Transcript of Hour 1: Pablo Torre Is Tired Of Winning Awards (feat. Pablo Torre) New

This is The Dan Levitard Show with the Stugatz Podcast.

This episode of The Dan Levitard Show is presented by DraftKings. DraftKings, the crown is yours.

There are times that Valerie will catch me just sort of shaking my head about something, and she can usually spot when I'm being hard on myself about something. So about 10 o'clock last night, I'm just sort of shaking my head, and she wonders why. And it's the ridiculousness of me thinking that I shouldn't have allowed Zazz yesterday to call a genre of movie time travel, because that's just sci-fi. And so if I'm doing that to myself at 10 PM last night over that mistake that I allowed time travel to be its own genre of movie instead of making it sci-fi, how do you think I'm going to be doing tonight or many years from now on Boricua?

Yeah, that was bad when you said Boricue. Which didn't really make any sense. But to, to help Zazz here for a second, time travel and sci-fi are two different things.

You're so off base.

Yeah, sci-fi is like space.

Yeah, and that's like saying that, that, you know, shark being a genre, as if shark movies are not horror.

No, but that's the thing. Shark is such a big— I'm saying shark— the thing I was asking you guys yesterday is what breaks off of its genre to become its own genre the way sharks has. No other animal can do it. And so that's the point that I was making, that there are just a certain number of genres, and now a shark goes in the heist category where it's a different genre from action, from thriller, from horror.

When you used to go to Blockbuster Video— I mean, what a time to be alive— when you used to go to Blockbuster and you would go up and down the aisles, you— there would be suspense, there was drama, there was action, there's comedy. There was no shark. It never said shark.

Uh, yeah, that's, uh, true. But also, Greg Cody, the last time he was on with us before he had to rest for Thursday night's show, uh, Greg Cody, uh, disputed what I was saying, which is the fact that Jaws is the number one horror of all time, and he was saying that's not horror, it's its own genre. The shark is over here with— there are so many of these made that it's become its own genre. And it's the question I was asking you guys, like, what else is, is like that? Time travel is not— it fits under sci-fi. It's just, it's not a time travel movie, it's a sci-fi movie.

Uh, to Zazz's point, Back to the Future. Would you call that a sci-fi movie? It is. It is a time travel movie. There are time travel comedies.

Hot Tub Time Machine.

Uh, put it on the poll, please. @LebatardShow, is Back to the Future a sci-fi movie? Yes or no?

Also, baseball. Baseball movie is its own genre. There are dramas, there are base— there are comedies.

That's sports.

No, baseball is totally separate from all the other sports movies. There are so many more baseball movies.

Yeah, but you could do that with every sport.

There are hockey movies, there are football movies, there are baseball movies.

That's fine, that's fine.

Okay, but baseball is the genre that supersedes the rest of them.

But it doesn't make it a non-sports genre.

It is, it's its own genre. Baseball movies are totally separate from the rest of them.

You're embarrassing yourself.

Yeah, can we subscribe to Zazz's Blockbuster Video analogy? That's a good one. When you walk down the aisles at Blockbuster Video, The, uh, the shark movie is classified depending on, you know, the, the plot, either sci-fi or horror.

Unless I go into one that knows great, uh, great many things about marketing, and during Shark Week they have just all their shark movies in one area because that's the way a clever, uh, person decided to do it because the shark movie is its own genre.

You're making an exception for a special seasonal rack?

I'm, I'm making—

this is ridiculous.

I'm making an exception for the shark block.

This is crazy. This is worse than the MLB Network does that.

Do you have the sound of me saying Boricua incorrectly? Boricue.

Whoa.

That's going to be like Spo with the Pistons calling the timeout when he didn't have one. You're going to wake up in the middle of the night like Boricue.

On my deathbed.

On your deathbed. I'm going to be next to you and Roy's going to be there and be like, I'll never forgive you.

Yeah, you're going to point and laugh at me. Boricue.

Morene.

Boricue.

Boricue.

Morene.

Boricua. Can you tell me something about the Boricua hot dog in Pittsburgh, please? I didn't know there was such a thing as a Puerto Rican hot dog.

Combines Puerto Rican flavors with Pittsburgh style.

I'm in on this.

Features a hot dog topped with sofrito beef, sauerkraut, American cheese, yellow mustard, ketchup, braised onions, and potato sticks. It seems like the only thing that is Hispanic about this whatsoever is the sofrito and the potato sticks. Other than that, a completely regular hot dog.

Pablo Torre is going to join us, but I think, Chris, you should just play randomly in between his answers the way that people in Pittsburgh pronounce Boricua.

Boricua.

To be fair to them, to be fair to them, like if you're thinking like with a Hispanic brain of like, all right, I don't know Spanish, but like let me try and figure this out. The CUA, the C-U-A makes sense to them in their mind.

Boricua.

I heard an L in there.

That didn't sound like Cuba, C-U-A. That didn't sound like the mistake that was being made by any of the other broadcasters except the first one.

Boriquian.

That doesn't sound like Cuba. That doesn't sound like Cuba. That doesn't sound like Cuba tampoco. That one does. Pablo Torre continues to do extraordinary work. Tony, give me a little bit of a sampling of some of the deeper terrain that Pablo has been mining here over the last couple of months, all of the deep dives that he has done into very serious subject matter to make the old gray lady proud.

Yeah, the right-wing takeover comments. Okay, I haven't heard that one before. Uh, Prince banned, but documentary, the only thing that he's seen, nobody else has seen it. Okay, great. All right, cool. Share a squirrel with Al Duncan. All right, sure. Don't go to the Lakers. We, we unraveled the case of the mob hit that saved Vegas. That one actually is interesting. I might listen to that one.

This is a fascinating window into the Hispanic brain, as Tony called it, by the way. Thank you for letting me see a live focus grouping.

Uh, do you want to know the brain of the Heat fan? Because Mike Ryan claimed to know that, uh, earlier in the show. Do you, are you interested in that? That brain?

Yeah, mentally ill. It's sports MAGA. There's a whole cult of personality, there's an ideology, there's a refusal to capitulate, there's the eternal optimism that the next time it's gonna work out while you're left holding the bag.

Then you yourself are the Tea Party.

Who's the Donald Trump, Mike, of MAGA? Pat Ryan.

Pat Ryan. And then Jeremy is, you know, those— what?

Cash Patel? What? Dan Bongino?

I think Bongino is a good one for Jeremy. I'm Tucker Carlson.

Uh, can you guys get for me please anything related to Cash Patel so that I can just put up on the screen, uh, a means— in a means impersonation of Cash Patel before we get into Pablo's newest reporting? This is a cool story, by the way. Uh, it—

it—

we have not seen a lot of examples of him getting as close as he has to the idea that the O'Neill is indeed going to get Infowars from Alex Jones. This is something that has been talked about for more than a year. And before we get to that though, Pablo, just what are your thoughts on what's happening at The Atlantic and in government where Kash Patel, the FBI director, is behaving like a frat boy? According to reports, he is suing for $250 million because The Atlantic has reported an exhaustively reported story that has in some cases as many as 9 sources on the information, uh, things that are really embarrassing. Drinking way too much, so much that you have to be, uh, woken up by staffers and they can't wake you up. Uh, missing meetings, uh, running around when you get locked out on your computer telling everybody you've been fired, uh, because you're so afraid to lose the power. What do you make of what is happening all around Kash Patel and a journalism industry, Pablo, that 10 years from now I don't think is gonna be fortified enough to do this kind of reporting if future governments are able to take over what this game plan has been?

You know, it's fascinating to see the FBI— again, the FBI director as a job was once a job that really struck fear, terror into the hearts of anyone who dared oppose it. And so Kash Patel, on a couple of levels, he's had enemies emerge, not only among media members, clearly at The Atlantic, um, in terms of what they're reporting that he doesn't like, but also actual what they called, what he himself called, the deep state, the agents, the federal agents who work inside of the FBI. And so it's important to remember, like, the FBI is not staffed by woke ideologues. A lot of what the pushback has been towards Kash Patel has revolved around how embarrassing it is that, again, a former podcaster who trafficked in conspiracy theories around how Donald Trump is basically the second coming of Jesus, how that guy is running the foremost intelligence agency in America. And so from that perspective, you're getting people who are just horrified that that guy has his finger on what feels like the controls of the deep state. And these are other deep staters, not journalists. And so all of these people come together, and in this story, to just zoom out on it, you know, they are filling in the blanks.

And they also interviewed hospitality workers. You know, this is a sort of panoramic view of stuff that lots of people have been saying piecemeal, including, by the way, us at PTFO. We reported a story about how much Kash Patel loves hockey. This is before he showed up, obviously, in the locker room of the gold medal game where the USA won and he was like chugging beers and stuff. We reported that on Sundays the FBI knows to leave him alone because he plays on his rec league hockey team in D.C. called the Dons and how he like loves— and he's like one of the guys, right? I mean, Roy, Roy's a hockey bro. He knows what it's like. I mean, this is, this is sort of a portrait of what this guy is really into. And so this story, a $250 million lawsuit, what it smells like to me is desperation. It's a guy who has no other moves to make outside of threatening and trying to intimidate using an apparatus that used to be a lot more threatening and intimidating. And meanwhile, I think the larger rumor is, oh, this guy's about to be fired.

Donald Trump will fire him because he's now useless to him.

Uh, I want to show you and play for you some sound that we're late getting to as we're, you know, at war with Iran and Pete Hegseth in a cabinet of fools and people that are—

Military incursion.

—incompetent that are trying to break the government. The idea that Hegseth would, in the pages of the Bible while in the middle of war, would read to a breakfast group of Catholics while, incidentally, J.D. Vance is telling the Pope that he needs to be careful how he speaks on matters of theology. These goons, these clowns, these imposters, and these incompetents. Hegseth doing this at a prayer breakfast and reading straight from what he thinks is the Bible. What did you do with this?

They, they call it Caesar 2517, which I think is meant to reflect Ezekiel 25:17. So the prayer is Caesar 2517, and it reads— and pray with me, please— The path of the downed aviator is beset on all sides by the iniquities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who in the name of camaraderie and duty shepherd the lost through the valley of darkness, for he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to capture and destroy my brother. And you will know my call sign is Sandy One when I lay my vengeance upon thee. And amen. Where does he think that's from?

The Bible.

Imagine bowing your head solemnly for Quentin Tarantino. That's incredible. How did nobody perk up? It's because, because it's too dangerous to perk up. I mean, on some— look, I am, I am Catholic, all the sacraments, got married in the Catholic Church, all that. It's sort of the outer limits of what I thought was even possible in the world of humor with this administration, that we are now with J.D. Vance, an adult convert to Catholicism, and Pete Hegseth, who is proclaiming his religiosity. We are actually asking non-rhetorically the question, is the Pope Catholic? That is what they are doing. They are challenging the premise of like, I know you guys think that the Pope is a real authority on the word of God, but what about me? And then they do that. That's the pretext for what that scene was. And it's, Dan, I don't even, at a certain point, the joke does tell itself. Like that's where we are. And if you wanna pretend like they're religious when they do this stuff, when Donald Trump is truly posting a photo of him, AI generated as actually Jesus. A doctor. Sorry. Red Cross worker. Doctor.

I actually thought for a moment that he might not know what Jesus looks like 'cause he's so pretentious. Pretending to be Catholic, that he may have been fooled by the idea that it was a doctor. I, I could have found my way to believing just that he doesn't know Jesus that much that he would think it's a doctor.

Best theory that I've gotten, which you'll notice this tell, like when he's talking about those that are seeking political asylum, he'll often say like they're from insane asylums. The best explanation that I heard is someone on his team gave him like the reason, like just say the image was doctored. And all he retained was like, I'm a doctor.

Yep, I've heard that theory. That's my favorite theory too. Folks, listen up, quick break in the action.

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Pablo leads all of podcasting in reading while smiling. If you listen to ESPN Daily, he sounds like he's having the time of his life. Stugatz! Coming up next, I'm going to tell you how the Savannah bananas are changing things. How do you know I'm a fan of bananas?

How do you know I'm smiling? That's how I find my vocal range. Sometimes I just say Savannah bananas. Savannah bananas.

Yeah, this is the Don Levitar Show with the Stugatz. Can I kind of say one more thing about the, about, about the, the Trump Jesus stuff? At a certain point, there was— I think it was actually, it was pre his election. He's asked one of the most— I don't know if you guys can pull the video. I'm sorry, video team. No, no, they can't. I'm sorry. It's, it's— he's interviewed by John Heilemann, I think Mark Halperin, and Trump is being interviewed by them. And they ask him, what's your favorite book of the Bible? And he can't come up with one. Then they say, are you an Old Testament guy or New Testament guy? He says both. Like he just does it. It's one of the great tells. And it happened before he was even elected. And everything since then has basically been worse than being unable to quote anything or even identify which book of the Bible or Testament that you liked.

I think his response was all of it. All of it. I can't, I can't just pick one. All the verses.

It's like when he was asked, he was asked, what is the, you know, what's the best book of all time? And because he hasn't read any books, it's like mine. Art of the Deal. Yeah. Part of the deal. Uh, can you just tell me though, as the finds out guy, what do you think happened there with Hegseth? Like, give me your best theory on what happened there that he's quoting Pulp Fiction instead of the Bible.

I, I, I, I think it's perfect. I think if you largely consume religious principle through whatever your media diet is and you don't actually go to any of the places that try to authentically teach you what God is supposed to be or could be might mean, you end up just retaining movie quotes. And who cannot relate to that on some level? Like, if you were to poll Americans, what's your favorite Bible verse? I'm guessing some people might accidentally quote Pulp Fiction. It's just different, though, when the guy who's doing it is also in charge of the war in Iran and is also trying to beat Americans over the head with his religiosity because they're not religious enough.

I have a number of things that I want to get to with you today from your recent reporting. But what is it that you're most excited to share? Because you've got one thing that you've done with The Wire— I'm sorry, it's a Wired investigation, it's not The Wire, it's a Wired investigation, it's not your investigation.

A very different investigation if it was with The Wire. That is correct. We did take notes, we did take notes on a criminal conspiracy, one might argue.

It would be cooler, but Wired investigation reveals some stuff with the MSG surveillance program that is kind of crazy, but I also think this Onion story is just delicious.

Yeah, I mean, look, yesterday we had the pleasure of making Metal Ark Media history when Alex Jones reposted a clip of Pablo Torre Finds Out. And so when a shirtless Alex Jones is furiously tweeting about this company, I think we've on some level made it, or the opposite. I can't tell if this is a peak or rock bottom, but we're now sort of beefing with Alex Jones. And so to be along for the ride on this story with The Onion, and for those who are not familiar, The Onion had a year and a half ago declared that they had just gotten the rights to Infowars in bankruptcy court because Alex Jones, for those unfamiliar, runs Infowars. Alex Jones had falsely claimed that the Sandy Hook shooting was a hoax resulting in, and this is an important statistic, the largest defamation payout in American history, $1.4 billion. That guy had to go and put a stop puts his stuff up for bankruptcy. And so The Onion, after a year and a half of legal fighting, has finally struck a deal. We broke the news yesterday and we interviewed Ben Collins, the CEO of The Onion, about it.

And we're now beefing with Alex Jones. So congrats.

So it costs $81,000 a month. What do they intend to do with it?

So they've done something that I think is, is more than just like a stunt. I think they're making a real media enterprise. They've hired Tim Heidecker of Tim and Eric, who is, for those unfamiliar, he's an incredible, incredible artist and comedian and actor to be Alex Jones. And so The Onion has done this thing over time when every part of media that becomes ascendant, they end up, of course, parodying. And so it started with the newspaper, The Onion. It went to The Onion News Network, which was cable news. It went to Clickhole, which was a BuzzFeed parody. And now they've moved, they found their podcasting arm, their YouTube arm, which is Infowars. And so they've hired Tim Heidecker, they've hired one of the producers behind, uh, Nathan for You, which is one of the great shows. Uh, and so they're making, they're gonna make stuff with it. And I think that's, it's just a rare thing to have like horrible, a hor— a horrible abuse of free speech that results in punishment cuz you've been victimizing the parents of of, you know, murdered children, for that to result in actual comedy that might do some good.

It's just one of the rare feel-good stories at this rate that we have sort of been able to experience recently.

It's, uh, it's not just smart, uh, is it good business? Because, uh, it, it's clever, but paying $81,000 a month to take an established brand that you are, and an established audience, uh, that you are now turning into parody material, my guess is you're going to lose the entirety of that you've bought a brand at $81,000 a month. There, there, there aren't a lot of media outlets that have the firepower or the credibility to turn that into something. Turning it into comedy so that Nathan Fielder and types like that can actually do something in an alternate space is, uh, is smart as an idea. Is it smart as a business?

I mean, look, it is one of the swings that like giant media companies used to make and independent ones couldn't. And so it's definitely an ongoing experiment. We are going to have to buy a lot of the pills they're going to sell. Like, to be clear, that's the other part of the business, is that like they're gonna have to sell Alex Jones brain pills. And so we're going to need to buy a lot of those to support this project. That is unfortunately also part of the business.

Before we get to the Knicks and MSG, here's that video you requested of Donald Trump.

Thank you, thank you, video team. Okay, you mentioned the Bible.

You've been talking about how it's your favorite book, and you said, I think last night in Iowa, some people are surprised wise that you say that. I'm wondering what one or two of your most favored Bible, uh, verses are.

I wouldn't want to get into it because to me that's very personal. You know, when I talk about the Bible, it's very personal, so I don't want to get into verses. I don't want to get into it.

It means a lot to you that you think about or cite?

The Bible means a lot to me, but I don't want to get into specifics.

Even to cite a verse?

No, I don't want to do that.

I mean, Old Testament guy or New Testament? Uh, probably equal.

I I think it's just an incredible— the whole Bible is an incredible— I joke very much so. They always hold up the Art of the Deal. I say my second favorite book of all time. But, uh, I just think the Bible is just something very special.

I mean, it's pretty good. Pretty good answer. Also pretty good.

Mere moments ago, Pablo Torre won yet another award. Pablo Torre finds out has won the Sports Podcast Webby Award alongside New Heights with Jason and Travis Kelce. Oh!

Where we share it? Yep. Sorry, I mean, thank you. I mean, thank you. Jeez. Holy shit. Don't clip that.

I mean, it's live. Oh, it's live. Jeremy, any particular reason you said it like that? What do you mean? No human being talks the way you delivered that news. That's not how anybody talks. I, I, I—

That's how you talk, Dan. Oh, goddamn. Boricué.

Why are you lashing out at me? I'm just asking why it is you delivered breaking news as if it was your time to shine.

That's a very personal question, and I'd rather answer that at another time.

Pablo, congratulations. I thank you.

Thanks to your support, Dan. The Kelce brothers and I have always been peers, so it's good to be recognized simultaneously.

The Kelce brothers could not be here, so Pablo will accept their award on their behalf.

Do you think Taylor, my sister-in-law, via this podcast that I co-share with— award that I co-share with her future husband—

that is one of the worst acceptance speeches I've ever heard. Your lack of grace. That impersonation. His lack of grace is Amazing. But here's the other thing. Let me let you, uh, look inside of the soul of Pablo Torre, because much like Mike Ryan knows the brain of the Heat fan, I know the brain of this man. Do you know how much work he's put into tying beer-swilling Kelsey brothers who show up at their podcast and just belch into a microphone and call Taylor Swift? Like, so to tie them— when the amount of work and danger to tie them— he's insulted by that.

I don't think you watch New Heights. I'm not, I'm not insulted at all. I— oh, so hold I don't like that implication. How dare you try to psychoanalyze me on live whatever this is, this program that you do. How dare you? How dare you? The Kelce brothers are incredibly talented. They are models of American masculinity, and I endorse them as well. Please don't get mad at me, Taylor Swift fans, that I'm not realizing might not think that this is a bid in any way.

You were not excited about this news. I would think as much as you love winning awards, that that would have been exciting, and you weren't excited.

I gotta confess something. I'm glad we're doing this live, I guess, now. The awards thing, I don't know, my nerve endings, I think, have been burnt off. I just don't— I just don't think they'd do it for me anymore, Dan. And I, I, I don't say this because I've won too much. I still have not intellectually. I say that because I was hoping they would fill the void.

All time!

Very good! What do you want? Why? Hispanic chicken.

Are you tired? Are you tired of winning awards? Is that what you just said?

No, I'm just saying, I thought, I don't know. I think we just did something live that I did not anticipate, which is that my response to winning a thing that I am genuinely so proud for our staff and for this company and all this stuff, it just, the EKG chart, man, I'm like, I'm like dead inside, I guess. I don't know. I thought this would make me happy and it doesn't.

I've won so much that winning isn't everything and money isn't everything.

And I realize I have all these things now and they aren't everything.

Tell you what, send the message along to whoever sent in the Slack to go ahead and vote for you guys.

What if the real podcast award was the friends we made along the way, Mike?

He just reacted to winning Podcast of the Year to my nerve endings have been fried off. Like, what kind of acceptance speech is that? I've never heard that response to somebody being honored by something.

Guys, I got a lot of fronts going on. I'm fighting with Alex Jones. I think James Dolan is trying to potentially investigate me. I don't really know what's happening right now. I thank you to the Webbies. You clip that one.

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Dan Lebatard! To us residents? Oh wow!

It's in there! Better! You think I haven't been practicing?

Stugatz!

I didn't realize we had a substitute complicated legacy by Toyota, 441 Powerline Road.

Second down and 9. This is the Dan Levatar Show with the Stugatz.

I got a question for you, Pablo. You know better than most. Can I start photoshopping Kawhi in the Heat uniform, or do I need to stand by for a punitive measure?

Oh gosh, I, I, you know, I've been waiting to talk about this with you guys. I don't know if I'm ready to talk about it yet, but I, I can't— please, please, if I may pray to Pete Hekseth's Jesus, please Lord, make Kawhi Leonard a member of the Miami Heat. Please.

Let's, let's make an agreement because you seem to want that too. This is big. If that happens, you gotta promise to lay off.

Yeah, I don't think you know how this is gonna go necessarily.

So you're saying we can lowball Maybe Tyler and a pick, take it or leave it.

I think what he was just saying is—

He's setting a trap for the Heat is what he's doing.

Throw in a tree. We're not falling for this again.

He's setting a trap for the Heat fans.

It happened with Terry Rozier.

That's what he's doing. What he's doing— the reason he's praying for it—

I'm not doing anything.

The reason you were praying for it with your fingers crossed is because you wanted Mike Ryan in Miami embarrassed by trading for Kawhi, and then there's a Terry Rozier situation and the penalty. Makes it so that Miami is actually laughed at.

You're the one that's going to have to deal with Cortez on a daily basis.

I was going to say, the number one person who might assassinate me at this rate would be Ryan Cortez. It would be very easy for him to do that.

The Knicks story was interesting, and again, it's Wired's investigation, and Pablo is just giving it to the public. And this is MSG's statement, I will say, for legal purposes, quote, quote, this story is built on false, misleading, and unverified allegations, including claims drawn from lawsuits filed by litigators. Uh, I didn't want to read the word rapacious. Uh, we categorically reject such reckless reporting and are actively evaluating our legal options against Wired. Uh, end quote. What is Wired reporting that MSG is so bothered about?

Yes, so thank you for reading that legal disclaimer. This is the part where the show that we do is both very silly and also trying to dance between the raindrops drops of litigation from a very wealthy person and his billionaire assets. So MSG, if you listen to James Dolan, has said for a very long time that safety and terrorism are the concerns, the reasons why he has installed what has been the most cutting-edge facial recognition and surveillance program among any sports team and any of the sports arenas that exist in America. And what Wired, in collaboration with PTFO— and they did the bulk of the reporting, and all we did was make sure that we felt comfortable co-signing this by doing a bit of reporting of our own, which which we so enthusiastically did, what we learned was that first off, the New York Police Department does not send its data to MSG. The FBI does not share its most wanted list into the MSG system. So immediately you're like, okay, wait a minute. So if terrorism is the claim and that's not what's happening on the backend of the system, what do they use this surveillance for?

And the answer is exhaustively detailed in the episode we did and in the reporting that Wired published, which is that for, for instance, James Dolan and the Knicks, their security apparatus, they spent, I believe it was like 20 or so pages, a file that we obtained tracking second by second with internal cameras a transgender superfan as she was moving around the building. There's a whole dossier. When I say second by second, I mean we have timestamps, we have photos from the cameras, we have the descriptions of what's happening opening, hugged security guard, moved down to section 10, whatever. We have that exhaustively, right? So they're watching a trans person go in and out of the bathroom, literally, and associating with MSG employees that she was at that point friendly with. That's one example. Another example of what they do, we got a group chat from Garden Security in which we see in text, in the transcript of this group chat, reminding me a little bit of the Pete Hegseth chat that was hacked into, or not even hacked into, excuse me, that was just added into that Atlantic reporting. There was a security group chat in which the guards are watching the fans, and as soon as a fan chants, sell the team, they scramble.

You see the text scramble. We got to sell the team in Section 10, whatever. And they send the guards to try and find them, and they play like Marco Polo with those fans trying to identify them. They heard a Dolan sucks. They're scrambling to another part of the building. That's part of what they're doing with this security apparatus. There's also, by the way, the basic fact that James Dolan gets a readout, a briefing in which the tweets that are said about him are read to him. So if you've made jokes about James Dolan on Twitter, James Dolan, it is entirely likely, has read them. And what they do with those is that they sometimes, according to the reporting, they will call up a local police department in, say, Colorado, not even in New York State, state to tell them that apparently, in the case of one story that was reported, some 14-year-old in Colorado was tweeting mean things about James Dolan. And so the picture that emerges is an incredibly personal, an incredibly petty security state that is not used for safety, but it is used to punish critics and to prevent the embarrassment of the guy who does not realize that through attempting to prevent embarrassment, he is only embarrassing obviously himself and his team.

James Dolan has received over $1 billion in tax breaks over the years. What is the one thing that you think fans should know about a billionaire owner being able to keep tabs on fans that say bad things about him this way?

That this is how it starts. It is very telling and worrying that James Dolan is the first real case study we have of this because he is both the cutting edge and also just the start. Steve Ballmer, the Intuit dome, they have replaced standard ticketing in Inglewood, California with your face. You've seen this, I'm sure, at other arenas. You've seen it at the airport. And the airport, you know, is one thing. I can imagine the argument for it. I opt into that. I'm not saying that surveillance for the sake of safety is insane. I am not one of these radical people who believes that we should not have security in any regard at airports. but at a building that takes, in the case of the Garden, certainly tax breaks and public money. As we expand out to the privately owned arenas that we all think are some mixture of both our favorite place to be because we can express ourselves, we can boo, we can cheer, we can criticize, we can praise, and also is a civic institution that does have some sort of hand-in-hand relationship with our government. I think we just got to change our expectations for what the people who own these teams want to do with us, with the fans.

And if you don't express any amount of discomfort about that, if you don't just go along with it, I mean, I think you're really running an experiment in which you're giving tacit approval, tacit license to a version of sports that may seem sort of sci-fi and, and abstract. Time travel until you see what they're doing.

Uh, have you been following this Sam Altman, Elon Musk, uh, lawsuit stuff? Because for those of you who have not, what seems to be happening here— and Elon Musk is saying that AI is more dangerous than nukes, and, uh, Sam Altman, according to reporting by Ronan Farrow and others, seems to be an uncommonly, uh, ambitious liar at every and so the thing that I wanted to ask you about that is it seems to me that Elon Musk is the OG of sort of creating all of these evil sort of descendants who are now these very young Sam Bankman-Frieds or the guys running the Polymarkets where these tech bros have just learned all the things they needed to learn from Elon Musk. And now he's like Mark Cuban and there are sharks that are younger than him. And Elon Musk is now suing Altman. What is happening here and what are you interested in here as OpenAI becomes, kind of threat that I think people are vastly underestimating. I will, I will rewind it, actually.

I think it starts with Bill Gates and Microsoft, and Steve Ballmer occurs in that story, too, incidentally. But I say that because the type of person that we've seen from Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg to Elon Musk to Sam Altman and to all of the AI founders in Silicon Valley now has been a common thread. And technologically, of course, we can be afraid. Is this a nuclear weapon? Is this Geraldo's vault in which we're all promised something and it's not in there? Right. Debate. And I think it's very interesting when annihilation is part of the sales pitch, right? That's something to the argument that's happening between Musk and Altman. But the larger picture that I think is important for people to remember is that the common thread through all of those tech CEO founders has been anti-competitiveness. It has been wanting to be a monopoly. It has been preventing regulation. And the reason why that's interesting to me is because 'Cause Elon Musk was in business with Sam Altman. Now they want to kill each other. There can only be one, right? Well, how does that matter to anybody who's listening, who's just a fan, who's a customer in America?

It's because Silicon Valley has been so deeply against anything resembling government oversight of AI, of social media, of any of these tech platforms. So against regulation. And the reason they say it is because we need to innovate, we need to beat China. The problem, especially, and this is before the era of this administration, which is so deeply corrupt, obviously. The problem is in the absence of competition, you get worse products. The customer is not prioritized. The through line in all the topics we're talking about from surveillance to AI and all this stuff is that the customer comes last. They don't think about you except to mine you for money. And if you don't regulate artificial intelligence, which neither, by the way, Elon Musk nor Sam Altman want, if you don't provide some government oversight with a government that is not here to also mine you for money, which is the whole story of this administration, then you're entering a world in which the products you get are worse. The, the economy you live in is worse. Like that's the, the last note on this whole spiel I have is that the government, if you are pro-capitalism, Capitalism needs to be regulated because in the absence of it, you get corruption.

You get what happened in Hungary. And the reason I bring up Hungary is because JD Vance was just campaigning over there praising it. And what happened? They lost in a massive landslide election. Viktor Orbán lost, this autocrat who's most similar, actually, governmentally to the United States. And why did he lose? In part because the economy fucking fell apart. The people were like, "Oh, we're worse. We're worse off as customers." And so forget about what you think about the lib principles here. If you care about your own welfare and the products you use, you should be deeply concerned that these are the people in charge.

Pablo Torre finds out he wins awards and yawns about it because it's merely a tie. Thank you, Pablo. You should listen and watch what it is that he's doing because it's pioneering, it's groundbreaking. He is doing things in the space no one else is doing except for the Kelseys. Uh, thank you.

Gracias. We were awesome that segment.

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