Transcript of Episode 635: Aaron Hernandez Part II - Inside the Meat Grinder

There's no place to escape to. This is the last podcast. On the left. Right above your glade. That's when the cannibalism started.

Who was that? Oh, yeah.

Oh, man. All right. Well, it is in charge. Big head is in charge. That's right, you fucker. Shut up, ass Nugget. Yeah. I have to listen.

For those of you who don't know, Henry is wearing a hat that says Ass Nugget.

Thank you, Metzinniken. I'm sorry that the NFL and NBA has destroyed your entire company because you made this hat. But it's really, really fun. It says Ass Nuggets.

Instead of Denver Nuggets, welcome to the last podcast on the left, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Marcus Parks. I'm here with the Making an Effort, Henry Zbrowski. I'm the Edge Lord. Yeah.

No, ma'am, it's sports.

Yeah, you're wearing your Dennis Robin T-shirt.

Oh, look at that. I'm sports. That's me.

Let's play some round ball. Yeah. Right? Yeah.

It's football. Well, that's fine. You're wearing a basketball man's jersey. This is sports. Do you remember his nickname? The Worm. Yeah, you got it. You know what you're doing. Do you remember what pop singer he banged?

I remember when he had sex with what's her name? Carmen Electra. Carmen Electra. Then also it was Carmen Electra, Madonna.

Yeah, there we go. Henry knows sports. I know tits. Tits in sports.

The man who knows where every penis in professional sports goes to, Ed Larson.

That's right. It's usually right in the middle. It's usually right in the middle. Yeah, usually.

Usually. Normally. Depending on whether or not you're getting them in the foothole because you got an amputation fetish.

Long story. Long We covered it on Side Stories last week.

I heard Troy Akeman's penis was in the small of his back. Really?

Yeah.

Oh, wow.

Can you touch my tail. Please touch my tail.

Hey, look, it's Wagging. He must like you.

Did you ever hear about that urban legend? I don't know why that was such a big urban legend when I was in high school. Not high school. Was it in a tail? No. There was this weird urban legend going around in the '90s, which was really big in Texas, which is strange, considering how big the Cowboys were. Then Troy Akemen was quarterback for the Cowboys. There was this urban legend that like, Did you know that they pumped a gallon of semen out of Troy Akemen's stomach?

Yeah, I heard that, actually. I did, too. That was just a rumor that people made because, I don't know, because people hated the Cowboys.

He did. I suppose so. We're talking more about Hedra for the Cowboys.

I don't know if you remember later on, the next quarterback of the Cowboys was Tony Romo. Yes. They had a fun nickname for him as well.

Yes, I remember that one.

Dude, he's a fucking lunatic. He's a crazy asshole. He's driving drunk through the middle of the streets, according to sources.

I have. Is it because of a certain head injury at Larson's? Yeah.

I don't think he played enough to get one. We'll see what happens here when we talk about things that are going on. But before we dive back into Aaron's story, we're going to start this episode with Marcus Parks' favorite thing in the world, Context.

Context. Context.

Context. Context. Yeah.

I thought we'd escape. No, never. There is no escape from context for context is all, my friend.

You're correct. Next year, Marcus is throwing his own festival, Context in the Desert.

He's in charge.

Well, the reason all this pertains to our story is because Aaron Hernández was diagnosed with CTE after his death, and it's thought that the CTE that riddled his brain heavily contributed to his violent behavior.

Do you think that's what they'll find for me? A call to entertainment.

Somehow you'll have CTE in your ass. You ass nugget.

It's ass nuggets. It's like it's a basketball team.

All right, let's pull back the curtain on the game that shaped his life, broke his brain, and the league that has done everything in its power to make sure that this side of the story is never told. More NBA.

Nba. It's more NBA. That's more.

That's more NBA.

That's the NBA theme, MBC, NBA on MBC.

Sports is live. Maybe one day we'll cover the NBA player who shot his limo driver in the chest. I love that guy.

Should have seen him at the three-point line.

From downtown. He's on fire. You get it.

Yeah, he was killed downtown. The NFL Well, the National Football League, if you need me to say it, is more nation than league. They have a GDP of $18 billion a year, twice that of Belize.

Fuck you, Belize.

That's a full stack of media propaganda, a sophisticated legal apparatus, deep political ties, and above all, they got an army, an army of the most gifted athletes to walk the Earth, the cream of the genetic crop. Each one of these dudes are a legend wherever they come from, be it a bustling city or a one bronco town. The NFL treats these soldiers like most nations do, completely disposable.

Yeah, killing for profit.

That's what we're doing.

End of the meat, right?

Yeah, let's go. That's how I like my sausage. I like it to have brain damage.

Let's get acronym crazy today and talk about the NFL and CTE. Sports.

Then The thing is, it's been like this forever. I told my cousin about this series. He's a big football guy, and he sent me a link to a book that I wasn't able to read in time, but it was, I think, called the Meat Grinder, and it was written in the '70s by an NFL player. It's not like this is a new thing where the NFL has been treating these guys like they're just talking whatever.

It's so crazy because we've known since, I don't know, Roman times that head injuries exist and they But they just decided that it doesn't happen in football for some fucking reason.

Eddie, you said several words that say that. That's because you said the word's $18 billion. You didn't say the word, how much fun it is to watch I mean, it's good for me.

You know what? As I get older, the only time- I'm being straight today. That's right. It's good nap stuff. You put a football game on, take a nap. It's actually a great thing to have on. That and a Western. I love for a nap.

Don't tell me. Oh, nothing better than having a fucking three beers in the morning watching a Western.

I've never made it to the end of Stage Coach. Why would you? Because it's just nap fuel.

Isn't it four hours?

It's very long. Yeah. But yeah, it's just... Well, Western is just like guys riding horses to places and having conversations in between.

No, it's existential problems of the West. Very sleepy.

Well, in the late '90s, Mike Webster, he was a Hall of Fame center and a Pittsburgh Steeler legend. He was spiraling, all right? I was a center, and everyone will give you an excuse why their position is the most dangerous. But the center is the one lineman who routinely gets targeted on blitzes and usually is responsible for blocking the middle linebacker, arguably the hardest hitting man on the field.

The guy, that guy's got to be big.

Yeah, he's got to be big. He's got to be fearless. Him and the quarterback are the only players that touch the ball every play.

Yeah, and the center is usually the biggest guy on the team. Yeah, always.

No, the tackles are usually the biggest guys. The center's got a good center of gravity. It's the only lineman that has real talent because you have to hike and all that shit.

I take that back. Not biggest, fattest. That's what I meant to say. You got big Because it would…

Center has the idea, too, because you get low.

Yeah. Well, the left tackle is usually the most important because it protects the quarterback's backside. Sure.

If he's a right-hander.

Yes.

Yeah. But I do remember growing up and play him in football. Sinner was always the fattest guy in the team. Always.

No matter what. I was big, but I wasn't the fattest. Cary Donaldson, you were the fattest. Despite a storybook career, Webster He was depressed, erratic, and he became unrecognizable to his wife. He couldn't keep his thoughts straight. His teeth were fallen out so much that he superglued them back in his head. His back pain was so bad that he couldn't sleep without tasing himself unconscious, which I didn't know would work.

Nice long day of being confused. Time to go to sleep. That's amazing.

If you ever saw the movie Concussion, he's the guy in the beginning of the movie. Got you. All right. So he was homeless, he was broken, and eventually started begging the NFL to help. After a long legal crusade, which became the only focal point for his blurring cognition, he finally He received a minimum disability payment from the league, 2,000 bucks a month, barely enough for a new taser.

How is he going to go to sleep?

How is he going to relax? Well, he then died of a heart attack in 2002. He was 50 years old at the time. Yeah.

I mean, everyone talks about how young wrest die, but NFL players do not last much longer.

Isn't the average career of an NFL player, four years?

Something like that. Yeah, like three to four years. Average. Some guys play for 13, some players play for a couple of plays. It depends on how good you are. Yeah.

The Steelers, I think, particularly the team that this guy was on, just so many of those got... Steelers in particular.

The Iron curtain. They're known for their smashmouth football. They're known for kicking the shit out of people. Yes.

Steelers know how to take a down time. Yeah.

Will Smith, or better known as Dr. Bennett Omalu- I prefer him as Will Smith. He's a Nigerian-born forensic pathologist in Pittsburgh. He autopsied Webster's body. He had no idea who Webster was. Omalu, he's a big character in this NFL CTE saga. And despite many conflicting accounts of him, one thing that remains constant, the man didn't give a single shit about football. All he cared about was brains. When he saw Webster's- He's like, Yeah, yeah. I can't wait. He takes himself to sleep, you say? It's delicious. When he saw Webster's, he expected shrinkage, damage, telltale signs of Alzheimer's and dementia. Instead, it looked healthy, a little too healthy. So we dug a little deeper. He put it under a microscope. He saw it. Tau protein, tons of it. When Tau protein is marbled through the brain like A5 wagyu, it's a smoking gun of chronic traumatic encephalopathy or CTE. Ironically, Webster's brain became the defining brain to explain CTE.

What's also really nice about that is that you can get a good Maillard reaction on a really hot crock pot, a really nice, really hot, searing hot pan. The brain is friddled with that Tau protein. The crust you can get when you sear it is just so good. It activates the natural sugars in the Tau protein.

Everyone always says, eat the ass, eat the thais.

Eat the CT riddled bread.

We won't go too far into the medical weeds here, mostly because I'm not a doctor and I have trouble pronouncing medical terms. But basically, when the brain is subjected to consistent impact, it panics. It isn't designed for this. It only has one fail safe. That's Tau protein, which in a healthy brain is like a lubricant designed to smooth over all these brain tears. But when subjected to the constant barrage that is any given Sunday, the brain goes nuclear, pressing the big red button and letting tau protein run wild. Eventually, this tau protein goes rogue and becomes a pervasive sludge that gets caught into the nooks and crannies that control emotion, cognition, and general humanness.

I had no idea that that's what this was. Yeah.

Well, fortunately, I had to tell you. It's interesting. This causes a range of symptoms such as memory loss, depression, impulse control problems, hyper-aggressiveness, and often leads to depression, suicide, and sometimes murder.

What's incredible about this is that the human brain, head injuries really do have so much bearing on our behavior.

Because one of the things that we've noticed over the years, a study in serial killers, is so many of them have these specific injuries to the frontal lobe. Like who? Ted Bundy, David Berkowitz. John Wayne-Gacy. John Wayne-Gacy, Richard Ramirez. That's just off the top of my head. Off theirs, too. But yeah, it is when you say general humanness, it's like when that frontal lobe gets damaged, it does take away a lot of the things that do make you... That keep you in society and keep you from doing things that make you an unacceptable society such as serial killing. But what this shows is that there are many different ways to get to... There are many different paths to get to the point where your brain just stops functioning as a social object.

Joseph Campbell actually put it in a really interesting way in a little talk I was listening to recently where he talked about the idea of all of history starts with biology. Every single thing begins with our brains. It's just amazing what happens to you when you destroy your brain, because actually, we're just brains walking around. Yeah, we really are.

Campbell, he had soup for brains. Yes.

But speaking of Campbell, I do have a pet theory that is not backed by science in any way whatsoever. Good. The brain, maybe the frontal lobe or maybe something like that. It's what connects us to the collective unconsciousness of humanity. We're getting gooping shit all over. Then once you're not connected to that anymore, once you're not connected to the rest of humanity, you lose your empathy, you lose your ability to say, No, this is wrong. I shouldn't do this. This might hurt somebody. Then once you get disconnected from that, you are fucked.

Absolutely. At the time, CTE was pretty much exclusively known as a boxing thing. On the street, they called it being punch drunk. It was cute. Yeah. Paul Thomas Anderson made a documentary about it, I think. I never saw it.

It was about boxing and pudding.

It was about boxing and little Trepanos.

And pudding. Yeah.

Nonetheless, CTE has never been associated with football until now. Omalu published his findings in the journal Neurosurgery in 2005.

Oh, shit. I had that issue. That's the one that had the Dr. Ruth Centerfold.

My subscription ran out in '04, so I missed this one. But then he sent his findings to the NFL. He was assuming they'd want to know. In fact, he expected a little bit of gratitude. Heads up, got this neurodegenerative disease lurking your most valuable asset, your players. So you can do something about that. You're welcome.

I think that that's not what they were looking for, though, Eddie.

Yeah. Well, they did something all right, and it did not involve a fruit basket.

The only fruit basket they had to deal with was that one guy's brain.

No edible arrangement for Omalu, just headable derangement. Come on. Yeah, come on. All right. Instead, he got hit with the full blitz, a billion-dollar propaganda machine. Wow.

Yeah, he's fucked.

The first thing the NFL did, Their own research. That's right. They had to fight good research with bad research. So they assembled a committee, and to run it, they needed someone incompetent.

No, they were running an alt run. That's all it was. It was an audible.

But they needed So we're not just incompetent, but confidently incompetent. If you're looking for incompetence in the NFL, please look no further than the New York Jets.

This is a personal beef, though. We're really going to see a lot of Ed's his own bias here.

Yeah, A side note, as a lifelong Dolphins fan, there's no team I hate more than the fucking Jets. I'd rather root for Russia during the Olympics. But no matter how much I hate the Jets, no one hates the Jets more than Jets fans.

Yeah, they do hate themselves and the Jets as well.

Dude, I'd go to the Dolphins game every year. I was in NYC, and it was crazy to watch. I remember once me and my buddy Kep, I went to the game and the Dolphins took the lead in the fourth, and we were obnoxious in singing the Dolphins fight song. Right as I was like, I'm looking for a fight. Because you're in New Jersey.

Exactly.

That's what you do there. It's a pastime.

It's the tone.

But a different thing happened to me. It was crazy. The Jets fans started telling us, sing you louder. Sing it so a fucking team could hear it. They deserve it. I never had my playful aggression turned on me that way before. It was insane.

That's the Jets for you, man. It's New Jersey, it's New York. Fuck them. Yeah, you're going to sing a lot. You're right. Sing it louder. Have them sing it a lot so they can fucking hear it. Oh, yeah. You suck.

They tapped Dr. Elliott Pelman, the Jets team doctor, who's a rheumatologist, not a neurologist. Coast. Being from the Jets, Pelman's main credentials seem to be loyalty and the ability to squit and say such lies as, I don't see a problem. This could be our year. This is it.

This could be our year.

I think that was the tattoo that that Jets' Coats got right next to the quarterback who fucked his wife, right next to her name was, This could be our year.

Oh, yeah, the footlover.

Yeah, the footlover.

Ryan, whatever his name was. All right, so he gets to work assembling a crack team of fellow elite humans from the Giants and the Stealers. Remember the Stealers, historically the most concussed team of all time. Together, they formed the mild Traumatic Brain Injury Committee, not to be confused with the spicy Traumatic Brain Injury Committee or the barbecue or the teriyaki.

Mild traumatic brain injury committee. What committee you think came up with the committee's name? I know. To make it sound as innocent as like, mild old traumatic brain.

We're the traumatic brain injury committee. Why don't you go ahead and toss mild at the front of that so we don't have to worry about nothing?

We just want to make sure we're covering the mild ones so the serious ones can go unlooked at.

This committee Well, they love two things, eating wings and denying CTE, two things that are very necessary for football's popularity. So here you have it. These princes of New York, New Jersey, and Pittsburgh coming together to do one thing, discredit a Nigerian doctor named Bennett Omalu. Turns out they had a neck for it. For whatever reason, they seem to have a real problem with the science. There was just something funky about it, something they couldn't put their finger on. It was dark somehow. They called the science flawed, junk, and even, this is a fact, they called it voodoo science. That's got a tinge.

My ears are hurting from all these dog whistles.

So despite this totally reasonable and not at all racist backlash, Omalu was a scientist who made a breakthrough, so he continued pursuing the brains of deceased NFL players. Even though, again, he knew who none of these people were, he continued to find evidence of CTE in prominent players who had even more prominent deaths. One was Terry Long, another former Stealers lineman who was suffering from severe depression and cognitive decline. He died of suicide in 2005 by drinking antifreeze.

It's just good to know that there's no ice in my belly.

What the fuck is it with these stealers? One guy's using tasers to fall asleep, the other guy is drinking antifreeze to commit suicide. Jesus Christ.

They're just not thinking super clair.

Pittsburgh stealers, the Raiders get all the credit for having the craziest fans. The stealers have the craziest fucking fans. We had to kick them out of our BW3s in Tallahassee. They would bring in thousands of dollars a week, and we had to stop them from coming. Because they were just like one of them started firing a gun off in the parking lot when they won. His name was Big Black.

Love that band, though.

So Omalu later confirmed the presence of CTE in Long's brain, making him the second former NFL player diagnosed after Mike Webster. Another prominent case was Justin Strezliak, who suffered from erratic behavior and increasing paranoia, offered a gas station attendant $3,000, told him the evil ones are coming and head for the hills.

Thank you so much, Mr. Strezliak. See you soon. He was like, Yeah, yeah.

Well, shortly thereafter, he led police on a 40-mile high-speed chase before crashing into a tanker truck in a fire explosion.

I don't know who that guy was, but I loved him. He was watching it on the news. That's the guy that made me a 3000 there, honey. That's the guy that started it off.

Well, Omalu got his hands on his brain and... Yeah. Cte again, of course.

Skimming some of them brains.

Yeah. But now the NFL has gotten there and they've removed Omalu. They've discredit him enough. The work has been passed on to Dr. Anne McKee, a neuropathologist from Boston University. We briefly mentioned her in a last episode. Mckee, at the time, was the foremost expert in Alzheimer's detection in brains. She had looked at thousands of- Thousands of brains. In her career. Her entire life was brains. Put it this way, the only people who made more on brain damage was Pink Floyd. Hey, Green Day. Well, that was Brain stew.

He's right. Fuck.

Also, I will say, Aaron Hernández might have been the lunatic on the grass. Anyway.

Good Pink Floyd, man.

One day, she gets a call from a guy named Chris You probably know him, Henry. He's Polish.

A former Harvard- You guys know each other, right? That's racist.

A former Harvard football player and WW e-wrestler known as Chris Harvard. Chris believe that he has CTE He. Being smart, he stopped doing the things that could make it worse years ago, and since, he's made it his life's mission to gather more research on it. Cool dude. He became the brain repo man. If a football player died under suspicious neurological circumstances, Nowinski was there with a cooler. Yeah, dump it in. Yeah, get this guy a Yeti sponsorship deal. You know what I'm saying?

Yeah, I brought him my rolling cooler. It's great. I drove it here.

Hi, my name's Chris Nowinski. You might know me more as Chris Harvard, but now these days, I'm known as the Brain Man. I'm here, and I'm here to bring the brains to the scientists so they can look at the brains, to let them find out if the brains is okay.

My job is to research brains, and me look for brains everywhere brains go. That's why I have this bucket of Super of you ultra messed up brains because these are the brains that need the most help.

So buy the brain bucket from Yeti.

Keep brains cold or hot.

If you're coming from a fiery car crash, you might want to keep them brains liquid.

I'm sorry, Chris. You sound like a very nice man. Yeah, sure. He sounds like a man who's devoted his life to a very good card, but he's a brain man.

Fire.

So Mika Nawinski have become the dynamic duo, the foremost team team studying the NFL CTE link outside of the NFL's own Fekakta committee. In 2012 now, all right, we're moving forward. Junior Seill, we all know him. You've heard of this guy, right? His brain landed on their table. Junior was everything the NFL wanted to hold up as a hero. A twelve-time Pro Bowler, Hall of Famer, Unstoppable middle linebacker with movie star charisma. He was beautiful.

Best hair in the entire NFL. Oh, my God.

Great hair. Yeah. Off the field, he was sunshine incarnate. The guy was a true legend and even a legendary hang by all accounts. By the age of 43, just two years after retiring, that's a long-ass fucking career. As a middle linebacker, retiring at 41.

He was there for... Junior Seau was one of those guys that was just always in the NFL.

I remember. Yeah. This is Junior Seau's shoeprint, man. But Seau, unfortunately, ended up shooting himself in the chest with a shotgun. It wasn't a cry for help. It was a message. The man who had it all had been quietly losing his grip for years. He had mood swings, domestic violence, drugs, gambling. Why had his personality changed so drastically? He wanted his brain studied. When they did, the result was chilling. Advanced CTE. From here- This is CTE with a master's degree. From here with McKee holding a scalpel Nowinski holding the cooler. The CTE body count kept piling up big time. As a fan, it was devastating for McKee personally, but as a scientist, the numbers couldn't lie.

Oh, I thought she said she was going to be...

She was ecstatic. A brief fast forward here. I mentioned this in the last episode, but I want to bring it up again. As of 2023, McKee had studied 376 former NFL player brains. 345 had CTE. That's 91. 7%, the same likelihood of getting diarrhea after eating diarrhea. Not a fluke. It's a crisis.

Because an 8. 3% of the times eating that diarrhea, that's what you're right.

Yeah, it's fine. You got to do it. It's like a greasy meal after drinking.

I'm just putting it back in. I didn't lose anything.

You shake it up, it becomes solid. Who knew? Swallow some corn starch.

Only 8. 3% of the time.

Fly from your plane. All right, so back to 2007. Now the NFL decides to start to think about attempting to begin to have a conversation about doing something about this, maybe. So they have their first official concussion summit.

All right, everybody busy? Everybody dizzy?

Everybody dizzy?

Did everybody on your way? And did you see the Hammer Man? Because there is a Hammer Man before you get it, and you must be hit in the head with the hammer before coming into this room.

Make sure before you take your seat that you get a bump from me.

Before you give your speech, you got to put your head on a baseball bat and spin in a circle. So McKee was invited to speak. Omalu was not, which was a big burn at the time. He was still the preeminent published researcher on the subject back then. So McKee, who, mind you, is a huge football fan. She grew up in a football family. She presented her research. It was rigorous, terrifying, undeniable.

I think it's better to hear it from a fan, actually.

Yeah, of course. The room was full of NFL reps, and they all rolled their eyes. They groaned. Yet again, there was just something about her science, something they couldn't put their finger on. It was like a Emotional somehow, like a real nagging type of science. Yeah, it's like a science.

It gets irritable once a month.

I like to call it Yack, Yack, Yack science.

So despite the scoff fest, the NFL must have sensed menstrual blood in the water. So they outed Pelman, the jet's finest, and found an actual neurologist to replace him, Dr. Ira Kassan. Don't worry, though. He was handpicked for being a stooge. In fact, he earned the nickname Dr. No for constantly denying the connection between football and brain trauma and attempting to kill James Bond. Yes. I want you to die.

Also, you can't read the plays anymore.

So at this point, Paul Tagliabeou, the Commissioner of the NFL, retires, and Roger Goodell steps up for the job. Goodell is the son of a politician and a master of vague statements who has been prepping for this gig his entire life. He immediately develops a CTE playbook.

So difficult for those guys to read.

As if he also worked for the Jets, it only had one play in it. Hire scientists who never come up with any answers and say you can't do anything until you get some answers because you're not a scientist.

It's a good plan. It is.

Yeah, and it worked, man. Goodell would get question before Congress, and on the news, he would go over and over the same thing.

I am not a scientist. I don't know. What does Roger What else?

I don't know what they'll sound like? You can make him Kennedy.

I am not a scientist, and we can't do anything until we get some science.

Some good, clean science, not colored or tainted with feelings. Some supreme milky white lab coat science. This goes beyond, We've investigated ourselves and found nothing wrong. It was more like the investigation into ourselves is still pending and we couldn't possibly do anything until we get results which seemed to be taking forever. And it worked. Eventually, it was the families of the players who had enough. They sued, forming a massive class action lawsuit. And in 2016, mind you, this crisis had been bubbling since the mid '90s. Marcus says the '70s. The NFL paid 765 million in class action settlement. Case closed. Not bad, right? Well, I mean, that's like $38,000 a player.

It's not enough.

It's not mine.

But it's exactly the amount you give to somebody whose brains are so scrambled. They don't know it's not enough.

Also, it's a huge number because it's a lot of people. It sounds like a fucking shit ton of money, and it is a lot of money.

Until you break it down.

Yes. All They can't live the rest of their brain damage lives off of $38,000.

You also got to remember a lot of these guys, the average career is four years, right? Maybe. Yeah, maybe four years. These are guys who go from being big shit in high school where they don't pay any attention. Many of them don't pay any attention to education. They get to college. Again, the same thing. They might not even graduate college before going to the NFL. They spend three, four years in the NFL, and then they're done. What the fuck are they going to do after that? They don't know how to do anything else.

They just started having financial education and stuff like that for these guys. They started doing that, but obviously not enough.

It doesn't matter. They all come from low-income families. Everyone in their family is hitting them up for money. Everyone thinks you're a fucking millionaire. I get it. But once you start making more money, you got more taxes, you got more shit, you got to pay all these other people, you got to pay lawyers, you got to pay your agents. The money goes away faster than you fucking think.

Yeah, it goes away very fast. I mean, a lot of these guys ended up becoming car salesmen.

The NFL worked out a deal where they would have to admit no wrongdoing, nothing, zero. On paper, they were just feeling generous, I guess. They wanted to give up almost a billion dollars in the spirit of charity. All this begs the question, why did the NFL choose these dark tactics? Or a better question, why did they exclusively choose them? Listen, I get it was a threat to the company. Turns out that the thing that is fundamental to the game, hitting each other, is deadly. Whoops.

On what level you do choose this violence to yourself. You choose to play football, but it's more just denying the fact that... I think most people would be able to understand that football is dangerous to the player.

Everybody knows it is.

Everybody knows that it is, but it's more of the, they're not doing anything to mitigate it.

I'll say this, coming from a football family and coming from... My uncle played for Texas Tech. He was an offensive lineman. My brother We're both really big football players, all that shit. What people worry about when they talk about being football players, they'd say, Oh, your knees are going to be bad. My knee, my shoulder. You're going to deal with back problems when you're older. Nobody talks about your brain ever. No, it's taboo.

Also, the knee and back thing ain't nothing to fucking scoff at either. It's not. Half of these dudes end up with fucking pill addictions.

Oh, I get it.

They're just shooting them up with cortisone and putting them right on the fucking field again. Yeah, they're making them strong.

Yeah, and they got to deal with that back shit for the rest of their lives.

Yeah. So the more science that comes out, the more it shows that it's not the big concussions that cause CTE. It's the smaller subconcussions, the all in a day's work, nine to 5: 00 head slams that do the real damage.

Yeah, that's what we were talking about, bobsled brain that they're dealing with in the Olympics. Really? Yeah, they're having a real hard time because no one wants to talk about it. There's a gigantic CTE conversation inside of the world of bobsledding that they're not ready to talk about as well because it's the inherent nature of the sport.

Yeah, you can't change it.

Yeah, you would just have to stop doing it. Yeah, which ain't going to happen. No. Sure.

Because you know how fucking lucrative bobsletting is. You know how fucking that gravy I'm not saying those guys are on.

The only time Bob Spletting made money was when they made a movie about the worst Bob Spletting two. Yeah, a job candy was the one who saw that movie, and he was a cheater. Each hit in football is different than the next, right? But an NFL hit has been equated to getting into a 20 to 30-mile-an-hour car crash. This is something that may happen 60 times in a game for some players, sometimes multiple times in one play.

And you know who was amazing at getting hit multiple times in one play and not going down? Aaron Hernandez. Yeah, man. He was big as fuck. Especially when you- That was his thing. When you watch, that's when I truly understood how Aaron Hernandez got to where he got at such a young age is when I saw the footage of him playing high school ball because he's a big guy, and he would hit three, four dudes with his head every play on the way to the end zone. Every just and starting at 15, 16.

You ever see OJ play? Yeah. He would hit the hole, head up, chest up, and just run through people, fucking using his head as a battering ram. You wonder what happened there. What did happen to OJ? You know who else was a running back in college? Bill Cosby. Yes.

Oh, wow. Interesting. But that means it sounds like he was real clear-headed about what he was doing.

In fact, as far as subconcussion sessions go, the helmet is the problem, all right? The head smashes up against it, and all the neurons and ganglia, the wiring that attach to the brain, it gets torn apart. So it's clear why this is a big problem for the NFL. But what's insane and unforgivable is their decision to just go full denial with no off-ramp. We get it. You want to keep the money train going. Okay, fine. Kick the can down the road until you figure out a solution. But figure out a fucking solution. They didn't put any money into that. $800 million in the payouts. God knows how much in the hoakam science, but why not also put it in the research if there is an actual solution? Wouldn't that be cool?

Because there is no solution. The solution is to end of the sport.

Maybe the NFL brass is so cynical that they never even considered that this might be preventable, that the tech would have been so mind-blowing, pun intended, or maybe that they just don't care. But left to its own devices, the market is figuring it out. A company called Rezon. Oh, that's nice reason. A company called Rezon just released a headband that stops 61% of subconcussive impact. It's a headband. It's not very space-age.

Sounds gay, though.

It doesn't have Bluetooth or anything like that. Exactly. It's just a cushiony headband.

Yeah, Eddie, I'm getting a lot of red flags on this.

This whole thing might be preventable by fucking headband.

Yeah, I'm pretty against that as a watcher, as a consumer, yeah.

You know, rugby don't use a helmet. And yes, rugby players have been diagnosed with CTE, but at a much lower rate than American football style players. Of the rugby players' brains analyze, 68% of the brains have it, as opposed to football's 92, still not great, but a shit ton better.

Oh, only 68%. Wow.

That's mostly them punching each other's in the heads after the game. That's one of those things where it's like, I feel like with rugby players, most of their life is getting congust.

Yeah. I mean, sure. There's a parallel universe where the NFL reacted by denying, buying itself more time, but also invested in research and development eventually comes out and says, Yes, CTE is a real problem, and we found a real solution, then maybe we could forgive the denial and the game would move on safe and sound.

No, that's not what men do.

That's right.

That's not what a manly institution does. No. It just chest up, head down, fucking rolling right through that fucking shit.

Fuck yeah. That's why we're in this fucked up universe. Oh, yeah. Where the NFL fosters a completely inhuman borderline disdain for its own players.

Dudes being fucking dudes.

These are the people who make them billions of dollars, where their knee-jerk reaction is to deny, deflect, and litigate and the wrong thing every single time. You're going to love this. The reason, you're going to love this, the reason the NFL is so dead set on choosing the path of denial, the chewy center of this conspiracy is women, moms. In a bunch of interviews with the NFL Illuminati, they said it outright, If 10% of moms in this country decide football is too dangerous for their kids to play, the game is dead. Not that much. There's a video of Robert Kraft, Hernández's owner, eyes moist, looking into the camera saying, I can tell any mother out there, it's safe. It's chilling.

It's safe to play the game. It's safe to be American.

This is a man who testified during Aaron Hernandez's murder trial.

Correct.

Yeah, it's been like, he's fine.

Yeah. He also went to prison for getting a handy.

Oh, yeah. His biggest crime.

Also, remember Vladimir Putin, I don't know if you know this.

Yes, stole his Super Bowl ring.

Yeah, and he just dealt Of course.

What are you going to do? Obviously, you meet Vladimir Putin, you take something of yours, you just leave, right? Yeah, of course. Yeah, he's walking away. I'm not fucking with a guy down the street, much less Vladimir Putin.

I think I could get him.

I mean, you're not a child. He can't jujitsu slam you. No. So this whole thing, this pile of bodies and billion-dollar conspiracy amounts to a bunch of rich man children afraid mom was going to find out and make everyone inside.

It's the only time they ever acknowledge a woman has any power, though. So in a way, that's a breath of fresh air.

Not bad. You're right. Let's give them some credit.

Yeah, let's give them some credit for painting all women as domestic baby makers. That's really the only power they have in the home is when it comes to- Dudes being motherfucking dude.

That's what this shit's about, motherfucker dudes. That chest hair being confused. I'm a confused fucking dude.

I mean, we all know it hasn't stopped. The NFL combine keeps churning these young boys' brains in the mush. Anne McKee has proven in her well-qualified research that it's not years of football that can do this. It could be days. It's more likely to happen to young developing brains. Not less.

Can't they just play later?

What do you mean?

What if we made it so the kids played football later than earlier?

They would have to start playing at 25.

That's fun. That's fun. That'll open it up to everybody. It really would. Anybody can play football. You don't have to be in some college. Think about that. Open calls every year. No scouts, open calls.

I mean, it would make it more fun.

Would that be a fucking blast?

It would be. It would be incredible, but that's not going to happen. Because by the time you're 25, half of these guys are already out of the NFL. Yeah, of course. It's very difficult.

You know what? We'll just choose incarcerated people. Oh, my God, Eric.

That's not a bad idea. Now we're back to the Angola Prison rodeo.

We're just having fun with American concept.

Well, CTE isn't a veteran's injury. It's not wear and tear. You risk it the moment you strap on that helmet. Wyatt Bromwell, an 18-year-old high school football player, committed suicide in July of 2019. In the minutes before he died, he recorded a video asking that his brain be donated to science because he believed he was suffering from CTE, telling his family that the voices and demons inside his head had taken over and he'd hoped they would understand his decision to end the pain. Two years later, McKee confirmed it, CTE in an 18-year-old, an advanced stage 2 case that had clearly been developing for years. This is the youngest person that had ever been sampled in. It was proof this disease doesn't start when you get a Super Bowl ring. It starts when you get a Snickers bar after you spent all day sweating into a garbage bag and taking laxatives just to make wait for a Peewee football game.

Personal experience out of medicine?

I added my little thing in there.

Is there a little part of me that's jealous of all the attention you got from your father? I was the only child.

You should have been stronger.

I should have been. If my father cared more, I would have been walking, jabbering idiot just like some of these guys.

No, I'm sorry, Henry. You're too small. Because that's the thing. Me and Eddie, we're big enough. If you actually look at the Instagram page, the last podcast, Instagram page, we actually posted some pictures of me in high school playing football. I was a lot bigger than I am now.

It's crazy. You look bigger.

What's up?

How are you bigger? I think I might have been, too, to be honest. I feel like my 18-year-old body could beat me up now.

Oh, God, no. When I was in high school, I had about 20 to 30 pounds more muscle on me than I have right now because I have that thing where I can build up muscle, really, the genetic thing where it's called the Olympian gene, where I can build up muscle very, very quickly, but also lose it just as quickly. So yeah, when I was in high school, lifting weights, doing all that shit, I was a lot bigger than I am now.

See, I was just spending time learning how to do cuddling us so good. They'd have to put me in woman's prison.

But you were practicing on cheeseburgers.

I'll destroy another one.

But even in my short time playing football, I came away with permanent injuries. My right leg is shorter than my left leg.

Dude, my hip is fucked up, my shoulder's fucked up.

Yeah, broke my right leg. Yeah, it's shorter, causes back problems, causes all kinds of shit.

Yeah, my lips got so narrow. Crazy narrow lips trying to get out of Where am I? Slicing tongue. Slicy slice, little duck-like tongue.

It's so funny because you say shit like that, and I just have to come back in with something utterly depressing. I love this.

Maybe I could be a bit of a segue here, but what I will say to Henry's point is that when I was in high school, I got way more dates from theater than I ever did from football. Oh my God! Way more from theater.

Because you're around, check.

I was the only straight man around.

The only ladies in football are cheerleaders, and they are unattainable. Yeah. All right, well, the fact is, these CTE addled players who demand research as their last wish are martyrs. They're laying down their lives with the hope of making it better for the next guy. But with the NFL's continued denial, others are starting to seek revenge. In July 2025, a 27-year-old named Shane Tamura entered a New York high rise and killed four people in himself. The investigation revealed it was his intention to reach the NFL headquarters housed in that building. He went to the wrong floor, and in his pocket was a note saying he believed that he had CTE and wanted his brain studied. Tamura wasn't in the NFL, but he was a running back until halfway through high school. It doesn't matter what level you play the game, you're still gambling with your brain.

That's true.

Yeah. George Carlin, he had a famous bit about it, Base versus football. Oh, yeah. Where he talks about how baseball is pastoral and how it's America's pastime and football is- You run You run home.

You run home. One of my favorite bits.

And football is war. Strategic tactical maneuver is executed on a gridiron. The Blitz. Listen to the bit. It's actually great. It is a great bit. If we extend the metaphor war, we see how accurate it really is. It is a war, and it's general's smoke stogies in the owner's box while the soldiers bleed on the feel. Like too many war stories, the real atrocities are atoned for when it's too little, too late.

If he sells, but who's buying?

Think the Agent Orange cover-up, the Iraq burn pits, tobacco companies telling us that smoking doesn't kill. The NFL is aping from the same playbook as many oppressive governments who have become so obsessed with their own self-interest that they betrayed the very people who actually fight their battles. The NFL brass are no less war criminals, and no amount of money or jail time could make amends.

What if they all got them all together and they had them play football against one NFL team? I feel like that's a good way to do it. Get all the suits together, suit them all up. You'd be like, All right, we're going to test and see how good all this stuff goes. Then you bring in the offensive line from the Detroit Lions.

You know what? I'll say, I'll do you one better. Even take retired players who are the same age as the owners.

Even do that. Run them like, run them, man.

Just fucking flatten them.

Yeah, I don't care how old Chen Sharp is. I wouldn't want to take a hit from him today at his age? No. He's fucking terrifying. Yeah, he's in his 50s, but no.

Yeah, man. The only punishment that fits the crime would be live inside of one of the heads of their CTE riddled players. To go from being a titan of life, the guy who scores the winning countdown, who gets the girl in the Million Dollar Check to a broken down shell of a man who can't remember who he is, was, or why he even wanted to be alive.

I just thought that happens to all men.

Or maybe they could at least spend a night in Aaron Hernández's isolated prison cell that he brutally ended his life in. That would be a fitting punishment, but nobody would wish that on anybody. I would look at it. Just look at it. I don't know. Maybe the NFL could just listen to their new slogan for 2025 and say, Inspire change and do something about this.

Is their tagline inspire change?

That's the new one. Last year was end racism. Did it work? No, because I remember when I went to the bangles game, it was like they had in the end zone, they had all these things that said, End Racism. End Racism was like a big part of the game, but then they made everyone wear white.

It's like, And now, here comes Chief Big Bottom ready to do this Hot Dog Rain Dance. Hum, num, num, hum, num, num. That's my favorite chat.

Really, when you look at football- Inspire change.

Throw a couple of dimes at a little girl.

When you look at this, it reminds me of the lead hypothesis, the lead gas lean hypothesis. Because football is such a massive part of American culture. As we know, American culture is very violent. That's not to say that football is the reason why American culture is violent. America has always been a very violent nation.

But I would also put the It's probably get me a little maybe angry about this, but the maleness of it as well. There's a deep connection to the using our natural impulses as things kill things as primates and turning in against ourselves.

Yeah, but the other part of that is that it's also a very good release for that instinct for a lot of people.

You talk about the war proxy. The war proxy is for real. Very real. The war proxy is also really important for the audience as well. That's why it's ancient. Watching men kill each other is an ancient process because it's for people that don't get to go kill people, and then they're not allowed by the government to go kill people, so they get to go watch it in a way.

Scratches that same itch I got when I watched Faces of Death as a kid. Yes.

I also think that there's something about it. It's outside of you. I started understanding the luminal mental space of sports, going through our fucking horseshit, starting to discover how nice it was to just blank out for three and a half hours and stare at little men running back and forth on a field. I understood it for a moment.

Three and a half hours, try 12 on a Sunday. Oh, it's the best. And another three on Monday and then Thursday as well. Nothing but dissociation. Yeah, man. It's amazing. The fucking the macho part of it, it even affects me as a fan now. Because last year, I didn't watch any football, and I took shit from my friends back home, our friends that we used to watch football with because I'm like, I don't want to go watch the games. I would literally take shit for it. It's just like, no, I want to go to the farmer's market and hang out my wife.

That's just for not watching football.

That's the biggest thing of all. Wanting to hang out with your wife.

On a Sunday?

Unbelievable.

That's the thing. That's just NFL. You could also spend probably 15 hours watching college football on Saturday, and probably another day of the and you can go to high school football games on Friday.

Why can't we just watch plays about sports? Play the play.

Well, there was the Vince Lombardi musical that did really well. That was, you're right. There was an opera. All right. Well, enough of the sad horse shit. Let's get to the last podcast of it all. Yey. All right. Last week, we talked about Aaron Hernández growing up in an abusive machismo environment, dealing with the untimely death of his father, hanging out with gangs in his hometown, popping off in Gainesville, and headed back to his home to become a millionaire and a patriot.

Wow, what a great light. Yeah.

Nothing can go wrong for me. Yeah.

Well, now it's early 2012. Aaron had just scored a countdown in the Super Bowl after suffering a concussion in the AFC Championship Game, all while being one of the league's youngest players at 22 years old. Fly from your grave. But now it's time we met one of the most important players in Aaron Hernández's story. And by player, I mean character, not football player.

That's a stage. Again, we're back to play. Yes.

He's a drug dealer. He named Alexander Bradley. Alexander Bradley was, for all intents and purposes, can be considered Aaron Hernández's best friend. He's my buddy. He's my friend. Yeah, he's confident. Not just that, Aaron hired him as his assistant. Remember we talked about this a little bit, but I didn't name him in the last episode? Mm-hmm. Hernández met Bradley at his cousin Tanya's house, and he helped Aaron with everything. From grocery shopping to getting weed and other drugs to getting guns. What?

You hire an assistant? Yeah.

I remember when I first talked with Kelly, I said, When you could go, honestly, first of all, here's $20,000.

You're going to get the cocaine from the man. The man is going to come out, check the box, make sure it's cocaine. If not, here's a gun. What you're going to do is shoot him in the head if this is impact right. Here's the scale.

Yeah, and then she has to go make the lines on the back of the toilet upstairs. To test it out for me so I could go in there to make sure it doesn't kill her.

If it doesn't kill her, then I could take it.

No, I mean, you got to actually... You're doing too much work. The thing is you got to have the assistant get the gun first. I know. Make sure that here's a guy. Check to make sure the serial numbers have been filed off.

That's a really good note. Kelly, I need you to anticipate needs.

You see, Bradley, he met Hernández before he was even famous, and the two, they were fast friends. Bradley, even though he was involved with a lot of illegal activities, was a smart dude. You have to be to survive in his business for as long as he did.

You have to know social cues, lines to live in this world functionally. You have to figure out a way to do it sustainably.

Yeah, especially if you're going to do it for a long time. Yes. Yeah.

He's also in the year since, he's been very smart with playing his part as a talking head in the Aaron Hernandez story. He knows how to tell the story. He knows how to be on TV. He's parlayed this into a whole new career.

I mean, who knows what happened? He's definitely made a career out of doing illegal things, but I fucking believe him. If you got to be friends with a gangster type dude, Alexander Bradley is the type of gangster-ass dude you want to be friends with, all right? He had connects all the clubs. He was generous with his weed and his time. And most importantly, he was a good cabanion to get stoned and play Madden with. If anything, Hernández was a bad influence on Bradley. Even Bradley's girlfriend at the time was like, If you want to hang out with your boy, then you hang out with your boy, but this is not going to work out with us.

Jesus. That also winks towards the other side of it. It's like, Who chooses the the dude, your bro, over your lady in a way?

As someone who used to deal weed, celebrity customers make you more desirable than normal folks. In turn, you get clout, and clout equals more business. For me, it was Peefong. For Alexander Bradley, it was Aaron Hernández. According to Bradley, he was selling/giving Aaron Hernández about four ounces a week.

That ain't going to help the tau proteins get any clearer.

Yeah, seriously, you would put this here. Full disclosure for reference to non-weed smokers, I smoke about a quarter ounce a week, and that's considered a lot.

Yeah, I do. That's on a really smoking week. That's when if I don't have any work, I'm about the same.

If I don't have any work, it's a half hour. I don't even know how someone would find the actual time to smoke that much weed.

You know how I bet it was? Blunt. Blunt. Yeah, it was this constant blunt.

He probably threw out half of it and shit like that.

Also, anyone who's hanging around is also going to be smoking a lot of weed. But yeah, he's wasting so much weed on Blunt, I guarantee.

God, I bet you can get so high off his ashtray. Oh, yeah.

He just got so much stuff. Yeah, that's also you remember, too. Do you remember just seeing the weed sit there? Yeah.

Oh, it flipped me out. Yeah, it was great. Well, not just helping Hernández with his day-to-day weed and gun habit, Bradley's real full- That was just a comment on the guns.

But the problem is sometimes guns get paranoid.

Bradley's real full-time job was keeping Aaron Hernández's paranoia in hostility in check.

This might have something to do with the four ounces of weed. That's a lot of weed.

You know how hard it is for me and Henry to speak ill on weed? I see. I love weed.

That's also like, I get tired. When I'm smoking like that, I get tired. I can't imagine smoking that much weed and committing murder.

Just doing stuff and playing football.

Doing shit, dude.

What is smoking four ounces of weed a week doing to his fucking lungs? And he's still like- Well, he's 22.

He's 22. He's invincible.

But even so, he has one of the most running heavy positions on the field.

He's at that age where you could do fucking anything.

Yeah, man. So they always love going around and hitting the clubs in Boston. Hernández, having just caught a countdown in the Super Bowl, he was newly world famous. Everywhere he went, people knew who he was. Sure, he was famous before, but everyone knew what he looked like now. And as we remember from the last episode, his social skills were getting worse by the minute. And while smoking four ounces of bud a week, his paranoia was at an all-time high. One of Aaron's pet peeves was people looking at him.

I hate it when people look at me. Well, you know those guys that are there? I know what this is called because it's not looking at you.

It's mugging.

It's eyeballing me. The guy's eyeballing me. This guy's looking for a fight. This guy's staring at me. It's like, you're a New England that was just on a Super Bowl team.

You're in Boston.

Yeah, you're literally the most famous person here.

You're also a gigantic man. Yes. Your eye just gets caught by huge people.

And super hot. Yeah, he is. Bradley would explain to him, You're a famous man. And he would ask, How come they're not looking at you? It's because I'm not you, he would say. He thought that everyone who was looking at him was just trying him. I mean, it really is a stoner's You think everyone is staring at you, and they are, and you're too high to remember because it's because you're famous.

Well, you also have CTE. You have CTE. You're immediately clouded, too.

No social skills.

I was just constantly forgetting that you're famous. That's a lot. Because it's true. I remember I have a OCD. I'll bring this up again, but going through all of our drama and shit, you do start to, in my head, stuff like that was getting real. What are they staring at me for? They're like, Oh, you're weird looking. Or like, Oh, they might like you from the show.

You have a pentagram on your shirt.

Not just a pentagram. It's like, Oh, you're wearing a T-shirt that has a Mickey Mouse his own dick. Yeah, RoboCop's gigantic cock.

I saved that for the grocery store and work.

All right. Sunday, July 15th, 2012. Hernández went to Bradley's place to pre-game to go out for a night of clubbing. Sunday was his favorite night to go out, mostly because during the season, it was after games. During the summer, it's usually not that busy. I remember, as I mentioned earlier, he loved going out and getting fucked up, but didn't like it when there's a bunch of people around. So Sunday was his day. Bradley and- I see Tuesday is the day. Well, you got to go to work on Wednesday. Football is 60 to 80 hours a week. Minimum. I know.

Oh, yeah.

Even in the offseason.

Because you're also watching tape, you're working out, you're doing lots of stuff.

Yeah, It's very, very demanding.

It's intellectual work.

It is. It's hard. I think I said this last. I hate when people say that they're just playing a game and they don't deserve the money they're getting.

No, it's an extremely complicated thing, and they have an $18 billion industry on their backs.

Yeah. Bradley and Hernández, to have some fun, they smoked a couple of blunts, had a couple of drinks, and decided on Cure Nightclub for their hang that night. Hernández was also excited to get over there because Bradley had a new gun for his Yeah, bang, bang.

Yeah, he's got a new family.

A $350 Silver 357 Magnum with a brown handle. The gun even came loaded. How convenient. Oh, nice.

No, I don't got to do two stops.

Oh, no, this gun's out all the bullets. Guess I got to go buy a new gun.

Throws the gun outside. The duo hopped in Aaron's Silver Toyota 4-runner, which was an endorsement car lent to him by the Jack Fox Toyota dealership in Providence. Good plug. Yeah. Call it a perk for scoring a Super Bowl countdown. Aaron was dressed like shit that night, so he was lent some clothes for the club in a ball cap by Bradley. They stashed the gun in the engine block and headed out for the night. What a weird place to put the gun. Under the spare tire. You put it under the spare tire.

Because I feel like it's one of those, when you want to hide something from yourself in order to make sure it's super special and you can never find it again, where you're like, I'm going to put this here, and that's how I know we'll find it, but then you never find it again. It sounds like that.

Yeah, but also, why are they taking a gun? You don't need to. It tells you not just the paranoia, but it also tells you who Aaron Hernández, how he thinks of himself, that he's going to need to go out and take a gun. He doesn't need a gun.

I will say something.

You know what the word is for those men? That honestly, I wish it could be applied more is drama queen. Like, literally looking for a fight, looking for it all to come For him to be tried.

No, you're right. That is absolutely a drama queen thing.

Lots of football players carry guns. One of the main reasons they do carry guns is- Jewelry cash. They become targets when they're out because they like going to these fucking dangerous ass places. Sure. People do- But he's not going to a dangerous place. He's going to a nightclub in Boston. It's a major city. You never know what's going to... I'm just saying it's not weird. Remember when Plexo Burris had one in the sweat pants? Oh, yeah. He shot himself in the leg.

Oh, yeah. No, I remember.

They get to Cure, and they park around the corner in a garage.

Cure is the nightclub.

Cure is the nightclub where they were out that night. When they got there, a group of dudes from the lovely Dorchester neighborhood of I will test that. They were also in line, having a good time and getting ready to get down.

Aaron and Alex- What a bad part of the world to be in if you don't like guys eyeballing you. It's like their sport. It's like what they do most in Boston.

By the way, this is the club directly next door to the Wilbur.

Oh, no shit.

Oh, wow.

I know exactly where that is.

Wonderful venue.

Aaron and Alexander, they ended up skipping the line and the $20 cover, but he still got in an argument with the bouncer because the bouncer made Aaron Hernandez take his hat off. My hat's my thing. That's my thing.

That's how people know it's me.

Daniel Day Abreu and Sephiro Fertado, African immigrants who just got off work at their janitor job, were talked into going out that night by friends, they reluctantly agreed. Everyone was on the dance floor having a good time. They got their drinks in their hands, and Abreu bumps hips with Hernández and spilled his drink all over his borrowed shirt. Whether the bump was intentional or not, it is up for debate. Abreu, not knowing who Hernández was, just smiled at him as a form of saying, My bad, dude. But either way, Hernández fucking loses his shit, goes crazy.

These guys that get off on this thing, they When you step on their shoes and stuff, it really does feel like, Just kiss me. You just seem to want to kiss me, dude.

It seems weird to go out with your boy and start dancing. You and your guy. You know, Eddie and I, we were talking last night about, Hey, Martin.

Natalie and I were watching something. I forgot what it was. It was just two people, it was like two guys holding hands together. I forgot what it was. I was like, That's how Ed and I said it.

Fingers interlocked. Oh, yes.

Bradley saw the writing on the wall, and he just grabbed Hernández, and he was like, Let's bounce. This place fucking sucks. He knew something was about to pop off because almost every time he hung out with Hernández, he flipped out on somebody. They were supposedly only in the club for 10 minutes. On their way out of the club, another patron recognized Hernández and stopped him for a quick selfie. When they were back in the street, Hernández just started to vent to Bradley. I hate it when people try me, try to play me. Bradley reminded him to stay cool. I'm cool. And that they both had too much to lose to get into a brawl at a club. He was right.

Yeah, it's fucking stupid.

It really is fucking stupid to get in a fight public. While in the street, a bouncer from another club, Caprice, spotted Hernández and invited him in and gave them a nice table. After they were there for a couple of minutes, Hernández noticed Abreu and Fertado.

These motherfuckers are following us, Hernández told Bradley, but it actually wasn't them.

Hernández his paranoia was just amped up to a thousand. Then they ended up leaving that club as well and then decided maybe it's time to go home. While retrieving their car- Yeah, I guess we could go watch Netflix.

Can you imagine him doing something like that? You're like, Yeah, let's go. I got all Muppet tapes.

They retrieved their car from the lot, and this time, Hernández actually did spot the other crew getting into their car as well. He told Bradley, Roll on up on there.

I want to stay in there.

The pair pulled next to the BMW Abreu had borrowed from his sister, and Hernández in the passenger seat leaned over Bradley, hung out the window and said, What's up now, fellows? Except he didn't say, Fellas. What do you say? He fired five shots into the car, killing Abreu and Fertado. There were three men in the back seat, but it all happened so fast, they didn't get a good look at Hernández or Bradley. Fertado was shot in the head and died immediately. But Abreu, who was shot in the chest, took a minute or two before he passed away. The men in the back seat flagged down a car a couple of ladies were in, scared the shit out of them, but they still called 911 for the distressed victims.

Yeah. So Aaron Hernández, at this point, just based off a guy bumping into him at a club, just committed a double murder.

Oh, yeah, because he's a child on the inside, and his brain's filled with mush.

And he's not thinking even a little bit. Oh, no.

No, not about anything, because he's never faced consequences for anything in his entire life. I mean, at this point, he's already have busted one guy's eardrum. He's gotten into countless fights.

He might have shot up another car.

He was passed endlessly.

It was late and the streets were empty. Bradley sped away and drove to his baby mama's apartment where they laid low for a while. Bradley told his girl that Aaron had just done some stupid shit. By the time she got up for work the next morning, cousin Tanya was in her kitchen whispering to Aaron about something. By the time she got home from work, Aaron and Tanya were gone, and so was the forerunner. Aaron hid the forerunner at cousin Tanya's house, where the car would stay in her garage to hopefully never be seen again. Poor Jack Fox Toyota. Yeah, that's the only- The unspoken victim. Where did that car go?

No.

The detectives, they're looking at the security footage from the club. One of them notices, holy shit, that's Aaron Hernandez. But he never even considered him a suspect because, yeah, exactly. Cops just think it's a It's a crazy coincidence. He's only in the club for 10 minutes, and why would a superstar athlete murder a janitor?

Yeah, that's the dumbest thing. It's so stupid.

Yeah. The murder had been so random and so pointless that the case quickly went cold for the police.

That's a good tip for those trying to murder out there.

Make it super out of pocket. That's how you make sure nobody knows it's you.

Choose somebody completely like you're just not supposed to be there. People are going to be like, You never do that.

This is almost a harder case to solve than a fucking serial killing. Because at least with serial killing, you might even be able to trace some motive, but this is so stupid. You would never think, Oh, one of the biggest athletes in the world, one of the biggest young athletes in the world. Oh, yeah, he may have killed this guy for bumping into him?

I'm sure they felt bad for him for even being around it.

It's so hard to leave calm at a drive-by. That's one of the hardest parts.

It is true, yeah.

I once asked a Boston cop what he would do if he saw Tom braided kicking a gun puppy down the street, and he said he'd arrest the puppy for hurting Tom's foot. Cops are funny. Two weeks later, Aaron Hernández would sign the then largest contract for a tight-end ever. 40 million over five years with a $12. 5 million signing bonus. At 22. Yes. Aaron Hernández then gets engaged to the pregnant Shaina Jenkins and buys a beautiful home in North Adderborough, Massachusetts. Things are looking great. During this time, he's spending a lot of time with Shaneya Jenkins, Shaina's sister, and her new boyfriend, Oden Lloyd. Lloyd worked as a landscaper by day and semi-pro football player by night. He and Aaron became buddies quick because they both love Madden and Weed.

That's the thing. It's so hard to find another man who loves Madden and Weed.

It's almost unheard of. It's so rare.

I can't believe you're into this. You're in the Madden and Weed? I'm in the Madden and Weed. Let's be best friends.

Well, he must have- No, best friends. Let's go. He must have beat Aaron a lot because he would soon be murdered by him for no reason. That's what happens.

You got to make sure you're going to give these guys some games.

They don't want to get too good there. Well, the 2012 season wasn't that good for Aaron stat-wise, and he failed to live up to his massive contract. He missed six games with an ankle injury and then messed up his shoulder after getting rocked by Dolphins' linebacker Carlos Dansby just weeks after his daughter was born. Got him.

Yeah. So it's not just the CTE, it's multiple other injuries. There's a lot of stuff going on.

He's fucking riddled with shit, man.

It's also probably that might be why he's smoking so much fucking weed as well to help with the pain. Oh, yeah.

The pain killers work, but the weed is way better. It doesn't fuck with your brain as much. They should just Let these fucking players smoke weed. It's ridiculous.

I don't know why they can't smoke. Smoking weed seems like the dumbest thing to stop for the football players. Anything to calm them down.

It does not make you a better football player. Please calm them down. He played hurt with a torn muscle in his shoulder for the rest of the season, which would be cut short by a loss in the playoffs of the Baltimore Ravens. Anything less than a Super Bowl win was a disappointment for the Patriots. Nowadays, they're less athletic than the Patriots that stormed the Got them. After the loss of the Ravens and not making the Super Bowl, the boys needed to blow off some steam. But for some reason, Hernandez and Bradley went back to Club Cure in Boston like they hadn't just killed two people outside of there six months earlier.

I think he thought that if I just kept acting like it didn't happen, nothing's going to catch up to me.

Yeah, but it didn't. If not for other shit that came later that led police to that. He was totally right to do this. Nothing happened because he went back.

I mean, truthfully, he never got any repercussions for that incident. No. This night, Bradley gets a DUI with Hernández in the car, and then Hernández tries to get him out of it by telling the cop- It's cool. I'm El Hernández. It did not work. I guess you got to win the Super Bowl for that client.

Yeah, next time, catch the last pass. You could see that from a boss. They were like, Oh, yeah?

So these bro-dogs, they needed to get town for a while. Boston ain't where it's at right now. Deontay Thompson, he was a Baltimore Raven. He was throwing this big-ass Super Bowl party in Miami. Deontay, he was Aaron's teammate from back at UF. University of Florida. Yeah, University of Florida. He told him to come down and party, blow off some steam, man.

That's what he needs, man. He's so fucking... He's such a work guy.

I'm sure everyone would tell him to blow off steam, and he just blew off way too much.

I don't think it was steam.

That's the other thing about it. In the documentaries that I watched, everyone talks about how nobody partied harder than Aaron Hernandez. That it was insane how hard this guy would party. Just doing shit all night long and then just going to practice or going to a fucking game and playing and not knowing. It's insane how hard this guy partied.

It's like he was trying to dull evil thoughts in his head or something. Quite possibly. Kill, kill, kill, kill, kill. The boys landed in West Palm Beach, and they weren't greeted by Deontay, but they were greeted by five dudes that they didn't know. Two of these guys were some fucked-up-looking dudes that went by Papoo and Soulja.

Yeah, Papoo and Soulja. They normally He finally answered the door. Papoo, he'll take your jacket.

Papoo sounds like an incontinent grandfather, not a gangster.

That's who we call him. Oh, grandpa shit suspense.

These guys were Deontay's friends from Belgrade. Belgrade is half an hour west of West Palm. Side note, I personally remember Belgrade being a very intense place, and when we played their team in high school, I could have sworn I was playing against 30-year-old men. They were gigantic. They were terrifying. They had a lot of NFL players came from Belgrade, Pacoqui, and Glade Central. There was a little pocket in West Palm, and they would all... So many great players. Fred Taylor came out of there. Vince Wilfort.

So you're up against a future NFL players. Yes.

Also, just to make them a little scarier, other than just physically kicking our ass all the time, we were scared to play against them because their high school supposedly had one of the highest high school AIDS rates in the country. One of. For two days straight, they're hanging out with this crew at a strip club in Miami, appropriately called Tootsies. Oh, cute. Isn't that nice? I've never been, but in a couple of years, my dog Tootsie will be old enough to get in.

Yeah, that'll be cute. We'll buy her a beer.

Offset just had an album release party there. Oh, congrats. And Wednesdays, the strippers do karaoke, which honestly sounds delightful. I'd go there.

It does sound great.

While there, Hernández's paranoia was amped up from a thousand to a million. Any time Bradley pulled out his phone, Hernández would tell him, Hey, put that down.

It's bog.

Bradley's phone was becoming the point of contention between the two. When Bradley asked the server for a charger, he flipped out again. Were you mad?

You bring up electricity to the bog? You got to starve. You got to make it hungry.

Then the bill came and Papu and Soulja conveniently went missing. They'd run up a $10,000 bill at Tootsies. I'm sure it was a lovely time. Oh, definitely. Yes. Hernández told Bradley, You're splitting this shit with me. Bradley said, I don't know these motherfuckers. I ain't giving you five grand. Hernández got pissy paid the bill, and Bradley walked off angry, but he forgot his phone on the charger in the process. Fuck your phone, man.

The idea that they would just bug your phone so easily is, again, a very dumb, paranoid idea.

Yeah, no. Bradley obviously knew because he's probably someone who knew at a search for bugs. Yes.

But also, who's bugging his phone? Who's bugging his phone?

He's hyper paranoid about the fact that he's probably going to fucking kill two people.

Dude, they're at Tootsies, and Hernández is like, Yo, those two guys over there, those are fucking FBI agents. Then Bradley's like, No, they're not. He's like, Yeah, they are, dog. Then Bradley's like, Well, if they are, it's because that dumb shit you did in Boston. Yeah, exactly. You did it. Yeah. Now they're driving drunk as fuck back to West Palm for Miami. That's like a two-hour drive, all right? Bradley realizes he forgot his phone, and he's a little outside of town, and Hernández refuses to go back. Papu and Soulja, they agree, and they're like, Fuck your phone. That's Fuck your goddamn phone. Hernández even offers to buy him a new one, which is an insane offer. Bradley claimed that there's pictures of my kids in there and shit. Before the cloud.

Oh, yeah. Before the cloud.

Bradley must have realized this was a losing battle. In his fucked-up-edness, he passed out in the car. The SUV had come to a stop at this point. When Bradley woke up, Hernández had a gun in his face. Bradley threw up his hand to protect himself, but Hernández fired anyway. The bullet tore through his hand, blowing off part of his finger, then passing through the bridge of his nose and lodged into his eye socket. Soulja casually leaned over and opened Bradley's door to try to push him out of the vehicle, but he couldn't. Aaron then got out of the car, walked over to Bradley, tossed him on the ground, and left him for dead, and he didn't even go back for the phone.

Unbelievable.

This all happened at 6: 30 in the morning. The sun's coming up, and the lot they'd pulled into was actually a John Deere landscaping lot, and the two guys who were working there found Bradley. They saw what at first looked like a dead body, but then realized Bradley was still alive. Bradley told them, Call 911 Tell them to hurry before I bleed out. 911 then asked what his name was and if he knew who shot them and why. He responded, Alex Bradley, no. And I'm done talking. It hurts too much.

When the cops- That's a good friend. I'm a good friend.

When the cops got there, they had similar questions, but Bradley wasn't going to tell them shit. The cops kept prying, and he simply said, With all due respect, sir, I have no more information for you. Unfortunately, the security cameras were not on that night, so there was nothing they had on anybody. Shit out of luck.

It's not as much of a good friend. It's more like Bradley wanted to take care of it himself.

Oh, sure. They were all caught up together anyway.

Bradley does not need a fucking investigation into his life. No. That's the last thing he fucking needs. Hernández, he was positive that he had just killed Bradley. Then he's at the airport in West Palm in the morning, and he called Bradley's baby mama and asked if she had heard from him because he hadn't seen him, and he was supposed to meet him at the airport, and he's worried about him. They'd got separated the night before.

You've never called me. What is this?

Did you kill him? She starts to freak out. She started calling all the hospitals in Miami, trying to find them. She called the cops in Miami. They're like, We don't know what you're talking about. They told her to fill out a missing person's report at her local precinct in Hartford, Connecticut. But the thing was, Bradley wasn't in Miami. He was two counties away in West Palm Beach. So it wasn't connected. She was looking for him in the wrong city. Bradley was continually uncooperative with the cops. The cops kept asking him, Who shot him? And he said, He's a fucking asshole. Whoever did this to me. Direct quote. Yeah, he's a fucking asshole.

Whoever it was that did this to me.

Whoever did this to me. He's a fucking asshole. The cops said, If he didn't make a report, then he would have no victim. And if there was no victim, there was no crime. And then Bradley said, I ain't telling on nobody. Then the cop left. Bradley then picked up his phone and called Hernández. Hernández probably mortified when he saw who was calling him.

Oh, man, it's his angel. A gop is calling me.

He picked up anyway. Now, Marcus, I'm going to need your help here. Sure. You're going to be Bradley, and then Henry, you'll continue to be Hernández. I want to watch this play. We got it. All right. So, yeah, this is for you.

Ring, ring.

Hello? Hello. Ahoy. Ahoy, ahoy.

What's up?

Who it is?

You know who this is. It's your boy.

Aaron hung up out of fear. No, no, no, no to that.

No to that.

I don't like that. Bradley starts blowing up his phone, and Hernández picks up again. Ahoy, hoy.

I don't know why you keep hanging up. I didn't tell the police on you. You know what time it is when I get back.

Hernández hung up and- I don't like that. I don't like that. I don't like that call. I don't What do I do about that? Then Bradley texted him, I really do love you, my boy, but you won't get away with that. Man, you really love me? Isn't that crazy? He's still like, I love you.

You're a cool guy and you're a good dude.

This is the last time you shoot me, man.

Unfortunately, I am going to have to kill you now.

This is going to be like a red line that I cannot cross, brother, but I love you and I'm going to miss you.

Soon after this, Hernandez goes to see Bill Belichick at that year's NFL Combine. It's in Indianapolis. He tells him that he's in trouble with some bad dudes back home and he needs to get traded.

Can you imagine saying that to Bill Belichick?

Out of everybody, And him just being like, I'll kill you myself. He never wanted to give a fuck about anything but winning. Belichick basically tell them to go screw. Oh, yeah. He's like, You just signed the largest deal for a tight-end ever. You're not going anywhere, dude. And then instead, he just suggests you go out to LA for the rest of the offseason. You bring your family, you get soldier surgery.

Because there's never been any gang violence in Los Angeles. Never. I think that's a great place to stay clean.

I don't think anyone really gets in trouble out here.

Not once.

Well, Brady's out here because he's hanging with Giselle at the time. He's like, Go hang with braided. You guys can go over the playbook and get ready for next season and shit.

You're just going to sit and drink bone broth with fucking Tom braided, and you're just going to watch him stare and just go pretend to throw a fucking ball every day.

You know, like Belichick called braided, and he's like, All right, Hernández is coming out. You got to take care of him. He's like, Fuck. Oh my God.

I'm not going to have any time to kiss my son now.

I need to wrap up. I guess I'll have to get it in now. Oh, fuck. My little boy, my little son.

So he's out there. He wants to get shoulder surgery, hang out with braided, and they just get ready for next season. Yeah. Be chill. Hernández and Shayana, they rent a spot in Hermosa right on the beach, and they settle in to chill out and recoup. That was the plan anyway. Even DJ came out to hang out with them to get them ready for next year. It was like, Let's chill. Let's fucking regroup. But he don't really spend too much time with braided, and he just gets hammered on the regular. He's flying out Bo Wallace all the time. But him and Shayana, they did get matching incubus tattoo. Choose during this time.

Incubus, the band.

Incubus, the band. Finally, a smart decision.

I've actually heard that that result, it's like a 95% divorce rate. If you get matching incubus tattoos. The worst band. You know what? Is it the worst band of all time? No.

Incubus? No. It's not even a worst band. Oh, yeah. Far worse band than Incubus.

But one of the worst bands to get a tattoo of. Who could love Incubus so much.

I was obsessed with them for a little while. In high school. In high school. Because my high school girlfriend was, too. The Chicks loved it. It's funny.

Incubus has the highest divorce rate. You know what actually has the highest stay together rate? What? Huboostank. Oh, yeah. Yeah, if you both get matching Hubo-stank tattoos, you separate life.

That one couple is having a great time.

Well, that's the whole thing. Unfortunately, it is a skewed sample study because it is just one couple and they have not divorced it, so it is 100%.

Me and my wife went out for my birthday. We got stank. We got stank.

What Aaron's tattoo said, Remind me that we'll always have each other, and Shayana's finished the line, When everything else is gone. That is so bad. Yeah, it's from the song Dig off of the Light Grenades album. If you get a chance to listen, don't.

Wow.

What are the late period incubus?

Like later?

Yeah. Not even drops of this train. Who was the other one?

The first incubus album, Drive.

Drive was the song.

Pardon me, what a burn.

Stellar, you know all those. I remember.

Those are good songs.

Several times, so they're out there.

Apparently, the lead singer has a great sense of humor.

He has to be. Although I will say the science album isn't horrible. All right. Several times, the cops get called out to his house. The first time, he'd punched through a window in his home. A couple other times, neighbors called when they heard fighting and what sound like furniture flying around the house. Shayana always declined to file reports. He also had an incident in a bar while fucked up on Long Island Ice Tees in Long Beach. A Long Beach Ice Tea is a Long Island Ice Tea with cocaine, I believe. I do.

Yeah. And you can't be vaccinated.

A couple of days later, he does some light banking, deposited a couple of checks from the Patriots and Puma, totaling close to $2 million. Jesus fucking Christ.

He's going in with those checks.

Just walking into a BOA. Why are they saying?

He doesn't have a business manager. No one's doing this for him.

But then when he does this, he fucking wires $15,000 to the parents of one Oscar Papu Hernandez. Papu. That money was given to Bo Wallace, who bought an AR-15, an AK-47, and a used Toyota Camry to carry the weapons back up north. Aaron, he really dug that incubus tattoo, by the way. So he took a drive back there and said to the artist, Pardon me, are you in? I need a new tattoo. The last one was stellar.

He said, Get out of my tattoo shop. I had to hold back my father already tattooing you.

He got a new tattoo of a smoking handgun with one spent shell underneath it. It is thought that that represents the gun that he used to shoot Alexander Bradley. He's so cool. Yeah. He then looked at an available spot on his wrist and regreted where he got the first tattoo and muttered to the tattoo, Wish you were here. Okay, I'll stop with the ink of his puns. But so he gets the other tattoo of a revolver with five bullets in the chamber. This is thought to represent the Boston shooting. Oh, good for him.

That's nice.

It's good to put the evidence right on your body.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Confessions.

That ain't me.

I guess a lot of tattoos are confessions. Oh, very much so. One of my tattoos is a confession of how much Castlevania I played.

Yeah, that's very true. You know, he's not doing well mentally at this time. He's got a bunch of incubus tattoos on him, some gun tattoos.

You He's murdered two people and has attempted to murder his best friend. Yeah. Because he's mad about him leaving his phone behind.

Marcus, he might have ADHD.

Well, probably something messing with his emotional well-being is that he's constantly texting with Alexander Bradley. Bradley had now decided his best course of action was to not kill Hernández, but to get a bunch of money off him. Not a bad idea. He's actually smart.

Yes, not a Yeah, once you calm down from that first day and you realize what the real course of action is, yeah, he knows how to get money. Yeah.

Here's some samples of their text messages, and I hope you boys will reenact it for us. Sure. Out of In a sense, all N-words have been switched to fellows.

Yes, thank you. You did that bullshit for no reason. Me being the real friend I was to you, I didn't try to ruin you even after you tried to kill me.

Think about how real that is. The tears that should be in my eyes after the way you betrayed me. I never crossed you in no way. I love you, and you are not going to frame me for some bread.

I would never try to frame you. You left me with one eye and a lot of head trauma. You owe for what you did, and it's too bad you don't know me enough to know that this convo is private between us. This ain't for no lawyer or cop to see. We both know what happened. The truth is the God damn it, there's no punctuation. It's really hard. This is verbatim, by the way. Yeah, there's no punctuation.

It's just rolled together. A bunch of these words are letters.

All right, so yes. Okay, so let me just take a deep breath. We both know what happened. The truth is the truth. If I dealt with police, my boy, this would have been over and done with. That's what's crazy about this situation. We know each other so well. You know I ain't no on, you know BS, you too paranoid. That's what made you do this shit you did in last but not least. I always wanted the best for you. Remember that you obviously didn't feel the same.

I will always be there for you to the day you die, but not in the state of mind you are in and be in to be in. I don't know what gotten into you after all the years that we were inseparable, but everything aside, you're always on my mind, and I love you, and always will.

No homo.

What's crazy is I believe that part is true. You probably do think about how real of a fella I am and how you even flipped on me. But what sickens me is the fact that you are denying this shit like it's for the lawyer or cops. You must not really know me, but I guess I didn't know you either because I would have never thought you'd try to in me. Do you have trustworthy fellows like me around? Doubt it, dog. Six strong with a lot of weaponry. Hey, you turned this convo into this.

If you ever got me into trouble or ruined my life or something I didn't do, I don't even want to get back at you, but you will pay. I'll be back around the way in a couple of months, too, and I can't wait to see you because I will still be at your baby mother's crib a bunch. Love uncaused, can't stop love of somebody that was the only person I thought with. It was like a brother to me, but damn, you were trying to sue me for something I didn't do and don't even know about. If you could win then that, then God is on your side. But I doubt something can be proof that isn't true.

Here you go, threaten again. You know that don't scare me, though. If you knew how geed up I am, you wouldn't even say that. I'm jeed up with AK-47s, Mac 11s, Mac '90s at the ready, four bulletproof vests, and oh, almost forgot the derait fellows to use the weaponry. Wepon tree. Wepon tree. Yes, actually, yes, it is weapon tree. If you think them wolves ain't on deck, then try what you got to try. What makes you think I want to kill you to one who tried to kill me? Oh, I promise you'll pay for that. And you are so boxed, and you'll be number one suspect.

I swear to God, either you know you're trying to ruin my life and kill me when all I did was be there for you. I still love you no homo, and I will always love you.

He always has to hit those no homo. Every time. Now, it ain't going to be this way. Say, Fuck it. You ain't getting shit from me. I file civil suit. You lose it all in me. Hold court in the street. You think I'm scared to die?

I miss you and love you. I still watch videos of us having fun every single day. I don't believe this. We'll keep saying, I can't believe all of this because I truly can't believe all this shit is going on. If I would really try and kill you when we were that close, I wouldn't. I never would want to hurt You know that. I love you. Good night.

Not to bother you, but feel me on this. When you did that, it's like you coming home to your crib and catching your broad in bed with another, You stole my trust and tore my ego.

Beautiful.

You stole my trust and tore my ego.

I love you.

Good night.

I love you. Good night.

It's with this wonderful piece of theater that we're going to leave you until next week. Why does he say that? Why does he say good night? Love you.

Good night. All right. And that is it done. You better be careful, fool, before I pull up on your ass, all right? Night, night. I love you. Sweet dreams. Sweet dreams, Mama. We love a friend.

Oh, man. Well, this was wonderful. Thank you, fellows. That was a beautiful piece of theater. We're going to leave you until next week when we conclude the Grit Iron Greek tragedy of Aaron Hernández. Yes.

Then we will be headed into one of the deepest waters you can possibly imagine. Very long series after this. You're all going to enjoy very much.

Long, long series.

We have been working on this series literally for months now. Almost a year. We're very, very happy that we're about to finally premiere it.

No, you've been talking about this for a fucking long time, and they're going to love it.

I've been preparing for this for a very long time.

Yeah, which is good. 1945. At patron. Com/lastpodcast and left a watch us do all the wonderful things that we do. Also, you can see us live on Tuesday at 6: 00 PM PST for last stream on the left, live on Patreon. It goes to YouTube afterwards, where we cut all the copyright material we like to show because we can't show it on YouTube. So you need to subscribe it to see it all. And then you go to all the fucking social shits at LP on the left.

That's right. And don't forget to come out and see us on tour. We're hitting all kinds of cities this year. We are taking care of the situation in Cleveland as we We care of the situation. Yeah. The show is not canceled, but it will be moved. So make sure that you keep an eye out or keep an ear out. Take a look at your emails to see where that show is going to be moved to. But yeah, we're getting the Cleveland situation figured out.

And then October, we're going to be in Milwaukee at the Pabst Theater and then Oakland at the Fox Theater. We're going to figure out this Cleveland thing. And then in December, you can catch us in Portland on December 12th and 13th at Revolution Hall.

And come see us. One of my favorite shows of this year is going to be, last podcast go buy tickets for a Side Stories at Humboldt. Yes. With Billy Wayne Davis.

It's going to be a lot of fun. That's going to be the day before the Oakland show on October 24th in Redway, California. It's in the middle of fucking nowhere, but people come out for it, man. It's a blast. It's so much fun. You guys are going to love it. You should come if you want, actually. I might. Yeah. Oh, I want to say something. Shout out to Grant Gordon. He took the lead on the CTE section of the script. You did a great job, buddy. I fucking love you. You're hilarious and much better writer than I am. So thank you so much for coming in and helping me out, man. It's such a hard job you have every week, Marcus. I don't know how your brain works like that.

I've been doing it for 15 years. Yeah.

He's built a callous. Well, hail Satan, everyone.

Oh, inhale Geen.

Hey, inhale Dr. Anne McKee. Watch your head.

Yeah.

And your balls.

Please. That's what I'm doing right now.

I'm going to watch my left nipple.

Sucking on the left. Thank you.