The Steve Dangle Podcast - Paddle Board | June 10, 2020

Episode Date: June 10, 2020

On this episode of The Steve Dangle Podcast, we address a terrible situation (00:00), John Tavares and other Leafs return to the ice (25:00), the diversity alliance and the trouble brewing in the GTHL (35:00), a follow-up on the Ottawa Sens Foundation (51:00), Adam bought a paddleboard (59:00), Adam's history corner! (1:12:00), and the playoff format and future salary cap (1:24:00). Originally aired: June 10, 2020 Watch the full episode here: https://youtu.be/x5TjCxUa59Q Merch: https://teespring.com/en-GB/stores/fancydangleshirts Follow us on Twitter: @Steve_Dangle, @AdamWylde, & @JesseBlake Follow us on Instagram: @SteveDangle, @AdamWylde, & @Jesse.Blake Subscribe to us on iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/podcast/steve-dangle-podcast/id669828195?mt=2 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

panago pizza presents s d p the steve dangle podcast with your host steve dangle adam wild and jesse blake let's go it is the uh i guess this is our last week before summer vacation sort of as much uh as much summer vacation as we can have right in the middle of all this so here's what's going to happen uh if you missed it at the beginning of last sorry at the end of last episode this is our last two-week episode uh until we hit we think early august we're pretty sure the nhl and the nba are going to come back at the same time we know the nba will be back july 31st um i would assume the nhl is going to be back within a week of that we don't know if we're ever going to get the mlb again uh but thankfully we're not an mlb podcast can you imagine if we were

their players union and the owners they just absolutely hate each other yep yep crazy it's an unbelievable it's okay though because it's never gotten in the way of a season before no you know what it's got it in the way less than the nhl and its players union let's just put it that way that's true so um so essentially we just decided that you know if we're there's not a lot of new content there's no trades no free agency there's no games um and we have some stuff man we have some we have some stuff but like it's it's like a little bit like let's let's save the quality uh and uh over quantity and also to be quite frank it's been a real grind uh we're all exhausted and i think we want to be geared up and ready to go for when

this 2014 bonanza hits us um and so i think that it kind of makes sense there will be some weeks off in there as well uh for all three of us i'm not really sure if we're going to do um shows on certain weeks um or if we're just going to rotate them we'll we'll uh we'll let you know uh but in the meantime uh it's nice to have you here and unfortunately we got to start the show with something that's uh pretty serious so um there was a a guy who did animations for us who um who you know he basically just reached out to us i believe one day steve if i'm right uh and he out of i don't even remember he he animated the barbecue versus meeting thing that we that one minute clip that we all put up on Instagram. His name's Evan Scott Huber. And it

was really well done. And it was very funny. And we thought, Oh, my God, like, look at how talented this guy is. And it's, you know, it's wouldn't be the first time that we've spotlighted somebody that listened to the show, because that's just sort of like, we're always sort of amazed by the diversity of talents that we have, you know, people who are lawyers, people who are doctors, people who are you know and well an animator and we thought it was it's our show but it's also the listener show yes because of how much community we have and how passionate people are about the show that it's it's a community show that's right that's right and so we uh we gave him shout outs and stuff and and uh helped him uh fundraise uh caught for through coffee he used to do that sort

of thing but you know i think we sort of i mean i haven't talked to him in well over a year but from what our understanding is, and just to get to this as quickly as we possibly can, he was DMing women within the hockey Twitter community who liked his work or who he followed or whatever. They would follow him. He would follow them back or vice versa. And then he would talk to them, feign being a nice guy, and then ask them to send him pictures of them in high heels or their bare feet uh and various other requests now uh it's important that you know that he had like five twitter accounts so this may not have come from his main twitter account which was in his animation one he also had a banned twitter account he had two others and i forget what they

were um but there was a facebook account yeah yeah but i mean like on twitter he had like five different accounts oh yeah so um you know under the auspices of these are just different branding and this is my personal or whatever and i said i think a few months ago from what i can remember from what i've seen online uh he started tweeting about how people were blocking him and he's just a nice guy and how could this happen um and uh and then i guess uh at the beginning of this week um somebody tweeted out the fact like have you know they used e s h evan scott huber as the uh as his name and how many of you have been victimized by that and uh i think it was something near 40 people um and so it was a lot and so we talked about jesse you mentioned the

community part of our show and um frankly we didn't know about this until until it came out until people started posting their dms i know uh one of our followers since like the beginning of time uh leah kessel uh or sorry leaf flame was was the one that uh um was one of the you know major uh writers of these tweets and coming out with this sort of stuff um you know one of the things that we've prided ourselves on in the community and and is that you know it's community supported community based and um we're good to each other here and um this is one of those things where we didn't know what's happening um but we are terribly sorry to everybody who was affected uh there's there's just no other way to do to say it i mean it's it's a um it's an awful thing and

i i feel bad for anybody that that felt uncomfortable um who you know was just trying to be kind to somebody online you know because that's really what we've tried to do here is is sort of pull in people that are also kind maybe we have divergent opinions and that sort of thing but at the end of the day we can all say oh at least i can respect that person and evan for his part i think tried to get out in front of it on monday night and tweeted uh and i'm paraphrasing here but he said as a prominent white man on twitter which i thought was an interesting choice of phrase to be quite frank with you um uh you know i he admitted to doing all of these things to women as young as 18 years old um those are his words those are his words um there are rumors

and i've read tweets that maybe there were people who were younger than that um if you were affected by this um we're so sorry and and you know it's not uh something that we would have known about um but all the same to everybody who has a story we we believe you and we're sorry and we've we've taken down uh as much of his stuff that we were involved in as we can find yes it does go back a little bit to a couple years and i'm just i think there was only one thing on our youtube channel i couldn't find one on mine uh i don't know i did i did a search on both of our the podcast channel and your channel and i pulled down everything i could just out of respect for the victims yeah it might have just been might have just been the podcast account i took it off my instagram as

well uh and i gotta i gotta redo the intro from scratch because i didn't save the uh the edit yeah so like we can't i i won't have his stuff uh in my stuff so i want to read you um katie at dame of scones on on twitter because she like us was a believer and thought well here's this talented guy and and here why don't i try to help him out so i'm gonna read what she had to say because I think she says it better than anybody else could say it. She said, a quick thread to start off the morning. Since I missed a lot while I was asleep and teaching, and then I will resume my regularly scheduled programming of jersey drawing.

Warning, discussion of harassment, abuse, predatory behavior. First, I'll start out by bringing anyone out of the loop into it. Last night, many people on Hockey Twitter came forward to share their DMs and instances of Evan harassing them, coming on to them, asking them to participate in his uh fetish without disclosing what it was if you require direction uh to some of the threads about it i can point you there or you can just search his name or handle on here and i imagine it'll pop up and by the way it does uh i'm also sure many of you know that evan and i were friends i met up with him my husband and i bought him dinner we donated hundreds

of dollars to him through his computer fundraiser and i promoted his work relentlessly because i believed he was incredibly talented. I know that my name is probably intertwined with his to some of you. So I feel the need to make this absolutely crystal clear. I have no tolerance for abusers or people with power or even power or influence in a niche social circle who take advantage of abuse, harass, harm anyone. And that is no different if the person was a friend or someone I supported. I'm sorry to any of you that I led you to Evan. Like most, I thought that any off or kind of creepy messages were just the internet being a barrier to everyone sharing their dms i see you and i'm sorry thank you for calling him out to everyone who isn't comfortable doing so

including myself i see you and i'm with you the things that happened to me sorry the things that happened to you and me or the things that made you or me uncomfortable are no less valid because we don't want to post about them publicly yet my dms are always open to you although i wish i had a better way to say uh that to say that given the context of this conversation anyway uh this is the end of the thread i'm going to uh nest this whole thing with another tweet below to make sure anybody who's concerned about it and not seeing the content of this thread can avoid it now i also want to quickly mention a couple things that she goes into because she said she was going to end the thread but then messaged about getting a refund on gofundme because i said so i had evan

muted frankly um so i didn't i didn't know this um because there are people that i follow that i find sometimes are just trying to get attention and evan was one of those people and so i didn't want to contest this contest this kind of like how many freaking contests are there in the world so i didn't know any of this was going on and i maybe should pay more attention to the people that i mute because um because you don't see this so i guess he had some sort of computer thing where he tried to fundraise for a new animation computer that's my understanding yeah and it's a rough understanding if it's incorrect please hit me up like i'm i don't mind uh but steve you followed that storyline pretty closely so you could explain that no not really closely but i i did see him

trying to trying to get money for it and you know i'm gonna use this computer for animation uh and everything and you know i was kind of getting pissed off with it because he really only messaged when he kind of wanted something like message you yeah and like i'm starting to i like i'm suspicious that he dangled the carrot of i'm gonna make the smart insider man video for so long and i wonder if that was part of it yeah he said for two years he was gonna do that yeah you know here it comes here it comes we had people donate money to him um because of that you know at my recommendation and mine and mine yeah all of ours um uh and i gave him some money for that and we actually we spoke about um damn i was gonna have him like

illustrate a book idea i had and he never got back to me for that either so like again it was just like uh i don't know i'm suspicious that it was uh like a a carrot oh yeah i mean being dangled for for everything and basically uh it sounds like uh this person and several others and my maybe myself i can't remember um gave him money for this thing that uh did he ever buy it is he gonna use it i have no idea did he have money for something else i don't know katie uh katie went to uh and this is why i just want to read these last two tweets because i think it's important if you were part of donating to this so there was a gofundme and she said sorry i need to add one more thing if you also donated to the gofundme you can request

a refund uh of your contribution through gofundme uh i have no idea if it'll work but i went ahead and submitted mine and she put hers out uh recent tweets on other accounts suggest that he was contacting numerous women and offering to pay for things and send them money for pair and pairs of shoes so while i previously uh just counted the money as gone now i think uh i would like it back to donate elsewhere so it's possible that he could have been soliciting this money to pay for things like that and um and i mean so katie knows it better than he didn't than we do um and i have to say that you know when it comes to what she says about um about uh tolerance for abusers such as this guy i mean i i don't think i don't think you could say it any better um so katie i

hope you don't mind us jumping on the back of this but i wholeheartedly echo her statement and i will be posting her thread on my twitter account uh the reason we haven't said anything is because we felt like it was the smart thing to do to just talk about it on the show um but let me read this one more time well in twitter sorry adam before you continue twitter is very chaotic and the what what I kept seeing at the bottom of almost every Evan post is what happened. And one tweet was not enough to explain what happened. And I was, I was asked to say my own thing and I just knew the impending what happened

was going to come in. And I don't even, I didn't even fully understand what happened this morning. There's plenty of people listening to this show who have no idea who this guy is. Right. And you're confused as hell right now. Well,

that's why I tried to give you some context about, about this animation. And again, that's what it is right like sometimes i think he might have had 2500 followers that's not a lot of people um and it's it's enough it's enough obviously but what i'm saying is that this is not like some gigantic animator from a massive studio that's come down this is some guy in his room and what katie had to say i have no tolerance for abusers or people with power or power or influence in a niche social circle which is i think identifies him perfectly yeah uh who take

advantage of abuse harm or harass anyone and that is no different if the person was a friend or someone i supported i'm sorry to any i'm sorry to any of you that i led to evan um and you know she she mentions again steve and you talked about this some of the dms that you got not pertaining to what the discussion that we've had where he's you know talking to women but every time he dm'd it was something he needed um and katie said you know like most i thought any off or kind of creepy messages with just the internet being a barrier. And I know what she's talking about there. Sometimes tone gets lost on the internet, right?

You have to really watch what you write. To everyone sharing their DMs, I see you and I'm sorry. Thank you for calling him out. To everyone who isn't comfortable doing so, including myself, I see you and I'm with you. Now, I wonder, you know, that tweet tells me that Katie was also the victim of this as well. And if that's the case, Katie, I'm sorry to you directly as well.

So we figured best to address the situation. And I think for us, it's a learning experience. Beyond the aggression itself, there's a trust thing that, for me anyway, I can only speak for myself here, that goes away. i have a harder time trusting strangers um and and it seems like a stupid thing to say right like oh you know but you think that these people you're in a community with and we were well and even people you've met i've met him yeah oh you've met him i didn't i met him in washington last year so you know you you want to assume the best of everybody and i think there's a responsibility we carry um with making sure that the people we give a platform to um are good people i feel i feel a tad bit of shame here for pointing people towards his work and that leading to people being abused yeah and i hope and i hope those victims if they need the help that they do reach out and

talk to someone about it if that's what they feel they need to do and our dms are open as well my dms are open and i know there's ways to reach jesse and steve um but beyond that you know it shakes my ability to just retweet somebody in the same way and i'm i'm and i mean that i i think it's sort of one of those things where it seems stupid but it's sort of like for us it was like the joy of this guy creating this this amazing piece of uh uh this amazing video for us out of the kindness of his heart. And that's what we took it as. And we're thought, well, here's a, here's a independent animator. Why wouldn't you want to help him? Of course, I wouldn't you want,

even if he ends up working for a big studio someday, you know, wouldn't it be cool if we, we, we could help get them there, you know, help get them some exposure. Um, so for, for that part of it, it's really tough. And, um, uh, I, again, let, let me just say that we were so sorry for anybody that we led to Evan. and we're so sorry to anybody that felt victimized by him and was victimized by him um it's uh uh it's something that i i honestly can tell you nobody i i did not know um until this week but now that i do obviously i mean he's deleted all of his accounts i believe his web domain was was he was

somebody in the community uh had the access to it and has changed his web domain as well um he's deleted all of his accounts except for i think his band account his his videos are all archived on youtube but the channel is still there um and i don't know i don't know what else to say beyond we're we're truly sorry that this happened um and we're truly sorry that we just we had no idea no idea yeah you don't know you don't know who someone is in the dark right um kind of reminds me of uh the sophie merckx situation from years and years ago so explain this one because you there was a few people you mentioned that i think there are situations people forgot uh well yeah so there were there were a number of um accounts from i don't remember exactly how

many years ago i think it was roughly when the the podcast came out the one it reminded me of a lot was steve lapore um and you know basically again sort of just being creepy you know pictures and dm stuff like that who is that i forget who he used to write for but he was he was a hockey writer a blogger yeah uh but the sophie merck situation is uh is a fascinating case study that i wanted to upload to the youtube channel soon because i reference it every now and then and newer listeners will have no idea because it's from an episode from seven years ago but uh basically um the the sleuthing of uh sarah connor's discovered that this network of women in uh hockey twitter were actually one guy named kyle from waterloo oh yeah yeah who uh actually

got a bunch of people to tell them a bunch of things right private information that they thought they were telling to a friend a confidant right and we had uh we used to have shirts with like different podcast uh catchphrases on it and little slogans and references and one was angry swedish listener an angry swedish listener was one of the fake women that kyle portrayed like that's how deeply this guy infiltrated and again we don't know we didn't know um how could you so like you said to every to everyone who uh was was victimized in all this uh we hear you we believe you and we're going to do everything in our power to make sure this sort of thing doesn't happen again absolutely um so with that i think we've got to take a bit of a turn um if you have any questions

by the way or you want to message us about this feel free by the way i just you know thought you should dms instagram whatever you want to do we're open um is there a way to not aggressively swerve out of this no i mean no it's in when i was in like news television it was it's a hard right it's a you know those tough where you go from stories like i remember i would david bowie died i remembered um having to do the entertainment story it's very sad and then when prince died too it was like within it was pretty close to each other um and then uh and then you know teasing a home and garden segment coming up after the break oh my god coming up to the break frankie flowers has got your you know what you do with your gardenias and kevin frankish the guy that

was the host of the show at the time did a really good job he said listen we're gonna have to take a hard right here and he would just say that to the camera like we're gonna have to take a hard right that's the reality coming up next we've got and god bless him it you know it was not an easy that's not easy um so uh yeah this is uh this is one of those things where we got to take a hard right turn figured we would talk about this right away because it's the most important thing on the schedule today now to help you transition adam you just reminded me remember when you invited me on to breakfast television to talk about hockey and i ended up being in a segment about a tiger at the zoo uh was that what was that about the bowmanville zoo no that was oh i so i remember

that story but no this was i was on to talk about like a playoff preview or something but there was a story that was local to toronto of uh this video went viral of someone dropped their hat in the tiger enclosure at the toronto zoo and so the toronto zoo there's the where the people are there's the holy smokes don't go here space and then there's the cage separating you from the tiger so it's supposed to be two layers of separation from the wild animal this lady drops her hat in the in the in the what do you call it ditch i guess uh and she just climbs down and goes and gets uh gets it i don't even remember that like i can't remember anything from that time ever yeah and that was going that was going around and it was one of the big stories on your show

that day and i remember i was just sort of standing there in the background eating a muffin you know uh waiting for god i love breakfast tv uh waiting to talk about hockey and i'm just talking to people i'm like oh yeah i used to work at the zoo people do stupid crap like that all the time and someone overheard me and they went you used to work at the zoo yeah stuff like this happened all the time like you've seen this happen yeah of course all right we're having you on i'm like what yeah and and so dina uh had to like introduce me like hi we have steve on to talk about the leash but first he's gonna talk about the crazy tiger person and basically i was the tiger king before tiger king yeah uh that show is sort of like uh they pull on anyone who's got

any sort of information pertaining to each story and that's what i loved about that show it's like it doesn't matter if you are uh on camera if you're a news producer if you're running cable if you're doing if you're in the control room it does not matter if you have a story that helps their story that that makes it better the whole team participates and it uh it really created a great community there like it was such a fun show to be on because of things like that there was just always somebody getting pulled on for something and dina dina that's right coming in like a car alarm at six in the morning hey everybody dina uh dina poliesi if you're from toronto or the gta just so you know she has as much energy off camera as she does on and is genuinely uh one of the

sunniest people in the world she's just so awesome one of those people you you feed off that energy she's amazing so yeah that's not fake that's not put no that's that's real that's natural you can't You can't fake that kind of energy. No. So the Leafs started going to practice this week, as did many NHL teams. I believe the Oilers are up in there too. Yep. I saw Marchand and Bergeron on the ice.

There you go. That hurt my feelings. Yep. Steve's not back on the ice though. No, he's not. Even though he hopes to be and was about to buy rollerblades and then didn't. I did buy rollerblades. They said they had them in stock and then they canceled them.

They canceled my shipment. You did try to buy them? i did no no so i didn't so okay i'll just say i tried to buy mars blades that are like three times as much like two and a half thousand dollars no they're not a thousand dollars they're a lot of money though they're not gonna arrive till august and so i got this other one and they said they had them in store and it's a week two weeks later i'm like where the hell are my rollerblades and then they canceled them because they didn't have i'm sad i want a rollerblade shut up it's making a comeback jesse what is it get that smile off your face jesse they're coming back you're never gonna

a rollerblade you're not gonna roll it well not anymore you're gonna do it once maybe if you get them and that'll be it actually you're gonna roll a blade right over your fingers i'm gonna drop something on the ground for you to pick up right over your fingers let's talk about let's talk about the the hockey ice okay all right well i think there was uh i think there was some i mean it's been a while i think for for sports reporters you can see the absolute glee i loved christian shilton's tweet yesterday about like i was almost tweeting line combinations today it was fantastic you know what i mean like and you feel like you know this is her and like jonah siegel and you know the the people that follow the team every day luke fox they have to like you think that

there's nothing going on in hockey imagine having to produce content for that for a team to follow then they have to um so you could see that the excitement's building although we still don't know when it's going to come back and you know John Tavares and and Austin Matthews I think I think Ilya Mikheyev was on the ice as well yep but one of the headlines that came out and uh we got to call out uh our company here a little bit here Desi but who's our who's our so Bell Media uh TSN uh TSN just there's glee right it's like put it up it's sports we got something it's Leafs and uh uh they had uh I had a three minute video about how John Tavares uh tapes his stick at home to save time before he goes to the rink you guys I got no problem

you know probably no I think that's a story I think right now a story is a story and that's a story yeah well and I heard uh I heard a clip from him on on the radio this morning Talking about his excitement And his excitement level for John Tavares Is pretty ballistic But for us it's like Yeah just really good to get back at the rink And really miss the guys

Like it was just so boring I tape my sticks at home You have to understand They're left handed sticks I have them Like I have to I don't know you can't tape a stick unless you have it John do you buy them or do you have them shipped to your house

Or how does that work Well, no, I have them chipped to my house for sure. You know, I don't know. I play for the Leafs. What room do you keep them in? Is there a specific room, specific reason? Generally, I keep them in the garage. I keep them in the garage.

But, like, sometimes I'll tape them in the living room because there's a couch. Hopefully my wife's not home. you know don't want her to see me with the stick you watch do you watch any tv john while like when you're sitting on the couch and you're in your taping your stick do you you have like a show that you like to watch like a pre-game pre-practice ritual show yeah there's um i really like watching planet earth you know that part where they show um the mushroom growing but they speed it up i like to slow it down i like to watch it in real

time uh john uh jesse here from uh leaf's dinner on tsn 1050 there you go um i'm just wondering how do you get the sticks from your house to the arena i usually in my car i put them in i like to put them in uh you know in the back like you know kind of diagonal you know i don't want them to like obscure it like you got you know john what what color is your back what color is your car john beige well i think we found something we need to do again um oh my god so anyway john tabar is very exciting and what i loved is um you know old faithful the danny heatley burner account the uh at dan heater 15 uh 50 and 07 um uh tweeted when he when the tsn headline came up um he said you know john savars likes to you know tape his stick at home

uh he just wrote okay thanks oh oh my god it was great but you know what like i i don't mind watching the three and a half minute video with a little bit of pre-roll i please let me just hear these guys talk or do something this is great i don't care i and you're and and i think steve you're right it's hockey it's anything uh or sorry jesse said that um it felt good it felt like they were back a little you know back a little but no no coaches are allowed to be there right i think is there a it's a limit on i don't for some reason they said no coaches and i didn't explain that what's that it's like a limit on everything i don't i don't even know if the players were

able to like be that close to each other i think it depended on the rank you were in i think right like what can you pass to guys like can you touch the same puck what's the rule if you're 10 people under though which is the rule now or will be on friday i think you should be fine right maybe it's an nhlpa thing like it could be a union thing they're not getting paid to be there it's an unofficial practice why would there be a coach maybe there's something with that a

There's a lot of confusion right now. Like in Ontario, for example, a couple of days ago, they had some sort of announcement. And after the announcement, which is supposed to be a conveying of information, people are tweeting at all these reporters who are tweeting out the information going, yes, can you explain what that means? Yeah. Can you explain what any of this means?

Right. So in Ontario, too, they've opened things by region, which makes sense. So all the major regions with any sort of major population, which is the southern part of ontario and i think like a third of the country lives in southern ontario um uh none of them can open for stage two yet everybody else can because north bay isn't the same as burlington it's not and that's the right different places it's the right thing so basically from niagara all the way over to durham region basically you can't do any you can't get a tattoo go to a salon get your hair cut any of that stuff however there's nothing preventing you from going

to any of these other areas like an hour outside of town and getting them for yourself um it's just that everyone yeah you can do that it's just that everyone's too lazy to do that so it's not gonna happen i bet they're counting on lazy people which i am most of ontario is open hey except for the gta oh and windsor for some reason what do we do there are people there there are there are lots of people where it's open is there are no people so the thing about these cities there's people yeah it's what ruins them that's true it's true so anyway we're uh we're you know i don't know what the rules are for the the hockey rink but it's nice to see it's nice to have um there isn't a lot of like crazy new hockey news either like there isn't been there hasn't

been much i know that they still have to like we still need confirmation remember we were going to get a it is now june the 10th and we were going to have a draft on june 5th like we still haven't had confirmation 25th oh no the draft was going to be june 5th they were going to do the draft at the beginning of june we and then that got canceled and then they're doing the draft lottery now so now they're doing the lottery yes they're doing the lottery and then yeah and then they're setting the uh the rules for that and then they might have the second lottery if you remember that'll uh involve the teams that were eliminated right draft will be at a later date it's cool man yeah excited um a whole bunch of awesome

there's a lot going on i was trying to think of the biggest like player related hockey news and i think it's uh lawrence pilute pilate um of the sabers signing a two-year contract in russia with tractor chalabinsk so are you guys ready for the next half hour as we discuss that one thing I do hear all the talk radio sports programs in the city doing is the uh trophy winner debates so I've heard a couple of stations do the like hey who do you think's gonna get the best now who's gonna get a heart but you can only do that once and then what are you gonna do for the next two months also it's hard because those conversations any given year you're kind of

pulling your opinion a little bit out of your ass because it's not like you saw every game that player played the player you're discussing played now it's you haven't seen that player play very much and also the last time you saw them play was at least three months ago like i saw remember the whole controversy and how embarrassed some people were they didn't know if ovechkin was left or right wing there were just people en masse out in the open going folks what position did leon dry saddle play i don't know that guy led the nhl in scoring by like 20 points and people didn't know what position he played it's i don't know i don't know i i i don't have the most patience for those conversations at the best of times now i'm just like dude i haven't seen them play in three

months all right like i think the most exciting heart trophy debate i've ever been a part of was whether it should have gone to taylor hall or connor mcdavid and i maintained it should have been connor mcdavid even though his team didn't make the playoffs he was still the most valuable player to his team because they didn't they would have won zero total games without him that year adam was right and i think history proved that taylor hall probably uh didn't deserve the heart that year it's crazy you know you deserve denomination crazy yeah sure of course he had a great year um one thing that i think you know talking about highlights of the last week uh is the diversity and uh alliance trevor daly matt dumb and wayne simmons akimalu evander kane um

chris stewart joel ward um and they're around that's they're rounding out the committee um now the idea from what we understand is is to start small um and then eventually work with the nhl although this body is a body outside of the nhl currently um i think the nhl is taking its time and rightfully so to make sure it puts forward a plan that is the right course of action and they have uh someone at the helm there that is is qualified to do that so that's great uh one thing that i know uh black girl hockey club was sort of upset about and i i understand this is is uh or i can understand why is that there was no women included in in that initial group now they've said uh the hockey diversity alliance has said well wait a second we'll

we will include women we we just started this and um so you know look forward to that um but it'll be interesting to see now these guys um in in in what they're going to be able to do because there's a visibility with um with alliances like this and groups like this um that the NHL has just never had before and it will be very um i think it'll be great for the game and it'll be great for the growth of the game we've talked about uh you know sean fitzgerald we had him on last year one of the best episodes we had was him and he wrote a book called before the lights go out and i think you should read it but it's about how hockey is declining in this country on in a huge way on mass yeah and it you know they these guys are not forming i mean i think part of the

the thing, the goal here is to grow hockey within minority groups. But I think the first and foremost thing is having people treat them with respect at the rink. And, and that comes all the way through up, you know, up through the programs and a side effect of that is more families from non white backgrounds are going to feel more comfortable at the rink. And, you know, it's the, the crazy part as a juxtaposition to this, that's a bubbling story right now is the GTHL. So, if you don't know what the GTHL is, it's a massively important Toronto Hockey League, Greater Toronto League.

You played in the GTHL, which I played in a precursor to it. My league has now been absorbed by the GTHL. Essentially, it's single A, double A, triple A. And then, you know, once you're like 14, 15, if you're good enough, you're going to junior. Was it the SHL, Adam? SHA. SHA, right. Which was the Scarborough version of it, which is now part of the GTHL.

so the the problem here uh with the gthl is 10 years ago they talked about racial slurs in the game and they actually released some some information on players who were penalized uh rick westhead who weirdly has steve blocked we still don't know why i saw people tweeting about it i'm like can't wait for adam to tell me what the story is i don't know why he's that guy had you blocked for like 10 years but he has i don't know rick rick westhead's been um talking about this and it's it's a fascinating story and i just want to bring up his account i want to make sure that i get this right because this um this story is is kind of developing um and so let me let me just read this is from 19 hours ago update the gthl refuses to disclose details on the number

of penalties called in games for racial slurs but this hasn't always been the case the toronto star reported in december 2009 that racial slurs were on the rise in the largest minor hockey league in the world so the gthl is the largest minor hockey league in the world the gthl hired a consulting firm to poll officials after every game between 05 and 08 in 06 07 there were nine penalty calls for discriminatory discriminatory slurs and the next season there was 47 the next season there was 98 hey one is too many one is too many one is too many and this is where it gets worse the gthl 11 years ago issued a directive to officials and teams to be on notice about racial slurs the executive director scott oakman told the star socially this is unacceptable with the

nature of our demographics we have an obligation to direct to uh to address it i mean not even forget though with the nature of our demographics we just have an obligation to address it as should have been the quote the gthl at the time suspended players three games for racial slurs former nhl goalie kevin week said that wasn't good enough uh he called for 10 to 15 game suspensions oakman said the gthl did issue longer suspension sometimes but didn't want to boost mandatory minimums oakman to the toronto star at the time there are degrees of discriminatory language when you increase the minimum uh the lowest common denominator moves up and that is the end of the threat for now hey how about this if you say something that's racist on uh on an ice rink

you don't get to play hockey because you're not you shouldn't be a part of the game if you're acting that way how about that one instead of suspending somebody for what is it three games that's absurd you think of how exhausted kevin weeks at this like he says he's not gonna talk about the gthl until they they figure this out and by the way they are steadfastly refusing to release any numbers on this right now yeah because it'd probably be embarrassing probably be a national story see i was just thinking like is it possible because i mean the whole league is minors right so is it possible they're protecting minors but we're not asking for names we're asking for just statistics yeah right well and i think more than more than this uh because they are

minors they do need to take some some responsibility here um but when they are minors they're in the care of their parents yeah and whether or not that is taught at home because sometimes uh people pick that stuff up because they think it's cool or whatever um i think you got to take a good hard look at what's going on home if something like this comes up so and i wouldn't i'm not suggesting you name the parents but i am suggesting that if your kid in a game uh uh utters a racial slur that there are some pretty serious consequences that need to come to the parents and the kid. You know, the kid has to have their toy taken away, which is playing hockey. There's got to be something that, you know, responsibility-wise is on the parents.

And I think if you want to play in that league, you should have to sign a waiver taking responsibility for your child's actions on the ice. if they are a minor they are in your care you should have to be responsible for what they do um and you know i know that opens up a can of worms for injuries and sort of things things like that but i mean at what point like are we going to try to stop this or are we just going to kind of dance around it and and i don't know i mean i'm not a lawyer but whether or not you as a parent teach that in your home it's still your responsibility to end that type of behavior and you know the league only has the opportunity to end that type of behavior in the league and

jesse's right you kick people out usually the behavior probably goes away an attention grabber for sure yeah but i do think i do think there has got to be some sort of recourse here where it's like okay like i i don't know how you put parents on notice for something like that um but there has to be we got to go a little bit deeper i think then like suspensions are just it's just punitive right you have to we have to change the way people think um and the way people view this problem and i don't know what the answer to that is i'm just spitballing but it it just it's um especially given on the what's going on in the world stage right now it behooves that league to get their shit together admit their faults and then do something about it so can you repeat the number

for me the number went up to it was 98 penalties assessed issued for racial slurs yeah wasn't it nine to start yeah it was so i wonder how much i wonder how much would they so they had these the the consulting firm to poll officials after every game so i wonder if if the if the officials let some of that stuff go because 9 to 47 to 98 over the course of three years sure seems like a jump of okay we're actually enforcing this now rather than oh all of a sudden people are racist again it sounds like they weren't counting it when it was not or they weren't yeah ignoring it you know because 98 like how many games do they play that's like that's like one in god knows how many games like it happens all the time so basically it's it's not even just that it's an

issue and maybe they're not penalizing it hard enough this sounds rampant well and 98 you know when you consider how many gthl games there are is um i mean it's it's a huge number but there are a huge number of gthl games too so my worry is that that 98 isn't even accurate it's even bigger yeah right because a lot of that stuff goes unheard by officials or just unpanelized you know and like i said when he initially said those numbers one is too many like that's that's too many for a bunch of kids literally kids on an ice trying to play a sport and have fun nobody should be um subjected to that that's harassment it's racist it's terrible yeah that's what i'm explaining to you yeah so when we talk about hockey diversity alliance

and and black girl hockey club and you know these groups that are trying to do and are doing great work um you know this is the sort of stuff that they're fighting and when you hold this information back when you hold this back you hold back process progress You know, I think people are afraid of, frankly, losing their jobs and maybe they should be. But beyond that, we have got to move forward. And if we don't have some degree of accountability from the organizations that are are allowing our children to play in these sports, I don't I don't see how you can put your kids in them. you know i if you're not going to be accountable to the public when you have their children in your care i don't think you deserve to to have their your children in their care or sorry they don't they don't deserve to take your money they don't deserve to have that sort of responsibility and to make money i mean you gotta you gotta take the gt sorry no no you please go ahead well you

gotta take the gthl off its pedestal because it's it's still parents they want to say my kid plays in the gthl if you come from a certain area so part of the problem too steve is that uh we have a unified body of hockey in this country that was meant to do good but i find that whenever you have one body controlling everything um it can lead to issues and uh you know there's been there are lots of issues with Hockey Canada, and right on down. Like, the GTHL is the only league. So it's hard to – it'd be like if you only had one car manufacturer, right? You had only one car manufacturer.

They can sell you the car at whatever the fucking price they want, and it can be as shitty as they want it to be, and they never have to make it better. You know, this league and Hockey Canada as a body, despite the good that they do and let's not take that away from them are not moving with where the world is moving and frankly don't have to be as accountable and no one and and and there's no competitive like it's like it's it's sort of the same issue that we've had with video games right if you have um and i know this seems like a ridiculous comparison but hear me out when ea

buys a license for a sporting game, they just release the game and it's like, too bad, suck it up. But there are certain sports where you can buy multiple games, you buy the best game. And so parents don't really have a choice. Your kid plays in the GTHL or they play house league. Or they don't, even the house leagues are at a lot of times controlled by the GTHL or Hockey Canada or both. And so that is an issue in and of itself. And I hope that, you know, sometimes I feel like when these bodies get a little too um powerful um they become a bit clubby and they look out for each other cliquey and they and they they look out for each other and they don't look out for what's actually best for the sport and if you are a director of the gthl right now and you think that

the right thing is to not release this information then you do not deserve to be there well and you're just leaving everyone with the assumption that it's really really bad well here's what's worse what if they don't know i mean at least release what you do know but that's isn't that worse even so i would what's worse to me is that you know if they knew and it's high that's one thing which is bad but if they don't know and they release that they don't know first off my mind goes to well don't you care about that you did studies on it and number two is what else don't you know about your league this is part of the reason why when this conversation began you were talking about you know the new alliance and also mentioned black girl hockey and you mentioned that

they were independent of the nhl my first thought was good like if you want something done right do it yourself um that's clearly what's going on yeah and it's not even necessarily to rip on the nhl it's just uh there's so much red tape and uh foot dragging you know when it when it comes to you know big leagues and big bodies and stuff like that and sometimes uh you just got to take the initiative of yourself go around them and then they'll approach you uh which is what i'm hoping happens here but the gthl they gotta fix their shit yeah i hope one day they listen to people like akim aliyu who is a who was a teenager and has to go to hockey you know he's all excited on a thursday after school just to go play a game and then he goes to the game he has to hear racial

slurs and then he goes home and he's crushed you know i hope they listen to people who've experienced that and they realized that hey that we have to change this right right and akim ali played in the gthl yeah so so did wayne simmons so anyway that's uh some some progress and some some people dragging their feet but i think eventually if guys like rick westhead stay on this story even though steve won't find out about it till later um hopefully hopefully uh we get some progress on this because i think it's it is the thing that needs to happen and uh uh whether they know or they don't know neither answer is good so time to figure it out fair yeah fair so with that um we've got obviously we've got i think we've got an extended press conference

coming up here jesse also mentioned that he would like to play some audio yes which we haven't had in a while steven you ready for some audio uh i am but uh we're skipping over uh what i thought was one of the biggest stories this week oh what are we going to talk about no please what did i forget our old pal eugene oh okay what else more about eugene now nick sends foundation stuff oh because remember we were like this sounds funny well more details came out and it sounds a little bit more than funny fellas okay what do we got uh it's always fun when steve leads the story i love it where it's going so uh there was a it started with an article um printed in the ottawa sun by rick gibbons and then dave festchuck did a follow-up and i have not read it

yet but it's i encourage you to read the whole thing i'm going to read you a couple snippets what would you think if a charity raised nearly a million dollars but spent less than half a cent of every dollar raised in on the causes it was supposed to support hold that thought now what would you think if the sole director of that same private toronto-based charitable foundation now wants greater control over another charity this one in ottawa the ottawa senators foundation you good with that again hold that thought first some background and then they go into the background and they get into the nitty-gritty there were accusations of uh the sends charge the sends foundation um a lot of money in rent yep we talked about that they were reporting was

not typical um so basically eugene melnick wanted to divert some of the sense foundation funds into uh organ donation charities which makes perfect sense eugene melnick's life was saved by an organ donation about five years ago from a sense fan from a sense fan uh the real issue isn't here this is another excerpt from the article the real issue isn't cost it's of control of the foundation's operations, including where it dispenses the cash. The foundation didn't entirely ignore Melnick's appeal to flow at least some cash into organ donation awareness. In 2018, against its better judgment, perhaps, it budgeted $100,000 plus an additional $15,000 in sponsorships to the Organ Project, TLP, a Toronto-based private charitable

Foundation set up by Melnick in 2016 to manage his pet project, creating greater awareness about organ donations and waiting lists. Ultimately, the $100,000 was never sent. According to Canada Revenue Agency filings, the organ donation project generated $991,708 in revenues in 2018, primarily thanks to a big charity gala it staged in Toronto. No doubt that $100,000 Senator's Foundation check helped. So what happened to all that money? Again, according to CRA filings, the organ project invested barely $5,000 of the nearly $1 million it raised on organ donor awareness.

For those without a calculator, that's 0.49%, or less than half a cent for every dollar raised. And yet the SENS Foundation is being attacked for investing about 50 cents on every dollar it raises on programs. The hypocrisy is stunning. So where did all the Oregon Project money go if not to worthy causes? According to the CRA, a whopping $779,464 went to cover fundraising costs. another $238,118 went to management and administration i'm told these are the kind of results most certain to draw the attention of the tax man so oh and i might as well read this one final paragraph and then we'll talk the organ project is registered as a private foundation and

as such does not require an arm's length community board of directors overseeing operations as does the ottawa senators foundation instead it appears to have only one director eugene melnick so basically he the the allegation is the money was spent in like i said i said to you on sunday well you buy a computer for somebody that's working we gotta well we gotta renovate the offices we gotta oh man we had to rent these trucks in this venue and the table costs are so expensive man fundraising costs yes you better break those fundraising costs down baby because cra is going to be right down your neck about that one you better know to the knife how much it cost so let me reread the one paragraph that got everyone real hot and bothered so what happened

all that money again according to cra filings the organ project which is the charity uh eugene melnick uh started in 2016 the organ project invested barely five thousand dollars of the nearly one million dollars it raised in organ donor awareness for those without a calculator that's 0.49 or less than half a cent of every dollar raised so fellas we've been talking about a lot of bad news i got some good news some good news actually came out of this and i imagine more news is going to come out of it um but this one in particular is wonderful graham nichols some of you might follow him on twitter as sixth sends which is a very clever twitter name they said sorry they said uh they sent out a tweet being disgusted that the organ project

only raised supposedly five thousand dollars or contributed five thousand dollars towards organ research they raised a million you said and they raised a million only contributed five thousand contributed five thousand so he sent a tweet on june 8th so two days ago rather than start a consolidated go fund me which would pull some funds from the pooled money which is a problem we've run into people can donate directly to the trillium gift of life network here so he was basically like come on sense fans screw all this we can raise the money ourselves we could probably raise more than five thousand dollars in an afternoon he was right cool and he tweeted this four hours ago an update for you all over the last 48 hours trillium gift has received a

total of twenty thousand six hundred and four dollars and fifty cents from this campaign spurred by rick gibbons article on monday a huge thank you to everyone in sends and hockey twitter for supporting this cause in support of organ donation i'm floored wow that's cool way to go hockey fans and graham nichols in particular uh you contributed four times the amount of money towards uh organ research then uh whatever the hell that weird pet project uh allegedly is i love when hockey twitter comes together it's great isn't it the only little tidbit i read from the fest chuck thing i i'm dying to read i'm gonna read as soon as i'm done is i don't know what the fest chuck thing is so sorry he wrote a follow-up to the previous article

okay and basically uh you know we've talked about sense fans and they're not showing up to games and blah blah blah although they'll show up to games and they have money and they're interested they just don't want to spend it on eugene's melnick's team or eugene melnick's team and they came together in a 48-hour period from a tweet and raised twenty thousand dollars hashtag melnick out yeah really i'm done yeah yeah it's it's not hard it's a pretty easy one do you guys mind if we pause for just a second i gotta bring my dogs and i can hear them barking at strangers outside give me one second okay last thing before the press conference jesse you've got some audio to play i do have some audio to play so this will be a lot more fun than uh talking about how little

the sins give to charity um it's around two minutes of audio it's two clips that i've spliced together okay what i'm gonna ask from you guys is the first time we listened to it all the way through okay you're gonna hear um ourselves the three of us talk and then you're gonna hear another clip come on okay this feels like an important question to ask for me am i allowed to say anything no we just said you can't say anything the first time you listen just listen all the way through listen to both clips listen to the first one i have a feeling second one and then i'll play it back and then we'll and then we'll unpack it and then if you want to do a start and pause and you want to go back to it we can definitely do that okay all right

are you guys ready born ready ready steve who is will not buy himself new clothes bought a kayak especially in 2012 especially in 2012 oh that's true okay on an impulse on an impulse and then you'd call your friend andy to come pick you up because it couldn't fit on your car so steve buy impulse buys a kayak and can't leave the kayak trapped you in a parking lot i was just like you're storing it at your friend matt's cottage yes and how many times in the last five years six years since you bought it have you used it i used it a lot when i first got it because we kept it at a friend's house who was on the water so that was great they said you know just

come over use it whenever you want so i did now i get to use it like once a year when i go up so you bought your friend a kayak i still have it no you don't have it you've never had a kayak steve you've never had a kayak you bought your friend a kayak and put it at his place i moved to leslieville down near woodbine beach and uh got a little apartment there and i was thinking it was so much fun walking the beach with my daughter everly because she absolutely who loves being down by the beach. And I went and I dipped her in the water. You didn't.

Guys, about a paddleboard. I'm looking at these people outside and it's a beautiful Monday. And I was like, well, they seem to be having fun on their paddleboards. And I could bring my daughter out and like get her used to the water and sit her on the board when she's there.

I wouldn't bring her out deep, but I have a life jacket for her. I've got a bathing suit for her. Baby jacket. So we could paddle together. Oh man. And it was on sale. Let me just say it was on sale,

severely reduced. adam what a paddle i live near water i can do that is i live 10 minutes 10 minutes that way steve bought a kayak and i just gotta say i'm embarrassed to know both of you you guys watch i'm gonna watch i'm gonna i'm gonna actually do my kayak paddleboard thing i have to say so that second clip of adam talking about buying a paddleboard was from today on virgin radio when he had taught wanted to talk about how he bought a paddleboard and he'll never use it because i don't think he's ever gonna use it so um

uh your new nickname uh hypocritical garbage um i have a question for you so originally i was i was upset i was hurt bamboozled led astray well adam that you would do the exact same thing that you ripped me apart for but immediately i thought how can i benefit from this okay and it sounds an awful lot like with that clip like it's amazing like you guys make fun of me for the big headphones but like you can you really hear the sound under the sound and what i could have swore i heard is steve you can keep your boat at my house that's what i thought i can you roll that i i thought i thought i might have heard my friend as your friend

garbage i would like to store your boat at my hypocritical garbage house in my defense in my defense how am i hypocritical garbage i've only owned it for a couple of days so for me i and i am i'm storing it in my own driveway right now and i did buy a kayak rack so you can bring your kayak down because i have one at the time i did not i ordered off wayfair it's going to be here sometime next year congrats on your new paddleboard there matt guys steve you can leave your kayak here the hmcs fuck adam uh which i believe is its name um i am uh i'm gonna go paddleboarding tonight if i can i gotta get the fin on it uh but once i get the fin on it i'm gonna show you two fuckers okay i hope you get before the before

the lightning hits though because i don't want to get electrocuted oh yeah like you should very not go tonight but no i hope you get bit by horseflies i'm just saying that's the worst i've paddleboarded before and you're like and you're struggling to keep balance as it is jesse thinks i'm willing to use this like two times i think you're gonna try and use it as much as possible this summer and i think going forward your life will not be filled with a bunch of paddleboarding like you imagined it would be when you impulse bought it jesse he's gonna use he's gonna use the hell out of it this summer he's gonna use the hell out of it yeah and then may He's going to come and he's going to think about taking it out.

Like next year? Oh, yeah. He's going to think about it. Oh, you bet he'll think about it. And then all of a sudden it'll be June. Yep. And he'll think about it. And he'll remember having thought of it previously.

In July, a little bit more of the same. And then it's the end of August. and he goes ah why bother and then when matt goes to close up his cottage he's earned himself a new paddleboard steve miss jesse as someone who has experience in impulse buying watercrafts aka your kayak how many times have you used your kayak in the last uh couple years well jesse i think a better question would be how many times have i thought about using it true it's a good one monthly at least how many i gotta say in the middle of a global pandemic

excuse me my prospects of using my kayak right now are limited adam we all live in the gta we all live near but i live nearer so and i live near a beach now that's a beach like four weeks of the year because it's canada and that's a paddle board so like do you put it on your roof or like do you just walk across the street like sup everyone i'm going for a paddle board i could watch dar i could i bring my dar out of my power truck because i have a truck that can transport it and i'll just bungee cord it down be easy i just don't have a roof rack for my truck which i should

have gotten killing the earth and then going to enjoy the fruits of it it's two minutes down the road go on hmcs hypocritical garbage i i didn't say i would never invest in a watercraft at that time i just said that all you did was make fun of steve relentlessly for doing it not for ignoring his for eight years yes we'll see eight years from now we'll play this clip again we'll see when i buy a seadoo you guys can play this clip for me but okay i'm smarter than that so it's never gonna happen yeah except your story goes completely different hey i'm really successful and i live on an island because i don't like people and i get to use it every day said jesse blake on his own podcast i feel like jesse likes friendless and alone

i don't know just call me when you when you steve use your kayak and adam you use your paddleboard and you guys are out there on the lake i'm gonna call me up for that one time it's gonna happen i'm gonna insta story it tonight and just to prove to you guys that i'm doing it i don't even know how to do it but i'm gonna do it anyway we all think you're gonna do it a whole bunch in the next three months adam but eight years from now we're gonna be talking about how you paddleboarded for three months i'm gonna i'm gonna get matt to bring you to my kayak and we're gonna take you out at the legs i'm just i'm just gonna go next to you and rock my kayak like this i'm not gonna knock you off i'm just gonna knock you off i'm gonna use my i'm gonna use my paddle

board as a as a diving board and i'm gonna jump on the front of your kayak and flip you off and sink your battleship all right wow adam yeah and then what about your guy in that movie and then where's your czar through all this where's my wife what czar my daughter my daughter you got her a life jacket i did get a lot you're getting all the accoutrement to go with it well i already had a life jacket for her that's sort of kind of key when you want your daughter to be able to swim and they're young and they can't swim yet yeah no you do have a life and it's adam so You know he got some, like, you didn't get the cheap paddleboard. He got the Tesla one.

I did not. I got a Gucci life jacket. You guys got Gucci life jackets. You know you do, Adam Wilde. Hypocritical garbage. It was cheap. Cheap as chips. Because I didn't want to spend too much because I didn't want to use it for three months and then never use it again.

You don't want to do that. No, I don't. So I want to make sure that I'm committed and then next year I'll spend too much money. Maybe I can save up all winter. Think about my paddleboard. It's so awesome that you live in a climate that only allows you to use the thing you bought for three months. Well, listen, it must be a great investment to have this machine that only works kind of times of the year.

Guys, if I got a wetsuit, I could use it all the way till December. Okay. And I have a wetsuit. So yeah. So there. Yeah. And also you get to swim the sunny shores of Lake Ontario. we're clean water five minutes of exposure you'll grow gills and a nose on your forehead who says i'm going in the water i'm just going to be on top of it so you'll never fall once never you don't fall in paddle boards no no not when you're not when you're experienced sea captain adam wild have you completed the turn have i completed the turn i don't imagine it's that hard during your hapanoa have you ever paddle boarded before no no but i've i've had my dad had uh

uh um my dad windsurfed growing up and uh so i spent lots of time on boards that were similar with with a canoe no i hear windsurfing is hereditary that's what they always say in the baby books like watch out your son or daughter is gonna have great windsurfing skills you're such a jerk oh my god i think it's gonna be a really fun pastime and i look forward to sending you guys pictures and making you jealous and maybe you can come to the beach and i'll show off to you sometime so yeah you can use it if you want you want to go out and paddleboard you guys more than welcome we can we can get all three of us up on it together can you is it that big i don't

think so but it looks like it is i think you could sit three people on it pretty easily i don't know about standing that might be pretty tricky what are you why have we lost you yeah what are you looking at i was looking at kayaks i miss it well you have a car in which to bring it home or no i'll think about getting something for my car oh i'll think about it will i do it we'll see we'll see all right all right well there you go guys i own a paddleboard and let's do the press all right adam's history corner today is going to be a little special adam has a special rendition about a book he just read

that's right so adam mild read a book on mosquitoes it's called hey mosquitoes should all own paddleboards and i'm adam wild and i love it so adam tell us about this book okay so it's called the mosquito It's by Timothy C. Weingart, who's actually a Canadian working out of the University of Denver as a doctor. And it is the human history of our deadliest predator. They estimate something like 50 billion humans have died at the hands of mosquitoes over the course of our history. And what's fascinating about this is it goes through the entire timeline of our known history, like the written down history and talks about the effects of mosquito borne disease on everything

so every major conflict every major pandemic everything that went wrong in part most of the time had to do with mosquitoes and one of the things that i found particularly fascinating was the fact that the reason like especially given what's happening right now in the world The whole reason the Atlantic slave trade existed, or what is sometimes called the Columbian Exchange, the whole reason that it existed is that the mosquito carried diseases like dengue, yellow fever, and malaria. So the whole reason that Europeans bought Africans, caught Africans, stole Africans, and brought them to North America and the West Indies and South America as well was that

mosquitoes existed. Now you're probably thinking how, what's the connection? So when they tried to colonize North America, especially in the Southern states and in the Indies, what they found was there were two types of people that were available to them, right? You had people who were part of the native population. And then you had servants, indentured servants from European powers. So what the Spanish especially did was they tried to enslave the native populations that they conquered to do things like mining and deforestation and farming things. They were looking for gold. And what they found was because of things like the measles and smallpox and things like that, these populations were dying very quickly because they had no built up immunity

like we do so then they try bringing over poor europeans uh indentured servants so an indentured servant is very very interesting concept is that basically you are a person who's extremely poor let's say you live in one of the major cities you live in paris you live in london you live in you know barcelona whatever and you want to go over to the new world and try to have some land which is something that would just never be available to you in Europe. You would never be able to afford it. You'd never find a job that would pay for it. There's no social movement up the ladder.

So what you would agree to do is for passage on a ship, you would give away seven years of your labor to a particular person. And at the end of that seven years, you would be granted land by the crown, whichever crown that you were, you know, Spain, England, sometimes Portugal, the Netherlands a little bit. and what they found was these indentured servants these people who gave up their freedom to go work for free for seven years to pay for the ship ride over and then eventually get free land out of it were not surviving and that's because dengue yellow fever some other some

other these mosquito-borne diseases so and i believe it was the spanish and the portuguese first figured out that because of a specific genetic predisposition that certain Africans had, they were able to resist these diseases far better than a European could. So sickle cell anemia, I'm not sure if you've heard of it, but essentially it's a disease of the blood that developed, And I'm just giving you the, the overview here that developed because of malaria and because they wanted to, because the human body reacted over many, many, many generations to, um, you know, the body dying of malaria. So they, um, sickle cell anemia would prevent you from dying of malaria, but it did, it

did kill you and it killed you around the age of 24, 25. And there's actually a Pittsburgh Steeler who has it, Ryan Clark. And again, it's a genetic thing. And anybody that has sickle cell anemia cannot play in Denver without intense medical supervision because of the thin air. And it has to do, and again, the book gets into this, but it's absolutely fascinating. So what they did was they brought these Africans over and they became the first slaves. And Africans could survive these things.

And sickle cell anemia might kill you by 24, 25, but that was long enough to reproduce so the species could keep going. And what's fascinating further than that is the reason that it continued was because they thought when the American Revolutionary War happened, the thought was it wasn't economically sustainable for slavery to continue uh because of the crops they were making at the time uh things like coffee and that sort of thing so they thought that over time it would probably take care of itself and that you know though a lot of them thought it was wrong if they wanted a union they would be able to uh they would have to look past it and they also thought a lot of the northerners thought well you know what uh it's not really economically viable to do this anyway. So England starts to go elsewhere for its tea and its coffee

and other things like that, cheaper places. And the Southern United States says, we got to make a choice here. What are we going to farm that we can give to the world? Cotton. And this is when slavery becomes industrialized. Because cotton, there's two types of it. There's the long stock and the short stock. The long stock stuff, and this is really crazy, only grows on like a couple islands outside of Georgia. And it's the better stuff to have. It's easy to pick. It's easy to go through and easy to create, but it's impossible to grow. The short stock stuff, you can grow it, but it requires a ton of hard labor. And that's when you see the industrialization of slavery. And that is when, when you start to clear large tracts of land, what does that attract?

Gigantic swarms of mosquitoes because there is standing water. So by clearing the land, By creating these plantations, they were making the mosquitoes like perfect habitats to exist within, especially in the southern United States. And the only people that could really survive it, and there were seven or eight U.S. presidents that had it, including Washington, like malaria, were these African slaves. and so that is why partially a good chunk of why this even happened in the in the first place and i think it's an important book to read not only does it help explain some world events uh but i think it's it's an important book to read because it does get into the social factors that played in this as well you know you talk about um white superiority and and and the reasons that our systems are the way they are it can be boiled it can be boiled down to many things part of the biological reason they happen was because of mosquitoes the social reason is

humanity uh but it is an absolutely fascinating read all the way through and you would not believe the effect that this one little creature which has no value to earth outside of uh you know it's no it's no food source for anything uh like just no it's nobody's main food source there's no animal out there that hunts mosquitoes um it the old mosquito really is one of the only creatures on earth that only exists to perpetuate itself it doesn't help anything uh nothing is helped by it being there there's a theory we don't know this there's a theory that if we didn't have any mosquitoes not much would change except for the fact that a bunch of diseases would just disappear um and would be much harder to transfer from body to body but absolutely fascinating read and if

anybody is interested it is the mosquito um a human history of our deadliest predator timothy timothy c weingart i think it's fascinating and it does a far better job of explaining than what i just did but i thought it was particularly relevant given what we have seen uh happen in the last 14 days and i gotta tell you um it's it's there are parts of this book that are really tough to read but it's absolutely worth it that's awesome you should do book reviews holy you know you're really good at this right wow you guys weren't saying anything every book you read like a fucking 10 minute book review that was amazing christ yeah it's isn't that insane though that like that that happened like it's just you just don't ever

learn that you would never know what drew you to that book it was on okay so my my who mentioned it last episode was my mom and my stepdad uh watch i think it was cbs this morning which is actually a pretty good little news magazine on sunday mornings and it's for you know mostly older people watch it which is why they watch it but they're they're relevant in the fact that they get who they want in terms of celebrities and news people and that sort of stuff like they'll have ariana grande on one week and the next week it'll be obama yeah like they're a relevant show yeah oh very relevant yeah yeah um and it's like the lighter lighter version of 60 minutes right Like the Sunday morning digestible and then 60 minutes on Sunday night, which I also love.

It's just like, let's get hardcore. But they have things like these books and it's a, my parents told me about it and I was like, well, I got to read that. And I had no idea. The first page, just wow. And I mean, I listened to the first page. I didn't read it. But from the first go, it was like, it was just an amazing book that just sucks you right

in. And the, it's well read on the audio version as well. So if you're like audible or you do Apple books, audio books or whatever, like I do, it is so worth it. It's such a fascinating, illuminating piece. Like you read books sometimes you're like, I got a little out of that. This one just warps your whole world perspective and, uh, uh, makes you aware of certain things that you would never have otherwise been aware of.

There was no other place on the world. Like there's no other way that you would know that about a mosquito, right? Like who does, who's doing research on that? So anyway, Jesus, Adam. i don't know how to follow that up man i know it's heavy stuff man but it's worth you need we need to learn this stuff we need to learn this stuff another one i was talking to jesse about and may i can do this next episode but king leopold's ghost is another book you must must must must read especially very relevant right now oh my god king leopold i saw that name recently

king leopold the second of belgium uh that's why yeah uh he is basically the responsible for the belgian congo uh major rubber trade source treated people horrendously um i can tell you about it next episode but it is another book that like i don't even know if i have the strength to read that one ever again it was so painful it's such a it's such a brutal book but it all happened there's a lot of statues coming down and i think this is one of them well i'm surprised that even had one like even the even the belgian people didn't like them um like for these reasons and it's funny because you know people talk about at that time well he's a man of his time he was late victorian era and everybody was racist well okay maybe no not necessarily and in fact this

man was internationally condemned at the time the only issue is that he was a king what are they gonna do tell him to give up the crown he'll be like fuck off um and the worst part about it is that he sold the congo to the belgian government it was his personal colony that he sold to the belgian government before he died just so they could take it off his hands it's just and then the cruelty continued it's it's just an unbelievable read again things that we need to know that we never would have learned otherwise jesus yeah oh yeah vicious stuff awful awful awful anyway i know it's been a lot up and down this episode but i think it's important that we we you know talk about these works i i just learned that my book is in the recommended for father's day section

It's Indigo's website. So there you go. Daddy dangles. Yeah, for sure. That's what it's called. Can we get to a couple questions? Yeah, let's do it. All right.

Jaden Ho wants to know, do you think it's a good idea for the NHL to keep this playoff format going forward? That'd be kind of interesting. No. I think you got to see how it goes, but I don't think they will. I mean, you're asking the NHL. I don't think it never changes to change. Sorry.

I think I might have misunderstood the question. Like, are you talking about, like, reseeding after the fact? Because obviously we're not going to have a play-in tournament every year. I don't think that makes sense. I think that would be interesting. What if you had the last two playoff spots played for a tournament between 8-9 and 10-11? They do it in other leagues.

Sorry, 7-8 and 9-10. I think the NHL, they always talk about, the old guys talk about the good old days of the NHL in the 80s. and you know the reality was that 16 teams made the playoffs back then but there were only 21 almost every team almost every team made it so i don't see there being a bad reason why more teams should make it i in fact think it's better for the game if you've got more teams in uh if you add a fifth round i think what you do is you make that fifth round one that you know the top-seeded teams don't have to play and then it's kind of fun because in the second round those top-seeded

teams haven't played hockey for a week and a half and they're going up against teams that have beat the crap out of each other so you kind of have that you know and and i i believe in receding every round i think you should do that the only issue with that i have is you're keeping now the best teams in the league off of the ice right for a longer period of time but oftentimes you're not oftentimes well that's not necessarily true because pittsburgh's a small market they're often the best team in the league right you know chicago is an awful team right now they're not good and uh they're in the you know having them is is a good thing so i think toronto was horrendous for 15 years 15 years no exaggeration and whatsoever but if we'd had them in great for tv

ratings so i think the more teams you have in the better and you can survive without one of the major teams because if you have four teams that are waiting for the rest of the teams to catch up with them you're gonna have some major markets in there right right i'm in favor of a baseball or a ncaa tournament format where you have the last seed is played for in a single elimination game i think that'd be a lot of fun you make eight nine in that little break between the regular season the playoffs make eight nine play a single elimination uh game seven game and you get the seed for that spot what if what if you made seven sorry uh seven play ten yeah eight nine play each other yeah yeah that's also an option yeah that's what i was suggesting before but either way i

think it i think you experiment and this is the time you see if it works and going forward i'd love to see some of these leagues implement these little changes steve doesn't like it i'm more i'm more into the receding part or going back to one to eight the one the one little thing i've been thinking about recently you know the legitimacy of these playoffs or whatever we've changed the format a bunch of times you know what i mean five games yeah like it's not sacred we didn't look at the first um one two three one two three two wild cards we didn't look at that as an illegitimate cup it's just the new way it is and that was a decision like that was a decision they just sort of arbitrarily made this is at very least hey guys we have a pandemic and we weren't able to

completely finish the season what should we do like this to me is even better than that so it's it's a legitimate cup do i think they should keep the format going forward parts let's play it first let's play it first like yeah hey experiment do you guys want offside reviews absolutely after one year take it back take it back take back exactly uh last question jesse uh what effects this is from mike p what effects slash effects will the possible lowering of the uh 2021 salary cap have on the uh potential lockout they're not going to lower it so we already know that they're not um and there will not be a lockout because the players believe it or not are again at the disadvantage here uh because if they don't play then the then the cap is guaranteed to

go down uh given what's happened this year um they're gonna they're going to extend this collective bargaining agreement i think until was it 2024 um 22 is that what it is i'm not sure i think it goes three years i think it's three more years after 2021 so i think that's what it was it was seven and then there was an option to renegotiate or go three more years or something anyway uh what's going to happen here is is that they're going to find an agreement pretty quickly and i would imagine it stays mostly the status quo the the real sticking point seems to be escrow and the olympics so maybe the nhl players get the olympics and the owners get to keep escrow which is you know and and that's i mean that's not fun for the players but i think

um they can't lower the salary cap because it would put a bunch of teams in default about it so that wouldn't make sense but the reality is the nhl's lost billions and or and will continue so we're lost millions and they will continue to do so like every major sports league until they can get butts and seats so um they're gonna have to work together on this and unfortunately it's billionaires fighting millionaires and the billionaires are gonna win so that's on this one um you know that that it's reality is the guys who signed the checks are gonna say well we can't run a league unless this happens so i don't think it benefits anyone not to play yeah um for that reason i should say if it's a health reason sure go for it and as for the

olympics oh we're not going to see the nhl in the olympics until 2026 you know my prediction no they i agree it would be better for china though it'd be a real boon if they were in there for time there may not be one there may not be well there may not be one you're right that's a good point too yeah we're not through this who knows no if you can't if you're if you're still not able to go to like uh a game in person or a concert uh they're not having an olympics yeah yep so we'll see you in a year and a half supposed to be one this summer or something there was they are postponed till next summer i believe where was that japan tokyo yeah tokyo and they canceled it mad late yeah because they were like oh no we're gonna continue now

No, we're not. It would be kind of sick to have two Olympics within like six months of each other. I'm pretty excited about that. Have them at the same time. Summer and winter. Let's go. Colossal Olympic Village. Everything's in text.

Well, okay, we'll revisit the plan. We made some progress before that. Yeah. Anyway, should be good. Jesse, is that all good? Yeah, we can do more next episode. I still have plenty of questions. So we will do that.

We'll do an extended version next episode. Thank you so much for listening. We'll be back next Wednesday, and we will see you then. S-E-P. The Steve Dangle Podcast. Follow the guys on Twitter at Steve underscore Dangle, at Adam W-Y-L-D-E, and at Jesse Blake. Brought to you by Panago Pizza.

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