Transcript of Hour 1: The Little Doubt Monster (feat. Elle Duncan)

This is the Dan Levatore Show with the Stukatz podcast. Al Michiels is going to join us here later in the show. El Duncan as well. She hosted that Skyscraper live event on Netflix. And I got to think that most humans have the same reaction that I do, except for those daredevil types. I don't know. What is the name of that sport where people, and I don't know how you get good at this, dive off the side of the with wings and a GoPro. The squirrel suit? Yeah, the squirrel suit, and then just fly along the side of a mountain. Watching others do that makes me queezy. It seems flippant about life.

I also have no idea how you get good at that. Base jumping? Yeah.

Let's try that for the first time.

Yeah. In other sports, it's like, Miss that shot. Let's keep working. I don't know. It seems like a pretty high-stakes game. Bucket punishment?

It's not like Tom braided getting better with reps at Hey, KB, can you help me?

You're on this squirrel suit.

When does the trainer say, I think you're ready.

It feels like you got to be pretty sure.

I don't know that all of you have the same feeling because I haven't talked to you about any of this, but I assume that most people who are not adrenaline junkies or daredevils, when they see the guy from Free Solo, Alex Hanold, walk, and it's fairly safe for him because he's this good at He's not actually fearing death, even though his family fears death, and there is the possibility of death. I also meant to ask Samson, I don't know how you get something like that insured. It seems impossible to put something like that on live television and have a zero % chance that you're not going to be televising a live death in a way that we've never seen on television before.

Well, we'll ask Seth Rollins.

But him climbing that skyscraper, when I see the wind blowing his shirt and and I see no ropes and no protection devices, I'm filled with a queasiness that makes me not want to watch it. The daredevil nature of it, I understand that it gets people to tune in, but it's exactly the reason I don't want to tune in. I don't want to feel like that when watching something.

I'm looking forward to talking to Elle because she relayed an anecdote where she says five minutes before they went live on Netflix, the producer handed her a card of what she's to say if he falls and dies.

I like that. I was going to ask her about that.

Five minutes before.

What was Seth going to say?

We can't do an ad read if we're handed it five minutes before.

That's wild. Look, I saw it on mute, so I would love to know how that went because I imagine there's a lot of personal stories, but is there two and a half hours of also like, he's still going?

No, it was 90 minutes total. They're at talking to him throughout it. Oh, really? The scariest part, and then there are some people in the climbing game. I'm watching it. Everyone I'm watching with, we are stressed. It looks scary as shit. But climber people on the internet, I've seen videos of compared to rock climbing, this is like climbing a ladder. There are people out there that this was super easy and that for him, he wasn't stressed with this.

Then, I mean, Seth knows about that.

El couldn't talk to him at the top, which makes for an awkward interview. They lost him a few times. How does it The scariest moments were when he would take a break and go to the edge and just lean over and look.

Isn't the whole thing an edge?

No, but because there were parts where he got to lofts. There were 10 different parts where you climb up something scary, and then you're on a loft and then you have to climb up again. There would be times where he could just stop and rest. Those were the scariest parts. He would literally go right up to the edge.

It wasn't edge, it was Seth Rollins.

I'm looking forward to talking to Al Michael's as well later in the show. I got to talk to Darren Waller for South Beach Sessions. It came out today, and you guys make fun of me for the tissues and stuff. But one of the things that we're aspiring to do with South Beach Sessions, and this clip will not indicate it, the rest of it will, is to get to a vulnerable place with people who are happy and willing to do so because they care to share their story. Now, if you don't know Darren Waller's story, it has addiction in it. Also, he went dark during his divorce as a whole lot of people made fun of him because he made a music video trying to express himself about the hurt in that divorce. To me, it's super interesting to see and hear someone built like that who plays like that. He's a mutant, right? Everybody wants a tight end like this, one of these guys who can run through the seam, and he can't be covered by smaller defensive backs because he's just too big and athletic. But Here's Darren Waller talking about, and I'd like to see him back with the Dolphins for a number of different reasons because he's good at football being chief among them.

But here's Darren Waller talking about the Dolphins and what the prospects might be for him returning next year. He was the one in the middle, I should remind people, of the exit meeting when Mike McDaniel was fired by Steven Ross, and that exit meeting ended in both Darren Waller's exit from the season and Mike McDaniel's exit from the building. This season was a bit of a disaster, not for you, but for the team. Everybody gets fired. I don't even know what your relationship right now is with football. If you want to play again, if you want to play for the Dolphins, if you've gotten to the place where no, that was... Imagine how many touchstones I could have if I wasn't just coming off the couch because I didn't know that I needed to do this a little better.

Yeah, that's definitely a lot of what I've been thinking. Throughout the season, there was like, I could feel myself drifting back and forth between, I feel like I could do this for however long. Then it's like the The injuries and the frustrations are like, I can't keep doing this to myself and floating back and forth. So now is the time that I have to sit with both parts, have a board of directors meeting with both parts of me and be like, Okay, what are we doing here? Let's look at the pros and cons of each of these directions, and we can make a decision from there. But playing football again and starting to lay the foundation, going somewhere, investing in my training with professionals that can direct my performance and have me be able to take on that load is something that I'm considering. But yeah, this is a time for me to reflect on that.

This time of season is exactly when not to ask football players if they want to keep playing because none of them do, because their bodies are just busted up. And so, Jeremy was saying earlier that Drake May, in a human moment, is saying to Josh McDaniels, Man, this is really hard. And McDaniels is saying, Yeah, and all fulfilling things are hard. But I don't think any of us listening to this or even enjoying football understand what price glory. Like, Okay, I love the gladiator glory and the money. How much pain am I willing to endure daily when I get up? Because everything hurts and I don't want to actually go to work to go get what Sunday's give me. You guys, I think about this a lot just very simply, you're making a tackle and your hand gets caught between helmets. That happens all the time in football. All their fingers are sideways. They can't hold change. They can't turn a car on with keys. That's not automatic because of what happens to their fingers because a very small thing that they'd laugh you off the field if you came off the field for a dislocated finger.

You're not allowed. You need to stay out there. Someone's going to take your job who will play with the fingers all busted up if you run off the field. Do you guys consider it all? I know we all think, Man, that must be fun on Sundays or to play in the Super Bowl or to be at the height of that, the gladiator glory. Do you guys ever think at all about what you would trade in terms of pain in order to have those things that just about everybody wants? Because the longer they make these seasons, that college football season is crazy, how long that is for college athletes. It's It's crazy that Indiana just won more games in a season than anyone since Yale in the 1890s because nobody knew back then what the dangers of football were, and nobody knew back then what the commerce of football is, is that we all need more games. The whole point of it is not actually to measure and get a champion. The point of it is make sure the games are on television so that everybody gets their money.

What's the question again?

Are you asking how much physical pain I would endure for my team to win?

For glory. It's not just physical pain. Yeah, it's not just physical pain. For the gladiator glory. The idea of playing in the Super Bowl is all of us would like to win the Super Bowl. Everybody listening to this would like to be the reason that the Super Bowl is won. I'm asking you, how much pain are you willing to endure? Alex Hanold got paid $500,000 for what he did. It's not enough. It's obviously not enough. It's about $500,000. I heard an interview with him where he's saying, Compared to what other people in sports are getting for this, it's ridiculous. But if he hadn't done it, somebody else would have. They wanted to get the most famous guy at this, and so they could get him really cheap for that. I read him talking about how his wife feels about all it. She doesn't want him to do any of it. Free Solo, the movie, was a great movie because it wasn't just about him climbing a mountain. It was about her trying to climb the mountain of a relationship with a man who's crazy. He goes out and he risks his life all the time, and she's worried about it all the time, and he doesn't worry about it as much because these people who do these things can't measure consequences the way the rest of us do.

And so we can't be them. It's not possible to be them. I'm literally asking you, Mike, how much pain would you be willing to endure for the things that you want the most? Physical pain, mostly, because I got to think that's the worst pain there is in football. It's worse than the emotional pain.

I don't know if I'm the right guy to ask. I did spring football, and I was like, This hurts. My coach sucks. I'm out.

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Don Lebatard. Florida claws back from down 2: 0 because they were getting their asses handed to them by Toronto to then get lit a fire underneath them by their head coach, Paul Maurice, who did the thing. Remember how the run was sparked last year? Stugatz. He called them a bunch of P's and B's. He did the thing again. Called them a bunch of P's and B's, and then boom, five unanswered. You win the division. This is the Dan Levatard show with the Stugats.

You got me thinking now they should have had just a regular person climb that building. That would have been interesting.

That would have been compelling. Yeah.

Can you imagine? Can you imagine if Roy did it?

What if it's like the hunger games and they have people lined up and they draw a number and you got to make money.

No, that's some There's 500K.

There's a bag, 500K at the top of the building.

That's where Seth Rollins could really come in handy analysis.

Because he's grabbed the briefcase a couple of times, Dan. The money in the bank.

Yeah, I got that.

The most legendary cash. You remember the one in Santa Clara? Yep. It was Roman Reigns versus Brock Lesner.

How about I was-Physical battle. How about I was there this past summer when he returned and he cashed in on punk.

And he threw out the-The crutch.

He fooled everyone. That was a moment. I was there. You were there? I was there. I sat ringside. What a pop, huh? Best night of wrestling I've ever been to. Wow.

How many nights of wrestling have you been to?

A lot. Yeah, a couple of dozen, I'd say. But You weren't at the Russellmania where Seth cashed in. No. He's got the two best cash-ins, right?

Yes, he does.

What's your top five cash-ins?

Oh, wow. Well, those two for sure.

Let's do this. Yep.

Let's do it.

Well, that's not how you do it. You don't say those two for sure and then make it a three. Yeah, I'll give you time. Okay.

In the interim, I would like to talk to you about what you've been doing recently with your television viewing habits, because I don't know if there is a more rewatchable show. I love Breaking Bad. I love The Wire. I love a lot of television, but I don't know that there's been in my lifetime a more rewatchable show than The Sopranos. It's just very easy to check in at any point. I've done it twice now, and I've been tempted to do it a third time. Really? Yeah, because it's just so easy to watch, and it's fascinating to see ground zero on television for the entire genre of suits and all these other shows where the people can be bad and you're still rooting for the bad people. To my recollection, it started there as an art form, I've told the story before. David Chase tells the story, and spoiler alert to any of you who have not seen the Sopranos, that it was very close to ending after season one. He had to fight like hell thinking it was going to end because he's saying, No, Tony Soprano needs to kill someone on screen. He needs to be a murderer for me to tell the rest of this story.

I want to test people and see if they'll root for a murderer for the rest of this story. And HBO, which pushes all the limits, did not want him to do that. And the show almost died after one season because of that. And so I can always watch. I'll always stop on an episode of The Sopranos. I don't do much scrolling anymore, but if I'm scrolling, I will stop.

So two nights ago, I just finished my first ever rewatch of The Sopranos. I've been watching it again over the past month and a half, two months, and I got through the whole thing two nights ago, and I hadn't seen it. I'll stop every now and then. If it's a marathon, I'll watch an episode here and there. But I just watched it straight through again for the first time in probably 20 years. All right? And I'll tell you, I had a very different experience with that show this time around. Obviously, incredible show. That's not going to change. But two things stood out the most to me. Number one, the show was really funny. I guess I didn't notice how funny it was the first time around because the first time around, I'm in my 20s watching it.

I don't know. And it's discovery. You're seeing something for the first time, and you're not used to something like that being funny, so you wouldn't expect it to be funny.

You can't rewind it back then.

If we're talking rewatchable, the goat of rewatching, you got to go lighter. You guys are going way too stressful. I don't do traumas. Give me Seinfeld every day of the week.

I don't like rewatching comedy.

I've never done a drama rewatch.

The Modern Day is Modern Family. The Modern Seinfeld, I can put Modern Family any episode.

No, I want to watch the story. If I'm rewatching, I'm watching a story again.

By the way, Seinfeld, that's the original rooting for bad people.

Well, so two things that I noticed again watching Sopranos. Number one, the show's really funny. Number two, and this is more so what stood out to me, I obviously knew it because he's a mob boss, and that's what the show is about. It's about Tony, and he's a mob boss and everything that comes with it. Thank you, Zaz. But Tony Soprano was a real piece of shit.

And you root for him. That was the thing about that show.

Yeah, and the first time watching, it's like, yeah, I'm obviously rooting for him, and I like this character, and I don't want bad things to happen to him. And watching it now, again, I guess because I'm 20 years older and I'm a real grown up, he is a really, really bad person.

I think for me, the best rewatchable is The Office. They live individually, but then as you watch them as a long narrative, Michael falls in love, then falls out of love, has a marriage that ends it, and then goes to find his love somewhere else in Colorado. That narrative and that story arc goes with all these different permutations of the story and then comes back to tell that one main story.

For me, it's Scrubs and the evolution of JD's character and his friendship with turk.

We go comedies as we did.

I don't get it. I would never rewatch a comedy.

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That was a good sigh.

That was a good sigh.

He's been bad today. He's been really bad for him.

And he's known it because he just leave. That never happens. That's twice today.

He just left. He wore that one. I'm going to write a note down. Okay. Not one thing in particular. It was just overall on the balance of the day, he was bad. Jeremy I eat.

That's a show I don't want to rewatch, Jeremy.

I want to talk about a couple of the things that you guys just brought up there. Put on the poll, please, @LevitargeShowjuju, is The Sopranos really funny? But When you talk about character evolution, one of the things you will find interesting if you rewatch The Sopranos is how much James Gandolfini changed the character from the first season to the sixth. When I've read things about this, Gandolfini was very insecure and didn't think it was working and thought he was bad the first season as he was trying to find what the character had to be because they were reinventing television. But the thing that you guys are doing while I understand is a different conversation than the one that I'm having. All of the things you guys have mentioned are exactly what it is that you check in on, and you're right when you call it light. If you just want a quick 20 minutes of something. You don't want to invest in something large, something that takes an investment of days or series. Just give me 20, 30 minutes of something, and let me just have my cotton candy and be done with it. I understand the Sopranos is not neat and tidy like that.

Yeah, that's heavy. I like it's always sunny. There's an It's always sunny in Philadelphia rave coming to town in two days. Oh, wow. I'm interested in that. Dayman with a beat drop? You kidding me?

Isn't there a big three, Championship, Celebration, Block Party around here somewhere? We need to end up at some of these places, the weird things that come to Miami.

Yeah, but they need to give me a little bit more access. Come on now, you're the big three. You need to guarantee Lance Stevenson. We need to talk. We need to rub elbows with the people. Way to butter them up. It's Katie Meyer night. I need to get guaranteed access to Mario Brothers.

Michael Bees is going to be there, Dan. I need to talk to MB.

It's a block party. They're doing a block party.

Yeah, in Coconet Grove. They're getting their rings. Kudos.

A A ring ceremony?

Yeah, this is Tuttletown USA. What are you on about? Are you not aware?

Tony, did you say kudos or barakudos? No, kudos.

That's what I call kudos.

I thought you were giving them kudos for winning the champion. No, I would never say that.

Tipping your chef. No, I would never say that.

It's a courtyard. It's a beautiful It's true that they blocked off. So now you can walk, walk dogs. You got the picnic champion.

You got the three champion, Mario Chalmers, Michael Beasley, Reggie Evans. You can ask him about getting hit by Chris Paul. There's a lot of questions that I would have, but I need guaranteed access. Again, it's Katie Meyer night.

Put it on the poll, please. But since we only have four categories, give me the four categories it is that we're choosing. Most rewatchable thing, The Sopranos, The Office, Always Sunny, give me a fourth. Seinfeld. Seinfeld?

Seinfeld is a good one.

Seinfeld is just one of the most rewatchable shows ever. It's the greatest show of all time. I think it would be the word association for most people. Rewatchable? Seinfeld.

Ken Burns, baseball. Who was that character? Wait a minute.

I will watch that. That's rewatchable. It's Roy's In Her Die. Ken Burns, baseball? Yeah, that's mine.

Here's why I object to the Seinfeld rewatch. And by the way, Seinfeld, I think, is the greatest show of all time. I love Seinfeld. Then be careful where you're going. I've seen every episode 100 times. But I've never sat and said, All right, season one, episode one, and bang through all of them. That's true. Binge like that.

Nobody does that. No, you want specific episodes. Right.

That's because you guys seem to be having a different conversation, right? What Chris is doing is just, What do I want to chew on? That doesn't have to have any reference to before or after.

That's not what I'm talking about.

What I'm doing is, What do I rewatch the most?

No, but what Zaz is doing, you're going to beginning to end on six seasons of television.

I voted a month and a half on my talk.

I just did that with Shameless, if that's what you're asking. Yeah, that is what I asked.

That is what he's asking. It's a different conversation. You're just saying, What do I like to just check in on that's empty that I can watch for 20 minutes? No, Zaz is saying, What am willing to invest a month and a half in every time I'm stopping to watch television, I'm going back to see the chronology of this. Seinfeld is not that. None of these other things you guys have described is that.

Sex in the City is that. I'm the only one.

You're not the only one. I loved Sex in the City.

It's the writing. That's what I tell everybody.

Six feet under. You're not the only one. I liked Sex in the City.

Did you like the new one?

No, it's terrible. It's got awful.

The new one, my wife was very upset about the new one. It got awful.

It was so disappointing. They keep reupping it. They keep doing it, and it's terrible. It's so It's such an offensive remake from Miranda.

I watch occasionally when my wife watches it, and I'll be in the kitchen and watch them like, This sucks, right?

Never watched it my own. She's like, Yeah, this sucks.

I have a lot of questions for El Duncan. I have missed her. She has left SportsCenter because this is what she wanted to be doing, something that was different, had more free time around it. Not a lot of people understand the amount of work that's required in Bristol.

Did I just get convinced by a sponsor to have an engaging conversation in which I had a conviction?

By the way, really quick on the aside, second seating Sopranos, where they had AI of Tony's mom. I didn't love that one.

You haven't gotten great yet at what is my inner monolog. You haven't gotten great at the old guy watching-No, I'm workshopping.

I need a voice modulator for it. I need a very girly voice for your inner monolog, so I'm going to make that happen. Mine was good, though.

Why very girly? It was not good. Him being an old guy. Never watch Wings.

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Dan Lebatard. Du kannst weeks, months even, during the regular season, I wondered, allowed, what Kevin Steenland did. And then about three weeks ago, it hit me. Stugatz. He gives him one of these, and he gives them one of those. This is the Dan Levatard show with the Stugats.

Hey, what's What's up, Greg? There she is.

Yeah. Greg is not here. That is El Duncan, I think, talking to Chris Cody and calling him Greg.

Oh, hey. What's up, Greg?

And Chris Cody is still reeling from it. It's probably not fair. El Duncan has ascended, not unlike Alex Hanold, to the heights of our world.

Her climb a little tougher, though.

Yeah. And more obstacles, more white men to get in the way.

You You got a speed bump with Hanold, right? I've seen you do it a couple of times. You slow down a little bit.

Hanold. It's very British. Hanold.

Thank you, Al, for supporting me, unlike these clowns who have been around me for 20 years, who look like for any spot to be pirana, I appreciate your support. You're welcome. She's the former longtime ESPN anchor. She's now the lead host at Netflix. She's also going to be doing USA Network's inaugural season of the WNBA coverage for 2026 alongside our friend, the great Renee Montgomery. Thank you for being on with us. Before we get to what it is that you did with Alex Hanold and Skyscraper, can you take us through your last couple of months moving places and leaving ESPN? What was the difficulty of that, and what wasn't the difficulty of that?

Well, the tough part was the people because I really do try to make family wherever I go. I've genuinely made family with a lot of people that I worked with, and I loved doing women's basketball with Dre and Jané. That was incredibly fulfilling. I think the tough part is leaving what's familiar and stability. I have an entire family. I'm 42 years old, and there was definitely that little doubt monster that was like, You could work here forever and be fine. I wasn't unhappy. I think sometimes it's harder. It's very easy to leave something that you hate, that you're miserable. Someone throws you a lifeline, you'll take it. It doesn't matter what is. And that was really not the case. And sometimes that's more difficult. So I spent a lot of time introspecting, asking questions, going to therapy, praying, doing all the things that people say, all the typical stuff. But I would say that the not hard part was that Netflix was just giving me all the things that I had been asking for in the universe, which was more time with my family, more time to sit and just be a creative, and try to think of things, and more time to pursue things that were sports and sports recent, and the ability to just have a little bit more autonomy over the spaces and projects that I took on.

And so it was very easy when I got my contract offer, and they were like, 30 days of work. It was like, Hell, yes. And that was the easy part. But it's been really interesting when you leave something like ESPN. You have a lot of existential buildup. I think a lot of anxiety. But I got to be honest, Dan, it's It's been so surprisingly wonderful the time with my family, but also the idea that people were watching you, that you didn't know we're watching you. People want to work with you, that you didn't think ever would. There's all these doors that are opening all of a sudden. And so so far early returns are that I made the right decision.

Tell me about the anxiety monster and tell me about the whatever specifics you can, about 30 days versus how many days, because I was just mentioning before you came on, people really don't understand Bristol as a furnace for they will work you to the ground.

You work a lot, and I get it. They have a really big sports portfolio, and I think that there is this understanding amongst talent that the more value that you have, the more volume that you take on. You got to take on more things. You got to take on specific things. That's how you get paid. Then once you get that contract, if you want more money, you have to justify it by doing more and doing more and doing more. Let me be very clear. I was not a victim. They never forced me to do any of it. I did it. I chose to work all the time. I chose to take on more and more projects. I do believe that in many ways, I'm a recovering workaholic, and a place like ESPN, if you are a workaholic, will feed your addiction. There's all that you need there. I'm no victim. I chose to do it. All of us do. We can say no. But I just think I looked at it and the best that ESPN knew that work-life balance was really important me, too. They tried their best in terms of what they could do and still justify giving me this big pay raise.

It netded out at about 250 days a year, and Netflix was 30. It's absurd.

Dan, it's your inner monolog. Just keep pushing, keep asking. She'll bash ESPN eventually, and we'll get what we want. This is going really well. Some grief over there. Come on, I see it. Next question.

Come on, one more ESPN question. I think this is the one.

Don't even say ESPN. Just hint at it. Let her say ESPN.

You can work through it. We can.

Come on. The anxiety monster. Good one. I don't think of you as anxious.

Oh, yeah. Oh, I'm a high functioning, anxious person. Really? I'm very anxious. I have a lot of anxiety. It's honestly what sent me to therapy because it was giving me panic attacks a couple of years ago. I'm like, Very, very very, very anxious. I think all that anxiety really showed up in Skyscraper, if I'm being honest. When I get anxious, I talk fast. I talk through things. And it was in a really high cortisol situation. And man, I was feeling it. I was amped. I was juiced.

So take us through that experience with Skyscraper. Have you ever been... You're not that anxious, I would imagine, because you're not televising broadcasting live a possible death. That's why people are watching, really. I mean, that it's possible. And so take us through that compared to anything else you've ever done.

Yeah, it's not like anything I've ever done. I mean, ever. Just Because when you do a pregame, certainly I've had that you're doing something for the first time, you have all this energy, you're like, And we're here, right? But you have commercial breaks. You have time where you're not talking. And it really does lower some of that energy a little bit and get you in a sweet spot, right? You have time to take a deep breath. I think in that situation, it was the first time that I was obviously covering something where there were real implications of death, like true ones. It was the first time that someone five minutes before a broadcast handed me a card that was like, If this person falls off the building, here's what you're going to say, and then we're going to get off air. And then I had honestly built a report with Alex. I went out to his home. I hung out with him and his wife. I played on the kitchen floor with his little daughters. I I had built an affection for him. We all knew he was in firm control of this, but anything can happen.

We're in Taiwan. There could be an earthquake. There was just a lot of anxiety. I think for me, when I went back and watched it, I was like, Oh, man. I started out at a 10, and then I just stayed at a 10 the entire time. I think it was tough because nothing like this has ever happened before. We really didn't know what the broadcast would look like. We didn't know there was no blueprint. So we were a little bit of a science experiment. I think that we would all do things different. But I think for me, specifically, yeah, I would absolutely do it very differently if I had another crack at something like this. Although, again, it's like, When am I... Great that I took some notes down. Next time a guy climbs a skyscraper, I'll know exactly how to comport myself. But I do hope that my tone, which was definitely off, I mentioned it a couple of times, I was broadcasting to the people that were there in the park with us that were loud and cheering and into it and gasping. There was so much energy. But when you go back and watch the broadcast, when you're the viewer, there's none of that energy is coming through, only tension and only drama and these beautiful scenes and this man dangling off a cliff, and all of that was enough.

I went in with an objective to teach the world about Alex Honold, but it just really wasn't necessary in that moment. It's not something that you can know until you look back on it. Unfortunately, Definitely, it wasn't my best. I don't think I stuck the landing completely, but it was a really, really, really tough thing that I'd never done before. I was willing to take a chance and see how it would go. I'm proud of myself for that for doing something that had never been done before and just being a part of someone's history making climb. That was really cool.

What did the card say?

It literally was like, what did it say? It was like, We've experienced a fall, and so we're going to cut the live stream right now. We'll update you as soon as we can on Alex's condition.

That is an odd thing to give you for the first time five minutes before something- I knew we were going to do it.

No, I knew we were going to do it. It was going to be one of those things that they were going to pop in. We had a 10-second delay. We were going to cut away to a wide shot. They were going to pop this statement up in prompter. I knew we were going to do it. I just hadn't seen it until right before I was going on air. It was just a reminder of, this is your card. If prompter doesn't get there, this is what you'll say. So it was just another reminder. And again, that has nothing to do with me being at a level that was just not sustainable for two straight hours. But yeah, it was a really high pressure situation in general. I also think that it felt very celebratory. Again, the tension at home didn't feel that way there. It felt like Alex is laughing and he's smiling, and he's playing. The crowd is playing into him, and they're waving on him. It just felt very different when I was there. And it was a reminder, you're not broadcasting for the 900 people that were in front of you, but rather for the 6 million people that were at home.

So tough lesson to learn in front of the world, but it's okay. I've been dunked on before on social media.

You're being very critical and very hard on yourself. And as you do so, Zazlo is red-faced with laughter from Tony, something Tony is saying.

I mean, Dan, how could the update... We'll update you as soon as we can. How could the update on him fall and be anything other than death?

It's He thought he was six.

There were some ledges. There were times where he was climbing, and he could have fallen to a ledge that wasn't all the way down.

Yes, that's exactly right, Chris. And he said that. He was like, At certain places in the building, it would be certain death, but at some places, he could fall on a ledge, a balcony. There were boxes. There was a way that he could maybe live, but we all know that- Zaz, you are red-faced with laughter because you and Tony were doing your own show over there in which the is going to be like, We'll update you when we come back on.

And you guys are saying, Well, he splattered. He fell 100 stories.

Okay, there's a ledge. So he would hit his head on the way down.

I hit his head from 20 stories instead. You don't get it.

There were like...

No, buddy, I get it. But if you fall from 20 stories, It's not good.

No, you're right. They kept saying on the thing, they're like, I know you might think, but falling 100 feet is the same thing as falling from the top of the building.

You're being very hard on yourself, El. Are you normally this hard on yourself? Was the feedback bad? I don't like what you're doing being here. I thought that what I heard of what you were doing was great, but you're going to have a higher standard for yourself than I am.

Yeah. I really do not go to social media to elicit feedback because I just think either way, people are always wrong. You're never as good as they say you are, you're never as bad as they say you are. I wanted to, right away, just go watch it. So once we got done with all our post stuff, I went back and watched it, and right away, I was like, Oh, I was on a 10. And then people are sliding onto pictures and being like, Oh, my God, You were so annoying. So it's not like I'm doomscrolling on Twitter, and I'm not a masochist seeing all the negative things that people are saying. But I am critical of my work, especially as I'm moving into a stage, Dan, where I'm going to be trying new things. I didn't need to go break down an episode of SportsCenter. I did it every day for 10 years. But with things like this, if I really want to grow and I want to get better and I want to try different things, then I have to give myself real feedback. And that was my real feedback. A full acknowledgement that sometimes I I think people are just mean for the sake of being mean.

And there's things that I've done that people dunk on, and I stand on it, and I'm like, I don't care. I thought that shit was funny, or I liked it, or I don't care. But this was one of those where I was like, I could see. I could see. I get it. They're not wrong. But it's all good. I have the spine for this, Dan, which is the only reason that I'm willing to put myself in a position to keep trying things I've never done before and seeing if I'm any good.

Oh, I I'm not. I know. I know you have the spine for it. It's why I'm surprised that you're anxious because none of that presents on television. You present as one of the most confident people I have seen in sports television. We don't have as much time with you as I'd like, Michael's is going to be on with us, and we've got pitch clock coming on later. El Duncan with us here. I have some fill-in-the-blank questions for you because I have a ton of questions. How much did it freak you out communicating communicating with Alex during the climb?

I asked him ahead of time, Are you sure you want to talk to me? He was like, Yeah. In fact, we were only going to talk to him once. He was like, You just don't want to talk to me once. You don't want to talk to me more than that. I was like, If you want to talk more than that, go for it. But it was cool.

What percentage of chance did he think there was of him actually dying?

I don't know about percentage. He told me it was a six, probably in terms of difficulty of climb and but tough physically. Out of 100? 6 out of 10. But in terms of physical difficulty, it was up there. I don't know. He probably would have put it at a less than 1% chance just because he was very confident.

Tell me, explain. Every floor, he seemed like there were people. Was that planned? Because I feel like I was getting on my couch with my friends, and I'm like, Hey, stop distracting him. They're waving. They're trying to get his attention. That, to me, felt like maybe that was a crack in the production, and they weren't expecting people to gather there. On every floor, he had fans cheering for him. It seemed very distracting.

He was fully aware. And when he did practice climbs, that is a public building. There's businesses there. So he would climb and people would wave at him that whole time. So he knew, and he enjoyed it. He said afterwards, he was like, I tried to give a guy a high five, but he was too busy being on his phone. It was not distracting. He didn't know if it would be. He's never free soloed something with people, but it was a public building. We didn't stage people there. They were just there.

How many milligrams, Chris?

Oh, dude, I was so nervous.

Do you have any Have you had any idea how this event is insured?

None. But I will say this. I have a couple of times googled Lloyds of London because I feel like they're probably one of the only... It was tough. The chairman of the building, you guys, after it finished, she came up to the green room, and she burst into tears when she hugged Alex because her job was on the line. A lot of people's jobs were on the line, a ton. I don't know how they made this happen, but they did. They could have never done it in the States. You can't get it insured there. So maybe some Taiwanese insurance.

I don't What is the second most scared you've been for a broadcast?

The second most scared? That's a good one. You know what? Scared is not the right word, but I would say equally, had to take a couple of deep breaths, was before the national Championship, Kaitlyn Clarke versus South Carolina, just because I knew that thing was going to pull a freaking number. We had had a lot of attention, the big three and whatnot, and I just really felt a lot of pressure to perform. But again, when you're in situations that you've been in a million times, even when you're anxious, you just lean on experience. When you don't have any experience in that situation, you don't have anything to lean on.

Always nice seeing you. Thank you for making time for us. Love you guys. Don't make it so long next time. See you later.

Okay, bye.