Toronto Mike'd: The Official Toronto Mike Podcast - Laura Diakun: Toronto Mike'd #262

Episode Date: September 3, 2017

Mike chats with Laura about her years at The Score and TSN and the incredible coincidence that brought them together.

Welcome to episode 262 of Toronto Mic'd, a weekly podcast about anything and everything. Proudly brought to you by Great Lakes Brewery, a local independent brewery producing fresh craft beer. And propertyinthesix.com, Toronto real estate done right. I'm Mike from torontomike.com and joining me this week is TSN broadcaster Laura Dykin. Nailed it! I was

practicing because I had Sophia Yerksovich. Did she make you spell it? Well, I missed the T. I thought the T was silent. No. Yes, that T trips me up every time. You need to get Natasha Staniszewski on, and then you'd get another one hard to spell.

Eastern Europeans, man. We're doing everything. I was going to say, I miss the easy names like Ann Roszkowski. I nailed that one. Okay, can I side wind already? Ann Roszkowski, I used to do global updates with her back in the day,

and I've got the weirdest last name pronunciation from Ann Murzkowski. I used to do global updates with her back in the day. And I've got the weirdest last name pronunciation from Anne Murzkowski. Let me hear it. She called me Laura Kendai. That's dyslexic. That's what I'm thinking. I'm thinking someone said, this is how you say it in phonetics. And they just got them confused. So when you're live on the air and your last name always starts with a K, you're like, well, how are we going to handle this what did you think of ann mroskowski she was very nice i mean we never met in person it was always speaking through a camera which is very odd because you've got to

look at the camera but someone you know you can't make eye contact with them it's it's a little but there's never and we'll get to this i know how your your your global thing comes out of the score and everything but like there was never like a christmas party where you know no i went up there once and leslie roberts and carolyn mckenzie showed me around and they were awesome but i think i'd just been doing it for a couple weeks so i big stars in my eyes now i think i'd probably be a little you know that's like me in this podcast in the beginning it was like oh this big now it's like i don't know what i'm gonna need like obama's gonna have to come i was gonna say who would be yeah who would be the one now that you'd be like, oh man, I'm nervous today.

Well, besides yourself, obviously. I've never, no one's ever wanted to interview me. So this, I was nervous waking up. I'm like, I don't know. I don't know if I can do this, but we'll see. Well, let's get the small world story out of the way here. Okay, yeah. Your father lives across the street from me.

True story. This is the first time, it's 262 episodes. This is the first time where I knew I would have to see the guest's father on a fairly regular basis after the episode. So I know you for a fact, you told me you haven't heard an episode of this. Normally, I'm really tough on the guests and I'm just so rude. But this time I'm going to behave myself. I was saying he's a lawyer. He can sue you if anything goes terribly wrong. And when you said that, it's like we're going to repeat all of our conversations. I was worried I needed you to sign something, like I needed a waiver.

And I won't do it unless my lawyer is present. But he's across the street. Well, no, he actually has more of a life than I do. I'm working all weekend. He's off having fun, probably freezing his buns off up somewhere. That's funny. So yeah, your dad,

and here it gets a little more interesting, the small world story. My buddy from high school is your dad's next door neighbor. But when I moved here, I didn't know my buddy from high school was living across the street from me. I bumped into him and I go, hey are you doing here i haven't seen you like i'm a little older than you so i literally hadn't seen him since the 90s and then he's like

oh my god like my buddy's across the street what a coincidence and then at some point his wife meant knew i had people like i had people like caro and Carly Agro, and I won't name them all, but Jackie Redmond and stuff. And the aforementioned Sofia Yurkovich. Yurkovich. Right. The J is silent. No.

There's lots of silent stuff. There's a Q in there, I think. There's a Q in Daikin somewhere, I'm sure. Oh, Daikin I nailed. That's what matters today. That's what matters today. Anyway, and then she's like, you know, can I say your dad's first name? Of course.

Yeah. I don't know. Roman's daughter is on TSN. And I'm like, what's his last name? And she says, Dyken. And I said, I remember when Laura Dyken made her debut on Raptors. Yes. And I tweeted at you.

I don't think you remember this because you get many tweets. I tweeted at you to tell you that you did a great job because fresh face doing the Raptors. I had never, like I was really impressed. And then I had no idea that your dad was my neighbor.

There you go. That is the best small world story ever, to be honest with you. It is. It's awesome. I could throw a rock at his house from here, although I'd probably miss, but it's a thought that counts. Do you want to hear, like, just because you mentioned that was the best small world story,

can I just give you a quick update on a couple of other small world stories? Okay. Okay. Yeah, for sure. Okay. Sophia, I know we're talking a lot about Sophia, but we'll stop. She was the last guest, so she's like top of mind. During our kick out the jams where she brings her 10 favorite songs and plays them. And we talk about why she loves these songs. These songs had a lot of, she shared a lot of emotional, like private, kind of personal stories. Because they were tied to why she loves the music. And one song she's like, oh, I loved a man 10 years ago.

I was madly in love. It didn't work out. I'm still friends with him. She's like, he introduced me to this artist. And didn't work out. I'm still friends with him. She's like this. He introduced me to this artist. And every time I hear this song, I think of him. And she goes, his name was Marty. Okay.

And I said, did you ever call him like Marty? Like the doc in Back to the Future. She goes, oh, he loved that movie. I did that all the time. In fact, his name is Marty Mc-something. So we always called him Marty McFly. We go on, whatever. Because did I mention there's 7 billion people in this world?

That's a key part of the story. And Toronto, GTA has, what would you say, like 6 million or something? I'm making that up. A lot of people. Right. This street has a million people. Just kidding. Okay, so where are we in this wonderful story I'm telling?

So now another song later on brings up another Marty memory. And she brings up Marty again. And for some reason in my mind, I remembered in grade, I had a buddy in primary school at Jane and Bloor named Tim McDougal. And in fact, the previous episode episode i shared a very quick tim mcdougall story long story short is i remembered he had a brother named marty okay so now it's right so i said to her this is during the recording yeah i said do you mind if i try to guess the name of the marty mc something she's like go ahead like she's like whatever who's this

idiot who thinks you can guess me and i said marty Marty McDougal. And you should have seen her face. White as a sheet? It's Marty McDougal. And then she's, and I mentioned my Tim thing because the previous episode I had spoken about Tim because he introduced me to the Sex Pistols. Anyway, isn't that a small world story?

They're everywhere. It's true. Especially if you grow up in the city, right? And yeah, you realize the city's not nearly as big as you think it is. And my last small world story before we get to important things larry fedorik is also of ukrainian descent by the way but larry fedorik is a long time radio dj in the gta and he was in here kicking out the jams and i posted his picture on instagram me and him posed after the show and i

posted larry fedorik and I put it on Instagram. One of my very good friends, Tara, who's married to one of my longtime buds, Alex Patino, she just leaves this note. Oh my God, that's my best friend's dad. Of course. Yeah, just hanging out. No big deal. Is that crazy?

My stepmother's like that. She's seen everybody. Everybody, there's always some little connection. I'm like the opposite. I should get your stepmom in here. Yeah, for sure. Oh, she's also my neighbor. Yeah, exactly. I know. It won't be hard to wrangle him up. That's for sure. I'll just, yeah. When he's going for a bike ride, I'll wheel him in here. I have to thank you right off the bat.

Let me let Randy Newman kick in here and then I'm going to thank you. I'm just thanking you for not being ridiculously tall. No. I think I lied on my license on how tall I actually am. How tall are you? How tall does it say on my license? I'm probably closer to 5'5 than 5'6. But that's not a, I would say for a female that is not a short height. No but you get a reality check when you have to work with some NFL players and NBA players and you're like I got my highest

heels on and they're like yeah but you still have to sit down. And you're like, okay. Well, the reason I'm glad you're not ridiculously tall is because on Friday, Jay Onright visited. So Jay is, have you met Jay Onright? I haven't met Jay or Dan. It's insane.

I haven't met Dan either. I mean, we were like two trains passing in the night, but now that they're back. So you'll meet him at a Christmas party or something. I hope either. I've only been there for a couple. I mean, we were like two trains passing in the night. But now that they're back. So you'll meet him at a Christmas party or something. I hope so. I can only imagine the stories I'll get from him. And the small world stories I'm sure we'll share. Well, actually, Jay and I had a few.

I can't repeat them on the air. No, I can imagine. But Jay is 6'6". And I took a photo with him outside after the show. And I got ribbed so hard by many people on Twitter and in the comments and via email that I'm a midget. Like, I'm not a midget, right? Like, I'm just, I'm not a tall guy,

but next to a six foot six guy, I just look really short. See, you should, I had to do this in a couple of hockey tournaments. They would bring out a platform for me, which is, you know. Oh, like Tom Cruise when he's in a movie with a tall female co-star. Hits your ego a

little bit but then you're like okay what can you do but laugh and hopefully not fall off the platform right i uh but then that would blow away my real talk that'd be so unauthentic i'd have to rebrand you just got to be happy with you you know don't wear those stilts no one told you have to don't worry um okay so like I was, I mean, I knew you weren't going to be ridiculously tall, but if I took another photo where I'm looking, you know, somebody, and somebody kept saying, oh, it looks like you're meeting your stepdad for the first time. What does that mean? Do you, we could, we could do it, the picture after where you're standing somewhere really

high and I look like the little Oompa Loompa or something. I was thinking the exact opposite. It would be hilarious if the picture we post, you're like a foot taller than me all right we can deal with this we got time to think about it yeah I remember I was gonna say I know where you live I don't know where you live but I will find out but I know where your dad lives that doesn't sound scary at all how often do you visit your dad because I've been living here for four years now I've never seen you before this is the first time I met you I'm like a ghost. I see my dad on a regular, this is getting really personal. I see my dad on a regular basis, but his mother is still kicking. She's 88 and acts like she's 50. So we usually see her. So

it's kind of a two birds with one stone. So I'm probably here maybe three times a year, but I see him maybe every week. I'm not trying to avoid you. No, no, no. I just, I'm not even trying to get too personal here. Don't ask, please don't ask me about me and my dad. That's a whole separate episode. But I just thought it was interesting.

I've never seen you before. That's all. But that's okay. Maybe me being here and you knowing that you want to come over because there's beer here and pint glasses and you might want to want to come over because there's beer here and pint glasses and you might want to kick out the jams one day. Like this will bring you and your dad closer because you'll be in the neighborhood often.

Well, and I would hope it would mean that you're not at home staring out the window wanting to see who's walking up and down. It means, you know, you've got things going on. Also, you know, your dad is in a place where I can't actually, like you're across the street, but a bit, you know, further over. It's not like I can see into his living room or anything no he likes closing those blinds at night let me tell you see I wouldn't even know that that's how far now you'll notice you're like oh it's eight o'clock the blinds are going down time to read the newspaper and go to bed okay let

me look at you for a second do you wear contacts I don't I've never been to an eye doctor I'm in my 30s and I've never been to an eye doctor. I'm in my 30s and I've never been to an eye doctor. You're in your 30s. Yeah. I have nothing to hide. That's why you're here. That's why I'm here. Real talk.

You're like, I'll find out where you live and I'll find out how old you are unless you tell me. And I will buy binoculars. And I will be in a bush. I'm in my 30s. I have nothing. I'm in my mid-30s. Everyone says you look 21. I'm like, well, that's really nice.

I'm only saying. Yes, you're aging because the alternative is to die. Like, you got two options. Well, we're all day-to-day. That's what we say. We're all day-to-day. Marcus Stroman may be day-to-day. We are all day-to-day.

He also told me that regarding my shortness compared to Gianre, that it's heart, what does he say? Heart measures height. Heart measures height, yeah. Something like that. I don't know. I'm he say? Heart measures height or something like that. I don't know. I'm supposed to get a t-shirt with that hashtag. I don't know. I'm going to get a t-shirt with the hashtag real talk. That's when I'm, when I have enough money on my Patreon account. Speaking of which, if you go to patreon.com slash Toronto Mike and Roman, I'm talking to you, take out that credit card, give what you can help keep this uh going now that i know roman was a lawyer i'm sure he can afford a dollar a month push it push it yeah um but regarding my eyesight

just to close that loop i'm um i did an eye test yesterday because i used to and no one can see this except you but i used to read things like this and i've noticed now that i've hit you know i'm in my 40s okay it's going further. I have to push it further away to read. And I'm like, what's this? And then my wife's like, you need to get your eyes tested. Because, like, I guess a lot of guys and gals in their 40s need glasses. And then the doc, this is yesterday, at Sherway Gardens, of all places. And the guy's like, you're farsighted.

And he's like, you know, eight out of ten people who see me are nearsighted. And he's like, you're farsighted. see me are near-sighted and he's like you're far-sighted so apparently like i can like see things far away like when george costanza uh when he squinches his eyes right remember i've got that going but like things close up um no i'm not so sure what's going on there so he gave me a prescription which i haven't filled because i'm not sure if i'm ready to be glasses guy i see it's not a vanity thing it's just more of like i have to this is another thing i gotta like take care of is it an age thing because i've i've kind of realized that too i'm like well that never used to hurt or the recovery time is a lot slower now than before no because of my uh great attitude

about age which is like because i've had a couple of i've had a very close friend die of cancer at 32 so now i'm like just i'm just really happy when I'm breathing oxygen. I agree with you, man. I know. It's funny how something like that can just change your perspective. And you're like, what am I complaining about again? And you'll never hear me complain about my age because it's something a, I can't control and I hate the alternative. Nope. I agree with you. You only live once. Right. Yeah. We should do that hashtag. Or so we know right now. I you you only live once right yeah we should do that hashtag or so we know right now we only know we live once but that's a hashtag i would like to say all right it's going to get into a deeper podcast one day yolo did you ever see a television show called

12 monkeys no but i love the movie yes with brad pitt yeah well you get to see brad pitt's bum it's not a bad thing i have around the corner i got a poster of it it's fantastic uh the uh show was filmed here and like there was a studio on kipling where they did this 12 monkey show which i have not seen but my neighbor's son bid on the clothes i guess they shut production down and they had to get rid of all the clothes he bought bought 1,600 pieces of clothing from the 12 Monkeys here for $1,000. And I helped him move this because he had to store it at his dad's house because he had nowhere to put $16,000. So yesterday, and I said, hey, is there any medium? And I'm a medium guy.

And he's like, it was all large and big stuff because I'm just a little man. We already talked about that. But I got four pieces of clothing delivered to me yesterday. So I am now going to start wearing these grungy, dirty, dystopian future 12 Monkeys clothing. It's going to change my whole thing. Like I'm going to be the... Or it's your Halloween costume. And I can wear the Jason mask.

There you go. Done. Your kid won't be afraid of you at all. It'll be fine. Thank you. Daddy? I've been wearing that hockey mask. I have four kids and forever I've been wearing it. You. I have four kids and forever

I've been wearing it. You have four kids? Yeah. True story. That's why I can't see anymore. It's going to get a lot worse. They all had a period where they were scared of me and the Jason mask. Well, I guess it's a good disciplinary tool.

You don't want me to put that mask on, do you? And there was a period of time where Jarvis, he likes to come down and he's three years old and he comes down to use this bathroom I'm pointing to. And I have this here, which is Guns and Roses Appetite for Destruction Penance thing. And I've had it here. I've owned this since the late 80s. I'm going to see

them in October, by the way. Nice. But my story is that there's a, you know, they're all skeletons, like that's Slash as a skeleton. He was so scared. I had to cover it. So I have to bury the skeleton because when he comes down and he sees Slash as a skeleton, he's scared. So anyway.

Poor kids. Yes. Do you guys sleep? Well, there's two are old. The two are teenagers from my first marriage. And they're really like independent social butterflies. Like, you know, they're out and about doing stuff. They're fine. They're fine.

They're easy. And then there's the three-year-old and the one-year-old. And they are time-consuming and... I can't even imagine. Difficult, but I love them very, very much. That's good. And they're cute. You have to.

Terry Fox. The run is September 17th. I am running at High Park. If people go to my website, torontomike.com and click Terry Fox Run at the top, you can, you know, if you don't give me all your money in the patreon.com slash torontomike, you can give it to the Terry Fox Foundation. That would be wonderful. And you get a tax receipt and everything. So please sponsor my run. Laura, there is beer in front of you. It's never too early for beer. It's five

o'clock somewhere, right? Well, this is a weekend, so you can actually start drinking really early. No, it's not. For normal people, it's a weekend. For me, I think what is today? This is, oh no, today's Sunday. I always screw people up. I'll start a six-day run on a Wednesday and everybody's like, oh, happy hump day. I'm like, it's Monday, actually. But you will concede this is a weekend for many people. Yeah, and a long weekend as well. Because you work.

Yeah, that's when sports happen. Nights and weekends. You get used to it. But you're not Jay Onright's driver. No, not yet. Because he had a driver, you know. Oh, well, that's what happens. Big timer, you know.

Do you think that him and Dan coming back have taken all of TSN's marketing budget? Hey, you know what? If that show is successful, it's good for everybody. So if... Oh, this is the rising ships thing, like a rising tide lifts all ships. Listen, you don't want anything bad to happen to anybody.

That's bad karma. It'll come back and get you. But from my understanding, I don't know a lot about the show, but this is kind of what their vision was. I'm sure he got into it more than I would about when they went to the States in FS1, what they wanted to do, and now they're getting a chance to do it.

Right, because of the regime change he told me about. Regime, yeah. Well, that's a polite way of putting it. So you got to get a little political because things like this last forever. Would you work in the States? I don't know. I'm a big family person and I'm lucky enough to have my immediate family within a 20 minute drive from me in all directions. So I know it sounds really cliche. I'm extremely happy doing what I'm doing. I guess it's hard to say never say never because you don't know what the opportunity would be.

But it would take a lot. I'm not the type of person that has to have their name in lights. But the opportunity has to be challenging, I think, more than anything. If that makes sense. If they made you an offer, you couldn't refuse it, you would not refuse it. Depends what it is. Of course. Depends if I could bring my family with me.

Oh. You know? Not that I have a big family, but, you know, it's, as we were saying, when you get different life opportunities thrown at you, you realize what's important and balance is really important to me anyway, you know? Will you share any of your great lakes beer with your family or is it all for you today is my brother's birthday 24 that's uh i feel so that's exciting i maybe i should if i had a sound effect ready i'd do it that would be great so it would be mean of

me not to give him a beer because as you, the close proximity to my dad's house, after I'm done here, it's time to take him out and celebrate his birthday. Exciting. Yeah. Where will you take him? Not that I will show up there. I promise. I won't be there.

We said brunch and it's up to the birthday boy. So I like days like this. Usually I'm the one that has to decide where to eat. And when it's somebody else's birthday, I can be like,'s your choice cool happy birthday what's your brother's name alex happy birthday alex who i haven't met either no he's also a dyke and we're taking over does he live across the street yep and i haven't met him no i should meet this guy you never know you might feel like you're a hermit and you don't get out you know i get it a lot that's my thing but i don't know maybe your brother's the hermit. Have you considered that?

No. Yeah. Yeah. No. No. He's good. When you drink your Great Lakes beer, you need a pint glass because you're supposed to break up these. You're supposed to break it up somehow.

You're not supposed to drink it from the can. You're supposed to pour it into a pint glass. See, I saw that. Yeah, it's just the YouTube clip. Yes. And this is why you may feel all bloated and weird after beer because it's all CO2. That's the CO2. That's the science I was missing.

So to break up that CO2, there's a pint glass that you can take with you. Courtesy of Brian Gerstein. He's with propertyinthesix.com. Thanks, Brian. Do you own property in the six? I do. I'm lucky enough to say I do. If you ever want to sell it, you need to talk to Brian before you do anything.

I'm not selling anything now. You're going to hold on to that jewel. But let's hear from Brian. Property in the Six dot com. Brian Gerstein here, proud sponsor of Toronto Mike and sales representative with PSR Brokerage, with offices in King West and the Annex. PSR specializes in new condominium sales with the hottest projects in the city, including Kingley in King West and 2-1 Bloor West.

For VIP Toronto Mike access, just call me at 416-873-0292 for renderings, floor plans, and pricing. Any real estate consultation in person with me will also get you my property in the six.com pint glass and a six pack of GLB. I see you tapping your toes there. That's a pretty good beat. It was good. His voiceover was very good. Was it? We recorded it. His original one, he thought he wasn't serious enough. It's not an easy thing to do, right?

Especially when it's hard to listen to yourself back. Have you ever done anything like, have I ever like, I don't know, heard your voiceover like a Kelsey's ad or something? No, no. You've never done like voiceover? No, I've thought about it, but I don't know. Can you put on like, now this is your natural voice, I assume I'm hearing right now.

Yeah, my reporter voice I don't think is much different. We always call it the reporter voice. You know when you're in somewhere really quiet and all of a sudden it's like, hello and welcome to, you know, and everyone's looking at you and you're like, oh. Yes, and you enunciate everything more. Yeah, that was the one thing I've been told I can enunciate. I like to roll my, no, staccato my T's. With proper enunciation, you could get a gig at the CBC. There you go.

I worked for CBC for three months. What did you do there? I was doing updates for CBC News World or News Network, whatever their 24-hour station was. Those hours were something. Call time was 4.30 a.m. So what time do you wake up for that? I was getting up at 3.45 as late as possible. So what time do you go to bed? That was the problem because, you know, So what time do you go to bed? That was the problem because, you know, doing SportsCenter, the latest show that we have runs from 1 to 2 a.m. live here on the East Coast.

And some days you don't get out of there until 3. But then you don't sleep, right? Like, where's the sleep? Yeah, you become a vampire. I'm lucky enough right now that I have major construction going on both sides immediately to my left immediately to my right today is Sunday as we've talked about and it is illegal to do construction on Sundays they started at 9 a.m this morning wow I got home from work at 2 30. Yeah um but when you were doing the CBC thing, where was the sleep happening exactly?

Was it like naps or something? No, it was sometimes you'd be falling asleep eating dinner. Wow. You can't operate heavy machinery like that. No, and you'd be going to bed at like nine and you're having to get up the next day to talk about sports that you haven't seen because you're sleeping. So it was a little complicated, but I was lucky enough to be there during the sochi olympics so i got to cover that for uh cbc news world sweet that's cool yeah i didn't know about your cbc connection i know i have a cbc retro shirt i could have worn for this uh this event so let me ask you uh because

uh when i was doing a little homework i I kept hearing about your golf playing. Yeah. So can you, I should tell you, I've only golfed twice in my life and it never took, like I never had a desire to golf again. You either love it or you don't because it's a ruthless game. But you love it. Love it, love it. But what age did you start golfing?

This is again, the dad story. My dad's getting a lot of airtime here. My parents divorced when I was younger. And when it was time for me to spend time with him on the weekends, it was kind of he's a huge golfer and golf has always been really important to him. Lord, you want to go to the driving range? Sure, why not? And I think I was eight. He says I might have been a little younger, but eight when I first started playing. And then I fell in love with it after that. And and luckily I've got a lot of friends that play and uh family members that play so it's never hard to find a foursome to get out with that's for sure how often are you on a golf course um

probably I try twice a week I try for at least once a week but it's not the cheapest sport to play and I don't belong to a club or anything, but, uh, I don't know. Once the winter comes around, that's when you save the money up again, just spend it all on golf the next year. I think you could get, uh, some kind of a social media ambassador role with a golf club. I can, I can help broker that for you. Imagine. Yeah. And the good thing is in our area, there's courses everywhere. It's just, do I want to pay fifty thousand dollars to become a member well my mortgage might have something to say about that so are you good uh I I'm not one to toot my own horn I break a hundred consistently I'm probably early early 90s low 90s I mean that

sounds good and this I have a question, and I've never understood this, and you're going to explain this to me. I always hear about the ladies' tees, okay? The forward tees, yep. So, like, you modify the course for females? Is this right? Well, see, if we're getting politically correct here, now they call them the forward tees.

So sometimes they have elderly gentlemen also hitting off of there. And guys like me. Elderly. Elderly. Elderly. You're young, you know. I'm young, but I'm a terrible golfer. I mean, like... They try to even the playing field.

So if you know some young kid's going to be hitting at 300 yards and you can only hit at 150, they want to make it, you know, as non-frustrating as possible, which is never easy with golf. How far can you hit it? Well, we were out last week, me and Tessa Bonhomme and Natasha Staniszewski, who I work with at TSM, we were at a tournament and one went like 245. I don't know what happened. I still think it's wrong. But is that good? Yeah,

it's good. It's really good. I don't know what happened. It's like I had to like pee in a cup after. I'm sure I wasn't taking anything, but there was a drone attached to the ball or something like that, but that sounds really good. So I've heard if you can just hit it 150 yards straight, you can play any course in the world. Of course, that's easier said than done, but, uh, just don't go to the dark place. That's what I always say. When things start to go wrong on the golf course, if you go to the dark place, you're not coming back. Why did you not follow in your father's footsteps and become a lawyer or did you and i just missed it and here we go again uh and then we're gonna leave your dad no no no so he came to my house and he said these are all you need to mention

me this many times yeah i'll give you a stink eye when i see you well it's funny all like these little pillars of my life and they always seem to come back to him. I was going to U of T and my plan was to do the LSATs and I was going to go to law school and a family friend said, oh, hey, there's this TV network called the Score Television Network, which doesn't exist anymore. They're looking for interns. Is that something you'd be interested in? I was like, sure. Never thinking that it would ever lead to where I am now. It's that was 13 years ago. And that was at Peter and King, right? That's where the score is. What a place to have your first job in television. Entertainment district, you know. You go from there to McCowan and the 401 in Scarborough and it's, you know, now I feel like

an adult there. I was a kid when we were down at the score and you grow up and now you're an adult at TSN. So when you're at the score, which I remember fondly, and a lot of great people like Elliot Friedman and Tim and Sid. James Cebulski, Adnan Virk, Caroline Froelich. Oh, I wasn't sure you were done your list there. There's lots. The big names that come out of the score. Yeah, it was like the training ground, if you will. What did you do there as an intern with

the SCORE television network? So my very, I'll never forget my very first day I was in the newsroom and it was the assignment desk. So that's at the time that was the people that would book feeds. And if you're, you know, transmitting stuff from halfway across the country, making sure that anyway, that kind of stuff. So it wasn't anything to do with being on air. And the woman who I was, who was my supervisor, Susan Jervis said, Oh, if it gets really slow, just look at box scores and you'll let us know if anything weird is happening. So I'm very young and very shy. And like, what am I doing here? and I'm looking at a box score and I'm like excuse me Randy Johnson is pitching a perfect game and they said thanks for letting us know we weren't even keeping an eye on that one and he ended up getting his perfect game so I think that

was May 2004 May 18th or something like that I'll'll never forget. That was my, and you know, then I became like the poster child. I was going to say you saved the network. Yeah. So I did that and I did that for a little bit. And then I went to the ticker and the ticker was actually my very first paid job. So all I did was input info into the ticker. And to this day, I'm still friends with a lot of the guys that I worked with. And it was one of the best jobs I've ever done because you're just so on top of all the stats, you know, guys that I worked with. And it was one of the best jobs I've ever done because you're just so on top of all the stats, you know, everything that's going on.

And you're just, you know, you're like the little mini computer. So it was awesome. And that was the big differentiator when the score showed up because we had TSN and we had Sportsnet and then the score shows up. And the big thing the score had,

other than it was like, was it Headline Sports or something all the time? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Before, and then, but it had the ticker. The ticker was always there. The greatest thing ever. Yeah. I probably had a lot of nightmares

about spelling things incorrectly and the tiles kind of, but that job was awesome. It was so fun. Did you ever make any highly embarrassing typos on the ticker? No.

Because I wish I could remember some of the stories now but there are always those warning stories you don't want to be that guy and little things like you know ben rothlisberger i would always think rowethlisberger there's little things like when we um like we had to take like a quiz and the one for the ticker was very specific because they wanted you to know not only do you know nicknames or you know if i give you this name of this athlete can you tell me what sport he plays or whatever whatever but it was they also tested your spelling so you're spelling saskatchewan rough riders and you're spending ben roethlisberger and all these weird ones so sophia yurksevich natasha stanishevsky that's not fair those are tough uh i was gonna say for

can't you just do big ben you couldn't do that for ben no no not allowed no you gotta be proper right this ticker it there's a name for this is it uh chiron or chiron have you ever heard this term yeah so chiron is so when you're watching the news or watching and they they put the fonts up that is what they consider like any overlay that's like a textual overlay that right yeah or like specialty boards chiron yeah i only learned that term like a textual overlay. Right, right. Or like specialty boards, Chiron, yeah. I only learned that term, like I think a few months ago, I learned this from Chiron, if that's how you say it. I can spell it.

But now I think it's everywhere. It's one of those, there's a word for this phenomenon where you discover something and then you see it everywhere. Right. This has happened to me of Chiron because I didn't know it had a name.

You're right. I've been noticing it too because I think it's the, not that we're going to get into politics, but the Donald Trump CNN. A lot of people say, well, that Chiron guy nailed it. Right. And now on Twitter, I'll be saying, hey,

look at the Chiron whatever. And I was like, that's a Chiron. I'm going to start calling it that. You sound so smart saying it. Oh, you don't know what Chiron is? Oh, poor you. I'd sound smarter if I was more confident it was Chiron and not Chiron. But it is Chiron. Well, we call it Chiron whatever then we're all we're all wrong together so how does so so how do I get your face and voice on the air like you're at the score and you're doing things in the background

you're doing the sports ticker they're paying you to update the ticker that's amazing but at some point you're selling it yep yeah ticker who hasn't read those tickers and wondered who inputted this did that but how much uh like um power do you have in terms of what you put into this uh feed this beast the like like ticker yeah like like none you just because you're not just order entry don't you have a little creative not really i mean it's the scores themselves would be this is like yeah you're testing my this entry. Don't you have a little creative... Not really. I mean, the scores themselves would be... This is like, yeah, you're testing my... This is like 10 years ago here.

The scores themselves would be automated, but it would be the other notes at the time. So I guess you could have freedom, say, two Toronto Maple Leafs scored a hat trick. Well, you get to pick which one you want to put on the ticker, if that makes any sense. But apart from that, no, it was all really structured. And that didn't happen very often.

The two Toronto Maple Leafs scoring a hat-trick. That's a pretty rare phenomenon. Not back then. Hey, things are looking up now. Oh, the future is... My oldest son, who is 15 and a half, is all about the preseason starting. Every day he's telling me about... Such a tease.

This is what I think the lineup... He's Mike Babcock here. I love it. He's all set. And he's like really in deep. Meanwhile, he doesn't give a rat's ass about Major League Baseball. It's hard when the Jays are winning, right? But what are your favorite sports? Well, hockey, obviously, if you're from Toronto. If you're from Canada, you don't really have a choice in that matter.

I'm a huge football fan. NFL starts next week. I am so excited. But I'm the opposite of your son. I hate everything preseason. I just want to, it's like going to the driving range. Let's just do it. Let's just start.

I understand why you do it, but I don't want to watch it. Let's do it. And you mentioned, you know, it's tough because the Jays are stinky. But when they were not stinky, let's say 2015. In the pennant race of 2015, there was a big series against the Yankees and I was at the game and my son, uh, I heard from my wife who is his stepmom that my son watched a Maple Leaf preseason game and instead of the Jays versus Yankee in the pennant race,

isn't that nuts? Well, I almost disowned them. Yeah. I mean, I think it's nuts. He says he finds baseball boring, doesn't care. Anyway, I digress, except to say that he is very excited.

He's very excited about Raptors and Leafs starting up. So yeah, except it just means that winter is coming and that's never a good thing. But that's OK. I'm sorry, I don't watch Game of Thrones. No, I wasn't even meaning it as a Game of Thrones reference. I'm just more like, you know, this is one of the best times of year in sports. For, you know, a month there, you have all four of them going at the same time. But then you're like, oh, right.

It's going to get really cold. Do you watch Game of Thrones? I do. I read all the books before the show even started. I'm a big dork. Are they very similar? Like, I don't... The books?

I haven't read the books or seen the show, but are they, uh, the plot lines very similar? I guess it's the last three seasons it's veered away. Cause the books, he only wrote, I think five. Cause I think a couple are in two parts and whatever. So the TV show isn't where the books are. So it's kind of gone off script a little bit. There were, there were a lot, obviously there were a lot of similarities, but a lot of differences as well. And I'm the one that would watch the show and be like, that didn't happen in the book and just drive everybody crazy around me. So you'd say that out loud to the person you're watching with? Uh, or I'd find somebody else that had read the books and then, you know,

save the people that are watching it with me. Because when I watch things with my wife, I, I'm constantly, uh, apparently out loud, I give fun facts about things and she thinks it's, she about things. And she thinks she doesn't love it as much as I do. But would you love it? She sounds like my mother. We went to see The Da Vinci Code. Remember the book? And Tom Hanks, who never should have been cast as Robert Langdon.

In any event, that was me the whole time. She's like, I'm never watching this movie with you ever again. So what we need to do is, you and I should watch things together. And your stepmom and your mom-mom. Yeah,, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom,

mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom books Stephen King books I like love like love them and my mom said I don't think you should go see the movie for that very reason because she's like it would drive you crazy to see how much they

change it right but I didn't see it I'm not good at movies okay I mean the last movie I saw in a theater was oh I got you beat 100% because mine is uh go ahead yeah it was the uh Star Wars Rogue One so when was that December I saw I saw it. Of this year? December. Of last year. The most recent December. Yeah. Okay.

So the last movie I saw in theaters was the most recent James Bond. So what's that? Three years ago? Okay. Two and a half years ago? I'm surprised you did win. I did. I would have bet money.

You know what you should have done? We'll get to this. You're into some gambling of sorts. You should have sucked some money out of me on that one. I don't gamble at all. I've done work at Woodbine. People say, do you bet on the horses? I've never put a dollar on a horse in my entire life.

Bear with me, Laura. Is that a good segue? I didn't even realize. I'm always ready. After 261 episodes, I'm always ready to talk gambling. I'm the worst. Okay, so I don't gamble either. But you've done a lot of things, and we're going to get to this.

I'm a little out of order, but like Bet Night Live? Yeah. Did you do that while you were at the score? I did, yeah. Twice a week, we would go to Woodbine. Well, one was at Woodbine and one was at Mohawk. So a little difference in distance. Wait, remind me where Mohawk is?

Mohawk is like Campbellville. So Guelph line. Okay. Way down there, past Milton. Cambridge or something. Yeah, well, yeah. It's like, you know, an hour drive, 45-minute drive. So I knew nothing about horse racing. They're like, you're going to be a great kid. I'm like, yeah. It's like, you know, an hour drive, 45 minute drive. So I knew nothing about

horse racing. They're like, you're going to be great kid. I'm like, okay. But it was invaluable experience. Two hours of a live show with no prompter. That'll teach you real quick to grow up as a broadcaster. Let me tell you. There was a Twitter question on this topic, which I will now do because you're mentioning this. People actually had questions for me. That's scary. Okay. In fact, this guy's name is Christopher Lee which I think is a cool name because that's that actor, right? Right.

The long time, he's dead now but he was in like the war and he was in all the cool stuff like all the Lord of the Rings and the Star Wars and all these things. But okay, Christopher Lee and it's not the Christopher Lee because he's dead.

He can't be tweeting. Christopher Lee. Unless there's something we don't know. Yes. How was, he asks, how was your trip to pei but there's an end here so we'll do that but and do you still watch horse races or was that just part of the gig at the score but then he's got a hashtag dyken dyken darts dyken's dart yeah sorry so where do you want me to start up to you. Okay, we'll start with the, just do the horse races thing. So tell me more.

So you did this as part of your gig that we're talking about, but then you don't actually do this as part of your personal life. No, I still get to cover some of the races. Like I did the Queen's Plate this year for TSN's coverage. We've got a couple more races coming up this year. Yeah, the horse racing show was interesting. Again, it was, you know, a lot of people can poo-poo certain sports that they're not interested in and the fringe sports. But, you know, I got to go to Woodbine and see these people

that genuinely loved horse racing that got a chance to do that every single day. And that's a beautiful thing. I mean, like, whether you like it or not, if you find something you love to do and get to do it every day, you're pretty lucky. Okay, but you saw, because I've had a, in my life, I've had a little Woodbine experience. And there's two groups in Woodbine. You have the members who are wealthy, well-dressed. They sometimes have big hats and things. And they're kind of there. And I'm thinking this is who you were seeing.

And then there's the degenerate gambler sect. No, no, no. That's not the group. Because those guys look like. No, that was the group. That was definitely the group. And I'm sure they're lovely, but they have a problem, some of them. No, no, no. That's not the group because those guys look like... No, that was the group. That was definitely the group. And I'm sure they're lovely, but they have a problem,

some of them. Yeah, yeah. I would take a cab every day to Woodbine. And the stories, even from the cab drivers, oh yeah, this woman made me drive all the way

to Hamilton so she could pick up more money and come all the way back. And I was like, oh, that sounds healthy. But they put our set right in the middle of the concourse okay so you were getting everybody coming up and talking to you they weren't talking to me because

they knew that I wasn't an expert and I couldn't make them any money but we go back to Dyken's Dart and one of the uh one of the segments on the show was kind of my long shot pick and the very first show we had a dartboard and my co-host at the time, Chad Rosema, God bless his soul, had to hold this dartboard with me throwing a dart. So we did it once and we realized how bad an idea. Because he lost an eye. It was close.

It was just, it was just not good. So we did it off screen and everyone thought, oh, it's BS. There's no way. No, we legitimately threw a dart at the dartboard. It kind of morphed into, I'll rip up pieces of paper and pull them out of a hat. But it was my long shot play. And once, I think there's a clip on YouTube of it, an 80 to one long shot came in. Yeah. You know what? I saw it. And then everybody goes, well, why didn't you put money on it? I'm like,

cause I never win any, I'm so unlucky in things that don't matter like golf and cards and sports teams, you know, but i'm lucky in life so there you go there you go okay so you were you were not a horsey horse expert but you played one on tv yes but i and i can appreciate it now i can read a program but i just i i'm yeah no i can't bet on it i can't bet on it when you're at the score you end up uh like as you mentioned with the ann mroszkowski story you end up on global news so tell the Ann Roszkowski story, you end up on Global News. So tell me, there's some kind of an unholy alliance there? How did that come to be? I think

there was a deal with the SCORE and Global that Global, I guess at the time, had been shedding departments. I don't know enough about it that I don't want to generalize anything. But anyway, there was a deal set in place that the SCORE would provide Global with their sport content. So twice a day there would be sports updates and uh again an e i don't want to say it's

easy because now after time you kind of go okay the hardest thing again is you're trying to have a conversation that with somebody that you can't see you can only hear them and it's very weird this is a weird thing i as you know i do i have a podcast you do i can see you like you're right there and your mickey mouse shirt which people will see in the photo we're gonna we're gonna take after but uh i've done a few episodes a very small few episodes like via skype and i don't like it it's weird i don't like it i don't know when to come in like i can kind of read you yeah but i don't know when to come in i can't see their eyes I can't if they're being sarcastic I can't tell like I really didn't like it and I really try I try very hard not to do these like uh I'll pass on pretty good guests if they say like we have to do this by

phone or skype come to me or I'm not doing this because it's no fun but yeah it makes a big difference yes it could yeah it it's one of the harder skills. But like just to try and give you some positivity, try it because it'll make you better. You may not like it. I did Jessie and Jean, who I'm going to guess because of your young age, you have no idea who Jessie and Jean are.

No. No, because they haven't been on the air since the 90s. Christopher Ward. Is that? Yeah, go ahead. They were on the radio. They were a longtime morning show duo. Yeah, on what radio?

Okay, they were on Q107. They were on CFTR. Do you remember CFTR before it was a news station? No. Yeah, I'm trying to do the math in my head. I remember when Q107 used to have Howard Stern on in the morning. They were replaced by Howard Stern. Yeah. So they were bumped from that's like nine, mid 97, maybe something. I'm not that old or young. Not that

I'm that old. No. Cause when you say Jess, yeah, no, it's Jesse and Jean, uh, Christopher Ward from much music, uh, down, you know, down goes Brown. Yes. So he's in Ottawa and we did his on the, but that was pretty fun actually but anyway i do like them in person i do like my guest to be sitting across the table that's fair it's your show as you know as you mentioned and global news you couldn't see who you were chatting with and that's tricky yeah so i'm trying to understand when how do you get yourself in front of the camera again is it what's the first time at the score that you're in front of the camera like on tv september 2008 and what are you doing so the score had money because things were going very well back then and they decided to build a new street level studio and sunk a lot

of money so that again was in it used to be the Holiday Inn. Now it's the Hyatt right at King and Peter. Oh yeah, I parked there. Yeah. Hope you saved your pennies for parking there. No, there was a good deal there. I can't remember what time it is, but there's actually like a $6 thing there. Oh yeah, after five o'clock.

Yeah, we used to do that. Anyway, so they were churning out more content from there so they needed someone to do updates so it was you know while you're watching raw or you're watching a baseball game or whatever it is the annoying person comes in every 15 20 you know with a 15 20 second update interrupting what you want to watch and telling you where you can watch something else and that was my first foray Ied, I worked my butt off and apparently I did a good enough job that someone gave me a shot. Greg Sansoni. Greg Sansoni. Uh, so Greg, I hear good things about, he's at Rogers now. Is that sports? Yep. Yep. And he's a, he was a

key figure in your professional development. Absolutely. Yeah. Um, along with, uh, Derek Snyder, who also did global and was kind of, we call it the highlight manager. So another good thing about the score was they kind of gave us the freedom to figure things out ourself. It was, I never went to school for this. I didn't have any formal training. So they kind of said, if you have the time, come in and shadow people, learn from people, you know, but what, along with the ticker what was unique about the score was at night we they had something called we called it the wheel where it was individual people voicing highlight packs so you would watch the game cut it you'd have an

editor but you'd pick the plays you'd write the script yourself and then you'd voice it so I did that for a couple years in between getting on air and that again that experience is you look back at it now and you're thinking at the time oh this will never you're so stupid right when you're younger like why am I doing this such a waste of time and you forget that it's a journey and that you learn so much you can't get here from there without going through that no and then when you get wherever you're going and you look back and you go, wow, what an accomplishment. You worked your tail off. You worked your tail off.

I'm not swearing. I have a really bad potty mouth. By the way, just so you know, you're allowed to swear. No, no, I can't. Okay, let me ask you this then. So I have this series. I mentioned it earlier, but it's called Kick Out the Jams. And people come, like they revisit.

This was mean, okay? How can you just say you have one favorite song? Oh yeah, yes, for the people listening. I asked Laura what her favorite song is because we're going to play it and talk about it later. Yeah. Guess who else is going to get mentioned during that song? That'll be my father again. So we'll just change it.

Then we meet the quota. It's Mike and Roman's podcast now you know that's right mike and roman if you want if i need a co-host you know if he wants to come up my co-host is uh we rarely record because he's in north oshawa it'd be very convenient to have a co-host across the street so if your dad's interested let me know uh where am i going to this oh yeah kick out the jam so i've done like 12 of these i think and people revisit to kick out the jams but they bring 10 songs and we talk about it uh but i kick off every revisit to kick out the jams but they bring 10 songs and we talk about it uh but i kick off every episode to kick out the jams with an mc5 sample which has m effer

in it okay right yeah i've heard of that one before yes so every all 12 episodes uh start with mother effer cool i think i said that to the neighbors doing construction this month yeah is that a bad like am i offending people? I don't know. I mean, it's a clip from a song. It's not like I'm calling anyone an MF-er. I'm cool with it. But I had one person just say they cringe when they hear it. I know. And this is not, you know, I don't have any CRTC regulations here. I think you just be you. You can't make everybody happy, you know?

Thank you. So what I'm telling you is you can swear. No, I can't. Why? I just, I can't. Because you're so used to not swearing on a microphone. I've never sworn on, which if anybody knows me out there is quite the accomplishment. I've never sworn on television. I've had somebody drop an F-bomb into my microphone on live television, but it wasn't me that said it. Was it just an F-word or was it the F-I-F-H-R-I-T-P? I don't even know what that means. No, it was just the F-word. I'm not saying that. So we were doing a, it was post game of a college, a CIS, Queens-Gales football game. And the coach's son dropped the F-bomb. And somehow I got in trouble.

Well, I didn't get in trouble. Okay, you didn't get in trouble. I was going to ask you. That's not fair because... Well, the coach wasn't happy. Is that reporter that said that to my son on the line? I'm like, oh, God. No, it was me.

I didn't say that. I think it would feel good. Like, I think you should really quickly... This might be a very rare opportunity for you to swear. Like, you don't have to say the F word, but maybe you want to say the S word. Is that okay? I mean, shit? No, I'm sitting.

How about that S word? No, that's not a swear word, Laura. No, it's not. Maybe in a different country it is. Sit down. What the heck was Fantasy Sports Network? Fantasy Sports Network. It's all over YouTube.

Yeah. it down what the heck was fantasy sports network fantasy sports it's all over youtube like uh if you search for laura on youtube you'll get uh four million uh fantasy sports network clips you can tell my social media profile isn't very strong right i have no instagram i actually technically i have three instagram accounts but can't remember the password to any of them and all the passwords are set up to emails that don't exist. No Facebook. Fantasy Sports Network came at an amazing time for me. I was in between jobs. Okay, so why did you leave the score? I'm rewinding now.

It wasn't my choice. Your salary demands were too high. That is one interpretation, yes. No, I was a casualty when Sportsnet Rogers was bought. Okay, great. The score was bought by... So I am rewinding here. I'm sorry. No, no, no.

So yes. So the score was bought by Rogers. Correct. It's now like 360 or something. Sportsnet 360. Yeah. I've had guests on... This is going to sound a little mean, I realize.

Like there have been guests on who... Like Jackie Redmond, for example. Right. Yep. Where Rogers kept her. Yep. So this is... I just realized now this is not nice. But for example, right. Yep. Where Rogers kept her. Yep. So this is, I just realized now this is not nice, but I'm going to do this very delicately, but they cherry picked some people to stay and then said goodbye to others. Yep. That's the business, right? And it's, I always say my journey into sports isn't as interesting, at least to me on

how I stayed in sports because you're kind of you get your dream job and then it's taken away and you're debating do I still do this do I not and then enter CBC and enter Fantasy Sports Network which launched uh March I guess of man my years are gonna be right three years ago I think now. And it was, yeah, fresh out of the ground. And it was a focus on everything fantasy sports. So for example, Justin Verlander gets traded from the Tigers to the Astros. Cool. But how does that impact my fantasy team? Or so-and-so gets hurt, you know, Marcus Stroman going down, who are some of the people that I should be picking up? So you're getting the main sports news, but doing a totally

different spin on it. So it was very, it was, it was very interesting. And a lot, what was cool about working there, not only that it gave me a job when I desperately needed one and in television, no less, where a lot of the people I'd worked with at the score. So it was kind of a little family reunion in a sense. Um, they're getting a lot of backing from the States, New York city, a lot of the money coming in there. So I hosted a show Monday to Friday, which was very weird for me. I've never done hours like that. And, uh, we had guests on, you know, we were doing fantasy NASCAR. We were doing fantasy golf. Obviously the main focus was fantasy football, but, uh, yeah, it was, it was a, again, I sound like such a dork, but it was such a great experience. Just again,

the timing was perfect. Yeah. Well, they said you came in here wounded and you left here with a lot of confidence. And I left there and I work for TSN now. And you pinch yourself. It sounds so cliche again. I sound like such a loser. Why do you think you sound like a loser?

Because everything's rainbows and sunshine. But you work in sports every day. The job is wicked i say the worst thing about my job it's not the hours or the people i work with or anything like that it's my drive i have to drive across the 401 you know five days a week if they only kept you at peter and king that's what we say all the time because if you go a lot of times if you go to agent court uh there's no food there so unless you don't then you're not eating we're at peter and king it's like oh do i want to go to bond me boys do i want to go and get a sub do i want you know your choices are endless yeah well my uh it's funny because my my wife worked for years at peter and

king just like across from the shoppers but yeah yeah so it's really like you're almost your neighbor but then they moved to one young street but that's much better than moving to aging court but we digress so this they plymouth rock didn't land on me like you know is it you know i mean like you did not choose to leave this is what happened uh i personally would have kept you over jackie redmond i just want to put that on the record right now well thank you but she there's a reason they kept her right and she does a good job and she's made a niche for herself and it's just i mean that's the business you can't get mad at at people for doing their job i'm just she told me that uh she does not believe in black holes like i don't understand why she would have the feel she has the right to not believe in black holes you know don't you have to have some kind of uh science

you know what i mean like hey you're going with your gut i guess and it's like you know yeah i'm sure there is some scientist out there who doesn't believe in black hole and that guy has the right to sort of like right put an argument out there's no black holes jackie redmond to me you're out of you get to black holes i think at the end of our chat i said to her something like this is there you want to push anybody down a black hole do Do you have anything controversial you want to express? Like, do you believe in anything controversial? Like maybe I, then she tells me, you know, maybe she'd say something like I'm a white supremacist or whatever.

Then, oh my God, we have a great, I'm just kidding. Of course. We've run out of time. And she said that she doesn't believe in black holes, but I, I'm kidding. Of course I would have kept you both. I'm going to be honest. I would have kept you both.

I would have kept you both. I'm going to be honest. I would have kept you both. I would have kept you at the score. But this is all happenstance because you're out of work. You were literally begging for change at the corner of Peter and Kate. Yeah, and I don't have any talents. I can't play the guitar. I can't sing.

So it was... You were going back to law school. No, that never came up. Never even thought of it. No, I don't know. Did you have a moment though where you thought of leaving the biz like maybe i'll go sell like software uh i didn't know i didn't have a backup plan and sometimes not having a backup plan i guess is a good thing because it

forces you to exhaust every avenue how did you hook up with the fantasy sports people like did you just knew somebody else at the school as i said there were there are a lot of, I don't want to say manage. Well, there were some of the management. Anyway, there were, there were people that could make those decisions and they were big fans of mine and, uh, I was big fans of theirs and it just, it came together. So I was there for nine months and, uh, yeah, it was again, you know, they're in Liberty village, a different part of the city. And you're just, it was, you know, was working monday to friday which was very weird and uh i only bought my

first car when i got the job at tsn i'd never owned a car so all i was doing was taking i was like your your quintessential toronto you know i'm taking the subway and man the bus is late again and all of that so did you ever bike to work no no um No. Biking and I do not get along. We were in Amsterdam after the Worlds, and they got me on a bike. Well, that's a tough place to break into biking. Dude. I've been there several times.

That's not where you go to break into biking. If you do manage to get Tessa on here, you have to ask her, because I don't want it. They lost me. Let's just, they lost me for a couple minutes, and it came back,

and it just, I don't want to talk about it. What happened in those two minutes, that was like my black hole. Let's just, they lost me for a couple minutes and it came back and it just, I don't want to talk about it. What happened in those two minutes, that was like my black hole. Let's put it that way. It's, the way they bike in Amsterdam, you have to know the system sort of, or you're going to get trampled.

It's like a new driver going on the 401. Have fun. Yeah, no, that's, and I've been there, like I said, several times I've been to Amsterdam and I'm a big biker here and it's all different there like it's a different kind of bike it's a different reason for biking it's a different style of biking you got guys in three-piece suits i'm like get up with the bike and i'm like crying behind my sunglasses i'm like don't let anybody see me and i'm like i just want to throw this bike into the canal wow the uh so why like okay just to clarify fantasy sports network is a digital television

show like this is like a streaming web thing i think they're on i think they're on rogers and bell i'm not sure now it's a little harder for me to keep tabs when i'm not working there anymore but the difficulty when we were when i was there is it was brand spanking new so it was just at that time it was just strictly the internet and then slowly uh more deals came with tv and and that kind of stuff they paid you with real canadian dollars like not like bitcoins it wasn't bitcoin no it's um the checks never bounced and that's perfect sounds ideal yeah and tsn does tsn poach you um Tell me how you end up at TSN. So an opportunity came up where they needed a reporter to do the Under 17 World Hockey Challenge in Sarnia, Ontario. And my, again, you know this as well,

the business is very small, so everybody knows everybody. So there was a phone call from, I believe it was Mark Millier at TSN or Paul, Paul Grant. Anyway, there were communications between, and I think my boss at Fantasy said, sure, we'll lend you out, but you're not taking her. And then I do the assignment realizing, you know, I was just doing ringside interviews. It's funny that, um um it was Alex Nylander who now is a big shot but it was Sweden I think I was only 16 anyway by the time I got there um and he was the only one that Sweden would let us talk to so I think I spoke to him like seven times and does he have flow like his bro yep yep and that's great flow at the world juniors in in

Montreal he was there and I said oh I remember you and he's like cool I don't remember you and I was like yeah that's that's not surprising not nice so I knew that if I did a good job at that assignment that things would probably happen with TSN and sure enough two weeks after and then it was yeah goodbye FSN thank you for this opportunity yes and like you said you came in there wounded you left confident and now you're TSN ready. Yes. And TSN is the, I mean, you're missing some interesting content that you used to have. We'll get into that.

But that's the big time. It is. That's the show. That's the first all-sports channel in the country. And it's funny. Back when my mother used to work, this is mom, mom, not stepmom, mom, but mom, mom. She worked for American Express and her job was to sell corporate cards so her client was I don't know how it was but in any event she whether CTV was her client or she ended up at TSN they were giving them a tour

and she sat at the desk and she said one day I don't even think I was in the business yet and she said one day my daughter is going to be sitting here at this desk and she said, one day, I don't even think I was in the business yet. And she said, one day my daughter is going to be sitting here at this desk. And everyone's like, ha ha ha. She knew something I didn't. That's the mom for you, right? She always believed in you. That story is right up there with Jim Carrey's story where like he promised, he wrote himself a check for $10 million or something. Did he post date it? I don't think, I don't know how it worked, but somehow he kept this check. He wrote himself for $10 million and said, one day I i'm gonna make this doing movies like when he was

nobody and then at some point i think it was ace ventura 2 or something he did it for 10 million dollars or something see but that's him him believing in himself right and this is your mom believing my mom believes in me that's what moms are for exactly we need to give your mom some more time on this there you go go yeah a little more invite them all down you know how many mics do you have i got three mics okay by the way you know why so i'm pointing to the swing boom arm here that's a new i used to have two and then this was on a stand see and then on up man but jay and dan were coming over so uh patreon account took some funds uh generous donations bought the third. I bought it for

Jay and Dan. You know, I never this Dan fellow, I'm sure he's lovely, ghosted on me. I don't know where he is. He never showed. Just this Dan guy is like a rumor. Keep at him, man. Keep at him. And then I'm like, apparently he lives east.

And I guessed with Jay, I guessed, oh, he's in Oshawa. Because that's really east, right? Oh, no it's like peterborough i think that's he wouldn't he wouldn't reveal that nugget he just said it's east of there that's far away to i guess if you're going to aging court or whatever but that's far away did i ruin the anyway i don't think he's maybe it's a big city it's not like you gave his uh address no i mean you're close to giving out no every address of my family i think so i've only said that your dad lives across the street. Come on. I would never do that, please. Especially because your dad practiced law. That's right. We'll keep remembering that. Back to your mom. No more dad talk. Okay. TSN. So what did you do at TSN?

What do you do there? What do I do now? Sports center and pretty much whatever they want me to do. So I'm lucky enough that I get to do sports center on the weekend. So we do two shows depending what time they are, but we do the overnight show. And obviously now weekends take on a whole new meaning once football starts, once hockey's back. So, and then I kind of do whatever they want. Like I said, I do a little coverage for Woodbine. I just finished doing the women's rugby world cup coverage. I've done tennis there. I've done women's hockey. I've done the world juniors. I've done the men's world hockey championship. I guess I'm the Jack, the Jane of all trades, if you will.

The, uh, so you mentioned you were in Amsterdam, so that was following the, uh, the world hockey championship. I don't know how lucky I got doing that. So that was following the World Hockey Championship? Yeah, I don't know how lucky I got doing that, but it was following Team Canada. I was in Geneva for six days, Paris for 16, Cologne, Germany for five, and then Amsterdam for fun. That's amazing, because it's all expensed. Yeah, but I said the same thing. I was like, how hard could I

possibly, we were working every single day. I mean, no one's going to feel pity for me at all. I mean, the days, it wasn't that it was long, but it was every day we were filing something. But did you tag on personal days? Because, you know, if they pay the flight over and the flight back. Yeah, that was Amsterdam. Amsterdam were personal

vacation days. It wasn't like they just gave them to us but um did you find like I did that um they speak better English than we do did you find that in Amsterdam uh yeah yeah well it was Geneva I was surprised how little English there was there was a lot of obviously you're really close to the French border France was awesome I mean it was grab bag. Cologne, it's kind of like as the journey went on, the English got better and better. Yeah, I agree.

I've been to Paris. I got engaged in Paris, by the way, at the top of the Eiffel Tower. But you're right. There they like to speak French. They go to French first. But I hate how everyone's like,

oh, Paris, they're so snobby. Everybody was delightful. I had such a positive experience um I mean the only the only negative with that whole tournament was Canada lost in the shootout for gold right I was watching and uh how do we tell me so this is the IIHF rules right yes so how do we get rid of this like how you cannot decide I mean, maybe, you know, obviously, the NHL would never decide a playoff game with a shootout. Never.

No. And no one would accept that. Why do we accept this in the gold medal game for an IIHF World Hockey Championship? I think because I was working with Darren Dreger for the championship, and he's obviously much more in the know about those kinds of things than I am.

But I think the rule had been implemented, but not for that specific tournament i think for a couple years down the road there will no longer be a show right i don't know all the details about it again it's i should know because it wasn't that long ago but it's kind of like in one ear out the other you're telling me i need to talk to dregs can i call him dregs sure dregs uh yeah i think so but i i don't know if i was comfortable with it i kept saying you know when you're so like jennifer hedger right everyone's like hedge hedge and i'm like oh i have to call her jennifer because you know that's her name and um you know she was on the lofters she was yeah no i i remember that she yeah um going back to the hockey yeah it was it was hard because i'd

spent you know almost every single day covering these guys for three weeks and they lose like that and they're coming off the ice and I'm like I can't even look any of them in the eye and like it's just so unfair to me Ryan O'Reilly walking by and takes off his medal like you know and it's uh but then serendipity you know TSN's like get William Nylander get and I don't know if you remember Williamiam nylander ran over henrik lundqvist at the end in the celebration and yes rocked him i do i do because as a big leaf fan i took note of that so they said you know get nylander okay no problem so i nylander's not the longest talker and obviously he wants to go and celebrate with his teammates and we look behind me and there's Henrik doing a radio interview, a Swedish radio

interview. And my cameraman, Fred, who works out of Winnipeg said, well, just, just ask him, you know, we got the TSN mic flash, just ask him if he's got time for a couple of questions. And I was like, okay, what do I have to lose? Sure. And right. Yes. No problem. No problem. So I got his first English television interview after winning the gold. So he's got the trophy. Yep. He's got the trophy. He's got his gold medal on. Then I find out after that, because his brother,

his twin brother was on the team as well, that Swedish TV was waiting to go live with Joel and Henrik, but some Canadian sportscaster kept him from. So I got the interview. Is he, is he, cause he's a very handsome man yes like he's the don draper of the nhl yes and it's not even like that it's just when he's answering your questions it's like he's paying attention like he's like looking into your soul it's like the whole package

of it and i know you know this day and age we're not supposed to say you know the eye candy and this and that because you know back in the day that's just why women were in sports because of the cute boys. But I mean, a handsome man, you got to give him some due. I think if you do it both genders, it's OK. Like the problem is some people, they only know like, you know, Eugenie Bouchard, whatever. Do a little twirl for us. Right. But they would never say that to the male. Well, who's El Chapo here, for example? Yes. Like he's not going to get the Bouchard questions. No. And that to the male. Well, who's El Chapo here, for example?

Yes. Like he's not going to get the Bouchard questions. No. And that's the problem. Yes. But we are here. That's a whole different podcast. Yeah.

So I mean, we're not blind. We're not. We're all humans. And you can note that, hey, Henrik Lundqvist is a very handsome man. I am a heterosexual male and I note it. I mean, you got to be blind not to see it. I would kiss that man okay if yeah if he initiated okay this thing this reminds me when jay was here he noticed

my son's bed is around the corner okay and uh he was uh yeah so yeah don't worry um he does some laundry at night and he was jay i think was coming on to me. But I think it's okay. As long as it's equal to both genders. I see. Okay. Right. We have to move on now. My producer is telling me to move on. So how did you get the Raptors game I mentioned off the top? I saw you on Raptors. How many Raptors games have you done?

One. I saw you do the one. I watch a lot of Raptors. November 1st. How come you haven't done it again? Because you were great. That is watch a lot of Raptors. November 1st. How come you haven't done it again? Because you were great. That is not a question for me to answer. There, you know, with anything, there's a hierarchy, right?

So I was the, I think I was the third or fourth option. So it's just, you know, there's a hierarchy. Rod Black's got it. So they just go down the list and then, okay, this guy's on vacation. This guy's sick. This guy's in the maternity ward because he's having a baby or whatever. You just hope that the reason that you haven't been asked to do it again

is because of that and not because you weren't very good at it. The thing I was most surprised about is how loud it is because the set is right in the thick of things. It is loud. I'm curious. I've never been in the business,

but don't you seek uh constructive feedback after something that is going to get a lot more eyeballs maybe than yep yeah it's um i mean the problem with i don't know if it's a problem but the situation with your bosses now is they've got so many other things that that's going on so it's you know you can't fault them if they don't get back to you right away. But another thing with the business, at least my experience, no news is good news. So you kind of got to park. Again, I don't think it's ego, but like you've just got to just go with the flow, man. If there's something wrong, believe me, they will tell you.

You'll hear about it. Oh, yeah. Okay. I think maybe we need to be more aggressive. Like you need to let them know you want to do raptor games and you're available ready do you want me to talk on your behalf maybe you should be my agent yeah i mean you could i'm already brokering the deal so you can golf for free right okay you need to up the social though uh i guess you've heard this but your whole like i

don't do social is hurting you no it's not that i don't do it it's just here's my here's my you need a manager uh a i don't think i'm interesting enough just, here's my, here's my. You need a manager. A, I don't think I'm interesting enough that people would be like, oh, hey, this is what she's doing.

And B, like, do you, do I really want you to know what I'm up to all the time? Please. Laura, you cherry pick

what you share. This doesn't mean, you know, you know what I mean? Like you don't tell them the stuff that's not fit for public consumption, but you'll be surprised

how much stuff in your life is ideal to be shared with your fans via social. You have fans. I know, and that's weird. Listen, you're in a job now. I don't know if you know this. You're not doing

the ticker updates anymore. No, I'm not. When you go in someone's living room, if your face is in someone's living room and they're watching the gold medal game, Canada-Sweden, a lot of people watch that game.

That's weird. A lot of people watch it and you're in their living room. I know. Your voice is there. Your face is there. People are getting used to seeing you throughout the tournament and you do the juniors like uh like do you do all the world juniors now or just when they i did it last year fingers crossed i'll get to do it again this year beautiful buffalo

this year how do you say no to buffalo in winter time or christmas yeah do you realize how many eyeballs are on the World Juniors? No. Lots. Yeah, I know. You're in a lot of living rooms. I'm saying you got to remember, you got to share. My palms are getting sweaty just talking about it, yeah.

Almost as many people listen to this show as watch the World Junior Hockey Championship. See, I knew I was nervous for a reason. We're going to get you back in a Raptors game. I wanted to ask you about what it's like working with people like Darren Dreger, for example. You touched on it, but is he a cool's like working with people like Darren Dreger, for example, uh, you touched on it, but, um, is, is he, is he a cool guy? I've never met Darren Dreger. Yeah. Yeah.

We had a lot of fun. It was, um, my first experience doing something like that. I mean, the world's alone. I was gone for 30 days, but just doing reporting, cause I've mostly been a host and anchor. We always joke that they lock me in the studio for the safety of everybody, not just my own, but for athletes and coworkers. So it was a totally different, like totally out of my element.

And I was really nervous and I put a lot of pressure on myself because you want to do a good job, not only for the network, but for Team Canada and these guys that are devoting all this time. And he was awesome. I just bouncing ideas off of, and you know, like I, I, the one thing with me, I'm very prepared and I, I think it's the librarian

slash lawyer that's inside me somewhere that, that likes doing that. I mean, always be prepared. And then if something comes at you, you know, you're ready for it. So he was, I was, there was a pressure on me to impress him i think which was just stupid because he's just he just wants you to know that you're there to do a good job and that you take it seriously but he was we had such a great time i look back at it now and i mean it was only a couple months ago and i just think i can't believe i did it and i'm really i'm proud of the work that we all did together because it was it's definitely a team effort and it was uh just a disappointing end i mean silver's not disappointing legally.

No, no. Silver's garbage in this country. Okay. No, you're kind of right. Especially with hockey. If you're a Slovakian, silver's wonderful, and you can put them on money. But I think of Andre Agassi's dad, and this is... Andre Agassi's dad, this is in Andre's book, would take his silver medal from the tennis

tournament and throw it in the garbage. Terrible. But it made him a champion. I'm not not condoning this i don't do this with my kids i celebrate their participation whatever the talladega knights right if you're not if you're not first you're last yeah you're the first yeah the first loser first loser but in canada and one thing i will say though about the world hockey championships is that we all have a little asterisk asterisk beside it we all have i know i'm gonna say asterix because i used to read the comics and yeah that was one of the um why can't i think of the word anyway they were symbolic during the worlds oh asterisk and obelisk they are called mascots mascots nailed it right i'm yes i saw them and i was happy to see him because as a very young man

i read those books uh those comic books i still have a bunch upstairs and we've just aged ourselves incredibly well i made i aged myself more than you did that's right i think they'll see that in the photo my white hair i digress uh what i'm saying uh what was my point about asterisk oh yeah we all know that the you knowrosby's in the NHL playoffs the fact is and that's what we all do as soon as that silver medal is awarded we're like well our best players are not there and this doesn't count so I think when it comes to Olympic

whenever our best players are involved it really is gold or get the heck out of here in this country yeah I agree with you that's tough that's a whole different kind of pressure on those guys because they know that too, for sure. But what I like is in recent history, they've been delivering.

When was the last time we lost a best on best? I believe it was in Sweden. No, when Sweden won gold in 2000. No, 2000? That was it. No, 2006. We did not win gold in 2006. We won in 02. We won in 2006. We won in 02.

We won in 10. We won in 14. Yeah. We won this thing we just had. And who knows what's going to happen now. Right. But another podcast. Look at all the things we have to talk about. See, you'll have to come back and visit your dad again.

Sorry to tell you that. I got to ask about Kate Burness. Am I saying Burness right? Burness. Burness. Kate Burness. Yeah. I was doing some research on you and I discovered this

like a video or a picture or something where you're getting your hair done. Like, oh yeah. But I didn't know Kate wasn't a real redhead. I don't want to ruin. No, this is her, her hashtag. She, she, I'm telling you, I'm not, I'm not going to get you in trouble. No, I know. She used the hashtag fake redhead. Yeah. Kate Burness is not a real redhead. It's breaking news. She works hard keeping the red. Breaking news on Toronto Mike's. Man, that scared me. I'm sorry.

I should have given you a heads up. I thought something that had fallen upstairs. I'm like, is one of your four kids okay? Where's the dog? That's why you have spares. You don't know what will happen. There's no dog, by the way. Kate Burness is a fake redhead.

I did not know that. Yep. She ignores me, by the way. I have nicely sent her, I think, two emails over the span of like two, although you ignored me for a long time too.

I was busy. But that's a long time. When did I first ask you to come on? Well, and then I went to Europe. I think, well, yeah, a year later. I'm just saying, it's for a long time, too. I was busy. But that's a long time. When did I first ask you to come on? Well, and then I went to Europe. I think, well, yeah, a year later. I'm just saying it's been a long time. I'm going to go back to the archives. But Kate doesn't reply at all.

But what I found meeting with TSN people, people like James Duthie or Vic Router or Dave Hodge or Brian Williams or Jay Onright, who is just here, Gene Oretta. I'm trying to name them all, but there's a lot of TSN people who have been here. You're name-dropping a lot. I am, but that's what we do here. But they're all, like, lovely salt of the earth people.

Bob McKenzie. Yeah, Bob. They're all sweethearts. Yeah. That was in Sarnia when I had my audition, even though no one said it was an audition. Right. I had to work with Bob.

So talk about being... Whose son is now in the business. That's right i golfed with him uh last week but with the uh some tournament yeah but he's with the enemy he's not do you like the like are you friendly with the sports net people the thing with sports net a lot of the on-air people i haven't met i used to work with carly Agro at CBC and again I come into the situation where I know absolutely nobody and I'm just freaked out and what am I doing here and she could not have been nicer bend over backwards nice like just insane and I was like you're too nice there's got to be something wrong with you um but I've never met like Ivanka but obviously my connection with the score and like Tim and Sid

are still there, Martine is there Was Carolyn Cameron there? No, I've never met Carolyn but I hate how they try and pit us all against I mean, I get it, it's part of it It's Kiprios' fault since he tweeted those fuckers at TSN See, and I'm glad you

It's Kipper's fault He's trying to cause some trouble So I have a lot of friends that still work there. So I, you know, I hold no ill will. I feel like I'm saying all the right things. No, I mean, I don't... This is not intended to get you in trouble. No, I hope not.

Okay, so Natasha... Can you say her name for me again? Staniszewski. Staniszewski. You work with her at Sportsnet. I mean, I'm so sorry. That's okay. Sports Center. Sports Center, yeah. Which used to be called Sports Desk when I was younger. Was it? Yeah. But it's been Sports Center for a long time now. Or as my American friends call it, Sports Centre. Right, because it's R-E. Right. And how is it working with Natasha?

Awesome. Awesome. Are you tight off screen? Like when you're not recording, would you hang with Natasha? Yep. Yep. We've, uh, someone, I think that question, there were four of us that went to PEI, Tessa Bonham, Natasha, myself, and then, uh, one of our friends that works behind the scenes, Carrie, and we went to PEI and yeah, the, you know, I've, uh, I've met some fantastic people along the way and you know there's always the stigma with oh girls and sports girls and tv and ego and da da da da tsn just so welcoming right from the get-go and uh the women i'm not trying to single out the women more than but it was just such an awesome like they're all and it's again i sound like a dork but they're all awesome they're just i don't i get along with everybody there's no assholes no and if there are i'm not gonna tell you i'm

sure there are a couple but uh yeah like it's natasha tessa kate jen like it's you know kara it's awesome lindsey lindsey's the newbie so lindsey's awesome yeah it's i mean a lot of it is you know a lot of the girls will work Kara and Lindsay in particular they work during the day Monday to Friday so it's hard to coordinate things all together but when you work nights

you've got your day spree and lucky enough that Natasha, Tessa, Kate they do as well and we just kind of hang out and Tessa's got a gold medal she does world championships I'm sure but yeah one gold from hang out. And Tessa's got a gold medal. She does. Did she have multiple? No, she has one. Well, world championships, I'm sure. But yeah,

one gold from... Do you remember the girls that went on the ice that were smoking the cigars and drinking the beers? And the American media was all in an uproar. 2010, right? Yeah, Tessa was the ringleader there. I'm going to get Tessa on the show. I mean, we had that Twitter exchange. I know. I never heard from her, though. But I did. Somebody

else introduced me. Oh, that's right. That was pushing for it yeah and then so i'm like yeah now i'm into this tessa thing i gotta get tessa but you can put in a good word for me assuming this goes well at the conclusion here no promises oh gosh what's happening oh you don't have a you don't have a wikipedia page me do you no i don't have it but you don't do that for yourself that's something people see i'm not important enough to have one yet. I'm surprised. I might have to create one for you. No, don't worry. Do you feel you get enough airtime at TSN?

Oh, I don't care. You don't care? Nope. There's certain shifts, and they've got the certain people that want to do certain shifts, and I fill in wherever I'm needed. And people kind of say,

oh, well, you're doing the fringe sports that nobody watches. We've kind of went through this already. Like rugby and stuff. I don't, I don't think about it like that. You know, there are very passionate fan bases out there and it's your job to do the job, the cert or to give the sport the service it deserves. Like it's just cause you don't follow it. But for me, I mean, my dream was always to do a highlight show, SportsCenter. I was lucky enough when I was at the score, Tim and Sid, I can't remember what it was, Score Tonight was what it was called. And I did eight shows and I was like, that is the best thing I've ever done.

I was so pumped. And you fall in love with it. And now it's, you know, I think everybody would want to, you know, do the highest rated shows, you know, guaranteed to work five days a week whatever it is but I'm you know I make the most of the opportunities when I get them so I'm lucky to have the weekends the weekends keep us busy we do four shows a weekend and um yeah I mean kind of going back to the Jay and Dan situation if their show does well more eyeballs come on come on the show on to the network and it's just the trickle down effect is going to be felt for everybody hopefully that starts tuesday monday oh okay well no one's gonna

watch monday because it's a holiday but maybe what do i know but i'm uh yeah starting soon tomorrow i feel like i've been promoting it for the like last three weeks i'm gonna say they really did put some money i mean he had a driver but he had a PR guy with him and a driver waiting outside. Who was the PR guy? Do you remember? Zach. Oh, yeah. Zedek.

Yes. I remember feeling like he wasn't a very intimidating PR guy. No. I felt like I could because he said I had an hour and I took an hour and 11 minutes. I'm like, screw you, Zach. But what could he do? What was he going to do? Rough me up?

I wasn't feeling any fear, but he was very nice. Make sure the microphone's always running and then you've got, you know. He was very pleasant in terms of PR. I've had unpleasant PR people. He was a pleasant PR person because probably because he's so young, he hasn't become like an asshole yet. Jaded. Right. See, everything's coming up TSN. You mentioned like fringe sports you get put on sometimes that maybe aren't as popular in this country, like some maybe women's rugby or whatnot. But is that because, you know, the other cable company, Rogers, has bought up all the hockey and already has the baseball because they own the team, you know.

But they have the baseball. They have all the hockey properties. So is that tough? Is it tough at TSN in terms of content? No. No, I don't think so. And that's a misconception. Like TSN still has hockey.

Well, they have the regional games. Exactly. They have some regional games with Toronto and other teams. Yeah. So they have regional rights for the Leafs, the Jets, the Habs, and the Sens. So we just got the Habs. This will be our first year doing it. So there is hockey, it's just not

national hockey. And there's no playoff hockey. And no playoff hockey, because again, that would be national. They're kind of, TSN's branding itself as the home of champions. So yeah, it's women's rugby, but you see New Zealand winning the rugby world cup you see you know the U.S. winning the world juniors the men's um under 18 hockey

championship like there's there's yeah I guess that you have to get more creative but again there's a fan base for these things it may not be millions and millions of viewers like you know CBC was getting for the playoffs but there are dedicated people that love the sport and want to watch it done well. And I think TSN has really put people in a position to see that succeed. I mean, you know, we've got the full NFL schedule, CFL. It's kind of it's funny. You got a lot of football. That's true.

Yeah. And it's funny how, you know, like the summer comes around and, you know, it's going to be the Jays versus the CFL. And then the fall comes around, it's like hockey starting and, you know, it's going to be the NFL versus hockey. And it's just, you know, ebbs and flows like with anything. I mean, yeah, I'm sure TSN would love to have more hockey games, but it's just, it's not a possibility. So instead of sitting in the corner and crying, you rebrand yourself and, and just do the best, you know, we can still show highlights, obviously. So it's just doing those the best that we can do and just, you know, showing people that, yeah,

we may not be doing the games necessarily, but we still have all the analysis. We still have Bob. We still have Dregs. We still have James Duthie. And we're still putting out a really good product. Now, we talked about, you know, you mentioned the female hosts at TSN.

You sort of ran down a list or whatnot. So I guess I'm wondering, like, how much does gender matter right now in sports media? Like, how significant is it that you are female? No, I don't think it's as much as, say, you know, 15 years ago. Caroline Frolic, who used to work on The Score, is a good friend of mine. Obviously, we met each other there. And when she came into the business, it was much different where it was, you know, I don't want to say it to be like this, but like the token woman, like you knew that you had to have one, you know, there were X amount of men, you would always want to have a man and a

woman on the desk, whatever it is. And maybe you got your opportunity because you were a woman. But my attitude was always, you kept it because you worked hard or you gave them what they wanted, right? Because at the end of the day, you're working for a boss. Nowadays, I think I would hope that it's you're hiring the people that are the best that they can be at their job. And I remember when I was trying to get into TS and they said, you know, we have so many women now. And this was, you know, you know, Natasha had come in. Anyway, they were, they were had a lot of women, you know you know Natasha had come in anyway they were they were had a lot of women you know and now they're just saying maybe that's again another ebb and flow where the men were really strong maybe it's the women that are really strong now and I

you're still going to get the flack from people that are like oh you just have your job because you're a woman what do you really know about it but I've always said I want to come across on air as myself someone said that to me from the very beginning. Just be yourself. I'm a sarcastic person. I know a lot about sports. I like it. If I come across as informed and that I know what I'm talking about

and I'm accurate, I could be a man, I could be a woman. I don't look at it like that as much anymore. I make fun of it sometimes, but I make fun of a lot of things. Well, it's kind of like it can work for you and against you. It's sort of like uh it can work for you and against you it's like there's pros and cons to it yeah and it's you know i even when you look at things that

people wear and all that kind of stuff like i just i well there you go there's probably and i promise you i have not been on any of these sites but there's probably sites like that are like just talking about what you wore but you're never ever getting that for you know read yourself no and that's and it's funny talking to my friends that aren't in the business. They just don't get it. It's what do you mean they tell you what to wear? What do you mean they tell you how to cut your hair? And it's just, that's, that's what goes along with the territory. And yeah, a lot of things aren't fair and maybe it's bad to just throw up your arms and be like, well, that's the way it is. But a lot of times that's the way it is. So you, you deal with it or you're going to let it consume you. Right. So like one thing is you cannot,

you cannot help how you look, for example, like, no surgery could help, I guess, but you know, I think you look how you look and if it's working for you, that's wonderful. My question, I guess, would be like, do you ever feel pressure? For example, like I won't have that six slice of pizza because i'm gonna get comments about like how i fit into this like you don't have any of that self-conscious that's good i like food i like and like the problem is too like working these late hours like i got home yesterday at 2 30 in the morning and i was like i'm starving and i just ate like bread and cheese really healthy at three o'clock in the morning ah you know it's all about

uh portion control as long as you don't have something eight or nine of those suckers okay and you're talking to guys i i sometimes think i bike because i have no i'm not able to like stop at like two slices of pizza right if there's pizza there it's going down i've had a barbecue across the street by the way did you see your? No. But it was like unlimited burgers and dogs. And at some point I just got so full. I'm like, I actually can't eat anymore. But it was like I needed that. Like I didn't have this wherewithal to like say,

I'll just have like two units. I had two burgers, two dogs. I would have kept going if I wasn't going to puke. Well, if you're going to puke, then that's a different thing. But if you're worried about... I have an eating disorder. I'm just declaring for everybody. Not disorder not good man not good at all so um so yeah the i always i'm always curious about that because in the radio world there's a lack of like for example at uh the sports net radio station which is 590

in toronto all the hosts are white guys and there's a lack of diversity there and i don't know if that's an issue or not uh do you have any desire to enter radio at all or are you just a tv gal no i again i'm whatever every different medium makes you better and i just think it's it's important to especially when you've been in the business for a while to do things out of your comfort zone like i was saying with the worlds and reporting, I, I'm not snobby when it comes to, Oh, it's just the radio in a way of radio is awesome because I don't have to worry about my hair or my makeup or my clothes. But again, the biggest thing that you're worrying about is coming across as someone that's well-informed and professional and just giving

the vibe that you want off. And I think that happens whether you're on the radio or on TV or writing on a website. I think it's stupid to just limit yourself to one thing. But that's my opinion. Someone else may poo-poo that again, but it's just... Watch your potty mouth, please. I think I've said... That's something else too, the crutch words, right?

I've said poo-poo a couple of times. You're just trying so hard not to swear. Ebbs and flows. It's very good. The crutch words. The crutch words. By the way, you just held,

I think you did a great job with a 90-minute conversation we just had. Really? So this could be your audition tape for, did you know TSN has a radio station

in Toronto? Yeah, I do. Not a lot of people know this. No, I know. It's at 1050. 1050. You should be there

somewhere in some capacity. You think so? Yeah, like as you diversify your portfolio. You're my agent and you're helping my ego. I'm not kidding. I have ideas for you. We're going to work together on this. Okay.

Last question before I hit you. I have a couple more Twitter questions and then we kick out the jams. What is your dream job? You sound so happy doing what you're doing now, but do you have some internal drive you want to share with us where it's like, that's what I'd like to be doing in five years like is there i want to have the peter man's bridge no i don't want peter man's well now because he's retired so that would be all right you want to say you want to be retired no i don't know um again i i never thought i'd be

doing what i'm doing now and uh you, someone said to me, remember where your feet are. So you don't need to look ahead for things that haven't happened yet. And I've learned, and I'm sure a lot of other people have learned that the best laid plans don't always work out. So, um, I'd love to stay at TSN again, being in the city, being with my family and all of that, but I'd love to keep doing SportsCenter. I would love to host more panels. I'd like to do more Raptors games. Yeah, there's things I'd like to do,

but I'm happy taking it one day at a time, which I know is not the sexy answer, but unfortunately it's the true answer. It's been such a great ride that I would hate to see it come to an end. And yeah, whatever they want within reason. Yeah. But I just, since I feel like we're neighbors almost,

like I feel like you're way, like whatever they want, I just wish it was more, maybe, uh, what Laura wants, you know what I mean? Cause I'm doing what I want.

I'm doing what I want. But a lot of the things, again, it's, yeah, we don't have hockey, so. But the world juniors is a massive tournament

and the world by the way i enjoyed i enjoyed the i i typically like uh my leaves are usually out of the playoffs or not in the playoffs at all so i'm usually tuned into that world championship pretty hardcore and i watch a lot and i love it when it's in places like germany because i work from home and i like that i can stick it on while I work. Exactly. The time difference. Yeah. No, I've got to do some really awesome assignments. And I'd love for those to continue. If they don't, I'm sure I'll be getting to do something as equally challenging. Cool. Sean Ryder on Twitter.

His name is Sean Ryder. He says, hello, Mike. No one ever says hello to me when they have the questions for the cast. I got a hello in there. Hello. Hello, Sean. No one ever says hello to me when they have the questions for the guests. I got a hello there.

Hello. Hello, Sean. My question for Laura is what is the biggest difference between working for the score and TSN? And then Sean uses the hashtag real talk, which got my attention. Cool. It's my hashtag. Well, again, I kind of touched on this a little bit when I was at the score. We kind of, it was a whole bunch of us that were just breaking into

the business and we were all young, you know, in our mid, mid to late, mid, early, mid twenties. And I kind of considered the SCORE school. It was my crash course. They gave us the freedom to figure out what we wanted to do. And there were people there that were nice enough that were willing to help us out and kind of tell us, you know, this is the correct way to do it or the right path, or you might want to consider this, you know, from everything from how the technology works to how to voice highlights, how to write highlights, how to, you know, your screen presence, all of that kind of stuff. So I always considered that my school because I never went to school for TV. And TSN is obviously kind of the fruits of your labor. I needed to go to university to get the

job that I wanted. Again, because the business is really small, there are people that I worked with at the score that are now at TSN, and it's just kind of crazy to look back and be like, wow, we went from there to here. But fundamentally, it's the same. I mean, obviously, there's a lot more pressure. I was on the ticker doing nothing, and now I'm on television and I'm, you know, representing the network wherever I go and, you know, eyeballs and people's opinions and all of that. But the people are still the same. We're all just kind of happy to be putting a product out there. So I think that's the biggest difference is obviously my age as well. I grew up at the score and I needed that to get to where I am today for sure. Yeah. It sounded like you got to get your hands dirty in a lot of different things at the score,

which reminds me of when I have some guests that used to work at City TV back in the Moses days, and they tell the same thing. Same thing, yeah. They were cutting tape. Yeah. Dwight Drummond's work in security, okay? Yeah, yeah.

It's like you're just doing stuff. And it's not like that anymore. You know, it's even near the end of the score, there were jobs that I remember when I first started, I was going in on my free time and doing it, and they were paying people to do it. And that's no slight on those people that were lucky enough to getting paid for it. It's just how the business has evolved and just kind of rolling with the punches a little bit. Do you know this Aaron Bronstetter chap? Yes, I do. Did I say Bronstetter, right? Yes, you did. Good. That one, I didn't butcher it. So Aaron

chimed in on that that kind of piggybacked on that sean rider question and then he said uh having worked at both with laura so he worked he worked with him at the score i did yep he was he was more on the radio side yeah gabe morenci the differences are endless he says both are slash were incredible places to work very different experiences though and in another tweet he joked that we would need four hours to truly uh discuss the differences between the score and tsn but you didn't need four because you're a professional you didn't need four hours no four minutes but i'm also thinking in my head no swearing that's your own rule. Of course, there are tons of stories, but that's how I look at it from the journey.

How was that? Hey, it's your show. I'm just, I'm just pressing the buttons over here. By the way, we need to finish with Christopher Lee's question. So he wanted to know how your trip to PEI was.

PEI was great. I, that was my first time there. The four of us went to play golf and we played golf and we ate. This is a personal trip? Yep. Okay. And how recently? End of June we went for four days.

Because you didn't have enough vacation in Amsterdam. No. That's another thing that I've been saying. I'm more trips this year. So actually tomorrow I'm off to New York for four days with my mother. And we're going to see Eric Clapton at Madison Square Garden. That's massive. Amazing. Have you heard of Gary Clark Jr.? Yes.

He's opening for him. Yeah. That's amazing. That's an amazing act to see at Maple Leaf Gardens at Madison Square Gardens. That's very cool. Have you been to PEI? Yeah. Yeah, it was awesome.

Yeah. Okay, so back to the PEI. So I was there for the first time last August staying in Cavendish in a rented cottage in Cavendish and great beaches. Like I didn't golf, obviously, but great beaches. That franchise of ice cream i had so much that cows yeah lots of cows i would eat it was great and that was a great show there's a road

trip too with uh all of us six of us cool uh very busy crowd heading to pei and i like how you can get the pi for free but if you want to leave the island in your car you got to pony up some cash really you unless you can swim, I guess. I would think they'd want you to get out of there as soon as possible. It'd be the opposite. It's like they don't want you to leave because I guess there's tourism and stuff. But yeah, you get two choices. You can take the ferry or you can drive over the Confederation Bridge, which is what I

did. But it was something like 70 bucks. You got to cough up a credit card before you jump on that bridge. Yeah, we flew. But you can get there for free. Let's kick out the jams. So I asked you to please tell me your favorite song

of all time. So I'm going to start playing it and at some point... No one's going to know this at all. Did you know it before I said it? Are you kidding me? Okay, good. I can't tell if that's a joke or not.

After we play, I'll tell you how insulted I am by that question. Okay. So don't say what it is. No one's going to know it. What do is. No one's going to know it. What do you mean no one's going to know it? We don't want to spoil it because we're going to play it and talk about it.

And I'll fade down. I won't play the whole thing. I'll fade down like a third through and we'll talk about it. But this is a big hit by one of the English language, the world's largest rock and roll bands. Why do you think nobody will know it? Just because it's not... It's not obscure. Well, it's not because I'm not picking Drake or...

My music is everywhere. You mean young people who don't know music existed before the 90s won't know it. Right. Well, Psychedelic Sunday on Q107 is still the greatest thing in the history of the world. And Andy Frost is coming on the show. He's the best. And his son is now a Philadelphia Flyer. Really? True story.

That's awesome. Was drafted in the first round. Cool. So Andy really doesn't need to work anymore. No. He doesn't work at the ACC anymore, does he? No, he doesn't do... He lost that gig, but he is still on Q107. Yeah. Okay. Anyways, I'll stop my Andy Frost impressions.

Let's hear your jam. Don't you worry about what's on your mind, oh man I'm in no hurry, I can take my time, oh man I'm going red, my tongue's getting tired Tongue's getting tired I'm up ahead, my mouth's getting tired. Tom's getting tired. I'm up ahead. My mouth's getting dry. I better chug, chug, chug all night. Let's spend the night together.

Now I need you more than ever. Let's spend the night together. So good. The Rolling Stones, this obscure outfit from England. I'm a weird fan. For me, it's like Zeppelin, The Stones, obviously The Beatles, The Eagles, which I know

is not always the popular one. And then for me and my generation, it was Nirvana, right? But I was like the one that would listen to classical music while I did my school work. I loved like Tool and Korn, Pantera, Sepultura, like Ozzy. Like I would go to those and like crowd surf like a moron when I was in high school. Loud music.

But then I liked like Britney Spears, who's like the greatest and like all of that. And then the hardcore old school rock. I'm all over the place. I'm very confused. Just not country. I just, I don't get country. I'm with you.'m all over the place. I'm very confused. Just not country. I just, I don't get country. I'm with you. I like a lot of, I'm with you.

I'll give it a chance. And I'll never rip on people for liking it. Just don't rip on me for liking heavy metal and the Rolling Stones. Okay. Cause you're a, as a, as a young woman, it is unusual that your favorite song is from the sixties. Yeah. Maybe I did live in a different life.

But, uh, you know, this, this is live in a different life. But, you know, this is a classic and when you said, you know, nobody will know this, I have to say, that's the most shocking thing I've heard on this podcast

since I guessed Marty McDougal's name. Well, okay, so the story now behind this, so obviously, you know where my father lives and my mother,

anyway, the drive, it was like maybe 15 minutes. So he would listen, remember the best hits, it was like maybe 15 minutes. So he would listen. Remember the best hits where it was like the woman in the hair, it kind of looked like a raccoon? Hot Rocks. Yeah. It was a double album.

That's how I got introduced to Hot Rocks. See? So me too. So he would drive me to my mom's. This is, you know. And the cassette would always go in. And this song, more often than not, I don't know, I guess he did it on purpose.

But this is when it was cassette. So you're, you know, fast forwarding, whatever. And it would always be on our drive home. And I'd get to my mom's and I'd be singing this song. And she'd be like, what is going, what is your father doing? It's just. That's great. Because when you're a little kid, you're like, oh, yeah, it's just they want to have fun together.

And then you grow up and you're like, oh, oh, I see what's going. Just like Lola by the kinks because my dad would call me lola and then i grew up and i was like oh that's not oh i don't want it no that's not me no this song so you're about the lyric being kind of controversial uh when the rolling stones went on the ed sullivan show and they were going to sing this song because it was a hit right uh ed sullivan's people or him or whatever said you can't say let's spend the night together on our show so they were asked to change it and they sang instead mick jagger the savvy businessman he said let's spend some time together oh see he played ball and you know reap the benefits uh but this song is uh yeah hot funny you mentioned

hot rocks that's the album i had from uh but my dad's collection he had the vinyl and i would spin it a lot in the song i i fell in love a lot of those songs but the one that got me was painted black oh yeah and to this day it's it was it's it's close to being one of my 10 jams but painted black is the track if i still hear it i still love it and i used to hear it on hot rocks but yeah let's spend the night together. Awesome. Well, it's like Nirvana. Remember Nirvana, they had Rape Me and they weren't allowed to do it on Saturday Night Live. So a difference from let's spend the night together to Rape Me, like I could understand. Well, and what bugs me about, I was a big Nirvana fan, is that the idiots who don't get the song Rape Me, like they think it's

pro-rape and they don't get, it It's completely the opposite. You know what's crazy? A segue. Nirvana, you could play their stuff now and be like that. It's just crazy to think their music's as old as it is. Like it's, I don't know. It's a shame. Nevermind came out in 91. Jesus.

Because I mean, because I have those years on you because you're about my wife's age. But I know from having a million conversations with her her that's a significant chunk of years because uh although we did just see green day at the uh budweiser stage and it was like uh dookie like that was my jam i know that was my album when kurt died i cried oh it was i was just devastated i was upset too and chris cornell was really sad i was in germany when he passed away and that was just, that one hit. I was a big sound garden guy as well. Like you're, these are my guys. I was a grunge guy.

Yeah. So after this, I'm pointing to my guns and roses pennant because that was sort of my thing. And then I got into this, which is public enemy. Cause I felt I needed this edge and public enemy fed it. In fact, five years ago today,

I saw them at the sound Academy. I only know that cause Facebook reminded me, but I digress. Then I discovered this new music that was being played on 102.1. years ago today i saw them uh at the sound academy i only know that because facebook reminded me but i digress then i discovered this new music that was being played on 102.1 and it was nirvana and pearl jam and you had the sound garden and then the allison chase a stone temple pies uh smashing pumpkins i call that safe rock music you know if you're like i'm a big rock fan i'm like oh yeah what do you like oh i like lincoln Park and I was like okay oh he died too I know I don't want to be mean about that

and Chester Bennington was a huge he was so like close with Chris Cornell yeah I'd heard that I know and he killed himself

on Chris's birthday yeah and he sang Hallelujah from Leonard Cohen yeah at the funeral yeah

so it's all connecting there don't kill yourself because like i said be happy we're breathing oxygen and we're living life and we're listening to rolling stone songs kicking out the jams yeah would you all joking aside because we joke together now that we're friends uh would you come back at some point to kick out all 10 of your jams with me. Yes. But that would be, yeah. My brain's thinking which songs would, okay. Yep.

Yep. Yep. That's part of the, uh, that's part of the deal though. You have to spend time to get it down to the 10 jams and then we'll do it. I just received, uh,

Steve Simmons. Oh yeah. Who writes for the Toronto Sun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know Steve. Controversial figure in the sports media world.

Sure is. Yeah. Don't ask him about Phil Kessel. That's for sure. I was going to say, it's like when you said golf, you love it or Toronto Sun. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know Steve. Controversial figure in the sports media world. Sure is, yeah. Don't ask him about Phil Kessel. That's for sure. I was going to say, it's like when you said golf, you love it or hate it. You could say the same about Steve Simmons.

You could say that about a lot of personalities on TV. Yep, for sure. He sent me his 10 jams and we're booking his visit. Any Rolling Stones on there? It's a top secret. I'll read it to you. No, no, no.

There might be. But you are coming back to kick out the jams. secret. I'll read it to you. No, no, no. There might be. But you are coming back to kick out the jams. Yeah, I think it would be fun. Yeah. Thank you for doing this. My pleasure. I'm going to wander to my dad's house. I was going to say, you will get a personal escort back home.

I was saying I was probably the only one that didn't have to use Google Maps to get here. I was like, oh, yeah. Where should I park? In front of his house or my dad's? The last guest was the very first person who ever biked. Sophia, by the way, she biked here and no one had ever biked here.

Pops to her. You're the first person who kind of walked across the street to come over. I'm hungry for lunch, yeah. And that brings us to the end

of our 260 second show. I'm honored. It's a nice round number. I did invite you like several years ago. You just turned me down for a long time. So I could have been

like the 10th guest? Yeah, probably. You can follow me on Twitter at Toronto Mike. And Laura is, she's going to kick up her social game, okay? Laura Dyken, and it's D-I-A-K-U-N as in Norman. Our friends at Great Lakes Brewery are at Great Lakes Beer. And propertyinthesix.com is at Brian Gerstein. See you all next week. Eight years of laughter and eight years of tears And I don't know what the future can hold or will do

For me and you But I'm a much better man for having known you Oh, you know that's true because Everything is coming up rosy and green Yeah, the wind is cold But the smell of snow Wants me today And your smile is fine