Transcript of David Samson Spars With Senator Chris Murphy | Hour 2 New

This is the Dan Levatorre Show with the Stugatz Podcast.

You get a double dose of Sampson today. He will be appearing later in the show on Pitch Clock as we continue around here to segregate baseball. Jeremy and Sampson are both very good on baseball. You should listen to Samson on baseball and business. Nothing personal. Chris, Nothing Personal.

Thank you.

Jeremy and Sampson will be doing Pitch Clock later in the show. And Nothing Personal is the name of Sampson's podcast, which I continue to tell you at every turn has an assortment of terrain that he covers that I simply do not see other people covering. We will get to him in just a second. I do want to put in front of you another prediction, though. I made the prediction yesterday that at some point during that Spurs-OKC series, things are going to continue continue to escalate, and it's going to appear like the Thunder are going to be trying to hurt Wembenyama. Something else that's going to make an appearance at some point during this postseason is the ridiculousness of the Spurs last night. Used their challenges in the first half to keep Wemby out of foul trouble, used them correctly, got them both right, and then lost their challenges at the end of one of these games.

One of these teams isn't going to have a challenge, and was— would they— would have been right both times and not late in the game been able to reverse something because the officiating was so bad. That's gonna be a thing at some point. We're not gonna keep getting away with doing this this poorly, uh, where the officiating is poor and your system is also shitty, and it's gonna cost someone a game. Because the Spurs, I think, in the second quarter were out of challenges and they got them both right. Like, what is that, Zazz? That's asinine. I don't remember.

I, I know what the, the second challenge was. What was the first challenge?

I don't—

it was— they got it right.

The reason—

but the reason I asked was Wemby's foul. It was Wemby fouls. I don't want— I think, I think both of them were to keep Wemby out of getting fouls.

No, that— but my question is, because a lot of these coaches, like, they'll use a challenge in the first quarter. It's like, why? Why are you doing this?

Head on the ball.

That's all.

Sampson is with us now here. How did you experience— David, we've talked before about the fact that when you were younger, you would go to Madison Square Garden and you were a heckler. You love this basketball team.

You are an actual Knicks fan, as opposed to Jeremy accusing me of being a Knicks fan.

How did you experience Game 1?

As a foreigner, I wanted to— we were a part of history. Teams were 0-643, down 20 with 7 minutes to go in the playoffs, and all of a sudden it's 1-643. That should have been the highlight of my sporting life. It was Game 1 of the conference finals and I felt nothing. I was like The Chorus Line, man. I don't know why that happened, but I've been thinking about it ever since because it, it bothered me, Dan, terribly. I should have been jumping up and down. I should have been schvitzing. I should have been pacing. I, and I just wasn't doing any of those things. I was saying they're going to have to start hitting shots. They're laying bricks for 3 and a half quarters. They're going to have to make some shots, aren't they? And then they did. And then I was just waiting for Kenny Atkinson to get fired. And I guess I was thinking if I were running the Cavaliers, I may have stormed the court and fired him right then and there on the court at the final buzzer.

I heard Cleveland radio host Tony Rizzo yesterday say that Atkinson should be fired ahead of Game 2 and they should hire Jason Kidd. He should be the guy.

It was an unbelievable coaching malpractice to continue allowing the pick-and-roll switch to happen. You can coach that to not happen. You don't have to have the switch-off where Harden takes it, and they kept running the same play again. It's like in football. I was thinking, if you're, if you're running the same play every time, eventually the defense is going to catch up to it and change the way they defend it. But the Cavaliers didn't do that, to say nothing of the fact that they did not give Donovan Mitchell the ball in overtime. I continue to say that any team with James Harden in charge is going to be a team that can't get anywhere. But they're in the conference finals. Good on them. But I just thought, oh, it was a disaster, which makes tonight's game even more interesting because Game 1 becomes a memory if Cleveland wins tonight and they went for one game in the first two and they get it. But if they lose tonight, the series is over at 2-nothing. So it's definitely a big game tonight.

I want to ask you some follow-ups of why you would feel like a foreigner there. I assume it's because real life is happening to you and sports is less important than it used to be to get you know, perspective about life compared to perspective about sports. But before I ask you that question, Zazz said something today that I don't feel like a lot of people are saying, but a lot of people do actually want, which is Zazz is rooting for James Harden to be historically terrible tonight.

He— listen, he'll do that. He doesn't even need you, Zazz. He just seems to do that more. He's an unbelievable situation where you have a Hall of Fame player who to me is not— he's never won anything ever. You know, one appearance in the finals with the Oklahoma City Thunder. He puts his way from team to team to team. I don't want to say he's Durant because Durant has a ring, but I just don't view Harden as someone who I'd want to go to battle with, with my team. And they've tried to embrace him in Cleveland, but again, I just don't think it's going to work. But yeah, I always root for Harden to go, 2 for 18.

And I'm not trying to be like, you know, mean, or I don't even know how you would classify where I'm rooting for a guy to fail.

Hater.

I don't like the way he plays. I don't like his style of play. I don't like debating officials. I don't like all the flopping. So yeah, I go into tonight hoping he's terrible.

Well, do you have that view of SGA?

Getting there, you know, like getting there. He was awful to watch last night. It's not— it's a brutal watch.

I think you should try to remember the 4-year run that he'd had with LeBron. And I was just lucky enough to experience that because I was in Miami at the time and I was at so many of his games. He also was an unbelievable complainer, and I remember noting that during the 4 years I was watching him up close. He complained every single time he would flop all the time. So that is what players do. They're trying to draw fouls. You know, Michael Jordan was no saint. I will tell you that when he got into the paint, he expected the whistle to blow. And any time Darrell Garrison would swallow his whistle or Jake O'Donnell or any of them, he would go crazy.

But he wasn't flopping.

I don't— well, it's just different. It's just not flopping around the ground because who the hell wants to get up every time? There's no reason to flop to the ground when you can just sort of complain to the referees.

Why a foreigner, David?

I just didn't. I, I, It's a very bad thing when you want to feel something and you can't. It reminds me, and I was singing the Barry Manilow song, Trying to Get That Feeling Again. I was singing that during the comeback, like, why can't I get that feeling? How do I— what do I do to get that feeling back? And then you realize there's nothing you can do. Once you lose that feeling, it just doesn't come back. And that's it. And I had to come to grips with that. And I didn't come to grips with it until game 1. The last 7 minutes of the fourth and all the overtime when I was just sitting in bed with headphones on and, and my girlfriend was sleeping and I was just— I was silent. And that's unheard of. I should have been like, anyway, it's, it's, it's nothing.

Explain it to me. No, but explain it to me. Has it been that way the last 3 years? This is the most relevant stretch of Knicks basketball that there's been since Larry Johnson had that 4-point play in 25 years.

The Larry Johnson 4-point play was fun. So here's my answer to you. My answer, Dan, is that being in sports for as long as I was has robbed me of my fandom. So it was heading this direction. And much like COVID just steepened the slope of many things that were going to happen anyway, what's going on with me has just steepened the slope of what was happening anyway. And so it's just been jarring to me how quickly I've bottomed out. In terms of my allocation of time and how much time I spend with sports and the visceral attachment I have to the feeling of success and failure around sports. By the way, it's impacted everything, including Nothing Personal. I used to be obsessive about checking rankings and checking downloads and keeping track of numbers. I mean, to the second. And now, for whatever reason, I just take the microphone and keep talking every morning.

That's sad.

Well, the second part feels healthier. The first part, not.

But I mean, everything he's saying is talking about a deadening and a numbing. I asked Mike today, I'm like, I asked Mike today, how you doing? Everything okay?

And he just turns around, he's like, is anyone okay?

Is anyone okay right now? And I thought about it, I'm like, yeah, probably not. I think everyone is in, I think every single person right now in is in a stage of disorientation about just world events. If you're paying any attention, he did say that.

I did say that.

He said, except Zads. He said, he did actually say He's like, is anyone okay? And he's like, yes, as is probably okay.

I feel good.

I think the key for us is to remember that everyone has a job during these times, and our job is to entertain, even when there are political overtones to it or serious things that we can talk about. Like, I want to talk about my show I did with a senator the other day and what happened after the show, which is shocking to me. But our job is to entertain and sort of ignore what's going on because we're supposed to be used as an escape. But it's hard when it's something that's unscripted to be the escape because you really have to remove yourself from reality. And it's easy when there's a script. It's much more difficult when there's not.

Dan, did you see, uh, Stephon Marbury in Game 1? What was taking place in overtime?

Just running on the court?

Yeah, like, so it's a weird thing in general that the Knicks, as opposed to any other team, for whatever reason, former players, they just They gravitate toward— how so?

Stop it. Didn't you— have you watched the Pistons games? Ben Wallace, Richard Hamilton.

Okay, Thomas, good point, but they're not jumping on the court. And so after, after Jalen Brunson is scoring in overtime, this is happening several baskets in a row. Stephon Marbury and John Starks too, they're on the court while the ball is in play, like they're cheering, they're pointing out defenses. Marbury is on the floor here several times in overtime.

I'm not gonna lie though, the way you're setting this up, I think he's like at half court and then the video we show, he's like toe is on the court.

Okay, but we can't play the video, so I had to grab the first photo. He goes further? Yes.

He goes further, okay.

No, he does not.

He goes like 2 steps in, all right? Well, David, it was enough that Marbury felt the need to tweet an apology the next day because he was so overzealous. I'll read this to you here. I would like to issue a formal apology. He's, uh, @starburymarbury if you want to give him a follow on X. I would like to issue a formal apology to every Knicks fan, every security guard, and especially Jalen Brunson. Not because I stole his shine, because I could never. That man owned the Garden. I just got swept up in the current like a plastic bag. My energy flew out the roof. I lost my mind and my feet Carried me somewhere they didn't belong. Thank you to the fans for the positive reaction. It felt great, which is honestly concerning. Now, how about we run that back? Just kidding. Unless Jalen hits another one, then all bets are off. Signed, Starbury.

Bunch of emojis at the end there.

What are those emojis?

Read all those emojis, uh, please, Aslo.

Okay, we got, uh, people's eyebrow, people's eyebrow, Spock, uh, we got, uh, looks like laughing face emoji. Ooh, a lion. Could be Mufasa, not sure. Then you have— is that— is that a goat?

I think it's a bull. That's an ox.

A bull?

That's a goat.

I feel ox.

Don't shame my— shame me on my emoji knowledge.

You got to know what the goat looks like.

I'm a child.

All right. I don't use emojis.

Why is there a bull and a wolf there? Like, what's—

what?

Lion, wolf, bull. Chinese New Year. Let me look that up. He's big over there.

That's true, actually.

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Dan Levitar, Tatas Stugatz.

Tatas, this is the Dan Levitar Show with the Stugatz.

What were you saying, Samson, about a Senator?

I was— well, before I get to that, the reason why Marbury had to send that tweet is there's different levels where the alums get seats in the Garden. The first row, there's first row behind the basket. That's where you see often Marbury and LJ is there and Latrell Sprewell is there, which is unbelievable. And then Patrick Ewing and John Stark, sometimes they're courtside on the other side, not behind the basket, but at the end of the sideline. And then there's alums like Bill Bradley. He gets put in the stands. Sometimes Allen Houston is in the stands. So there's a hierarchy of where people are. And Marbury does not want to upset Mr. Dolan for fear he'll end up like Mr. Oakley. So he's got to come out there and say, okay, I won't do that again.

That's a really good point. I do find it interesting that you scoffed at Sprewell being one of the guys who can be front row there when I would say Marbury's the guy I would scoff at. Like, he was the face of the most embarrassing times as a New York Knick.

Yeah, I certainly don't appreciate seeing Stephon Marbury. I don't view him as a Knick. I don't think about him as a Knick. It doesn't— his Knick tenure was— it might as well not have happened. But there could certainly be— you alluded to China. He is big business. Do not kid yourself.

But he's New York.

He's the city, though. Come on.

That's a place—

he's playground basketball.

It's point guards. It's that city prides itself on high school Legend. I mean, that he comes from there, its roots. Like, you know, it is a bad time in Knicks basketball. But get to the senator story. What happened?

So I did a story where sort of Nothing Personal is becoming a place where politicians want to come on the show and they want to talk about bills that they're introducing in Washington and have a conversation about it. Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut has sponsored a bill called Let Kids Play. It's an act that is trying to get private equity money out of youth sports. And I was approached saying, hey, he's doing appearances on this, he'd like to do nothing personal. And Coca is very clear with all of these handlers of the politicians. It's not going to be some sort of just glad-handing where I'm just going to smile and not tell you what I think about it. And so there's great debates that happen during these shows. So we go through the show that just got released on YouTube today or yesterday, and it's a podcast today, whatever it is. It's outside of the regular Nothing Personal. But it got heavy because I so vehemently disagree with this bill. And I asked the senator questions that were real questions like, okay, who's going to pay for it? Is the government? Well, no. Well, then who?

If you don't want private equity money and venture capital money? And so I thought it was a reasonable question. And there was a bit of sparring that went on during this. And it occurred to me that Coca and his concern of we're not going to get called again to do these anymore. And my thought was, I don't care because I don't want to be the one who's the cupcake. And if people want to come on and have a real conversation, I'll do it. And then it occurred to me that those types of real conversations, as you talked about on your show, seem to be disappearing. So I may have gotten Metal Ark Media in trouble. And if I did, Dan, I sincerely apologize.

I don't believe that's sincere. I believe—

smiled the whole time saying that.

I believe you.

I don't care. I don't think you care whether you got us in trouble.

And don't worry about apologizing to Dan for making it awkward with a guest.

Listen, Mike, I actually did think about that. The stakes are much higher with you and your show. Quite obviously, he was born in the dark.

You merely adopted it.

So that is the only saving grace as I was going through the show in my head and replaying it where I could have been better. And I watched it again. Trying to learn how to be a better interviewer and how to have better debate. And what was in my head was, wait a minute, Dan does this all the time and look at the career he's built over 20 years. And here I am in year 5 or year 6. So I gave myself a little grace because of you, Dan.

That's right. And it's precisely why we don't get guests anymore.

Hahaha.

Grrr.

The thing that's funny about that is that philosophically, actually. Uh, this one is something that, uh, has— I'm gonna say plagued me my entire career, but I really don't actually mind it.

The tension between a guest comes on.

How do you treat a guest when you're a host? I'm talking about at a house party. I'm talking about on a show. There's a guest coming into your environment. How do you treat that person?

I've always found it weird, David, that the guest in this particular setting who's coming into our home has the expectation that I'm there to do something for the guest as opposed to my responsibility being to the audience. It's weird to me that the expectations when you step foot in here are that I'm catering to you versus I'm catering to the audience, because I live here and you leave and the audience stays with me. My responsibility is to the audience and making it good. My responsibility is not to the guest.

And so I look—

and it's why the guests disappear. Like, it's why we, we now, and for many years, had a great deal of trouble with publicists and managers and everyone else who says, no, why would I put them there if I can just put them in a place where they'll be treated like a guest?

Yeah, Dan, the reason we didn't want players to be with you is for that very reason, that we didn't think they could stand up to you and, and really hold their own, and that you would put them in uncomfortable positions that would just not be worth it to us. But now that I'm on the other side, I realize that really the issue was our issue, not your issue, because what you taught is it is all about the audience, period. What serves the audience? What keeps them entertained? What helps them give of their time to you, which is the ultimate honor. People give hours of their day to you, Dan, and hours of their day to me. Why? Because they don't want us to just be sitting there not saying the things that they would say if they had the ability to say them. So I think about that. But on the other hand, we answer to sponsors, we answer to rankings, we answer to getting audience acquisition. And maybe there is a middle ground and I just haven't found it.

Me neither.

That doesn't give me great hope. But I'm better at this than I am.

Well, I don't want it, though. And you don't need guests.

And we are.

So, Dan, I think that what we should do— listen, what is our show? I go on Pablo's show. Pablo goes on your show. You come on our shows. It's a very incestuous network-like relationship. That's amazing.

Partnership is better than incestuous. Partnership is easier to sell. That's a little better. Partnership. It's a part— it's a network partnership. It's not a network incest.

It is a network incest. And what it means, though, is that it creates a wall around us where people become less interested in piercing through that wall because they feel like they don't get the show or they feel like they're not going to be treated a certain way. And then their publicists get concerned about it. I was thinking about the interview you did with Boog, and I was thinking that if I ran the network, what I would think about him working these phrases in and what— whether or not that passes the— crosses the line of professionalism. But when it comes to raising money for ALS, I think Boog will choose you. As he should and choose the money as he should. But those are real push and pulls that happen.

The network should choose that too, though, right?

Like you think, you know, you— but you were ahead of the curve on this.

Look, David, for those who do not know the history on this, David was, I'm going to say, a decade ahead of the curve with Showtime and the Marlins, where he made a reality show that was so interesting that they immediately had to cancel it.

Like what I'm talking about when I keep lamenting the idea that so many people are interested in the streaming business in the optics as opposed to the truth, that that transaction is corrosive to the viewer. That if your responsibility is to the viewer, the trading of— I'm going to trade pieces of the truth in exchange for the access to you— makes everything worse, especially the content. And it's not a trade that I think we should be making.

I don't want to make that trade, but on the other hand, we're competing with people who have already made that trade. And they don't think twice about making that trade. And that— so I think about it all the time as we're trying to grow the YouTube channel and get subscribers. And I look at a bunch of absolute dolts, like an intellectual-free zone, posting about what outfit they're going to wear with 500,000 subscribers. And I think to myself, whoa, the amount of work that I do to do a show every day that you guys all do with all of the group that you have. Pablo does, and we're successful in our own right, winning awards. But we don't come close to what it is that some rando does by posting something ridiculous because it's the lowest common denominator of absolute intellectually free crap. But on the other hand, wait a minute, everybody's watching that. So I think about that a lot too.

Well, but the way that you're articulating it is the idea that if you fight that fight, you're going to lose to the people who are playing by different rules. But the way that I would argue against that is I would I can tell you we have— I can make an argument— one of the most loyal audiences in the history of sports. And the reason for that is because that audience appreciates that.

Like, that audience sticks to you from in there where they're like, nah, this thing's a little truer than the other things. And I think that's going to become more and more important and more and more rewarded as we go forward. It's happening for Pablo. It's happening right now for Pablo, where people are like, nah, this is a little truer and a little more uncomfortable. Than, uh, than people realize. But actually, I'm going to tell a story here I have not told, uh, uh, and I'm going to tie it to what we were talking about earlier with Skipper and being the most powerful man in sports when he was the most powerful man in sports, and the way that the conflict came to him and he had to bow for the NFL because the NFL is bigger than everybody. We've run things that are hard to run, and one of the bigger fights I had with Skipper was around one of the things that we ran that went after, um, uh, who's the name? Ishbia, the owner of the Suns, and some of the things that they were doing with predatory loans, allegedly. And, uh, we were now going to run up against real power and silver and people who can bankrupt you.

Like, people who can—

when—

if they come after you, you don't have the wherewithal of ESPN or Disney to fight with them. It's a fight worth fighting and people appreciate it, David. Like, our audience is loyal the way it's loyal. We may lose to some of those influencers in terms of size and power.

Say Druski.

But it is—

Olivia Rodrigo is my new one.

But it is something that is worth fighting for, even if you lose.

Well, the problem is you're gonna run out of ammunition way faster than anybody else will. And so you can fight the good fight, and you can fight it for as long as you can. But the problem is you eventually just get swept up in the losing of it. And yeah, loyal audience, that is something you talk about and I think about all the time, building up loyalty, which is what we get when people give us their time. But part of the game that we have to play is we're looking for new people to engage with us. We're looking to be interesting. Why is it that you want to clip things of you in a bathrobe saying something serious and get aggregated for it because you get both that way. You get the humor that you love, you get the attention that you crave, and you get the seriousness that you strive to be. So you try to combine all those and you're doing it purposefully. And we're competing against people who don't necessarily do the gimmicks because it's all gimmicks. So there's no frame of reference. And that's a very hard battle to fight.

If I'm keeping my head on the ball here, you're saying Dan needs to do get ready with me videos?

Yeah, that's— he needs to do— he needs to tell us what he's having for dinner. I mean, can you imagine how ridiculous that is? I want to see him prepare a meal on YouTube and I'm going to get a million followers. I just—

I can't.

Got to be an obnoxious dinner. Just the most obnoxious dinner.

Dan Levitard, go pee pee.

Stugatz, go pee pee.

This is the Dan Levitard Show with the Stugatz.

Dan is the single worst person I've ever been to a restaurant.

I've been to a few restaurants with him, but I can imagine. Just the worst.

You just— you have to cater to what his dietary requests are. Nothing can come as is, and you don't even know if the right menu— so basically you just give in and say, you choose the restaurant, and then he'll choose it and then be 20 minutes.

Can I get no garlic?

Was this cooked in air? Was there air around this food?

Sorry.

Is there food in this food?

I don't mean to go after you, but man, it really got to me. The last meal we had is I was just sitting there like wondering, can I just get my spicy tuna roll, please? While they're finagling what they're doing and returning everything they don't want. Can I just get my food?

I don't return anything.

I've never— I never return anything.

You just don't eat it and then order a different thing.

I never return anything. I will not send something back to the kitchen.

We just turn to the waiter and say, "This was bad.

Where's that?" Can I get some gluten-free fries on that salad, please?

Or I go to management and have them fired so I never have to see them again.

What is gluten-free mayo, by the way? Thank you. And who would expect to have that?

Thank you, David.

I think mayo is actually gluten-free under all circumstances.

Yeah, whatever.

There is no gluten in mayo.

You knew the point, Dan.

We think.

Pretty sure, actually.

And the reason this all came up, Dan, is that I was going to review a movie about this very thing. And this is what set me off because I watched this yesterday, this new documentary on Netflix called The Crash. And it is about an influencer who murdered her boyfriend and a different guy in a car crash in Ohio. And I had never heard of this.

Hold on a second. Hold on, hold on. Murder. What happened was, just to be clear, because I saw the documentary too and it was also good, but it was confusing to me how it is she ran into a school, a school building at 100 miles an hour and the people in her car died. I just didn't really understand how it is that she never hit the brakes or how it is that the physics of that accident happened, that she was going that fast. But continue, please. I'm sorry I interrupted you.

I just want to know that's in there. That's the crime, though. That's why she got convicted, because she drove a car into a wall. Now, if you want to murder your boyfriend and somebody else, I can tell you I can't think that driving a car into a a wall makes sense. She was able to survive, and she— there's no way that this 17-year-old girl was able to formulate a plan using physics and calculate and game it out to say, if I crash at this speed at this angle, they'll croak, and I'm only going to have a few broken bones, be in the hospital, and then I'll be fine. And the result is she's in prison. Spoiler alert. But what struck me about the documentary is what these kids are doing in high school and how far removed I am from having that level of either being in touch with it or how jealous I am. And I, I'll admit it, these two girls, her and her friend, do ridiculous stuff on TikTok and Snapchat and Instagram about looking at outfits, etc. And she's got more YouTube subscribers than you, me, and Pablo. How is that possible?

Is what I was thinking while watching this. And then I got the last laugh thinking to myself, yeah, but she's in prison now for at least 15 years and hopefully life. But that's— I don't want to have to go to that in order to make myself feel better.

That's what you got out of the documentary there, David?

That is exactly— that's it, Roy. What I got out of it is I can't imagine she chose to murder with a car crash. I can't believe how many YouTube subscribers she and her friend have. And I cannot for the life of me believe that she went with a bench trial and not a jury trial, because that is a right that you have to just be tried in front of a judge without a jury. You can waive your right to a jury trial because she thought, and her lawyer thought, that she was so unlikable. I think her best chance was to be cute and to be like, oh, murder, I murder. I can't even figure out what I'm wearing on a Wednesday afternoon. I just open clothes from Amazon. Like, I figured that I couldn't believe it that she waived a jury trial.

You do a very poor impersonation of a 17-year-old girl.

I'm thankful for that.

What is the review? Did you like the movie? You're talking about the meat of the movie, but did you think the movie was worth watching?

No, it makes me feel terribly— I don't know. It's— I do not think it's worth it for anyone other than that. You should just know that if this is really what your kid is doing or what you're doing as a high schooler, I think you should maybe think about a different path. But there's a lot better documentaries out there. I agree it's ranked in one. That's how I found it. It was the number one ranked documentary. I had no idea what it was about. Hadn't heard of it. Spoiler alert, didn't know it ended with a conviction. So I watched it and it was whatever, 94 minutes and I'm fine. But it made me feel terribly.

Uh, thank you, David. Uh, so we begin with David saying he was dead inside. Uh, and, uh, now it's, he feels terribly. If you want more David Samson and some more uplifting stuff, uh, pitch Upcoming show, 10 o'clock is coming up later.

It will be uplifting.

I'll be there too.

It is David Samson and Jeremy Tashay. Nothing personal, Chris Cody. Thank you, David. Nice seeing you. Thank you for the time. Speaking of which, he mentioned YouTube subscribers here a moment ago, and South Beach Sessions— this is long, long overdue— South Beach Sessions now has its own channel, and I am requesting that the listeners of this audience support the work that we're doing around here. By subscribing to the new South Beach Sessions YouTube channel. Today's interview is with Tony Hawk. I really enjoyed talking to him for a number of reasons, including that I was almost privy to the delight of having him skateboard to the studio because he always has his skateboard on him. And we talked about— I don't know whether you guys think about this at all, but about how he has a brother named Mike.

All the time.

No, we talked about how—

first question—

injured he has gotten over the years. Let's hear that clip today from South Beach Sessions. And you take me through your body on a journey of the things that you have harmed or have needed surgery. Like if you were to do it from your— from the— from the bottom of your feet to your head.

Sure.

Well, okay. Starting at my feet, I've definitely rolled both my ankles. To such severity that they are almost too loose for safety purposes. I thought I broke it once when I was on tour in France. I mean, I rolled it so far, I just figured, oh, I broke my ankle for sure. Luckily I didn't. I don't really know if that's luck or not. My shins are a disaster. They're just countless stitches. Mm-hmm. I've had, I've had knee surgery, two knee surgeries on both knees, mostly for torn cartilage and torn ligaments. I broke my femur. I broke my pelvis. I recently fractured part of my pelvis, actually. I mean, you might have saw me kind of limping in here. That's getting better, though.

I—

let's see, where do I go from there? I broke my elbow. I've I've dislocated my fingers. I've gotten stitches on both eyebrows numerous, several times. Had a few concussions and knocked out my front teeth 5 times.

He forgot a bunch of them too, because over the course of the interview he started mentioning and remembering other ones.

His name is Mike.

Put it on the poll at Lebatard Show. Did you know that Tony Hawk's name was Mike?

No, no, no, no.

He has a brother.

It's his brother.

He has a brother whose name is Mike.

Michael Hawk.

Put it on the poll. Did you know that Tony Hawk's name was Mike? @LebatardShow. And please subscribe to South Beach Sessions. We've got a bunch of them coming out over the next few months that I really enjoyed doing while we were in California. I got to spend a lot of time with comedians because I heard your criticism, audience. Audience on how bad I've been over the years at interviewing comedians, so I've begun practicing.

Mm-hmm.

That's what I got very good at with Tony Hawk.

He's showing me that if you want access to my actual inner monolog, I'll give it to you here. That sound is me camouflaging.

We don't have enough cameras in here to see how blue his shins are, so it's just me. Like, you did get like a little look over there, like you're Also, thinking of the audio audience, his, his shins are blue. They've got so much damage on them, uh, that that's not a human color, but you couldn't really see it because we didn't have enough camera work in that studio to execute it correctly. So that's all you got in terms of, uh, getting deep inside the intimacy of introspection with Mike Mike Hawk. Mm-hmm.

He's the brother of Michael Hawk.

A couple of corrections from earlier in the show. I said that PBS had done— or did I say that NPR?

You said NPR. No, this is going well.

I said that NPR had done the reporting on concussions, and it was PBS.

And I described— I don't want to get aggregated on this— I described the conversation with Skipper about the mortgages and stuff as one of the biggest fights we had. I'm going to call it a disagreement. It was something that we were having, um, we weren't aligned on. It wasn't—

I do believe I can concur that.

Is that how it works, that if you just say I don't want to get aggravated— aggregated, you don't get aggregated?

You must stop saying that.

And if they do aggregate it, they'll pull in that context.

Yeah, they always do.

That's not how it works, but I'm only interested in how it is our audience receives it. I don't care what anyone else does with it. So it doesn't much matter after that. But I just wanted to get, uh, the facts right on that, uh, subject. Uh, I want to talk about, um, the Stephen Colbert stuff, but we do not have time inside of this segment. So we'll start the next hour, uh, on the Stephen Colbert stuff because I do want to celebrate something that is ending tonight and makes me sad that it's ending. And it's not necessarily the show So it's the time that is making me sad and it's the roots of it because they really did it. That show introduced me to stand-up comedy. I had not known that it was something that existed, not Colbert, but as The Letterman Show, the first time I ever saw Letterman. So I want to get into that next.