The Watch - Unpacking 'Game of Thrones' and Shonda Rhimes Leaves ABC for Netflix, With Guest Adam Granduciel of the War on Drugs (Ep. 176)

Episode Date: August 14, 2017

The Ringer’s Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald unpack Sunday night’s 'Game of Thrones' episode, "Eastwatch," and what it means for the series as a whole (3:00). They also discuss Shonda Rhimes’s major move from network television to Netflix and what it means for ABC (19:00), before Chris sits down with Adam Granduciel of the War on Drugs to discuss their upcoming album, ‘A Deeper Understanding,’ and how he and his bandmates use basketball and 'Game of Thrones' as escapes from the stress of making music (35:00). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today's episode of The Watch is brought to you by The Rewatchables. Andy, this is a new podcast from the Ringer Podcast Network. People are excited about this. It's about, it's a podcast that's going through sort of the last, say, 25 years of the most rewatchable movies. Yes. Right. So basically, kind of an homage to those cable classics where it's like if it comes on, you're stuck. No matter what part of the movie you're at, no matter how much time you have, you're like, I'm in.

I'm in for 20 minutes. I'm in for an hour, whatever it is. Yep. First episode was A Few Good Men Featuring myself Billy J. Simmons One of the great podcasters and Amanda Dobbins. We had a blast doing that.

We'll have another one this week. We're going to try and get these to you with regularity. I think a lot of professionalism. A ringer friends are going to be on them, right? A lot of Ringer family is going to be on these. And while I'm here, I just want to also say, I hope you guys are spending all your free time

listening to Ringer Podcast Network podcasts. How about against all odds with Cousin Sal? How about GM Street with Tate Frazier and Michael Lombardi? How about the NFL show with Kevin Clark, Robert Mays, Danny Kelly, all manner of guests? Can I throw one out? Sure. What about House of Carbs with Joe House? And coming soon, special guest Andy Greenwald.

Also, the chestnuts. Big picture, binge mode, mass man, shack house, teed up, you know, Ringer FC. Jam session. Jam session. Did you almost say the watch? I almost said the watch. But I can't get the watch out of my mind. I can't get ringer podcast.

cast out of my ears. It's all good. Listen to them all. We're going to get going with an episode of the watch right now. Let's go. I need sports to have to clear the room. Stand up and walk now. Hello and welcome to the watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I'm the editor at the ringer.com and joining me

on a snowy ice mission to save the world. It's Andy Greenwald. Actually, that's why I moved to L.A. I'm done with snowy ice missions. Ferd up. You get furred up? He stays furred up. It's the Ringer podcast. Network, it's The Watch, it's Chris and Andy, it's Monday. We're

still reeling from a Game of Thrones in which no one died, but a lot of connections were made. A lot of sniffing happened, and no narcos, but there's a lot of important sniffing. Greenwald and I're going to talk a little bit about Game of Thrones. We're going to talk a little bit about Shonda Rhyme's blockbuster move from the

American Broadcasting Corporation to the Netflix Corporation. Listen, you better put on your industry cap. I have to get my flame retardant suit for the takes that are coming from Greenwald on this one. thoughts. And then the second half of the podcast today is an interview that I did with Adam Grandesiel from the

War on Drugs. A Philly boy. Yeah, man. We had a great talk. He's got a new album coming out. A deeper understanding drops August 25th receiving rave reviews. I am sorry I missed this. And it's dope. It's a really good record. How was your time with him? He's awesome. Basketball player.

Is he? Game of Thrones fan. Talked about it all. Talked about Steely Dan. Talked about making this new record out in L.A. Do you talk about Wawa? Perfectionism. We talked about perfectionism. And how I'm holding you back. Yeah, I know. So check out that interview with Adam in the second half of the podcast. But first, where else would we start?

Westrose. Andy, last night's episode was interesting because I think you and I were watching it. We watched it with Adam. We watched it with Adam Grandisiel. No. We watched it with Mallory and Rubin and Jason Concepcion, which is a treat. Always. The Bingemo guys

We also watched a T-Pain, a Jace. Yeah, adjase to T-Pain. But they're watching it, they're processing all this information. They're thinking about the history and all the stuff. They're holding each other's hands. Holding the hands. Mallory grabbed me very hard on my hand that hurt. I sit way on the other side of you guys.

But I think there were a couple parts of last night's episode where you and I looked at each other. And even we vocalized this where I was like, that was corny. Yeah. And I think I've been trying to articulate this to myself for a couple of. hours now. I think one of the things that's so cool about this show is the fact that even though it was a fantasy or whatever you want to call it, like some sort of genre work, that it felt very rooted in an understandable kind of nation-state army conflict.

You know, that even though there was magic and dragons and prophecies and legends and destinies, that Tywin and Stanis and Rob and Jamie, We're playing this chess game of military might and savvy. You liked the show when it was about men making military moves. No, I love the show. I'm not trying, I don't like the show. What I'm saying is a bunch of people in a room being like, we've gotten to this point.

What we got to do is go capture a zombie and bring it back to King's Landing. We could just burn Kings Landing down. That's what I want to start with. We could just send a team of assassins to kill Serbs. We could just do a bunch of things that would just like X this out. But instead we are going on this weird mission to prove something to Searcy when Searcy then in another scene is like, I'm fine like having an armistice because maybe that would be beneficial to me. Maybe I'm misreading things. No, I mean, there's two conversations to be had about the role of this episode in the structure of the season and the structure of the series.

We weren't sure if there would be these bridge episodes anymore because, you know, there are fewer episodes. There's a lot of ground to cover. Apparently, it's very easy to cover ground now. Ships can literally teleport, so we're not worried about that anymore. So this was a connective tissue episode, which had pluses and minuses, as they always do. There are always episodes in the spirit in a season of Game of Thrones. We were a little caught off guards. We didn't think there would be room for them.

And I think we've been preparing for the worst for a long time. In terms of this is going to be a bloodbath, so many characters are going to die. Yeah, beloved characters. So that's apparently going to be next week. So we can talk about that. But let's start where you started, which is. is the central thrust of this episode pointing towards the second half of the season.

I mean, next week is the penultimate episode. It feels totally rhythmically off, but that's where we're at, is based around a plan that is wild dumb. This just seems very stupid to me. Now, again, you have to do this with other shows often, and it's the first time we've had to do it with Game of Thrones, which is try and give the creators

the benefit of the doubt and your creative empathy or sympathy and be like, certain things had to happen. So in order to build the house that we want to build, We got to cut some corners in the HVAC system. You know what I mean? We got to do some deep plumbing work here.

And the work that needed to be done was we need to have more action with the Army of the Dead, with people we care about, which involves putting them on the other side of the wall again. Right. We also don't want next season, I think we're headed here, to be just a CGI enemy. So we want to keep Circe in play somehow. Or some Lannister or some threat. Some extra threat. Yaron who now has been out of the mix for a couple episodes. He literally could have traversed the globe six times in how much.

time he's been off screen. But we also, you know, but they also want John to be south and then north and then south again, right? We know, we're pretty confident. We shouldn't say we know. Would be fine if this wasn't a show that was like Tyrion's going to be in a box for half the season. We're also confident now, or it used to be that show. We're also confident that the hound will survive this because he has to fight his brother in Kingsland.

So there's certain things that, quote, unquote, have to happen. And I think this is a point I was making last night on Talk the Thrones. It's exciting to think of a season finale that would involve all. our players in the same place for the first time. You know, if there's a case to be made to Circe or in King's Landing, that is great drama, and it's probably worth getting there. All that said,

all that said, this plan, which is let's take some of the most crucial characters to the future of the world, including basically the Messiah, Tormond, who is king of the free folk and guarding the wall personally. Jora, who just came off a sick leave,

you know what I mean? Right. Like, just working back into game shape. How strong do you think is sword arm is right now. I have no idea. I don't know whether Grayscale solidifies the muscle or what. I doubt it. Sending them on what is essentially a suicide mission to do something that seems

profoundly unnecessary. Because again, they've laid some track to make us understand this. The track they've laid says DeNaris does not want to set fire to King's Landing. Well, no, Tyrion doesn't want her to set fire to King's Landing. Right. She has now backed off of that. John doesn't want her to set fire. Like these people are saying like don't be the

Good point. Let's find another way. That said, dragons aren't nuclear weapons, which I know is a sensitive subject this week for those of us in IRL. But you could fly a dragon and just burn the castle, right? I don't know. I'm just saying, I don't understand all of this risking everything that matters in order to prove something to Circe who doesn't matter. It's weird that there are no other plans. It's weird that they were like, okay, so there's like either this WMD option, which is.

not really politically palatable or humanitarian. Yeah, and I'm with that. The option B is this kamikaze dirty dozen mission, which I have heard described as like, you know, Snotian's 11, which I liked very much on Twitter. Snotion 7. I think William O'Donnell was the name of the person who puts up. I also think because you've got Gendry and John,

you can go in glorious bastards. I'm sure that's been mentioned before, but I, that occurred to me today. Although we learned last night, not a bastard. John, not a bastard. Yeah, I know. I mean... I'm repping for Mallory here. No, I...

And you know what? I'm glad to brought a Mal and I wanted to bring up Jason. Because one of the things that's really cool about watching the show with them, not only because they have like this background in it. But Jason was saying last night, he was like, I think John wants to die. Like, I think John has like... The safety is off with John and he is kind of like... Every mission is seemingly impossible odds. Never tell John the odds.

and that is an interesting I wish the show showed that more or I wish Kit Harrington had a moment to depict that more that he was like you know what I know that this is kind of a wild unstable plan

but I'm a guy who's died and come back to life and I don't want to come back to life again you know look the show for many reasons is completely unique in Swedish in the history of television and we're continue the way we cover and is in many ways post criticism

yes because we We all want to see, we all just want to see what's going to happen. We all bought tickets to the show and we want to watch the show. So I get that. One of the unique things about it over the course of the first six seasons was, though it was always heavily plot-driven, there was event and event and there were people moving and, you know, characters were kept apart for seasons at a time. Because there was so much source material in such an expansive world, they were very skilled at finding, I mean, Beniof and N. They were very skilled adapters, and they found pockets to advance the humanity of the character. to put them in pairings that would reflect both of the characters in the scenes true nature.

Jamie Brin, for instance, yeah. Right, and advance things twofold. So that people are on a long walk somewhere, they have a chance to know each other, and we have a chance to know them too. There is very little time for that left. All of a sudden, you know, it went from having limitless time to suddenly the show's ending, so now we need to get moving. And we're really seeing the strain in scene work. I mean, scene work, scene construction, the breaking of episodes, this is like, boring. TV 101, but I would say the degree of difficulty, everyone's always given them credit, and

rightfully so, for the difficulty of adapting this sprawling work, but the degree of difficulty in these last two seasons, these 11 episodes or whatever it's going to end up being, is just monumental, because every scene now has to do five, six, seven jobs, and very few scenes are load-bearing enough to withstand that. It's strange, too, because you think about whether or not, I don't know, there's going to be, like, say, two more books. One more book, I mean, have you ever finished. Jason says no, but, yeah.

Okay, so wouldn't that theoretically be like three more seasons or four more season? Wouldn't 11 seasons be the amount of time that you would probably quote unquote need to tell this story? Yes, and HBO would want that. Yeah. You know, this is, I don't want to read too much into it yet because we haven't seen the rest of the season. There is an element of storytelling that does feel like they're ready to move on, you know. But or it's just they were ready to end the story. Maybe it's just a semantics thing.

You know what I mean? but there, it does, expediency seems to be the rule of the day in the show now, not just in terms of the characters moving places, but the completely compressed shorthand with which characters have to define who they are to each other before, you know, sailing across the world. So like the Aria and Sansa stuff just isn't working for me. There's something inert about it because we barely, you know, we kind of remember who they were,

and then there were six years when they were apart, and now they're together, and they have three scenes to basically, basically sketch out their territory and then relitigate their entire relationship. It's just very hard to do. And so, yeah, I agree. Like, John should be doing something other than brooding on a cliff and then going back to war again. It's like, I think we said this last week or the week before. I am coming full circle and suddenly being, I no longer think that George R. and Martin should

feel totally terrible about getting the story stolen from him because we're watching now and we're like, there's actually a lot more work to be done here. We are almost getting the Cliff's Notes version. So, yes, I agree with you. I mean, I think I said it. Like, this show is in many ways post-criticism, but what, I'm going to throw a hypothetical at you. I don't think this is going to happen.

But what if it's not great? You know what I mean? Like, what if, my guess is that even if certain things line up too neatly or feel rushed, the overall experience of having lived through this and watched this show is going to wash away most sins. You know, if they pull off next week's episode with this daring snow rescue of a dead body, we're not going to remember the ridiculous machinations that it took to get them there. We're going to remember the excitement of episode six in this season.

Sure. But I kind of wonder the thing, I'm not saying it's going to, I don't see a world where Game of Thrones is bad and people are like turning on it like they did at the end of lost. The writing is really good. The acting is really good. And they love the characters. And it looks better than anything it's ever been on television. But let's take a moment. like, there's not much time left all of a sudden.

And everyone is going to need a, to have a grace note or a farewell, or to feel like their storyline is resolved. And it does feel like, I can't wait to be wrong about this on some level, but it does feel like certain beloved characters, like Braun, for example, is just bulletproof. You know what I mean? Like, he's just there to call Jamie Seward. Or not. I mean, because, or not.

And I wonder, even, this is why it's still fun to talk about this. Even that is fraught, right? Because if Braun just surprise gets broasted next week, then the conversation will be, do you think Bennoff and Weiss were feeling criticism that they're too soft and Martin would have done this? So they need to keep us on our toes. The meta-conversation continues.

Yeah, I mean, that meta-conversation continues, but I think that the central idea that I think attracted plenty of people to this show or at least made them so passionate about it. And I know it had a lot to do with how I felt about the show, was this idea that this series started, with a series of characters with a group of characters

that all died. You thought Kat and Rob and these people, I mean, obviously people who read the books didn't weren't under that impression, but if you're watching the show and you're so invested in certain people and then you're taught

lessons about the world that they exist in is that the world is cruel and unforgiving and punishes people for making these kinds of choices. To now have a group of 12 characters about who, you know, I mean, not all of them are going to make it, but in a lot of ways,

it's strange. Like, I'm starting to run out of ways in which Jamie dies. I guess I'm thinking out loud, but what I'm saying is, like, the idea is it's gone from plot subversion or myth subversion to myth fulfillment. Yes, and so here's the thing that I wanted to ask today, which is when was the last time Game of Thrones

made you feel like the episode of The Mountain and the Viper? And I'm thinking, I was thinking of it already, and then actually our friend, Chey Serrano, was surreptitiously filming his wife watching that episode and put it on Twitter last night and we saw her face and it reminded me of the reactions the show once in gendered.

I think it would have felt that way last week if Jamie had died. Yes, and I'm not saying shocking us like that is the goal because I think that can be very cheap storytelling if used ineffectively. But if we think about the really breathtaking moments

of the last few years, they have been they've been fulfilling exactly to your point. Aria somehow survives this battle with a waif and is now a Terminator basically. The Battle of the Bastards is brutal and savage

and an incredible episode, incredible filmmaking, and we lost a giant, literally, the giant died, but the good guys won at the end of it. Last week, the dragon comes,

no one we care about dies, and, you know, the dragon wins. So what is the next, are we waiting for that next surprise, or have we moved past that surprise? I'm not sure.

I'm not, you know, but I guess the only other thing to say is, and there were great scenes last night there were moments when I was happy. I think we were probably sounding a little bit critical because I think we're...

Whereas I think what we're doing is really I, you know, in the moment you're just so blown away by so many things but I'm trying to sort of unpack like so this is it, huh? Like we're gonna go with we gotta capture a white walker and bring it to Circe

I mean, what about Circe makes you think that she would be like sure I don't understand that. I don't understand why we want to run this team up. Let's team up. The part of my brain that still has vestiges of being a daily active, you know, TV critic. And the things that were probably the most important, quote unquote, last night, the most emotionally thrilling were based on, once again, on John Snow's parentage. And that's why Mallory was crying and why she and Jason were holding hands. I don't know if that's enough for me as a TV viewer, you know, because I know, I get it.

And this all seems to be tying into larger mythologies that are very gratifying for people who've been reading the book series for 20 years. But I kind of want to know more about John's life now, not as a Messiah of a religion that I don't personally subscribe to. And I mean that in all senses. Yeah. You know, I think it's important that the show function not just as the checking of long promised boxes. And I certainly don't mean to make the criticism that it is not doing that. But there are moments when I'm like, well, let's be honest. Like the flow of information on the show as of episode 706 is starting to remind me of movies and TV shows we would have been more harshly critical of where people just don't say the important thing to each other.

Yeah. You know, like when Ebrose in the morning is like, yeah, his family just was burned alive, but I haven't told him yet. And then he leaves. When Brand knows everything, writes a note. but not the important note. Right. You know, there's a lot of convenient withholding going on as there is in all narrative storytelling for the screen.

Yes. Anybody who's ever read a crime novel where... Totally. The hero finally finds the guy who can explain the whole book in a room by himself and says, you better tell me what's happened. And then there's six pages of explanation. That's what happens in storytelling. But like with our beloved crime novels that actually on the face of them kind of make no sense plot-wise,

but we love them, it's the balancing act of storytelling. where, you know, wonderful character work, deep emotional upheaval or emotional, you know, exhilaration can forgive almost any mechanical sin. Yeah. And that's the balancing act that we're watching Game of Thrones try to wrestle with as it goes into the home stretch. All right. So we've been talking about Thrones. We've been talking about Thrones for years. We really have.

We rarely talk about the shows of Shonda Rhymes. That's a shame. I am a big fan of Early Grey's Anatomy. Me too. I am... Remember the Kyle Chandler episode at Super Bowl? With Monica Kina? Was she in it, too?

I can't remember. She was on Grace Anatomy. I remember the Kyle Chandler, remember. But then she's got the light pole stuck in her cover? But, yeah, got blowed up. I know, man. That show is good. Not only did I, am I a Grace fan from OG days?

Original Grace. Kind of fell off, obviously, over some point. High body count on that show, by the way. Rivaling only Game of Thrones. I am an office roommate with Juliet Littman who still rides for Grays today. Season 14. Amanda Daven, still a scandal fan, I believe.

There are neighbors here on the lot. Shonda Land is basically located here on the lot. We should do more crossover. Huge news last night. Weird timing. I guess Sunday night is the new Friday news dump or whatever. Or maybe Sunday night is like now we're going to dominate this week. Sunday night is when people watch TV.

That Shonda Rhymes is going to be ending her long, like decade-plus relationship with ABC. And is moving to Netflix. Yep. She will still have, you know, she will still oversee the shows that are running at ABCS. This is the final season of scandal. Yep. It is, I don't know if, I don't really know what the state of Grease is in terms of. I think the state of gray is just changed.

That was, I was going to ask you that. Yeah. And then how to get away with murder. They were been talking at Gray's spin-off. And I wonder what. Yeah, I think that they have that. And then there's how to get away with murder. And she's got another show coming this fall.

A bunch of stuff in development. Yeah. And has had shows not make it out of pilot, like toast, I think, was. a comedy that she had, the catch ran for two seasons. And had like a massive sort of re- reconfiguration, right? Like it had been one thing and then they like just completely rejiggered it.

And our pal Allen Heimberg came in. I believe he has a show with her as well. He does. Yeah. Writer of Wonder Woman or one of the writers of Wonder Woman. So now she's on Netflix. And this has just been rolled out as I mean I have, it's interesting because as somebody who doesn't watch a ton of Shonda stuff

but obviously follows a television industry. I don't think I got the magnitude of this until other people started. Yeah. Kind of like Juliet just texted me and was just like, I am rocked by this. You know, and I think that people associate a good chunk of like their television watching lives with watching Shonda shows on ABC in a very specific way. At very specific times in a very specific format with very specific rules and a very specific look.

Yes. And I think that that is one of the, I mean, we're going to talk a little bit about Netflix here. But you can also talk about like what does. does a Shonda show look like without any? I think that's a very good question to ask. Restrictions and oversight. ABC as a network has been having an identity crisis for maybe its entire existence. It has been saved or kept afloat by certain planks that are just, you know, that keep them above water.

The Bachelor franchise is one. Just continually having the best consistent, I would say, sitcom development. Modern family, black. Family Blackish. You know, the middle is ending. It's a show I have never seen a frame of, but it will have run for nine seasons and people really liked it. You know, fresh off the boat is doing well. They have a comedy brand that they stick to and they understand and they execute, you know.

But largely the network is Shonda Land. They gave her an entire night. And the shows that are on ABC's air that aren't Shonda shows are kind of Shonda Light. I mean, they are built to exist in the same ecosystem as her shows. So Quantico is not a Shonda Land show, but it certainly has her DNA in it in terms of how ABC positions itself. So it is a identity rocking move. There's also an argument to be made, though, that they were perhaps two in business with Shonda. Now, that seems, this is the kind of thing you say after you lose your MVP.

You know, like this is people saying like... It's like saying it's the Ewing theory. It's basically like I have, we had this. star player. That's right. But that star player needed the ball a lot. And now that they're gone, we have so much real estate now. So many other resources. But here's the thing, especially in 2017. This is always true. If you're running a broadcast

network, you don't want open real estate. What you want is a night you don't have to worry about. What you want is a time slot you don't have to worry about. You just want something you can plug in and it is a relief. You know, and that's why it turns out Dick Ebersoll didn't overpay for the NFL because it's just such a breather. I mean, obviously it's highly rated and a valuable thing to have on your air. And it puts you in business with so many advertisers just initially that, like, I think a lot of things come from that.

That's kind of relationships. Now, from Netflix's point of view, it's kind of, it's super aggressive. It is a super aggressive dick move on some level. I mean, it's business. But to be like, we're just going to rip the heart out of a network here. Now, it's obviously it's two-way street, but they have more money and they offer more freedom. And I think if you would talk to Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, who made shows for NBC, their deal

is still with Universal. but, you know, when Kimmy Schmidt went from NBC to Netflix, what a relief on some level for them. They're freed from ratings. They're decoupled from it. They just have to do the thing that they do. Certain people will watch it. We don't know how many. And they get nominated for Emmys and they find it finds its audience.

And they're in production. They work. That's got to be a relief from someone who has been not just surviving, but thriving in the still difficult network trenches for all these years. There's an element of when the Philly signed Jim Tomey when they were like, okay, we're ready now. Now we're going to do this. Yeah. And it's funny you should say that because in the deadline piece that announces the Shonda deal, the inline sort of link to another story is Chuck Lorry Hollywood comedy starring Michael Douglas nears Netflix series order.

So this isn't them chipping up. They're here. You know what I mean? And this is, you know, you could make the argument that, yeah, it's like there are soccer leagues, you know, where guys go to get a payday at the end of the, at the end of the. of their careers. This is not that. This is them.

And what I'm most fascinated about by is this idea that if they keep accumulating content on this level, when are they going to have to make some fundamental changes to the actual way the platform interface works? In terms of like seeing. Like is there going to be a Shonda channel of Netflix? Like how are they going to break down how they promote things, how they distribute things, how, like how, part of the reason, not in any way all, but a element to the success of the Shanda shows is the community around them.

And the, it's tonight is the night that the show is on. Let's live tweet scandal. That's a huge thing that they are giving up without question. And so does that going to happen now? Let's remember that Shonda has also recently started an internet presence and community to basically not just monetize, but to own that part of it as well. Yeah. You're the online home for people who feel this passionately about things.

So she's thinking big picture and owning, you know, end-to-end, as you would say, on Silicon Valley. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if we glossed over it for people who aren't following the business as closely. To be clear, the shows that are on ABC will stay on ABC. The reruns of these shows, a lot of them are on Netflix. Although, you know, remember that all of the moves that these players are making today are making them for the future that's coming very, very, very quickly, where all networks and studios own their own stuff and don't give it to Netflix.

We are headed there with lightning speed. They're pulling their stuff. Or the creators will start working for Netflix. That's what will happen. So ABC will own the Grey's Anatomy, but they're going to lose the pipeline of new stuff from Moshana. Now, do we know if she has many more great shows in her future? Probably she has great relationships with people. And she has a lot of people working under her now and she's got a huge, you know, team.

I'm curious if some of her writers, like Allen, for example, have deals with ABC Studios. Yeah. And then work with, so there's some politics there. Yeah. Here's the bigger takeaway from Netflix that I wanted to pivot to. The other deal that we haven't talked about last week is that they bought Milar World from Scottish comic book writer Mark Mila.

For people who don't know him, he is a contentious, controversial figure. He wrote for Marvel a little bit he created the Ultimate, the Ultimates. He wrote Civil War that basically became the Captain America movie. But he's also written like Kickass, right?

Then he went independent and wrote Kickass, and I think the Kingsman came from his comics. Did he do Wanted? Kingsman came from him, yeah. Yeah. And so he has proven himself to be, you know, very smart businessman and content creator. Here's the thing to remember about what Netflix is doing. It may seem like hiring Shonda Rhymes is a shot against ABC, but the Millar World deal is actually a sign that what Netflix sees as their only legitimate peer in competition is the Walt Disney company.

Because what they were doing is saying, networks are small potatoes. We are the future of content and entertainment. Disney bought Marvel and what it will be looked at. back on as one of the great deals, business deals, and also an underpay, honestly. DC is always, not always, but for decades been owned by Warner Brothers. So Netflix was like, well, where's ours? We need to be on that highest possible level content business to compete with these players who already have their arsenals of IP and blah, blah, blah. So I don't know if Millar World is that thing because the titles and franchises you mentioned are already bought. They're already somewhere else.

They're buying what comes next. But that's where their, that's where their ambitions are. That's level of content creation that they want to be in and the competition. So it's almost like, for me, it's just such a, the whole thing with Shonda is just such like a, it's kind of a power dick move, right? Because they're like, we're not even concerned with you, ABC. You're taking one of, I mean, Chuck Lorry too, but you're taking somebody like Shonda who has had plenty of shows that go into the pipeline and don't work out. I'm very, very, very curious to know what this does to the paradigm of television show

development, which is already under attack anyway, about going straight to series, about, you know, this idea where, but the networks are still piloting stuff, announcing things that don't get made, et cetera. How does this change that? And when, you know, when do the networks start saying, you know what, we have all this spending power? Why isn't ABC going to Steven Spielberg and saying, what do you want to do? You know what I mean?

Why isn't they kind of making their own? moves if this is the way that the television is going where it's like creator and talent based as like a selling point. Well, I think the one thing to remember is that Netflix is an entity unto itself, whereas all the other networks, for the most part, are parts of a larger conglomerate where they make decisions on a much higher level. So we can talk about FX and say how great FX has this relationship with Noah Hawley. And I'm mentioning him just for the example I'm about to use.

This comes from no inside knowledge of the situation. And then we find out Noah is developing a Dr. Doom movie for Fox. Now, I don't know John Landgraf's thinking. I'm sure he's happy for Noah personally, but he probably would rather have a season four of Fargo. But Noah's relationship is not just with FX anymore. It is with the larger company and feeding content to different arms of it. Whereas for Netflix, if you go there, it's all for one place.

Yeah. You can do movies. You can do comedies. You can do whatever. So I think that's part of it. I think the, we've been predicting or clamoring for the end of the archaic network, broadcast network pilot season model for a long time. They've experimented. There have been straight to serious things.

There have been off cycle piloting. You know, they've tried to shake it up. Yeah. A lot of that stuff hasn't worked, you know. And I think that a lot of it is still going to be micro-noted to death due to the advertising climate, due to the space of it. And there's plenty of stuff on Netflix that could have probably used some notes. Well, that's the flip side of it. But like if you are, again, Tina Fey and Robert Carlock and you want to make a comedy,

and to do it for NBC, you have to squeeze it through, you have to be 21 minutes of comedy. You have to have act breaks. You have to please all the different levels of it. Or you do it for Netflix. So what? Maybe there's a scene and it makes it 30 minutes. Maybe it makes it 32 minutes. They'll run it.

Now, I agree with you. I think comedies can be better at 28 minutes. But it's more pleasant to be in that circumstance. And a lot of it also now is prestige. Like broadcast network TV, it can still be a quick payday. There's a quick turnaround. Sometimes people ask why do people still do it? They have to make stuff.

Every year we need new stuff, new stuff, new stuff. Whereas cable is becoming, and streamers are becoming more and more like movies in that you got to package it. You've got to get the right talent attached before we can even move forward. So it's possible to get a big payday up front. And it's still possible to get a huge payday later on, you know, in the continued life cycle of the thing that you made. Whereas Netflix, they buy it. They own it forever in a closed ecosystem. So that's a little bit different.

But it is a crazy world out there right now. And, you know, it's just we keep seeing. Here's what I thought of when I read that news, just to wrap up and to complete the cycle, the circle here. Okay. I just feel like, you know how I saw, I told you, I told our listeners, I saw Landgraf at the Game of Thrones premiere. Yeah. I feel like if he talked to Casey Blois, I'm sure they chatted about the premiere and the business. And by all accounts, they get along and respect each other.

I bet Landgraf left by saying, I wish you good fortune in the wars to come. Because for real, it's about to get wild out there. It already is wild out there. But I mean, Apple is coming. Apple is the Army of the Dead with hundreds of billions of dollars, you know. So all of these moves, let me tell you something. Netflix is not thinking about ABC's Thursday nights. They're not sweating that.

Gotcha. They're thinking about how they're going to own the rest of the century, basically. Lots of stuff to think about. Okay. So we're going to take a quick break to hear from our sports. sponsors and then we'll return with my interview with Adam Grand Seal from the War on Drugs. Thanks, Andy. Thanks, friend.

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Understanding. End of August, August 25th, yeah. August 25th. All right, we're recording this a little bit earlier than that. But I just wanted to ask, because it seems like this being like a, at least in its conception, like a woozy L.A. record. Have you already started getting a lot of L.A. record questions because of that? Or is it, is that like... A. Yeah, I guess the question is usually like, oh, I heard it was an L.A. record. And then I'm forced to kind of like expand on that. What made you say? Was that just like a tossed off thing at the time? Or were you...

Yeah, I think at the time, I mean, I was living out here. I think as I was just thinking about some records that were like quintessential, what me and my friends would call L.A. records, you know, whether it's like... Pet Sounds or wrecking crew records or like, you know, on the beach, Ditch Trilogy stuff. You know, and then I guess once I started getting a little bit more ingrained in L.A. in the studio life and having my own place and then working at places on this lot, really, at United and, you know, your book ended by United and East West here. Yeah.

I worked at both those places. Then you kind of start, like, feeling the L.A. energy a little more, you know, like using an old echo chamber that's been used for 60 years, rooms that have a lot. really been touched all that much. You know, you hear the legend of like David Rawlings and Gillian Welsh like ripping up the tile at old supermarkets to get the asbestos tile like in the old LA studios, you know? So stuff like that, you're like, oh, I get it. It's just like, it's just like a thing, you know, recording a record in LA becomes like its own kind of story. But it's like, it's almost more of a motif than it is like a kind of operating theory of the

album. Do you? Right. I mean, I kept thinking I was like whether or not it was like a weather thing, but that doesn't really... I don't know, the light does do something out here, though. Like, weirdly, like, I think that when I first moved out here, I was like, oh, yeah, that's why they probably shoot movies out here where they used to, you know what I mean? Because it was like the light really does, like, you never go too high or too low,

which is interesting that a lot of the records you're mentioning are these kind of midlife crisis or, like, you know, depression albums. Right. It's not even thinking about that. Yeah, even, you know, that Warren's Yvon record, cut at sunset, you know? Yeah, I guess there's something to driving around L.A. 6.37 o'clock and seeing the palm trees in your river mirror and having your demo on or your

record or someone else's record and feeling like that's the moment in time to be hearing it, you know? Yeah. It becomes yours in some weird way. It's very romantic. I think it becomes your record or whatever you're listening to becomes driving music inevitably because you're always in the car. Yeah. So everything has like this new, especially listening here. Like I feel like my taste in music has changed to make it so that like it's very hard for me to, listen to like acoustic music like anymore because I'm like I'm always like keep me entertained while I'm driving. Keep me like engaged a little bit. Do you find your taste changing out here when you spend more time out here? Yeah, I guess you're always trying to uncover new stuff. Yeah. You know,

out here I've been a little bit more of an active music listener than I was before, I guess because of the car. Yeah. Because I had like my phone, you know, or I had like radio, a serious radio in my car now. I didn't have a car in L. or in Philly or New York or anything. I was like listening to a lot of different music, more modern music, you know, more current music. Yeah. And making more of a point, like, oh, I got to go to the dentist. That's going to take me seven hours because I have to drive 10 blocks. Yeah, right.

So, you know, I mean, update my phone and put some stuff on I want to listen to. When you listen to the more modern stuff, do you just, like, put on a pop music station and just check out what time? Yeah, I guess when I'm a modern, I guess, mean like contemporaries, you know, so I listen to serious. Yeah. Yeah. to something like just satellite radio that I haven't really didn't do before. I wanted to ask you a lot about

the process of this record. So it seems like you, it was what a 15 month recording? How long from like, okay, I'm making a new album to we just mastered it? Yeah, about 15 months. It's like November of 15 to April of

17. And is that the longest you've ever worked on a single project? Yeah, I guess it was. It was the longest that it was that focused. Okay. Like it was pretty much came off tour in October of 2015 and had a couple weeks and then I was kind of like I had already had some of the stuff not even fully written but like mapped out or an idea or I had like you know, strangest thing I demoed as a band a year before. So I had a few songs at least. So I wasn't going into it totally blind. But yeah, like I rented out my studio. I found

this place in Atwater Village and signed the lease for November 1st and by December 1st and by December 1st and pretty much made it my own, like repainted it, hung up cool lights. Was it a studio already? Yeah, it was a studio run by this guy Richard, who's become one of my good buddies, but he opened it in the early 90s, and they did everything from jazz to a backstreet boy demo session to Super Tramp, Nancy Sinatra, like all sorts, just like a functioning L.A. mid-level studio. The Beastie Boys Studio used to be over there.

That was up on Glendale. Yeah, that was in that same little neighborhood. Because I remember what record did they do there? That was that Paul's boutique or was that? I think it was- Paul's boutique or was it the one Was it a check your head? Oh, maybe it was check your head.

I'm not sure. It was like one of those and it was just like that was like a real like they got lost in the studio forever story. I imagine that Atwater was like there was not a lot to do over there back then. Right. Now it's like it's like that little neighborhood.

I kind of because when I moved to you I really didn't know where I was half the time. And then Atwater having the studio over there I kind of all of a sudden had like a little neighborhood of my own. So it's the process for recording. something like this, do you do a lot of building of tracks by yourself? Do you have like full band workouts and then you guys do overdubs like separately or like, how does something like this come together?

Because one of the things I've loved about listening to it is just on certain tracks, I'll just be like, oh, I didn't hear that line like in the fourth minute that's like kind of low down in the mix, but it's like this little counter melody happening. And it always makes me wonder how a band puts together these kinds of, they're not symphonies, but they're like these like, you're telling us. story and there's like all these little subtle things in there. Yeah. I guess it changes per song, but for the most part, I feel most comfortable starting stuff by myself and like, you know, recording some sort of demo, whether or not that demo like ends up as the main backbone of the song later on, like in chains was like I never

strayed too far from the demo that I recorded. And then some of the other ones, I record a demo and then we'll demo it as a band and we'll kind of not change it all that much, but everyone will kind of slowly fall into their parts and maybe we'll tweak a few things. Strangest thing in pain were like that. I'd kind of written them and then we worked on them as a band a few different times

before we cut it in the studio. And then some of the songs are just kind of like I start by myself on a drum machine. The guys were coming to L.A. to record. Before we started working with Sean, we had about six months. Sean Everett, right? Sean Everett, yeah.

We started in June of 16 and I had my own studio, so the guys were coming out from Philly once a month every five weeks, and we would just haul up in my studio and record on the demos, because me and Dave are both pretty adept engineers. And Richard, the guy I rented it from, a great mic collection and cool outboard gear and pro tools, like HD. So it was like, and then I had brought in a bunch of all sorts of other stuff.

So we had like a lot of tools at our disposal that we didn't have of her own, like really nice old German mics and ribbon mics. And no hourly rate. No hourly at all. It's like we could be there, you know, anytime we wanted. So how do you not get lost when that happens? You just try to, uh, A, I think knowing that we were going to be working with Sean was kind of this like, not even a deadline, but almost like, all right, well, nothing that we're

doing has to be the it, you know, because we hired Sean to come in and record this record. So we're really just having fun. Oh, I see. and seeing what happens. You know, like, maybe we'll recut a bunch of these songs or maybe we'll keep these cool drums we recorded. And that's kind of what ended up happening. Like, Sean came in in June.

We did some stuff. Live as a band, like thinking of a place. The first half of the song is pretty much live bass drums, guitar solo. Pain was pretty much like that. And then other stuff, like up all night, the first track was something I built on my lindrum and had like three different versions of it. And a lot of that we recorded in the first six months.

And then we worked on a little bit with Sean, but something about that song, it wasn't working for about six or seven months. So I kind of forgot about it until the very end when I was in New York at the beginning of this year, working pretty much by myself in a bunch of studios. And that one started to come together. Like I needed to like spend like a couple weeks.

weeks on it, getting inside of it or something. You're not betraying like any neurosis about this. Like it's, you know, because like I'd expect maybe like, yeah, man, it took us like a year and a half, quartered all over the place. And, you know, sometimes like, I don't know, it seems like you took on a lot of work by yourself. It was sprawling across multiple cities and different parts of the country. And, you know, there's not necessarily pressure on you guys, but you're like, people love your band and they want to hear a new record from you. I mean, do you, do you ever feel that pressure? Do you ever feel any? anxiety about making something that like i mean i'm just curious because you sound very chill about

the entire process yeah i think the process like it's obviously in retrospect that's done now it's a little easier like there's you know each time you make a record i feel like you have those moments where you know the first month you're so psyched you're like wow we're gonna finish this record in two months yeah we're all there like we cut the drums all you have to do is some stuff and then three months after that you're like at least for me i was like oh man like i'm like in a wormhole. Like, I don't like any of these songs. Everything doesn't, nothing feels like a step up or nothing feels like a band playing together. So, and then you spend two months like going even further, you know, on a tangent. And then six months after that, you're like, oh, things start to make

sense again. Yeah. Whether or not you go back to original takes or whatever. I feel like each time you make a record, you kind of get used to those that like up and down. Yeah, like the sort of like, Any crisis is actually not a crisis. Right. And it's like all you, you know, all it is, it's, it's just music and you just keep writing and keep pulling things away until it feels like, feels like music or feels like a good representation of what the band is or if it's a good representation of what you're trying to do. Have you ever been in drugs or any other project, like on the like the Husker-Doo,

like, Creedence Diet of like a record every 10 months kind of thing or every nine months? No. No. No. I guess it's like, why? Why would you need to? But yeah, can you not? In the early days when me and Kurt working together a lot,

he was not full on records, but he was always putting stuff out, which was cool. It was like, that was like 2007, eight, nine. EPs, singles and stuff. Yeah, like EPs, like with all sorts of different labels,

small stuff, like a pressing of 200. Yeah. But there was always like a trove of things that he was putting out, um, that we'd have at our shows or whatever. Or that we'd be working on in my house or his house.

But even his records and my records, yeah, tend to put it out and then tour. And then, you know, for this one, I wanted to get started on it quickly just because I know that it takes time to do it the way I like to do it. And, you know, we want to get out and tour and, you know. How do you keep yourselves entertained when you're working on a record for 15 months? Well, the studio had a hoop in the parking lot. So that was cool. We'd shoot hoops.

And you play a couple times a week anyway, right? Well, I had back surgery, not unlike Bill Walton. I don't know. I don't know who had back surgery. Steve Kerr is very against back surgery. I know, right. Now he's like the anti-back surgery. Robbie.

I had like it started from, I don't even know when it started, but I had like a, it started with like a bulging disc a couple years ago. Yeah. And for some reason I was like, okay, cool. Sounds good. And then I didn't change anything I was doing. Like, I was still, like, lifting my high watt amp, like into the back of my car. You got a roadie, man. You know what I mean? Yeah. And then it got worse and worse and worse. And then actually, when we were recording right over here at United one night, I was like loading out of United at 6 a.m. And I had to take a flight

to Robbie's wedding at like 10 a.m. or something. And all this gear, like three trips back and forth to my studio and went to bed feeling like I definitely tweaked my back. Yeah. And then that was like the beginning of the end where it was like the next three months. I couldn't do it. I couldn't stand up. I couldn't walk. I couldn't sit. I couldn't sleep. So then I ended up having surgery, which was great because it's actually super simple procedure. And for the level that, because then my disc ended up being ruptured. So it was like all the acidic gel in your disc had essentially shot all over my nerves. So it was like, they go in there and they scrape it off. It sounds like alien. Yeah, it felt like alien. But that, I mean, it was pretty quick heel.

You know, and I had to do like physical therapy for it. But honestly, like once I did that and I was in bed for like six days, but I wasn't really taking any pills or anything. And once I could like walk and move around and ride in a car again, I like had a whole new vision, like a whole new energy for the record. Really? Because up until that point, like it wasn't every day, but it was like standing and holding a guitar was really painful. Yeah. Sitting at the chair where I'm working on Pro Tools was really painful. So it kind of affected just like my ability to like focus on music, you know, whether I'd be like sitting down trying to do an acoustic guitar part.

I'd be like, I can't sit any longer. You know, my limit was like six minutes. Huh. You know, and, you know, driving was really hard. So once I actually took care of it, like in January, when I finally went to the East Coast and I had been doing physical therapy for, or I'd been healing for about seven weeks and I was going to start doing PT. and I was starting to work in the studio again, I was like so focused, because I could sit, I could stand,

I didn't have to think about it anymore. That's wild. And it was, it was like, I sometimes would say to my friends and my girlfriend, I was like, I don't know what I would, I don't think I would have finished this record

if I didn't have the surgery because it was like, just was consuming my whole life. You would have to become like death punk and stand with some synths. That's it. Right, which is, I mean, you know, that's maybe, maybe I don't need back surgery to do that.

Yeah, right. But it was, for me, personally, it was kind of a turning point just because it was like, I kind of was in New York now with like a fresh mind, you know? So what did it do to your game? You can more of a spot-up shooter now? Right. So that was the thing. So now I'm trying to like baby it a little bit so that I don't like re-injure it.

But I think by the time we go on tour, I should be able to shoot. But when we were playing, I think the most intense game we had was a couple years ago in Long Island. and we did a benefit show and we stayed at this guy's house and he had a hoop in his yard and it was me and Dave versus Dave's a great player. Yeah.

He's like really good player. And a huge hoops fan. Huge hoops fan. Every day his knowledge is growing deep in the hoops. Does he bring a lot of advanced stats to you about like your pickup games? He could.

Yeah. He could. Just like your effective field goal percentage is actually lower than you think it is. That was the whole thing with the Matt Bonner thing because he was like, you know that like when he did the Let Bonner's shoot.

campaign. Yeah. He was like, he had done the numbers and he was like, you know, Matt Bonner actually has the highest some percentage in the history of the NBA. I don't know why he isn't in the three point contest. Yeah. You're right. I don't either, dude.

So you're playing in Long Island? We're playing on Long Island just in this guy's driveway with, I think, probably deflated soccer ball. And our sound guy at the time, Mickey, he's like 7-2 or something. No, not really. He's like 6-10. It's huge. You got Georgie Mershon.

Yeah. Doing sound for you. And then our old drummer Stephen, I think, was his teammate, maybe. But I remember that being an intense game. I noticed you just said our former sound guy and our old drummer. So it sounds like it was pretty intense. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

No, everyone's cool. It was the old era. But we did have some good games at the studio. Yeah. Do you guys watch a lot of basketball on the road? Yeah, we do. If it's on. Yeah.

Yeah, I remember when two years ago, or maybe it was three years ago, I guess we watched the finals in Miami. Yeah, if there's a game on, we'll watch it. I was talking Katie Crutchfield from Waxahatchie was on a couple weeks ago, and she was telling me and Andy about how, like, when you're on tour, you can, especially if you're just like in a moving vehicle, you can just like completely get lost in your phone. Yeah.

It just becomes like this thing that's even worse than when you're outside of the van because, like, you know, you can look at stuff out the window. But after a while, if you start looking at your phone, you just get sucked down these rabbit holes. Does that happen to you at all? Yeah, for sure. Yeah. I mean, it's like, I want to find a way.

this upcoming cycle to not have the phone all the time. I mean, Dave ditched the phone a year and a half ago. You got a flip phone. Did he? And he has this, we got these free Samsung phones at La Paloosa,

and he carries it around essentially as a laptop. So when he gets Wi-Fi, he'll go on that and he'll do his mess, you know, his social stuff, whatever. It's so straight. Like, I've tried, I've tried, like, blocking certain words from Twitter. Right.

Like, I just want pure basketball and soccer Twitter. But I follow too many people who still talk about Trump or talk about, you know, like whatever the sort of viral news story of the day is. And then I'll just be like, God, this is just making me feel so terrible inside. But I can't get the algorithm right. The wormhole too is like comments. You're like, oh, let me just click on this for five for a second. And then it's like, you're like, why am I all of a sudden like I'm standing? Are you mostly like on music Twitter or sports Twitter or politics? Like what would you say? I don't actually. I would say music and music and music and politics. Okay. inadvertently politics, but that's the wormhole I go down the most. Yeah. Yeah. And then just like, you know, click on websites and, and whatever, anything. Yeah. It's the Like any shows? We watch Thrones. Yeah.

Yeah, we're all, not everyone. It's funny, actually, because me, Dave and Robbie, super into Thrones. John, our sax player. Don Natos. Don Natos, right. So he's, he's anti, decidedly anti-thrones. Is that a take of his, or is he just like, I'm just like... He thinks he's on this thing where he's like, I'm just not into the fantasy.

Okay. I'm like, well, just give it, you should just watch it because it's deeper than that. Right. And you get, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. There's a lot going on. I think you really like it. Yeah. And then, but now it's funny because I remember a couple, when we were recording at the studio down the road in between tours, we've been on tour for four weeks.

I booked a week at the studio. It's like when we demoed, like, strangest thing. It was Sunday night and Thrones was on. So we all watched it in the control room. And it was the episode where Aria is like rowing into Bravo's or something. Yeah, she rode for a while. Yeah. And like, right, I guess she did ride for a while.

But the joke was like, we started watching the first two minutes of the show. and John's like, I get it, you're rowing, you're rowing, I get it. He like storms out of the room. And he always comes back to that. He's like, I don't know, she's just rowing forever. Yeah. But now, so we kind of make fun of him for it. See, that's not the fantasy part.

That's like the actually mundane stuff that they show that people often have a problem with. But now he's like, he's anti-thrones, but he's also like listening to Thrones podcast now. And I'm like, dude, dude, dude, dude, dude, dude. just watch the show. It's okay to like admit it. Just dive in, dude. Yeah. Yeah.

So, I mean, people this season have had a problem with like, uh, characters getting very long distances with like seemingly without effort, you know, like they'll just get across an ocean in like one second. Like,

oh, how'd various get there. Yeah. And then I'm just like, there are dragons in this show. So if they're going to like cut corners on like, you know, I don't really want to watch people take long ocean journeys every time this happens.

Yeah. Any other shows besides Thrones? Um, Because I was kind of wondering, you know, we often talk, like, you will talk to people, a lot of screenwriters. I was listening to a lot of this kind of music when I was writing this script. Right. You know, I was listening to Tarantino was always like listening to classic Morricone soundtracks. Yeah.

When he writes. But I was almost wondering if it ever goes both ways when you're writing music, are you watching like Altman movies? And you're just like, I want to write a song that feels like it would be in this one. Oh, right. Yeah. Well, I feel like in that regard, we're always sharing. like music docs or links to like because now with YouTube there's like oh there's a 45 minute movie about the making of so yeah i don't even know who made this thing but there's killer footage

you know and you see one clip you know you see a whole movie of peter gabriel sitting in his control room with a roads and a space echo and his mic and he's like you know they're building the music and he's just sitting in the control room singing and playing the hooks yeah and you're like, oh, that's like, you get so lost in all being out there in our headphones. And sometimes you just have to like find a refreshing way to like interact with the music you're recording. Did you ever see the making of Steely Day in Asia? No.

There's this, okay, so there's this incredible moment where Fagan and Becker are sitting in front of the mixing board. And they're like, you know, like, and this was probably 10, 15 years ago that they did the doc. And they're playing peg. And they're just going through each track of Peg. Yeah. And then they get to the Michael McDonald backing vocals,

and they just are like, like, smiling at each other. And then they just, like, knock out everything except for Michael McDonald's, like, one, like, pur! Yeah. And it sounds hilarious. Like, and they're just, like, cracking up in Michael McDonald's, like, they cut to another separate Michael McDonald. And he's like, yeah. Yeah, I tried to sing it as best as I could, you know? Yeah.

It's pretty great. I love those things. I should have. Actually, we actually, right up the road on Hollywood Boulevard is, um, used to be the producer's workshop and now it's called boulevard recording and my friend owns it but um yeah they did Asia there and they did some of the wall there yeah those guys when they were in LA they there's some of the liner notes they wrote for the records they made in LA make it sound quite desperate time out here yeah I remember when I was younger I like I didn't even know much about Steely Dan but I had the gate the

maybe it's just the best of Steely Dan where the inside gatefold was Becker with the long stringy hair and the shades yeah and then fagin right next so I thought I thought man those are the coolest guys Never. And they were just like these, like New York nerds who were hanging out. Yeah. And then you like,

you know, you grow up, you're like, oh, different, different. I'll let you go now, man. A deeper understanding

is out August 25th. This is Adam Grandisiel from War on Drugs. Thanks for stopping by me. Yeah, thanks for having me. Okay, so that was Adam Grandesiel from the War on Drugs. His new album,

A Deeper Understanding is out on August 25th. Thanks so much to him for coming by. Andy will be back on Thursday. I'm off that day. Yeah, special guests coming in. Who is it? David,

Wayne. Nice. Creator, director, Wet Hot American Summer. Awesome. We're going to talk comedy. Something I can't do with you here. I'm not very funny. I'll be back on Sunday night with Andy, with Mallory, with Jason for Talk the Thrones after the East Coast airing of Game of Thrones, which I think is a little bit longer than usual.

Probably. Also, everyone should know, still a couple tickets available to our second. Literally a couple. Like, literally like a few. Our second and final Talk the Thrones live of the season happening next week, August 23rd here in Los Angeles at Largo. guess, maybe some accent work. Some special guests. Yeah, yeah.

Fun. Get your tickets now at Largo. Through Largo. We tweeted the information. Buy tickets. Yeah. All right. Talk to you guys soon.