Transcript of Hour 1: The Game Pablo Torre Loves (feat. The Riddler of Sports Journalism)

Okay, Nicolas.

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Pablo Torre is getting ready right now, and I don't know if you guys saw what it is that Pablo did at the Sloan conference. Pablo. But Mike, as Pablo gets ready to join us here, do you want to file any of your objections? I will tell the people, first of all, if you didn't see what he did at the Sloan conference, he, I guess, taped. I don't know whether he did it personally or someone else did, but the The latest smoking gun, the biggest of the smoking guns that there has been in the nine-part Kauai investigation, was taped to the chair in which Adam Silver was sitting so that the smoking gun was literally under the commissioners' nose as he sat on a panel giving a conference. Mike Ryan somehow found a way to criticize Pablo for this.

Yeah, the internet and myself are all wondering, why is Pablo trying to be the riddler? Yes, it was an impressive, and look, drawn out, overly dramatic, self-involved. These things go hand in hand with Pablo Tori.

That should be the name of the podcast instead of Pablo Tori finds out.

All right. It ends on this cliffhanger, even though he was promising this knockout punch. I'm like, did I see the knockout punch? Or are there two more bits of evidence out there? Also, I asked, what was in the two other envelopes that were under two randomly selected chairs? Because Pablo, on top of being the Riddler, was also Oprah during this thing. And Amin's like, I don't even know what's in those envelopes. Were we trying to start a who done it? Is this a caper? The search functionality on X is terrible, so I can't actually find these other wayward envelopes. It was naval gazing. It was quintessential Pablo Torre in that there was really good journalism being done, but it was also very overly dramatic. Pablo, what say you?

Let's see if we get his sound up here in a second. Pablo does not appear to be ready for your what say you because he took those insults, all of them, right on the chin. He was smiling during many of them. He shouldn't have been. He should be indignant because he's doing very difficult work, and he's doing it theatrically because he can't help himself. I have two questions.

Has anyone called him Pabloopra yet?

And Dan, do you ever get worried about potentially potentially crossing Pablo as his boss here?

Because he seems to be a vindictive sociopath.

Good question.

Well, it is dramatic, and I don't know what was under the other seats. I was a little confused by that. I think he was giving those people also the documented proof, Mike, you're underwhelmed by what is really difficult to do journalism. You keep saying, Give me more of a smoking gun, when every time he does a report, it is more of a smoking gun, and this is the most smoking a gun has been around this, where he's got the documentation of a whistleblower telling the government. There's paperwork saying, Look, this is all allegedly a contrivance meant to just pay Kawhi Leonard where no one's looking.

No, it was the lead in the whistleblower complaint. That was the nuts. That was the big revelation that in this whistleblower complaint to the federal government, the lead was they're trying to circumvent the MBA salary cap with Kawhi's endorsement deal. I'm not the person saying, Give me more of a smoking gun. Pablo Torre is. He said there's two more smoking guns underneath two more random chairs, and he ended his live podcast on a cliffhanger, and the broadcast cut out, and it pissed me off.

Yeah, he's doing this in dribs and drabs, and he's doing this because he's got it months in advance and he's way ahead of this story. So Pablo, defend yourself.

Hi, guys. Can you hear me now? Yes. Good? Yes. I appreciate the insult and the conversation as always. Part of what I want to do is always, and this is the curse of me, is draw attention to what we're doing. Because I unfortunately think we're at this phase where I thought we were going to be done after episode 2, and we're not. The MBA investigation is ongoing. The MBA investigation has been a focus of what we did at Sloan on Friday live, which is to say I talked to five former Aspiration employees who all told me that they were They were not asked by Wachtell Lipton, the MBA's preferred outside investigation firm. They were not asked directly about Steve Ballmer by name. I am not just dumping all of this as fast as I can because I'm trying to be first on everything. I'm trying to make sure I get it right. I'm only dropping stuff when there is reason to say, Oh, maybe it's actually worth considering that attention must be drawn to a story that I think the NBA is actively trying to minimize. And so that's part of why we opened it, part of why me and David had no idea what they were getting in for.

It's why we did at a conference where Adam Silver was on those very chairs hours earlier before, of course, going to meet Donald Trump at the White House in ways that I could not have possibly scripted.

What was under the other two chairs? For those who don't know, Sloan conference is the Dorka Balooza. A lot of the smartest people in sports get together, and they congratulate each other for an assortment of things. Under the chair of Adam Silver was a smoking gun. What was under the two other chairs in the audience that you placed in? What were the seats? Because you are trying to be the Riddler. There's no dispute on that.

Mike said they were random chairs. It was Rose K and Rose L, seat number two.

But what was there? See, he's even more like the Riddler.

Yeah, but what was there? I don't want to solve your... I get it. K and L and two.

I get it. Unfortunately, that is for the people sitting in those chairs to reveal. They have those documents now. Get them to answer the question. The whistleblower complaint. The whistleblower complaint. I'm not here to step on further reporting. Just know that the reporting continues. The whistleblower complaint was many pages long. You've done nine of these. There's lots more to find out. That was the ninth one. Mike, I'm as surprised as anybody that we're going to have a 10th, right? I'm genuinely as surprised as anybody. It's something, though, in the whistleblower complaint that I don't want to just speed past as we get to whatever sequel is here, because I just want to clarify. This is the document that started the actual federal investigation into Aspiration. The co-founder of Aspiration, Joe Sandberg, was prosecuted. He played guilty to wire fraud. His co-conspirator, Ibrahim Al-Husseini, who was a board member of Aspiration, prosecuted, played guilty to wire fraud. Those things happened because of the roadmap laid out in this document, which had been rumored for a very long time inside of Aspiration, but no one had ever seen before because a whistleblower complaint, is confidential. One of the things that has happened that has enabled the reporting, and by the way, this is why, when I say I have to get it right, I really do wait for the actual document.

The evidence is now undeniable in terms of, did these federal whistleblowers under penalty of perjury put into writing in March of 2023, years before I ever even published part one? Did they say the thing that people have since accused me of grafting and grifting onto a story in retrospect? Why would they ever be talking about caps or convention? This is a larger criminal enterprise. What does it matter that anyone care about the salary cap? Well, this is part nine, parts one through 8, explained that. Here is the keystone in case anybody still had remaining doubt. You can see it on screen. It says, Even to pay Clippers to forward Kawhi Leonard an incentivized bonus to circumvent the NBA salary cap disguised as an organic marketing sponsorship agreement. By the way, we've provided contracts of that agreement. We've provided bank statements of money in and money out. We now have a whistleblower complaint under perjury from two Aspiration employees. The only way, by the way, this comes together is because in poetic symmetry with Adam Silver going to the White House, this administration has effectively turned over multiple federal agencies that have been investigating this story.

The Department of Justice, the SEC, the CFTC, the three agencies that these whistleblowers reported to, those are all shells of themselves. My ability to report the story, it is panoramic at this point. It's like I'm going to every possible place, and that's the only way you can get to the bottom of a story like this. The question is, who else is doing that?

One of the things that I see happening, and I just think that it really shows great ignorance about, and I will keep saying this, the degree of difficulty on getting documentation that is vetted that makes for proof. A lot of people are saying, Wake me up when there is something that's an update as the updates are incremental. They are updates. Bruce Arthur, the Canadian columnist, is saying, Pablo delivers again. There's simply no other plausible scenario other than Capser Convention in the Kauai case. Why do you believe that what's happened so far represents the greatest proof of any kind that you have as it relates to a smoking gun? And how can you possibly say there's a lot more to find out here?

I want to credit Bruce Arthur because Bruce, of course, covers the Raptors in Toronto. He had heard and has reported since what Dennis Robertson, Kauai's unlicensed representative, his uncle, had been requesting of the Raptors. And he had been requesting, per Bruce's reporting, a no-show job and equity in a company that he didn't have to do any work for. That is the story, incidentally, of Aspiration. These requests were made. The question is, how were they delivered? Here we have nine parts showing that. Credit to Bruce for truly reporting out That aspect of the story. To me, there are three indisputable examples of why this is Capsure Convention. The first one was in the first episode. It was that no one ever announced this deal. Why would an endorsement deal be secret? I've been waiting for any... I had Mark Cuban in the studio at length asking, why would this ever remain confidential, an endorsement agreement with Kawhi Leonard, in which not only did he do nothing, you never announced it. Why would that never be announced? Why would that be protected by the Clippers?

When you say do nothing, the alleged no-show job that he was paid for that required him to do nothing.

He was signed to a $28 million contract, an endorsement agreement that he did nothing for. In fact, the greatest example is that they never even announced that the endorsement contract existed, even as Kawhi was getting paid to never talk about it. Why would the Clippers and Kawhi and Aspiration all agree none of us should not only... We should never say anything about this, we should deny it in the future? What other reason other than this needed to be a secret deal to violate the NBA salary cap? What other reason would there be? This is just the logical documentation and evidence around that part. The second thing is the fact that Dennis Wong, the Clipper's co-owner, Steve Ballmer has one co-owner of the Clippers. It's rare, Dan. A 99 to one ownership group, two Two people. One guy was 99, one guy was 1%. Dennis Wong went to Harvard with Steve Ballmer. He is his close friend. He is the vice chairman of the Clippers. He, as we've reported exhaustively, when Aspiration was in default, Dennis Wong had never put money in before, and he decides in December of 2022, I'm going to invest $2 million into a broke company that I know via the disclosure form on the contract, which we also published.

We know that they are under investigation by the SEC. We know that they have no money. They're broke. I'm going to invest as if they're a normal company. Then nine days later, Kawhi Leonard will be paid $1. 75 million as quarterly payment to do nothing after months of not getting paid that sum because Aspiration had burned through all of their money. Why would they do that? Why would they pay Kawhi when they had no other money to pay anything? Why would they pay the guy that is a secret endorser who does nothing nine days after the The owner of the Clippers puts in money for the first time, the only outside investor to give money to aspiration. No one's ever explained any other plausible money in, money out explanation for that. That's the second thing. The third thing, we're just talking about what feels the most indisputable, the rankings here. The third thing is this complaint, the whistleblower complaint under penalty of perjury to the federal government in 2023. One of the questions has always been, why is it that you have all these anonymous sources, even on tape, voice modulated. It's very easy to say, in retrospect, they were circumventing the cap because maybe you were convinced by episode one, maybe you were just connecting dots on your own.

This complaint shows in writing under federal penalty that can be prosecuted if you knowingly lie that people said this long before I ever heard of the company. I'm okay with the demand for a smoking gun. All I ask of anybody who takes that side of the argument is to provide one alternative explanation to Bruce Arthur's point that it's something else. Tell me what you think explains this, and no one has ever plausibly done that.

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Limited time offer. Don hard. 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.

Stugats. Coming up next, I'm going to tell you the Savannah Bananas are changing face. How do you Savannah Bananas. How do you know I'm smiling? That's how I find my vocal range. Sometimes I just say, Savannah Bananas.

Savannah Bananas.

This is the Dan Levatard show with the Stugats.

These documents are really difficult to get a hold of unless you're randomly seated in rows K and L at the Sloan conference, and then it's just in your possession. Pablo, did you embargo this? Because you ended the episode on a cliffhanger, and I just assumed, well, since two randos have these documents, I'll just check social media and this will be posted there. But I haven't heard what's in these envelopes at all. Are they in your employ? How have you kept this buttoned up?

Well, I'm a careful person. I'm a careful guy. Why even do that? Because I don't think you need anything I genuinely think that after part one, and let's say part two, the first two things in this power rankings are the three things that are most undeniable. That was accomplished in the first two episodes. Everything else has been further proof, reporting, sourcing, dissection, counter argument, pressure testing, all that stuff for seven months. If anybody wants more, there is more. But frankly, I don't think I need to say what else is out there. I guess I'll get to it at some point, though.

Two questions, Pablo. One, did you run into Adam Silver at all at the conference? And two, have you heard it all from Mark Hubin lately?

Mark has disappeared. Mark has summarily disappeared. It's interesting that the episode I did with Dan, when I brought Dan in for one of the Aspiration episodes, it was about the carbon credit stuff. We retraced that in this episode, part nine on Friday at Dan was the first person to experience that. I bring that up because the reason I booked Dan for that episode was because I wanted to get Mark Cuban, and I had to settle for another Cuban. Mark was the person who first theorized, if we were going to do... It's true. It's true. The question that Mark Cuban theorized was, if you're going to do Capsular Convention, you do it through carbon credits. I'm not going to redo all of the Friday episode. Here, although I've basically started to. It's, yes, great point. We show that that is also what happened here. Mark Cuban has disappeared, which is, I think, telling as to your point. Adam went almost immediately From that stage to, I presume, this is just my connecting of the dots, how you get to Washington, DC, in time for a four o'clock meeting with the President, from Boston, where he was.

He went right to the private jet, I assume, to the White House. No. Although, again, the number of people who were in the audience, these are all characters who I think, might have thumbs on the scale of what the NBA does, and we'll see whether that was persuasive to them.

Take us through how it is that physically you got the document taped under his chair, and did you literally want the evidence to be right under his nose?

It didn't start... As much as I like being the something like the Joker or the Riddler.

The Riddler. You're not the Joker. The Riddler. You're not the Joker as evidence by this sound. I think that's better. You're not the Joker. You don't get to be the Joker. You can be the Riddler.

That's a good photo.

The Joker would have killed him.

Adam Silver looks like somebody who could be a villain in one of these movies. He just physically, more than anyone in sports. But how is it physically? Take me through the thought process, the decision television and who physically did it.

Yeah. So again, I'm not the Riddler. I'm somebody who got invited to do a panel at Sloan and thought to myself, who else is speaking at Sloan? Oh, wow. Adam Silver is speaking earlier in the day in the same lecture hall, and I'm going to have David and Amin there. How can I convey to David and Amin this new information? Well, typically I'd give them folders, but there's not a desk. So what if we do it some other way? And then I thought, well, it'd be funny because I'm an American who grew up in the age of daytime television. It'd be funny if I did the Oprah thing and was like, look under your chairs, there's a gift for you. Instead of a car you got to pay taxes on, it's this document. I thought, wait a minute. If we put those documents under David and Amin's chairs, early enough in the day, it's possible that Adam would be sitting in that same chair. I had one of our producers, who will remain nameless, perhaps for legal reasons, show up at Sloan at 07: 00 AM on Friday and tape it underneath the chairs. I should say, for legal reasons as well, Darryl Mori, the organizer and the co founder of the conference, had no idea what we were doing.

Nobody at the conference was in on this in the way that, of course, our staff was. For that reason, we just woke up really early, and it turned out that, yes, these were the chairs.

I should mention that Balmer and the Clippers continued to deny all wrongdoing. They declined to comment for this episode, as they have for a while, and they say they are fully cooperating with the NBA's investigation that was sparked by Pablo. Pablo is up for yet more awards, I should tell you. 2026 iHeart podcast awards are next Monday at South by Southwest. He is nominated for podcast of the Year. He's also up for best host. So podcast of the Year, he's going up against The Daily, Call Her Daddy, The Breakfast Club, Mel Robbins, Theo Vawn, all the big names in podcasting. And on best host, Amy Poehler and Emma Chamberlain and also Alex Cooper from Call Her Daddy. The biggest award that you have been proudest to win so far, and do you expect to win this one? Because the work you're doing is unlike anything anyone, never mind sports podcasting, anyone anywhere is doing in podcasting.

Yeah, look, no one for better and for worse in the award stuff is for the better. I'm heartened that people have felt boxed in enough journalism that they feel like they got to put us into those categories, frankly, because we're doing it in a way that no one else is doing it for better and for worse, which is to say with these documents. I would love to get to a point where the sheer force of my charisma is the reason why I'm in a category with Amy Poehler in any way. But no, man, it says we're doing journalism. We're really showing the power of doing evidence audience-driven reporting. I am so thrilled that we've been included because it's weird. It's a bunch of people that I would say billionaires would love to invite to a cocktail party and then the one person who they absolutely don't. I take pride in that. I take pride in the fact that it's a weird thing for us to be in those rooms.

Who's on the other side of arguing the other side of this right now? Who are you hearing from? And are you willing to say that Mark Cuban is now hiding from you in a sheer act of cowardice?

If Mark Cuban is out there, I would love for you to come back on the show. He came in studio and we talked at length and he was such a delight. Then he tweeted nothing after it came out, and he stopped talking about aspiration entirely. I'm just curious why. I'm not going to call him a coward. I'm merely going to say that his silence has been conspicuous, and I'd like to figure out if his thinking has changed.

He was team bomber. Since, he's been very, very, very, very, very 10 years ago that the President of the United States could become the President of the United States, taking a hatchet to journalism. People hate journalists more than just about any occupation. It's right up there with used car salesman and agent and lawyer in terms of not liking somebody. You, despite doing legitimately extraordinary work, have now become polarizing, at least in part because you do it as the riddler and you do it with some self-involvement and you call it charisma. I call it hateability that you were taught at the knee of us. You? Yes, of us. Yeah, exactly.

I learned it from you, dad, by the way.

Dan, I learned it from you, Dan, said in the voice of dad.

That I'm going to froidian slip?

You have been surprised by the reaction and who's on the other side of this because you keep presenting facts that make it damn near impossible to be on the other side of this because of all of the things that you said, show me the There's some alternative reasoning here that no one can explain.

Yeah, look, the reason that I do the theater of this is from a place of, wow, I got invited to this conference to do a live show. How can I make this interesting? Then it was, if I'm going to do another chapter in this series that people are pretty numb to because I think most people out there, by the way, fans, head coaches, owners, general managers, when I run into them, when I see them at games, at conferences, they all agree that this is egregious. These allegations feel like they deserve punishment. These alleged schemes must warrant punishment. That's what I hear all the time. I'm not saying that people are idiots who don't get what I'm saying. I think they largely do. The theatricality comes from the premise of journalism needs kids' entertainment to cut through. I was a writer who only wrote. I was a TV person who only gasbagged. Now I'm trying to do both of them together because I am at odds, I guess, with what is required otherwise to make an impact. I decided, Fine, I'll play the game, too, and I enjoy the game. And so that's why I do it that way.

The people who are on the other side of this, though, frankly, it's people who who cover and talk about the NBA, who find that this story should be adjudicated by the NBA. I'm like, Guys, I'm not here to say that we're Woodward and Bernstein. I'm not here to say that this is the President being forced to resign. I'm not saying that. All I'm simply saying is that if you ever talk about cheating in sports, if you talk about caps or convention, which is how you get the most important assets in this sport, star players, to join a team which everybody cares about so deeply that entire off seasons, entire seasons are overshadowed by the acquisition of star players. That's the whole thing with NBA Twitter. We're obsessed with it. I'm telling you, the most egregious, and the Ringer has said this to its credit, the most egregious cap circumvention scandal in history, allegedly, is this one. Why would you leave it to the NBA to tell you how big a deal it is or not? Months removed from its initial impact such that the footprint of it, the accountability the importance of it can be reduced.

I come at that, and this is where I do feel like I just got to reassert something. I do this because I'm actually a sports fan, because I grew up loving the NBA, because I grew up writing into a little notebook, the Dream Team statistics, and fetishized the New York Knicks, and admiring Michael Jordan despite my fandom of the Knicks, and going to games, and really caring about this thing, and then watching our sport, my favorite sport, become a thing that built up credibility over time, that became a very popular mainstream product welcomed into American homes all around the world as well. They decided to get into business with a bunch of people who, frankly, are misrepresenting the truth of what they're doing to the public. I mean this to say in the Epstein class sense. I mean this to say in the crypto scammer sense. I mean this to say in the sovereign wealth fund sense. I mean I have to say in the Silicon Valley sense. Certainly in the case of a company like Aspiration, which the MBA and the Clippers decided to present to the public as if this was a real company, and they didn't do the due diligence.

They're still, it seems, allegedly not doing the due diligence. And the question of what has happened, what's that meme? What's happened to the game I love? The reason I'm on this and why I'm not leaving it to the NBA to tell you what's really happening here is because I think the truth when comes to sports should be taken seriously. I got to be a turd in the punch ball sometimes, I guess, to do that. Also that, and also literally the Riddler.

Perhaps you've also noticed that when he gives the Ringer credit or Bruce Arthur credit and he says, to their credit, it's only when they're saying that he's done exactly the correct thing the most correctly. You've noticed that perhaps that he doles out credit to people who already agree with him on things, and the whole exercise is it's fairly masturbatory, but it does seem- Well, it becomes less masturbatory the more participants become something else.

There are other terms for it. It's true.

Thank you, Jeremy. I appreciate you- He's right. When he's right, he's right. I appreciate you- To my credit. Cosigning on that. Yes, to your credit, to your masturbatory credit, wherever it is there's one person masturbating verbally, you'll get right in and masturbate verbally even more than that.

Here, I have to masturbatorially be right about the Miami Heat.

But Pablo has people there to help him when it comes to the Clippers.

By the way, Pablo, what do you think of the five-game win streak for the heat?

Anyway, the other things that Pablo is doing, because he is doing an extraordinary job on Pablo Tori finds out, is every episode has something interesting in it. You just did one on AI. When you say the sport I love, the social media parts that I used to love, Mike Ryan just pointed out on X how hard it is to search for things. Mina Kimes is pointing that Google doesn't help her do her job anymore because it's been so contaminated as a search engine. I was alarmed by your recent reporting on artificial intelligence. You've done a couple of pieces on this. What is the last and most recent information that you found most interesting about just how damaging and dangerous artificial intelligence is?

Economically speaking, I'm talking to all these experts who are far better versed in the industry of artificial intelligence than I am, there's just no way of avoiding the sinking feeling that AI is becoming too big to fail, which is to say that Emina was a great voice to this as a former business journalist herself. We're being sold a product, and we're being told that this product is so popular and so good. Whether or not that resonates with you at home using AI in the way that you do or the money pouring into it from the US economy is unprecedented. The speed of money and the scale of money entering artificial intelligence as an industry is so enormous that we are going to get to a point that reminded us, me and Mina, of 2008, the great financial crisis, when we were both reporters working in New York City, and there were companies, there were banks that were too big to fail. What does that even mean for those who forgot the great financial crisis? It literally meant that there was so much money tied up in certain financial institutions that even though those institutions were corrupt and betraying the public in the most definitional ways and were not using that money responsibly, in fact, collapsing the economy, the US people, us, the government, public money, had to save those companies to prop them up.

Otherwise, the economy would have been even worse. So AI is getting to that same point. There is so much money propping up AI, which is in turn boosting the US economy. When you think about the most valuable companies in the world, like NVIDIA, these chip makers that are funding the processing that AI runs on. When you think about OpenAI, when you think about Anthropic, when you think about Google, these are all comp. Apple is getting into the AI, is already in the AI business. All these companies are saying AI is the future. Cool. Real, and before they have to prove its use to the people, to customers in real life, they're getting investment such that if those products end up being not a thing people want to actually pay for. What's the actual business at the end of this? Mina was asking the question, are real people paying for these AI products or are companies, are enterprise customers paying for them? Therefore, it seems like a lot of normal people are, but really, it's just companies paying other companies to boost stock prices. If If that's the case, and AI as a product turns out to not be the revelation, then by the time those stocks fall, the US economy will be so reliant upon them that we may have to bail them out, too.

They will become too big to fail, which is to say we are inviting potentially another economic crisis if we don't watch where the money is going. That is a little bit terrifying. Don Levatard.

There are sunglasses in boxes today, but in my bed in the hospital, ending our lives all the same. Stugats. ♪ It's the final nightgown.

♪ This is the Dan Levatard Show with the Stugats.

Have any of you guys seen the movie 2073, 2073? It is put out there as a dystopian future action movie, but it's actually a documentary inside of it, and all of it's horrifying. What is presently happening with the government of the United States, for example, being so brazenly purchased by billionaires, more brazenly than we've ever It's always been so, but the government being used right now by billionaires to create a dystopian future that separates the billionaires from all of the little people, I had to turn it off in the middle of it because the truth is so horrifying. Your podcast with Mina felt the same way. The truth is so horrifying. I wanted to turn it off because there's no coming back from where we already are.

That is a downside for us in the awards category as we've been entered into, that people find the things we're reporting to be so horrifying.

It's not call her daddy. It's not Call Her Daddy. That's not what you're doing. Those shouldn't be in the same category.

We're reporting on glucking of a different kind in this case. In this case, it is the administration of our country and the corporate leaders that you're referring to. Yeah, man, it's scary. It's scary. Again, the water is warm, by the way. It's just It's funny, dad, that, again, the I learned it from you stuff. I think there's a lot of room for people to make an impact here talking about this stuff. Maybe people have made a calculation that serves them best, and that's okay on some level, but I don't know. It just seems like in the documentary of our time, and this is the exercise I always try to do, 10 years from now in the documentary of our time, which character are you going to be? I think people are maybe not making the right choice on that.

The name of the podcast is Pablo Tori Finds Out. Can we do something a little more uplifting when we talk about the end of the world? Die. We're all going to die. We're all going to die. We're all going to die. The sky seems to be falling and we're all wondering why. Let's turn on the news and find out how we're going to die. Thank you, Pablo. Pablo Tori finds out. It really is extraordinary. I urge all of you to check it out. I remember when the quaint apocalyptic movie, was it called 2011 or 2012 with John Cusack, the movie where he's just driving as fast as he can-I like that movie. As Earth falls apart behind him. It seems quaint and charming and fossilized. Just an antique compared to where it is that we are actually headed. You like the movie? Is it 2011 or 2012? I think it's 2012. 2012. Where the Statue of Liberty just falls into the ocean.

I like those apocalyptic type... What's the one with Jake Gyllenhaal as well, right?

Day After Tomorrow?

I like that movie, too. Yeah, I like those films.

We're living in the middle of it right now. We are at the center of it. So let's distract ourselves with the Miami of Ohio, Undefeated. We're going to say Miami heat.

Oh, man. Thank you for finally bringing it to the Spectacle of the Sporting Weekend. It was a great weekend for sports. It's basically sports equinox. You got a million things going on, and I was positively dialed, sound on, to Miami of Ohio at Ohio.

A college basketball game in the hundreds, them going back and forth with each other into overtime.

I mean, the lighting in the arena was terrible. It had a film on it when you were watching the game broadcast, and it was like another time. It was March basketball. It was everybody clear out of the way. We're giving it to the best player, Scrappy, number 13 in white, Pavelski, trying to hold on to this this rivalry advantage that Ohio has had over Miami, Ohio. Miami, Ohio, undefeated this season in college basketball, gunning for their 30th victory. Ohio had had victories over their rival, I think dating back at home since 2011. So this was a huge win streak, and the game frigging delivered. Back and forth the entire time, heroic shot making, absolute cags from each team, and such hate from the Ohio attendees. That at the end of it... Has Jeff Goodman tweeted? Because at the end of it, they were mother bleeps and bleep you, and smiling faces, hidden meanings, projectiles. It was a scene. I loved it. It was the best basketball game I'd seen this year.

Miami of Ohio against Ohio. Ohio was a small dog in the game. Miami of Ohio ends a perfect season, Zazlo, that nobody believes is going anywhere in the tournament because they've had the 300th toughest schedule or something like that. The last time I checked, it was at 2: 80, and they're an undefeated team playing against Ohio on the road, and they're just a four-point favorite because everyone knows that team is not all that good, even though it's undefeated.

They are not favored to win their conference. Akron is.

Whatever. If you're undefeated, you make the tournament. If you're playing Division One basketball and you don't lose a single game in your regular season, you deserve to be in the tournament.

In one college sport. Yeah.

But it has so much juice to it. And they've had several of these games where they survive when you don't think they are.

That's a fun story. It's also a TV show. When the committee is making their selections this weekend, you don't I think that's going to have some juice to it. Miami of Ohio, first round game, Thursday or Friday the following week. That game's got some juice to it. I want to check that out.

Man, they got this little... You would think that the underdog, undefeated Miami, Ohio team would be beloved, but they've been villains. I don't want them to continue to be undefeated. And now I've come around like, I rock with these guys. They're trying to be bad guys when no one believes in them. They're trying to bully people around when they're a half feet tall. It's great to see.

Who would you rather have in the tournament, undefeated Miami of Ohio or a 15 lost Auburn? Get the hell out of here. Get the hell out of here.

When Mike Ryan says no one believes in them, I saw him wandering around During our break, trying to get someone to believe him that the Ben Shapiro eyebrow situation- No. Wasn't photoshopped, wasn't altered by others. There's no way, Mike, this can't be real. It's not real.

I have multiple. I have videos from his social media, selfie videos.

Look at that. Oh, yeah. Videos are never fake.

He posted this himself.

He has Tom Selleck's mustache above each eye.

That is a selfie video that he posted.

That is not real. How do you even get eyebrows like that? Nobody says, Hey, I'm going to grow out my eyebrows. That's not a thing. You can't just... You can grow out your hair, you can grow out your beard. You don't grow out eyebrows.

Put it on the poll, please, @LebitardShow. It's not real. Does Ben Shapiro have Tom Selleck's mustache over each one of his eyes? This doesn't seem- Dan, that's not real. Like it can be real. Occasionally, someone will send me a picture or a video of me that day that Ron McGill said that I looked like a Pappi Chulo when I was just doing an impersonation of somebody who had done a fake, highly questionable with me and Bomani, and I had just painted on my eyebrows and on my mustache, something so very dark as to clearly be fake. Over the weekend, I saw a Hispanic crooner of some sort, an old guy, singing with Tony Bennett, who had... Yes, thank you. That's him right there. Look at that, Zazlo. Which is the more egregious offense between those two people? I am remiss in not knowing who that Latin legend is. Well, yeah.

See, that's the thing. That guy's eyebrows, he may have been born with those eyebrows. That may be just how he looks. Ben Shapiro all of a sudden is showing up with a Bush above each eye.

It's not real. It is real. All the videos are real. I understand the skepticism I shared in it, and then I researched the internet for 15 minutes to try to find evidence to the contrary. He dies the eyebrows, but he also made them busier. It's irrefutable. Gender affirming care.

My mother has rarely been more frustrated with my father than when it is that he would go from totally gray at work when he was an industrial engineer and the plant manager for a fiber glass company in Hialea, he would go from totally gray to looking the following day like this Latin crooner because he had painted everything black.

Mike, you know I have one rule to live by, right?

Don't place parlays on multiple long shots. Don't say a game is one when it hasn't hit triple zero.

Always drink your Jägermeister ice cold. That's the rule. Everything else is merely a suggestion.

Everything else? Everything else. Wearing clean underwear every day?

Well, that's just a personal decision.

Brushing your teeth?

Obviously smart, but not a rule.

Never PP on an electric fence.

Okay, maybe there are two rules, but the one that is 100% that I insist on completely, Jägermeister must be drunk ice cold. Or don't drink it at all.

Damn, that's cold.

Exactly. You're finally starting to get it.

Drink responsibly. Jägermeister L'Core, 35% alcohol by volume, imported by Mass Jägermeister US, White Plains, New York.