Andy Roddick (former professional tennis player)

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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert Experts on Expert.

I'm Dan Shepard and I'm joined by Lily Padman.

Hi.

Today we have Andy Rodakon.

And if anyone was curious who this sexy guest was who sweat a little bit,

this is it.

He's

he was very go all the way.

He's just a very attractive person in general.

He looks attractive, he sounds attractive, and he is attractive.

And as it turns out, he's attractive.

Yeah, I was absolutely charmed to no end by Andy.

I really just thought he was fighting.

He's very easy to talk to.

Yes, yes, yes.

He's not just easy on the eyes.

He's very easy on the ears.

Andy Roddick is a tennis champion, former world number one and U.S.

Open champion, three-time Wimbledon finalist, and a 2017 first ballot inductee into the International Tennis Hall of Fame.

And he has a podcast called Served with Andy Roddick, which is like the best tennis podcast out there.

You can watch it on YouTube or listen wherever you get your pods.

Please enjoy our new boyfriend, Andy Roddick.

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He's an armchair.

Wow, this is charming.

This is

exactly just straight to the sucking up.

Waste no time.

I never offer this to drivers when they're in the driveway.

I don't know why, but we're walking by.

I'm like,

hey, brother, there's a urinal in the garage.

If you need that, it's unlocked.

And he was like, oh, okay.

He wasn't really holding it in his bottle.

Oh, my God.

He was bottled up.

He was.

He was

expensive.

I didn't know I had that ability, but here we are.

It's like a superpower unit.

That's like a good thing to say out loud to people because you don't think about it, maybe.

It's kind of like a dick thing to not think about, right?

And what was that guy going to do for the next few hours?

He pissed on a cup.

He was going to prove the toughness and no one was going to know.

Oh, and then he was going to have problems like we all want this.

He's going to give them to his wife and he was going to be like, my prostate's on fire.

Oh, no.

You just saved him from the end.

Also, you just wanted to talk about your urinal.

I mean, I don't mind that people know I have a urinal in my garage.

Does that excite you, Andy?

A little bit more than it should.

Yeah, exactly.

I'm going to be honest, this is more bragging because it's name-droppery, but he's passed, so I can do it now.

But I was once at Ozzy.

That's the way it works.

Yeah, I think so.

You and I are going to get to talk about our dads as wildly as we want to.

Okay.

That's the one upside of having lost dads.

She can really tell the truth.

But yeah, I was one time at Ozzy Osborne's house and I went to use the bathroom and there was this gorgeous black urinal in there with like gold fixtures.

And I was like, of course.

That's kind of what I wanted to look like in this house, right?

He's really delivered.

That's where the obsession came.

And then

that was the secret.

Yeah.

But at the old house, when Kristen moved in, I had a urinal in the hallway there based on the Ozzy thing.

And she was like, this is so fucking tacky and and got rid of it.

So I didn't have it, but now I have a garage.

And I go, That's where the urnal's going to live.

Yeah.

Do you have anything stupid like that at your house where you bartered with your wife?

Good question.

Oh, I just got like my first room.

Oh, you did ever.

Yeah.

She has me trained well.

I have like a lounger and a TV.

I'm like, I made it.

Yeah, killing it.

This is it.

But you're stylish.

So I feel like you probably have a high standard for aesthetics.

Generous.

I think he's mostly known for wearing t-shirts and shit.

But it's really stylish t-shirts.

Is that a really stylish one?

Like, yeah,

this is is it.

My wife, she's a designer and she does all that stuff.

And it's like, if I don't value my opinion more than I value your opinion, why should I get 50% of the say in what goes in this room?

Wow, that's mature.

That's her stance or yours?

That's mine.

With design, I don't trust my opinion more than yours.

Why should it be valued right now in this conversation?

Agreed.

And if we're going to talk about what power plant the car should have, maybe you defer to me.

I'm an idiot.

Very narrow silo of

things that I can waste out of tennis questions.

Pretty much.

I wasn't a dummy.

Well, I was thrilled to learn a couple things about you today.

We have some mutual loves, I discovered right out of the gates.

So you grew up in Austin, four to 11?

I grew up there and then went back.

So I've been there 25 years.

The day after you won the U.S.

Correct.

Jesus.

Right.

Yeah.

Flew down there and bought a house immediately.

Yes.

Yeah.

So I have that same crazy love affair with Austin.

Yeah.

What was it like growing up there?

It was different than it is now.

There weren't 60-story pre-sold commercial buildings.

It was Willie Nelson playing Antones and this weird place in Texas that makes no sense compared to the rest of Texas.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was great.

You know, we moved from Nebraska.

Most of my formative memories are probably from Austin and your parents move you around.

And then when you have your own decision to make, I went back there.

What part of Austin were you in?

Well, it used to be kind of the outskirts and then it became, I guess, the main skirts.

Like Westlake?

Yeah, exactly.

The hills out there.

Good kids.

You knew that.

Speaking of people who have passed, sadly, Robert Redford passed, and I almost sent this to you.

Apparently, he loved Barton Springs.

Oh, no way.

Barton Springs is cool.

That's my temple.

It's amazing.

The whole town lake situation, right off of downtown, you can be crunchy and you can be downtown in like four minutes.

If I go there for a week, my commitment is like I go to Barton Springs every day.

I got to go every day.

But I just recently discovered going at night.

I guess I didn't realize it was opened at night.

So the notion that you can float in the springs and be looking at the lit up city, that feels impossible.

Do you like it so much that if you take someone and they don't love it as much as you, you're disappointed?

Then they're out.

No, they're not.

I'm still here.

But my financial security is tied to you, so you have to have a lot of leverage.

There are exceptions.

But did you not let, I mean, she got booted.

She got thrown out.

You got thrown out?

She got 86.

Is that possible for

you guys?

They don't let you bring in any food.

By the way, it wasn't just me.

It was a bunch of us.

It was a black mark on my reputation there.

I know you distanced yourself from us so fast.

Yeah.

No, you can't.

Her mistakes can't become yours and vice versa.

She's it's in snacks.

And this Australian woman who runs the place very well.

For that month, I'll just add the turnover there is very high.

She lit into us and she was like, you got to go.

And we were like, well, we'll just put it in the car.

Oh, so it wasn't like a water bottle through TSA where it's, you just got to go back and start again.

This was like,

you can't come back.

Take your food and get the fuck out.

We hate you.

Did she actually say that?

Provision is historical.

It's funny because we got in afraid about it.

I mean, because in Aussie's saying that, it's kind of funny.

It's kind of funny.

And then it gets funnier when they cuss.

Well, also, you were just like, there's a very easy solution.

We'll just put it away.

We'll just remove the food.

Nope.

Artie saw it.

Already saw it.

To be fair, you had just proven that you weren't to be trusted.

I guess.

I'm a very trustworthy person.

I just love cheeses.

Okay, so you grew up there and then you're the youngest of three boys.

Do you think you would have ever been a professional athlete without competing with two people that are way older than you?

And not just in tennis, just the whole ride.

I always thought about it because my middle brother played tennis and was good at tennis yeah so i like the way that you frame that because i normally thought about it i had this exposure to tennis at like a really high level so i think i gave a lot of credit to that as opposed to just the basic structure of you're fighting uphill the whole way so then when you get to neutral it feels like you're downhill i think i was a little bit of a whoopsie my oldest brother was going to college when i was going to preschool no so it's like we didn't even live in the same place.

My next brother was six years older, which even worse.

In sports is like an eternity.

We kind of had the same thing.

And, you know, the rankings told a story that I wasn't horrible, but it was you weren't him.

Luckily for us, it flipped one summer very quickly.

You know, he was a four-time all-American at Georgia and played well and was one of the top juniors in the world.

And then one summer he's drilling me when he comes home from school.

The next summer it flips at University of Georgia?

Yeah.

That's where I went to school.

Oh, really?

Yes.

Yeah.

You could have even been now.

No, he was born in 76.

Yeah, that's how I was going to be able to do it.

Oh,

we just barely missed seasons.

Just barely missed each other by a decade.

He's been retired for 25 years.

Do you remember beating your brother at tennis for the first time?

Yeah, and I'm still not totally convinced that he didn't take a dive.

Oh,

it's where he was leaving college.

He was pretty sure he didn't want to try tours.

So the benefit to me was way more than the benefit to him.

I still haven't asked him about it because I don't know that I would believe anything he said.

I don't think he did.

I don't think you can.

He did either.

I don't know, but he's not Jesus.

He might be a great dude, but I don't think he's like from another planet.

I was excited because then I knew when my mom was like, well, look at your brother.

I'm like, that bum?

The guy who sucks now?

The husband who I just mop the court with.

But did it cause any friction between you two?

Not at all.

I think the age gap's so big.

So big that, like, you basically just ignore each other.

There was no sibling rivalry because it was just he was here and it was here.

And then he was gone and I was home.

I probably annoyed him at a certain point, you know, when you're eight and 14 or something.

But once you get older, there's no day-to-day orbit and friction, at least in my experience.

I'll just say, I bring up your brothers because you guys moved to Florida for your middle brother to pursue his tennis career.

Were you bummed to move to Florida?

I honestly don't remember.

That's a little misleading.

He was good.

I was one of the top in the country in my age division.

So it wasn't as if we moved there and I started playing tennis.

It was pretty established.

But you were only 11?

I was 10.

I think it was new and exciting.

I mean, imagine this.

You all have probably experienced at some point.

You've had this crazy growth trajectory, but we landed, I'm 10.

And at that point in Austin, I was nine

beating 16-year-olds.

So I was number one in the city in 16 and unders.

And I always tell people with athletic children, when you think they're really good, just travel a little further.

Yeah.

Right.

So we get to Florida, and all of a sudden, I see two girls hitting on these courts down at the end.

Their names were Venus and Serena.

Stop it.

Oh, wow.

How old were they?

Serena's about my age, and Venus is, you know, two years older.

Oh, wow.

And so three years of our existence after we moved to Florida was like, you think you're good.

Yeah.

And then you see, I get goosebumps talking about like Jennifer Caprioti was there who won majors and made the final semis of the USA when she was like 13.

yeah well you've now moved to the epicenter of tennis where you see like pro players and it's going oh i thought i was okay yeah and now i suck again parts of that are exciting parts of that are scary yeah i bet that's the first round of caving that's on the table like that could be overwhelming and you should give up like getting beat and just going to work the next morning is like a superpower it's like an undervalued skill absolutely you could be sad and work and so like i've always been okay with that balance and i've failed many many times but that part was cool where you arrive and it's like this is where the next 20 years of tennis is getting made.

I even realized that at a young age.

So that part was exciting, but you know, you miss people and things.

So your dad grew up working on a dairy farm.

He was in the military.

He ran a Jiffy Lube.

He's a tough dude, yeah?

Where does he rank in these parents of child athletes?

You hear these kind of stories.

He was very tough, but also most of the parents of the child athletes want to be noticed and want credit.

He wanted no credit.

Oh.

They never sat in my player box, were never visible on TV until the cameras like found them like crouching in some random part of the stadium.

So differentiated in that it was completely altruistic.

It wasn't his own glory he was seeking.

No, I fully believe that.

But it was like, this is a choice.

This is an opportunity.

You don't have to do it.

If you do it, we're going to do it.

This isn't like a half-assed type thing.

And it was military that way.

And anything that I was doing was not hard compared to him running a farm when he was 12 or 13 years old.

So the base comp for any conversation we started wasn't good for me.

You You know, so he was hard.

Where was it productive and useful?

What aspects of it do you have a lot of gratitude for?

And which ones were probably not helpful?

It's probably the same.

It's just a matter of if you get through.

Tennis is weird.

You should not have kids playing nine hours a day when you're eight or nine years old.

Tennis is one of the sports that has to happen.

Right.

You don't have stories in tennis where it's like a random reference, but I remember a guy who got drafted number one in the NBA, Michael Olawakandi, though, like he started playing basketball freshman year of college.

Rodman started at like 21 years old.

That story doesn't exist.

In tennis.

It doesn't.

You guys are more like symphony musicians.

It's like this weird thing, and you have to get used to this kind of lifestyle training thing before you are old enough to realize it's weird.

I was pretty aware.

I went to normal schools.

It was this weird divide between no one at my school knew that I could do this thing.

And so you're dealing with every little issue that every kid has, whether it's not fitting in or this, that, and the other.

Some school isn't like you.

Yeah, someone's little brother trying to kick the shit out of you.

He just found out he's strong.

Yeah, and then all of a sudden two o'clock hits and you go to practice and all of a sudden you're elite at something yes and you're valued and so you have like this shift midday every day where it's like you put on your cape and then all of a sudden you're good at something great well i would imagine that would make most people pretty dualistic or arrogant oh

well i just think you really get used to having multiple identities in different spaces and there's like a quarter between these and when you go to school you can't bring your cockiness from the court you shouldn't yeah

it won't go well yeah yeah minimally I would imagine you get pretty well versed in kind of snapping back and forth to two versions of yourself maybe that feels too self-indulgent for you no definitely didn't realize it in the moment you're shy when you're at school unless you're playing a sport or something and then you kind of get a little cocky to your point yeah you know but I've realized the value of different places different things at different moments the value of traveling when you're 13 to Cali Columbia by yourself for going to Hong Kong.

I don't know that I realized how weird that was, but also as I get older, the value of that if it doesn't go completely sideways.

And I think that's a razor's edge.

There's a million people in tennis.

They did all that and it really didn't yield anything besides maybe damage of having done that stuff or like there's a lot of issues.

So I think if you get to the other side of it, it's great.

where you're actually pragmatic enough and you feel like your cup was full enough to look backwards and say, that was really good for me.

And I don't know that that's a one-size-fits-all thing.

Do you follow F1 at all?

Not really.

Okay.

Well, Max Verstappen, the four-time world champion.

His dad famously on the way home from the track pulled over at a gas station and was like, get out.

You're walking home because you didn't go for that pass in the turn and you had it.

I mean, just brutal.

Now, the fact that he's a four-time world champion, you're like, okay, well.

Tiger, Serena, and Venus.

I mean, you hear all the stories.

But we never talk about the ones where it's like, well, they never even got there.

And you left your fucking kid at the gas station.

She was like, oh, yeah, no, that kids might be dead now.

I remember,

and she never lets me forget it.

I remember playing Serena in like a practice match, and they were famous for we're not going to play junior tennis tournaments.

And we're all like, How do you learn how to compete?

You can see how good they are.

And also, this will never work, idiots, right?

And so we would play, you know, as the best kid.

And Serena at that point was like she is now.

She's an absolute beautiful physical specimen.

She is an absolutely amazing person.

Yeah, totally.

So we're playing, and her dad are the coaches at the academy.

They're all in on this program with these two.

It's like, okay, I guess so.

We'll see if it works.

It worked.

But like having kids from the academy surround the court and cheer against them.

oh really yeah

yeah she didn't say this you see her go over and you're looking and she's like you it's fueling if it works yeah exactly i don't know that there's neutral are you born with the disposition or is it made that's sort of my question again i don't think it's absolute i think like everything it's not binary yeah and it's some combination if you time it when you're ready you could be ready at 12 and not ready at nine.

Well, you tried to quit at 16.

This is going to sound arrogant.

This isn't real for most people, and I understand it's insane.

My version of quitting was after I lost a junior Wimbledon, throw my rackets away.

I knew at that point I could go to any college of my choice on a full ride.

So I wasn't quitting that.

It was more like, I'm quitting progress.

I'm quitting working towards this pro thing.

It's not there.

I'm going to go to Georgia and be a stud.

I'm going to dominate Tigers and Courts.

That's what we're going to do.

I know.

My brother had the most fun of any person that's ever gone to Georgia.

The story gets told, and my version of quitting is like, I left my rack as an England.

Nothing's a straight line.

Yeah.

And there were levels to stuff.

I knew that I could go anywhere to college.

I knew I could play.

And that wasn't a cocky or arrogant thing to say.

That was true.

There were offers, but also it's like you have this comfortable thing that is going to be awesome.

You know, life is going to be great until you're like 22 or 23.

And it's going to be fantastic.

And you can train or not train.

But there's that choice to kind of go past what.

you can be content with.

That's a hard thing.

You're going to have to have another whole round of misery.

You've been suffering to get to this level but to get to that level there'll be more suffering you're signing up for more suffering in that everything though yeah it's not tennis specific right it's just like you don't feel content you want to keep going and building and there's a next interesting conversation there's something you haven't touched on there's always something right for me yes that's the scary yes i am getting to the age

i am i'm eight years older than you i think i'm just starting to feel like yeah we did a lot this lifetime and we did enough if you didn't do enough for six months would you still feel that way that's the fear But I will say I had a lot of practice as a struggling actor.

So for eight years, I never got any work.

So I got pretty good at learning how to exist with like nobody.

No, you didn't.

You were a drug addict.

I was a drug addict and a drunk.

Awesome.

But I just going to the movies.

I like exercise.

I like bike riding.

I like working on shit.

I'm very content not doing that.

I could be wrong, but I have a different mindset for sure than I had at 42.

And I can just feel it and I'm welcoming it.

I like it.

Did you used to have guilt about it?

Oh, tremendous.

I think at the core of it it all is, am I worthy of love

just by existing?

Or do I need to be spectacular?

I understand.

So my story my whole life is I have to be spectacular to be loved by everyone.

And I'm approaching a zone where I'm like, no, I think I can just exist and people will love me.

And so that's an interesting thing to unplug from.

But what about day-to-day purpose?

Well, I have two kids is my purpose.

You know, I get up and drive them to school and I'm very involved.

Okay, so then you drive them to school.

And then the hours of school.

Where's the purpose meter between eight and four?

Yeah, exactly.

I'm pretty involved with helping dudes that are getting, so I have a lot of things.

Yeah.

Don't you think though, and maybe I'm wrong, I don't have kids, but I feel like if you are your parents' sole purpose,

that's tough.

If they feel the weight of that.

Our kids probably feel like they're our sole purpose, not knowing what we do when they go to, like you have an entire work life.

Right.

But I do think it's important.

We're happy, and I'm sure you are too, that your parents actually see you working.

That might matter.

And the mom still wants to work for a while, so they'll see plenty of work.

Here's what it is, Andy.

You've been given this enormous gift.

I've been given this enormous gift.

I could explore the world and I could figure out what purpose is other than being productive.

I have that opportunity.

And I feel like it would be very dishonoring to that insane amount of luck I've had to not challenge myself to find out what else is there in life other than being productive and accomplishing things and being spectacular.

to me it's a challenge in its own right it is purpose in its own right can i unplug from the production hamster wheel in the growing and growing and growing and explore and listen and be a part of the planet have you not done that at all yes i have windows of that by choice by choice do you mean like do i take breaks and stuff meaning people's journeys aren't the same i was away from tennis for nine, ten years.

Right.

Before I wasn't.

I had that beat to where now I feel the opposite of you.

I feel refreshed.

You feel like you're gaining on something.

You feel like you're going.

But, Andy, also, we started this podcast when I was exactly your age.

I directed a movie.

It didn't work out.

I was completely depressed.

I sat around for six months.

And then I was like, okay, I need a whole new racket and I want to throw myself at it.

And I want to build something again.

And it happened.

I don't know.

We'll check in at 50.

I'm not saying you're wrong at all.

I'm more just fascinated about the process.

It's interesting.

Yeah, back to you.

It is about you because this is on your horizon as well.

You have these dissipations.

Well, I'm just fascinated.

I mean, it starts and stops, and people normally think they need agreement.

I'm more fascinated about what I don't know yet.

Yeah.

Uh-huh.

Okay, so you have this meteoric rise in tennis.

You're a lot bigger.

Forgive me.

Neither of us know much about tennis.

I just own that right now.

And I'm also going to ask you to go through some things that you would imagine everyone knows.

Sure.

But I don't know that our audience knows.

You're a lot bigger than the tennis players I've met.

You're kind of abnormally big.

Not in tennis anymore.

I present more as like a fullback than a skinnier person.

But you're like 6'2 ⁇ .

I always say I'm like a tennis player that was born in Nebraska.

They're big now, though.

Like Rafa's an animal.

They're all huge now.

That's the thing that's changed.

The conditioning has changed.

Well, we used to have a skill and now you can't have that skill without being insanely athletic.

So now you're seeing like Alcaraz and his body's like UFC Fighter.

Yeah, he explodes and centers six foot five and he's like a skier.

The athleticism of tennis has completely changed in the last 25 years.

All sports, F1 drivers are now like peak fucking athletes.

They weren't.

They drove a car.

The only place I'm seeing, because I watch all these sports doc series, because I do love them, even if I don't like the sport.

I don't like golf.

You get away with just having a normal dad bot.

No, I mean, you look at like a McElroy.

These guys are like human rubber bands.

Used to kind of be, what was the, quote, Hobby Gilmore, plaid pants and a huge ass.

It's younger and younger, and these guys are swinging violently.

It's changed a little bit.

Tiger changed a lot of it.

Okay, yeah.

Because he looked and presented like an athlete, so therefore every kid that wanted to be him now looks and presents like an athlete.

That's the thing with sports, man.

Anybody who comes in here and says their generation walked uphill both ways is completely self-indulgent and full of shit.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, but with your height, that has to be a part of your serve, right?

Because the crazy part about your game was you had this insane serve.

Yeah.

I like this detail of it.

You had numerous different coaches over the years.

And I do want to talk about that.

I want to know how one, you got to break up with someone and hire someone.

That's got to be a very stressful part of the experience.

But as you hired coaches, your whole game was on the table except for the serve.

The serve was to not be talked about.

Is that right?

It was to not be talked about.

Were you superstitious about the serve?

No, I just knew it backwards.

I knew the cadence when it started.

I knew this little three count that I had.

I knew the feelings of it.

I knew more than they did.

I don't say that lightly because we'll get to the coaches.

And I was obviously always in pursuit of something new, something different, something additive.

And also.

Don't talk about my serve.

Is the origin of it true that you got really frustrated at like 16 and you served in a weird way out of anger and it worked?

Is that true?

That's true.

I was playing my friend Marty Fish, who ended up being a really good player.

He was six in the world.

Basically, all the kids who didn't get picked by the Federation, right?

So the people not funded by U.S.

tennis anymore, kind of the throwaways.

We played at Crystal Palm's apartment complex in Florida, and there were like six of us.

And out of that group, a couple of us made top five, top six in the world.

But I was playing against Marty, who's really, really good.

And at that point, better.

And just got pissed off.

And I have like this little half motion of borrowed tears, but it's not conventional.

Hit one irresponsibly out of anger and it went in.

Which, by the way, is the thing they tell you to never do in anything.

Never do, right?

Don't try to kill it.

Don't try to crush it.

And you did.

You're like, I'm going to fucking murder this ball because I hate it.

And that was it.

Had I been doing well with Marty that day, I wouldn't be here having this conversation.

That's crazy.

And how do you, like, when you recognize it clicked, do you then think, okay, how do I commit this whole thing to muscle memory?

Like, I got to replicate.

You just over and over again, you do it?

Just started doing it.

And you didn't have to overthink it.

It was immediately.

Well, a lot of the muscles build it.

Like your shoulder still goes over.

It's just your feet was different, but it was no time and there were some other things that needed to be adjusted but yeah i mean you literally figured it out and then the year before you're 40 or 50 in the world and juniors which sounds good but that means you're going to college and then four months later it was you're number one in florida and signed a rebuck deal over pro yeah so when you went to bed that night after discovering the serve did you think it's replicatable that wasn't a one-off yeah i mean it was not the way a tennis player should look it was violent and so the conversation became it'll work but for how long he's gonna destroy his shoulder.

Destroy it.

It's like a 12-year-old throwing a curveball.

I knew I had it.

But you were wondering for how long?

I was like, let's just rip it, though.

Yeah, good for you.

Do you remember going?

Yeah, kind of.

I just feel like if I was you and I had been pursuing this thing nine hours a day for the last nine years, I feel like I would have gone to bed that night and been like, oh, wow, we're about to enter a whole new year.

It was weird too, because going into sophomore year of high school, I was 5'2 ⁇ , 110 pounds.

Oh, Jesus.

I grew seven inches that year.

And then six months after that, I discovered the serve.

So all of a sudden, I go from like this tiny little guy who just annoyed people forever.

You know, that was like my style to having this thing.

You go from like itchy row to Bonds

and judge quickly, right?

Yeah.

How exciting.

Were you cool in school?

What was the high school experience like?

The better I got at tennis, I became cooler.

Everyone had a local paper.

Oh, so people started learning.

Yeah, so then I started, but no, not really.

Not even local celebrity.

You were becoming a.

It was weird because what we talked about earlier with the separation with church and state with school versus this other thing, it changed.

You sign a contract, people know what you sign for.

Yes.

You know, I remember the first time I played, there's a tournament in Miami, 1,000, which is like just less than a grand slam.

Win my first match.

So I'm 17, beat a guy top 40, which was like unheard of.

And then I'm second round, Andre Agassi, who was number one in the world at the time, my idol, 17,000 people, obviously lost, but then went to school the next day.

After playing Agassiz.

In high school.

So that like weird trade-off was like.

Also, how much money were you winning back then?

That deal I signed, it was incentive-based, but the base was $400,000 a year.

Okay, okay.

Immediately.

Okay, so this is the other.

Yeah.

And then it was like all bonus-based, right?

Right.

So your prize money equals an incentivized contract along the way as well.

With your endorsement deal.

Correct.

Okay.

So how does a 17-year-old comprehend like we're going to make a million bucks this year?

Is that part

super exciting or were your parents somehow trying to shelter you from that reality?

Probably both.

I knew enough.

Were you allowed to go buy a stupid car in high school or anything?

No, I bought a fucking sound system.

What a douchebag.

That's a high school thing to buy.

I don't regret these things.

That's exactly what I'm saying.

$3,200 for losing to my first pro event.

But you money.

It was loud.

Was loud going in the parking lot a week later.

Just such a tennis.

You have to love that about your...

I'm impressed you could keep your eye on the tennis prize.

I bet the girls were just...

Yeah, I bet the girls were all aflutter.

They were all aflutter.

They were a flutter.

Of course they were.

Not only, you're a...

A stud.

You're a stud, and you're famous, and you have a talent.

You got the best sound system in the high school parking lot.

I think you're underselling the sound system.

You're right.

I didn't know that turned out.

Let's add that back in.

What was the sound system in?

What kind of vehicle?

It was an old Chevy Blazer.

Great.

You could put a lot of seats out there.

12-inch kicker box.

Yeah.

The speakers couldn't take it, obviously.

So it was just broken.

Cloth seat.

It smelled like a hockey locker room.

It was terrible.

It was not the one.

Wow.

So, yeah, rich in high school.

That's such a

rich.

I mean, I didn't have it.

It's not like I had it.

I knew it was there at some point, but it wasn't as if I went to a bank account and could go

spend $100,000.

I didn't have access to it.

It's not the same.

That's what I'm saying.

It's like liquidity versus net worth.

You can't buy a coffee with net worth.

Yeah.

So the parents were keeping you in check.

You asked about my dad.

He was very strict on the financial part of it.

Could be a short ride.

You got to save.

Not even a short ride.

Just why wouldn't you be responsible?

He was actually probably doing that because he thought it would be a long ride.

I think it was probably the opposite.

So he was very overbearing with that stuff.

Like he wore my first agent out to the point where like I would have other coaches and it was like, well, your dad called me.

I go, don't answer.

Well, your agent who you loved to death, what was his name?

Ken Meyerson.

He ran interception for you a bit.

He took a little bit of the stress of the father-son relationship out of the equation.

Completely.

That's kind of telling because he had too much to say too often.

My dad

just has a control issue.

issue yeah control i don't want this to become this weird representation my parents got married they lived in a trade he did every single thing in his ability all the stories we're telling was because he didn't leave an hour of work on the table he never asked me to do one thing that he hadn't been willing to do in his life which i think gives it an element of credibility but definitely wanted his voice in the room okay not in front of the tv didn't want credit didn't want to be recognized didn't want anyone outside of this circle of four or five people these four or five people were going to know that he existed all day long.

And no one else would.

And that you were his.

Is that a piece of it?

I think just overly protective.

Maybe like a fear-based type control thing.

Yeah.

And then I think it's weird.

You get to certain levels and we talk about high school and then you play the U.S.

Open and then you're on night matches and then you win it and then you do all these things.

And I think it was hard for him once I was a complete adult.

Yeah.

Right.

Like he would tell me to clean my room.

I'm like, dad, you came to stay at my house.

Yeah, he came to see you in Austin and he was all rung up about it being a mess.

We were just pissing on fire hydrants.

He's like, your room's a mess.

I'm like, I'm number one in the world.

Yeah.

I don't care.

I don't mispractice.

Maybe misguided at times, but I don't think ever for the wrong intention.

Right.

I can feel the hesitation.

You would never want to say anything disparaging, but it's like, I love my wife.

She's flawed as fuck.

We have a great relationship.

It has many challenges.

Yeah.

It's totally fine if things are also complicated.

Yes.

It doesn't make her a bad person that she leaves the fucking cupboards open nonstop.

She's still a great person.

But she can't put a fucking cap on a jar.

Oh my gosh.

I grab my pills.

They all fucking blow.

I'm like, none of these caps are on.

Toothpaste.

It's so simple.

It's right there.

I don't want crusty ass toothpaste.

After you, like, can I borrow some?

No, you can't because then that's a goner.

Yes.

How about this?

You can borrow anything, but you have to put it back.

Every time you use my toothpaste, I end up in the car driving somewhere.

Yes.

And then I'm made fun of because I order like 15 fucking toothpastes from Amazon.

She's like, we don't need them, man.

We do.

See, she's good now because she'll hear me bitch about it.

And then she's going to be furious because she actually buys like the 20.

2010.

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One thing I just want to end on with your serve, which I find so incredible.

So you had the record for the fastest serve in history at 155 miles an hour.

It has been beaten, but it's still only at 156.

Wow.

That's so massive.

The service described in many of the things I was reading as unreturnable.

Well, to most, except for the Avengers that came on the broker career.

But I wasn't a natural tennis player.

I was like a work guy, but I could throw it.

That was it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like I could make your life uncomfortable for a little bit.

Okay, so you win the 2003 U.S.

Open.

You are.

I'm dying to go to the U.S.

Open.

No one will invite me.

Let's do it.

Whenever.

You just have to be a guest on his own podcast.

Oh, great.

Invite me and then let's go.

You have to, you know, earn your way.

you don't even have to do that.

Oh, I want to go.

Very easy.

I know why you want to go.

I want to try that honey

deuce.

Yeah.

That's a cocktail.

They basically invented a signature cocktail that everyone pretends has been around for 100 years.

Like a mint jewel.

I put it in like eight years ago.

It's not.

Have you had a honeyduce in the US Open?

Like, no, because they didn't fucking have when I was playing.

It's a made-up thing.

And it's what's in it.

It's genius, though.

I don't know.

I know.

Oh, you got to buy it to find out.

No, a little shamboard, lemonade,

gray goose, and Sprite.

Yeah, I want that.

I'll make you one and serve it on the factory.

She wants to overpay for it.

That's right.

You can't imagine how well you know her.

You literally know everything you need to know about Monago with that.

Doesn't it taste as good if you don't pay $28 for it?

And if it doesn't, there's this little melon thing there.

Yeah, that's really cool.

My favorite thing about that is they have the honeydew cups that have all the winners on them.

It's like, oh my God, I know I paid $30, but I got a free cup.

It's worth 75 cents.

So I won.

Yeah, I want that.

I want that.

I'm going to do that.

I'm going to do that.

I save thousands by getting this.

But also, the U.S.

Open's gotten so cool.

Everyone goes.

It's definitely a social event.

It's the Met Ball.

It's the Met Ball of Sports.

Yeah.

I do really, really want to go.

I need to learn a little bit more.

I'm trying to decide if I should ruin your day.

What?

I got invited this year

to go sit in the GM box.

It's cool, but it was the Emmys.

No.

There's something else important.

Yeah.

We have have been

it's worth seeing i gotta do more social media stuff

i have a lot to work on it's theater now for sure

you win that 2003 you're 23 no i turned 21 during the tournament what are the emotions that follow it there's obviously probably relief I feel a lot more relief towards the end of my career when I won matches.

I was so dumb.

I was like, oh, I'm going to be like the guy.

And this fucking guy, Federer, comes in.

I used to get bribed with the U.S.

Open for my mom for for a good report card.

Like I went when I was nine, and she would just weirdly let me walk around all day by myself.

I would sneak into the players' lounges, bore you to tears, but I saw Jimmy Connors make a run when he was 40 to the semis, and he had the crowd in his hand.

It was like a live rock show.

Like he would go like this, and everyone would get up.

I'm going, tennis can do this.

Stand up, bro.

Crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was like, he's controlling the mood of grown people.

It is interesting to observe human power when you're little.

Absurd.

I remember flying over it.

And at that that point, Mayor Dinkins then changed the flight pattern so that you didn't get the noise over the stadium.

But I remember flying right over the middle of the stadium when I was nine.

It was 1 a.m.

or something irresponsible.

And it was packed.

And it was Connors versus Patrick Magner.

And I remember being like, I cannot believe how late it is in what we just flew over.

They're still flying.

Oh, my God.

I was blown away.

So then 12 years later.

you have that moment where it's like, that's it.

No matter what happens and not much happened, but no matter what happens from there, that's that.

You did that.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

People can't take away what you did.

I think you have to come to that.

I don't think that's human nature.

I did it.

It can't be taken from me.

Because I have had many successes.

And then after failures, I really can't.

access the notion that I had done the other thing.

Does that make sports and entertainment?

Maybe.

Yeah, like a trophy's so definitive, I guess.

It's number one.

You want it.

It's also each match is individual, where I feel like entertainment's more cumulative.

The difference is, I'm guessing.

I I don't want to tell you about your business, but I'll tell you about like ours.

You win the U.S.

Open, you know what that is.

You can finish a project and other people are going to define what that is and you're not going to know for a year.

Or even the quantifiable aspect, it might make 180

and you're like, wow, that's the big comedy.

And then another movie comes around and makes 225 in a month.

And that's like, oh, we forgot that that other movie made 180.

Yeah, if someone wins the U.S.

Open last week or wins at 20, it's kind of like the same thing.

I had a hard time

less to do with like that U.S.

Open win because that was just fun, good time.

You're like hosting SNL.

And you thought it was the beginning of something.

You think it's going to happen a lot.

I would lose a Wimbledon final after that.

Yes.

And it was like, you failure.

And now I can go, okay, there's 128 men and women, so 256, each vying for this thing.

You have a two-week race.

You come in second with like Earth.

Some jackass can define that as a failure.

I bought into it for a very, very long time.

Yes.

Right.

And so now it's like, okay, the way people perceive me would be different had I won two more points at Wimbledon, one of seven times.

But it doesn't really change the day-to-day like what a Tuesday would look like at all, I don't think.

I guess that's what you're saying is that's healthy what you're saying.

And some people never get there.

It took a lot of work for me.

It's an ongoing thing to work through

the experience of having mass relevance and then have fading relevance and then maybe get another spike of mass relevance.

I mean, I was struggling with it so much that I asked Sean White to go out to breakfast with me and I'm like, how did you navigate these periods where it's just like, when you win the Olympics, the Olympic is a whole nother thing because it's like you're four years top of the mountain.

And then like a year later, it's like, okay, I have three years.

I'm curious about that conversation.

That's brutal.

Because I've heard Phelps talk about that.

He goes, I'd win the Olympics.

I would get all these medals and then I would be depressed.

You're on every talk show.

It's the opposite of what you would think, right?

And the rest of the world is

plays along because when someone's number one for too long, they want to see that upending.

Well, there's also a reason why, you can't say everyone, but the narrative you hear most with musicians, with actors, entertainers, sports is when you're going after something, they always say, that was the time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That was the best time of our career looking back.

Building.

Pursuing, having those things where there's no, I think expectation is the hardest thing in sports.

People talk about doing it.

I think keeping it, to your point, is like another level and something that I couldn't do.

It's another piece where you have to almost be like a complete psychopath.

You always got a reset?

Daily.

It's not even just a big reset.

It's like, I have to wake up.

You know, Novak has been doing this for 20 years where he used the jokovic.

He's like, I haven't had a piece of chocolate in 20 years.

I eat lemon water when I wake up.

That's hard to do for a day.

Exactly.

We're going to cleanse for five days and we want to throw a parade.

You need to be a Buddhist to get through it, but I don't think you can be a Buddhist in order to get it.

That's like, it's this weird catch-22.

It is.

You have to keep it right-sized, but in order to be the best, it can't be right-sized.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you can have it all just not at the same time, right?

Right, right, right.

That's true.

Okay, so.

The email I got from your publicist and then in this great GQ article I read with you.

It was really, really good.

Great article.

Both people are like, doesn't really want to talk about retiring.

It was present in the article, and it was present in this.

And that's just a curiosity of mine.

What part of it don't you like talking about?

Or is there any part you don't like talking about?

Well, imagine you have to announce your retirement from the five things that you do individually.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It makes no sense.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I retire from tennis.

That doesn't mean I retire from life.

There's a million other things.

Yes, yes.

Right?

So it's like you retired at 30.

It's like, no, I started other shit.

Right.

It's a weird thing where I get asked about a lot and it's like, oh, are you okay?

Here is my primary guess.

Yeah.

Was

I would hate it because

I hate being pitied.

There's nothing I would hate more than like knowing someone pities me or feels bad for me.

No, I don't think that was it.

I think it was I was 30 when I retired.

Yeah.

From tenant.

And so it's hard to define people kind of almost digesting as like life ending at 30.

That doesn't make any sense to me.

Like I'm very sad.

This is my thing.

This is the thing I'm in love with.

This is my first girlfriend.

This is my first love.

This is the first thing ever.

And I have a weird story.

I woke up one morning and I decided that that was that.

It was your birthday.

It was my birthday.

I retired that afternoon.

I made a run at the U.S.

Open.

I was in the middle of the U.S.

Open.

I'd played the night match the night before, and then I just did it.

So I played like another week, and that was that.

And I never came back.

Right.

So I admire it deeply.

The earlier conversation we just had, which I was saying, no, the challenge of leaving safety and leaving what you know is actually the calling.

And so I actually admire greatly that you were 30 and you were confident enough to go like, I'm not enjoying this the way I'd like to enjoy it.

I'd be happier not doing this.

Ultimately, it might have been a little more selfish than that.

I'm pretty good at reality.

I think the athletes were trained to like live in denial.

We have numbers, like a very clear data set of you're one, you're two, you're four, you're six, you're eight.

I was able to do that math and then I was 12 or 15 or whatever it was.

So it was going the wrong way.

And then frankly, it was these monsters that came, these Novaks and Rafas and Rogers, and my shoulder was not great If I didn't have the carrot that I was chasing, that was a Grand Slam title.

Yes.

I had a hard time reconciling because that was the goal the entire time.

Yes.

So that's interesting.

When I didn't believe in that goal, I wish that I could have had in that moment more enjoyment of just being on the tour.

Yeah, and I didn't work that way.

It was past fail.

It was like misery.

I was trying to out-train everyone, make up for what I lacked in ability.

I often had these conversations with Brooke, my wife.

I was like, I was jealous of some of the guys that were 20 or 25 in the world that you would see a half hour after a loss and they were like happy going out with their buddies, enjoying the town

day.

I didn't know if it was great that it didn't have that or great that I did.

I didn't know.

And so I struggled with that the last couple of years.

Yeah, that makes sense.

We were talking earlier about the difference between entertainment.

Entertainment is subjective.

Yes, the best shows aren't the biggest shows.

Correct.

The best shows that are really speaking to major themes, those are not seen by everyone.

It's all very subjective.

What we do, even though we're all in the podcast space, is very different from what Rogan's doing, from what Alex is doing.

We can take pride in what we're doing.

Sport is winning and losing.

It's like the only metric.

I mean, it doesn't have to be.

It could be this.

It could be 10th in the world or 11th.

But if you're a winner, as you are.

Go ahead.

And as am I.

Yeah.

It's winning or nothing.

That was a two-time state champ.

But tell us more about that.

Everyone's heard it.

They're so sick of it.

We can't get into it anymore.

I could probably get through it.

Go on.

But I do know that second is not an option when you're in it.

And so if it's just like, yeah, we're fifth, we're sixth for this long, I could see being like, I'm done now.

There's also even a hiccup within there, which is there's like all this great science behind the curse of silver.

So bronze people actually enjoy the Olympics.

They go out on a winning note.

They get out on the podium.

Silver's like a death sentence.

It's a rough one.

It doesn't make any sense.

I watched my friend Marty from the serving story earlier.

We were on the same Olympic team.

I was seated two.

I lost early.

He made it to the finals, played another guy.

Marty, I don't know what he was ranked at the time.

He was probably like 30.

It wasn't as if he was favored to get there.

Plays another guy around that ranking and loses.

I look back at the Olympics.

I'm like, yeah, it was pretty fun.

We were in the Olympic George.

And he's like, I fucking hate it.

I can't.

It's hard.

Dead when I think about it.

To your point, that second place silver thing is, I think it's real.

The brain is so fucked up.

It is feeble.

Yeah.

But you can be pragmatic.

Like you can talk through it and understand basic math and you're like, that's better.

It doesn't matter.

Damn, but it hurts more.

It's so bizarre.

Not when you get into those mental gymnastics.

Okay, so you are one of only two tennis players to ever host SNL.

That's pretty incredible.

Yeah.

What was that experience like?

It was great.

I think Lorne Michaels just wanted me to hit with his son or

that was pretty much it.

That would be enough for me.

I think that was the entire thing.

It was a weird moment in time where...

Tennis crosses over.

I don't know why that happened.

I like uncomfortable things.

I don't get freaked out by that thing.

I'm like, oh, if you suck, it's kind of funny.

No one expects anything from you.

Their job is to not make you look terrible.

Right, right, right.

And you have the most talented people on earth around you to do that.

Were you able to be present and have fun?

Our world tour finals, where I was one going into it, there were three guys in that tournament of the top eight.

So getting number one is great.

Being year-end number one is more prestigious.

Federer was in second.

Ferrero, who now is the coach of Alcaraz, was one of the guys also.

Was that the guy you had beaten the USOP?

Yes, exactly.

So I was still training for that the next week.

So I was in New York.

I would train in the mornings till two, and then I would go do all the rehearsals and everything until one or two in the morning and then landed and then had to play that.

I enjoyed it.

I wish it would have been two weeks later when my season was done.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Because all I wanted to do was sit in that room and listen to them read the shitty bits, the good bits.

I'm obsessed with comedians.

You want to go to the after party in the state of the end.

I was gone.

Yeah.

I had to play on Tuesday.

That was Saturday, obviously, right there in the name.

And then I had to leave.

So I got into Houston at like 3 a.m.

that morning.

It was incredibly fun.

Poorly timed.

It was amazing.

Who was the musical guest?

Dave Matthews.

Oh, who's your favorite?

Yeah.

And so

he was there.

It was during his solo album.

Did you become bros with him over the years?

We had known each other before that.

My wife, if I say I'm a Dave fan, she's like, you're not a Dave fan.

I'm a Dave fan.

I'm sure she's.

She will fight someone over.

She's like, you'll see.

In 20 to 30 years, people will fully understand.

Oh, my God.

It's like, I don't know.

You look back and I'm sure you guys had the same thing.

It was a crazy moment in time where crazy, fun, weird shit was happening all the time.

Oh, God.

Yeah.

Right?

Like, and then it calms down.

and it was weird i don't have the thing where i missed it when it wasn't happening yeah i appreciated it fully i loved it it was great i was always happy to have the opportunities i like doing stuff that wasn't normal so you talk about comfort zone being that comfort zone is the worst you feel and kind of yeah yeah a little bit yeah yeah it was cool it's like the best cast ever one other neat thing i think that i read about today that happened in your career was you had gone i don't know what number it was going to the finals at wimbledon against federer who by the way the fact that you had to face him three times in the final there's There's going to be a great movie at some point about that whole thing.

It's just so incredible that you faced him three times there.

You get to the top level and it's about matchups.

So it just happens that this guy from Switzerland,

well, we talk about serve.

Pace doesn't bother him.

He sees the ball earlier and he's able to accept it.

It's like I say the greats, the racket is like an extension of their hand and the rest of us are grabbing the racket and then using it.

It's very different.

He's just

assuming it's the same as like if you're on the other side of a great actor and you're thinking about stuff and and delivering stuff and they're just doing stuff.

You're saying the rest of us as if you are not one?

No, I'm not saying that.

I'm not saying the rest of Tiny Margin

and

I know I could go down the street and like

yeah, like I don't want to brag.

I am one of the best players in my club.

So I understand that.

But as much of a difference is between me and someone who's 300, there is that much of a difference between

the greats.

Who are the top five?

We get to separate.

Best three female players ever in my mind are I have to make four.

Chrissy Abermartina, Steffi, and Serena.

And I'm going to go back.

I'm going to realize I didn't say it's someone and it's going to kill me.

Yeah, yeah.

No, don't worry because I made you do this very fast.

No back, Roger, Rafa.

They ruined sports for everyone else because they were so good.

Alcaraz has six slams already.

That's like as many as icons of our sport.

And like, will they get to 24?

I'm like, yeah, how many did Agassi get?

Eight.

Yeah.

So it's already.

McInroff at seven.

Alcaraz is six at 21 or 22 years old.

He's that great.

But also the question is now, can he win 20?

Right, right, right.

It's like the record before those guys was 14.

The last Wimbledon final I played against Roger, that was when he broke the previous record was in that match.

So Pete Sambras, who you don't see, is a recluse.

Doesn't get turned.

Pete showed up for that match.

Because that was his record.

It was his record.

So he showed up.

So we're playing in front of him.

I'd known Pete because I played on tour with him.

It's 15.

And I think the next highest active player at that point, so that would have been 09.

It probably would have been Rafa at like three or four.

And it's like, there's no one going to be even close.

Yeah.

And then the two of them didn't even finish.

Then another guy comes and does it.

It's just absurd.

And then you throw Serena and what she did.

And it's all together.

It's just like, we're spoiled by greatness.

Then you tend to like look at someone who won

four

or the commentators are disparaging someone who's 20 in the world during a live broadcast.

I'm like, what the fuck are you talking about?

Tell a better story.

Yeah.

Yes.

But that's the match actually that I'm referencing because

something really cool happened, which is he wins.

He sets this new record.

The Brits go crazy.

They're chanting Fedora, Feder, Federal.

federal and then there's a beat and then they start chanting your name which is like unconventional which is radical like i think everyone was like fuck me he played an incredible match we respect this guy so much even in second place you also in your interview after it made almost the entire focus on Pete Sampras for being there.

The way people regarded your sportsmanship was so admirable.

And then you got home to New York and you were in a Apple store like three days later and people were coming up to you and being like, oh, a tough match.

And you realize in that moment it had really permeated.

It had kind of transcended a bit.

It changed everything.

And I don't know that that happens if I win.

Right.

I think it gets viewed very differently than if you kind of tragically lose.

I was a kid who was hot-headed, threw stuff.

Yeah, yelled at people.

Yeah.

So you get judged.

There's a hype mechanism that my natural ability probably doesn't support.

After that match, maybe you feel a little more understood.

And it's not conscious because you're reacting.

All you're trying to do in a speech is try to get through without breaking down.

We have the most psychopathic sport ever where it's like the loser has to go up and address the crowd within 10 seconds of finishing.

It'd be graceful.

Like, imagine going to a Super Bowl trophy ceremony and having a losing team come up and give a soliloquy before.

Why is that?

It's absurd.

From my experience with that match, you're shattered.

This is like the thing.

I don't know if I'm going to get back.

That was a place I hadn't been in a couple years.

It wasn't as if the other slam finals that I played and lost,

I still thought I would be back there.

Yeah, yeah.

This one, I'm playing it actively during the match.

I don't know that.

And a layer, people, I don't think, would naturally assume I had it, which is it's not just about you.

It feels like a very singular sport.

It's just this person.

But in fact, after that match, you're comforting your wife, who's very, very sad.

You're comforting your coach who's crying.

Oh, no.

I underestimated that aspect.

It's like, you're not just carrying your dream up there.

You're carrying a lot of the people around you.

So you're also setting the tone for this point forward.

But you come back to the States.

I'm walking down the street in New York City, and the crew fixing the pothole and us not being appreciative of them saving us time the next day, or you know, no one sees it when it's fixed, right?

They're going, Andy, tough one, man.

Like, I'd never experienced that in my entire life.

I would imagine in that scenario, you can actually feel the love.

Amazing.

Never in my life had I felt that.

And then I pulled out of a couple tournaments.

I wasn't ready to play.

A month later, I show up and we play a tour event in DC.

Tuesday, you normally draw, I don't know, seven, eight thousand people, and then you get to finals and it's full.

First night, walk out, and there's 16,000 people going nuts.

Yeah.

Practices were different.

It changed the entire thing forever, even to this day.

Completely.

You don't realize that without time, right?

They forced you to maybe accept the thing I was saying earlier, which is like, am I worthy of love if I'm not a champion?

Oh, wow, I am.

That's nice.

It was something completely unexpected.

Okay.

So, yeah, you're gone for 10 years.

You didn't play really for 10 years after retirement.

No, I would play like customer tennis where you get paid to go do this thing.

Yeah, yeah, yeah have you played with bill gates he's i haven't no he's our rich friend if you want us to go

i haven't yet but i didn't like play play if i went out i stunk i'm sure there's like an element of stand-up where you can know you weren't great right but maybe they don't know you weren't great type things but i didn't play i never played at home for fun i played transactionally completely for 10 years got it so what is the wake-up where all of a sudden you get kind of back interested in it i can't stop playing no oh you can't i play all the time really is it the same thing you woke up one day and you're like i'm ready again No.

Body starts breaking down at a certain point.

It basically has this thing.

It's like, okay, I probably have however many years to be athletic, but then you go out and hit, and the feedback is like, it actually makes sense.

It's listening again and you kind of get addicted in a great way.

That feeling of, oh, I'm relearning this thing.

I know how it's supposed to feel.

Sometimes it feels that way.

Competence.

And it's you for it.

But there's no consequence.

So I've never, ever in my life, this thing that I love, I've never lived it without consequence.

Yeah.

And it's the best.

It's the best.

I'm not nervous.

I don't care.

There's no pressure.

I'm playing a bunch of dickheads.

It's great.

You're playing for the right reason, which is the sensation of being competent.

You don't go home to anyone who cares about how you did that day, but it's amazing.

It's the best.

But then you start kind of tweeting prolifically about tennis.

You're starting to get more in the national conversation about.

tennis as it is today.

Ultimately, you start served, your podcast.

But what are the little steps before you start served?

So I say this sensitively.

I don't know that I would have gone back to kind of the front-facing side of tennis had it not been for COVID,

where it's like they have nothing live to show on tennis channel.

And I remember I looked at the emails and it was like, oh, we should be through this in six weeks.

Six weeks to two years.

Yeah,

right.

So basically, it's setting precedent for working from home.

Cause my whole thing was like, I don't want to sacrifice geography.

I did 45 weeks a year.

I'm never doing that again.

Had you already moved to North Carolina?

Yes.

So I start going on there, just basically reading the phone book because events aren't being played.

Top 10 best places to play, you know, after a mimosa, whatever it is.

So I'm just doing that.

And then they start regular programming.

You basically get to the point where it's like, okay, Earth pays attention to tennis for like eight weeks a year, the four slams.

It's a lot of runway for people that are like kind of nerdy about it.

Yeah.

And that's not being addressed.

There's no place to consume a story on a Tuesday.

And so it's like, there's no cost to it.

I'm preaching to you about your business, but you can start something up.

You don't need permission.

You don't need someone to put you on.

You can go for an hour.

You can go for three hours.

There's no extra expansion.

There's no exhibitor.

You are self-distributing and do whatever you want to do.

Basically, we just thought there was a lot of football field left.

And so we did that.

And you've done a lot of fun stuff with the show.

A, you've interviewed a lot of really famous and interesting.

How do you and Agassi get on?

You had him on.

He's my idol.

He's my hero.

That incredible doc.

Extremely flawed.

And he'll be the first to tell you why.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Or how.

Being around him when I was 17, it was a little freeing because

fully aware of his flaws, but also capable of this greatness.

And when you're 15, 17, you're like, oh, the people that are that good, that successful for that long have to be perfect.

Right.

It was a great lesson.

We're as close as we've ever been.

And at some point in the last three or four years, when we've been around each other a bunch, it went from like, okay, I don't feel like a kid around him anymore.

I don't feel like I'm the nine-year-old who is wearing all the unfortunate spandex with him.

Right.

Danglo, orange and green.

Yeah.

And so we text.

all the time.

He's a friend.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

He came on our show.

Him sitting down.

I mean, you get to experience it every week, but digging into people's psyche, their brains, and that was kind of the biggest one because I knew where to go.

Yeah, the reward of it, I think, is like to have someone trust you makes it a very beautiful feeling.

I know that I'm not as good as Andre, I'm not as good as Rafa.

I'm not as good as all these people, but I understand the things they're describing.

Absolutely.

Very well.

Yeah.

Patterns and processes and how we view things differently.

We could be remembering the same match.

and think about it completely differently.

Yeah, that's fascinating.

Both maybe be experts in our own way.

But I'm like, why do you think that?

It's amazing.

It's like the biggest high ever.

And it's like, it's basically, I found a way to get paid to ask these people the questions that I want to ask them that I would never ask them in private.

Right, right, right, right.

To nerd out.

It's the best.

Yeah, I agree.

You two have it figured out.

Did you see the doc about Agassiz?

What's the untold one?

That was with Marty Fish.

Yeah, and you were in that, right?

Yes.

So that's the guy who I served against at the silver medal.

We watched that together.

Is that the one where it talks about him dealing with his wig?

That's Agassiz.

I don't know the doc, but his book Open

is my favorite sports book of all time.

I got to read that.

I saw a great doc and he was incredibly honest.

And again, there was some really, really important match.

And, you know, he's dealing with this secret he has that he's going bald and he's wearing.

He wears a hairpiece and he has a bandana.

Famous for like this big moulay, jean shorts, like rebel renegade.

Back when the culture in the 80s was like, you dress in all white.

Yeah.

He was like, fuck this.

On its head, long hair, jean shorts to play matches in.

Insane.

He's like one of the first brands.

He was a brand.

and something has gone wrong with the wig and the thing and he's in the finals of the french open he has it like pinned on me he can feel it like coming off so all this poor guy is thinking about during that match gets routed that

and again you talk about what was happening in the match like that dude until he tells that story he's like that guy has no idea what happened in that match he's having this fucking complete collapse of identity the other guy's he's giving himself credit he's like i've completely taken this guy out of this game i am all this guy's thinking about is his hair i am a strategic surgeon

I had so much empathy for him.

And everything's just so fucking human.

And you project onto these people like, well, he's agassy.

He feels 20 feet tall.

No, we are all terribly insecure.

We all don't think we're worthy of love.

Let's say we all have this fucking racket.

Pun intense.

You have to read his book.

Your thing about not feeling like you're deserving of love.

He opens the book with like, I hate tennis.

Wow.

And he's like, because it caused so much stress in my family.

He goes, now I'm good at it.

I respect it.

I've now gotten to the point where he can have a relationship with it.

That's like semi-house.

He goes, you can't tell me that I shouldn't hate it when you haven't lived through the personal side wasn't worth the other side.

You can't tell me how to gauge those things.

Yeah.

Yeah.

He had some wild times out there in Nevada or wherever the fuck he was living.

Yeah.

His dad was an Iranian boxer who worked the door at Caesars.

Okay, let's go.

Okay, so I know that one of your goals and missions, and you just stated it, which is there's a billion viewers throughout the year and there's 29 million people that play this sport and yet it's relatively very small on the television front so people watch these four events they watch the french open the australian open the wimbledon and the u.s open yeah so in your

opinion how did they better the experience for the fan how did they get people interested in these non Grand Slam tournaments I can go off on this in a million different directions you can't have an 11 and a half month season and expect people to be committed when it's not in front of them.

And in order to have a conversation that's realistic and in the right actual spirit of change, the tour runs independently from the ITF, which is in charge of the protocols for the Olympics, which is in charge of drug testing, which is separate from the Grand Slams, which is separate from the team events, which is separate from the everyone fighting for those couple of weeks.

So everyone agrees everything needs to be shorter.

Everyone agrees these changes and no one is willing to give.

And so then you bring in money from other parts of the world.

Everyone's reacting to like, is that going to set off is that what has happened?

Are the Saudis entering this

as well?

But it's just

everyone lives in their own silo.

The biggest properties, which are the slams, aren't in control or don't really care about how tennis is delivered throughout the year.

So when ESPN comes in and buys only the slam rights, whoever's negotiating that deal doesn't sell them the Monday night game with two losing teams in December.

That's a mistake.

Yes.

So there have been a lot of mistakes where how ESPN doesn't cover the lead-in events to the Grand Slams.

So they need collective bargaining so that they can lift the lower.

There's no independent representation for the players.

So what you asked is a loaded question with a million layers.

Right.

Like you just scraped an onion.

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Here's what I think is really beautiful about the sport that I don't think is played up enough.

It's kind of the most meritocracy

sport there is.

You think?

Beats.

100%.

Because this weekend when F1 races, a guy on the Haas team, he can't beat Max.

He doesn't have the car.

Well, that one is specifically.

But it goes all the teams.

You're on the Yankees.

They have a bigger budget.

They have more players.

If you enter this tournament with the 260 people that enter, everyone has literally a shot to be the champion that weekend.

And that's so rare in any sport.

People will tell me the tough losses, it's unfair.

I'm like, it's the most fair.

It's the most.

You never walk off feeling like maybe it was a bad call, but the scale of unfairness in tennis is tiny compared to almost every tax.

You cannot make an argument for scale in tennis and it being unfair.

Yes.

It's not unfair at scale.

I guess golf shares that as well.

But that's even different.

Like you can have course setups that are lucky.

The PGA moves every year.

If you catch a run of courses you like that fit your game, a tennis score is a tennis score.

Other than the surface, but the services, they're not changing as much.

You know the cities are going to be played in 10 years from now.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Like it's just going to be that.

What about who you're paired up with?

But that's luck of the draw.

It's like flipping a coin and being ahead two at the end of 10 flips.

That'll even out.

And there's no manipulation in it.

So the NFL.

The NFL, as it was explained to us by the wonderful guys from Acquired, the goal of the NFL is that mid-season, every team's 500.

With scheduling, you mean?

That in the middle of the season, every team would have a 500 record.

Every great team at the beginning of the season plays all their hardest games.

It's not just random and it's not look at the draw.

It is manipulated so that hopefully at the middle of the season, everyone has 500.

And also, it's just different because you'll have a tough scheduled season where the people you play are 10 games above 500.

So that's like a really rad aspect of tennis.

You're good enough or you're not good enough.

There's no nepotism in tennis.

Right.

There's no team spending.

I mean, you could have better coaches, whatever, but if you have federations, it's not non-existent.

But the narrative of tennis, like and how much it costs and all this, I don't know.

You see all these other travel sports with kids and stuff, and I'm going, I don't think that's true anymore.

I think we're just being lazy about what was said during the 90s.

Kind of.

I mean, you look at our icons.

We talked about Agassiz's father.

You talk about Venus and Serena.

You talk about Novak Djokovic from war-torn Serbia.

Yeah, true.

And then you tell me that only

gymnastics is comparable in that way.

You're either good enough or you're not.

And you don't need a full team to get to the highest level.

Yeah.

It's just a really rad part that I feel like they're not telling the story enough.

They're not amping that up.

You know, they're not doing the prelude to that.

And this guy's on a run and he's only ranked this, but this could be his weekend.

Building in the human drama of that.

I once had a, you know, like people who are really great at their job are able to take complex concepts and make them into like a sound bite.

Yeah.

So I had a quick lunch with Al Michaels and I was going over to cover a match for BBC at Wimbledon.

He goes, just whatever you do, don't tell me what's happening.

Tell me why it's happening.

Ah, great.

That's right.

and it was like very clear yeah my job's to tell you what the score is your job's to tell me why the score is what it is and what needs to change for it to change

to your point i don't think we often in tennis which we try to do on our show why is this happening why is it a difficult matchup why is it someone's good forehand good backhand no the forehand in different spots and regions on the court you can actually manipulate it's not all the same this show match point that box to box does i think that's what it's called that's great because again it introduces you to the personalities why did af1 explode drive to survive these guys wear helmets helmets.

You can't root for a dude whose face you've never seen.

You don't know his story.

So it's like that needs to get infused, obviously.

But yeah, it is such a pure and wonderful sport.

The mental fuck of it, man, I don't know that there's a sport.

The mental of that game is just insane.

It's like chess.

There's no other sport where you can't really talk to anyone.

Fucking drop me crazy.

You're just there.

I didn't know it was weird, and now I know it's weird.

Yeah.

I sat up in the stands of the U.S.

Open last year and was just catching a match.

And I'm like just watching these two people go about their thing.

Like, this is a weird sport.

We're watching almost like a very private thing.

But even the locker rooms on the last day.

So you get there day one and it's a train station.

People from the qualifying tournament, 128 main draw, double.

There's hundreds of players in this locker room.

It's like the first day of college class where everyone's dropped.

Right.

I can only assume that's the case.

I don't know if I can

experience, but then you walk in the last day and it's just you and one other person.

Oh, that is so weird.

It's so quiet.

Oh, my God.

It's like squint games.

And it happens.

It is.

Every day you lose.

You lose.

Yeah.

Every day you lose like a quarter of the draw.

Whoa, yeah.

That's such a mindset.

People in a locker room.

It's so weird.

Yeah, that's so weird.

Like you walk in, then you like walk past the person.

It's like, hey.

Hey, this is stressful.

So awkward.

Hey, have a good day.

I mean, don't.

I don't, I don't know.

I know.

What do you say?

Good luck.

Actually, no.

One of the things people are loving about your show is that you're not afraid to take people to task.

I do want you to just tell me, what's this situation with this billionaire bill i don't know that's what i thought you were talking about when you was like billionaire you said so oh and i said okay so bill ackman one he's funding a lawsuit against the atb tours basically saying there aren't enough jobs and a bunch of other things and not a lot of people have signed up they basically have this thing that they say they're a players union but the players haven't agreed to it right so i'm i don't know where that leaves us so we had like a contentious with his CEO from that thing like a year ago on our show.

So Bill is obviously brilliant at what he does.

He's a brilliant investor, polarizing.

Half the country likes what he says, half the country doesn't, fancies himself like a tennis player.

It's like, I'm good.

One thing I don't want to do is make someone into a cartoon because he's very serious, accomplished, great at what he does.

That's good.

And takes a wild card into like a pro event.

And it was the Hall of Fame.

And I love the people at the Hall of Fame, strongly disagreed with them on air, strongly disagree with them behind the scenes in every conversation I have.

We've made our piece.

I went to the induction last.

We were great.

And I said on the show, and I believe it, it was a minor league event.

Who's Jack Sock?

Sock?

That was his doubles partner.

He's a guy who's won a couple of majors and doubles, was a good singles player, well-known.

He's a ringer.

Yes.

Yes.

What's that mean?

What do we mean?

Brought in with an unfair advantage.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh.

But not even because.

No, but Jack doesn't even play.

He's not even on tour anymore.

It'd be like AAA baseball.

Great players striving to make a living, do their thing, break through.

That's what we're talking about.

Yes.

Bill Ackman decides he's going to go play.

It'd be like him going and saying, like, I'm 60 years old.

I'm a great pitcher.

I'm going to go pitch in a triple-A baseball game.

Right.

And I think I can do it well.

The other guys are playing, like, the memes are incredible.

One of them set to the Kirby Enthusiasm theme song where it's like they're just hitting the ball back to him.

And so I just went on, and like I said, this is the biggest clown show I've ever seen in pro tennis.

It's shameful.

You can't tell me people should have more jobs and then take one of the spots that week.

Like, it's just there are parts that I don't like.

And if Bill wants to do it, Bill can do it.

My personal belief, and I'm going to get texts from the Hall of Fame, but I don't believe that the Hall of Fame should have allowed it.

I think it's beneath the Hall of Fame.

Your job is to preserve and celebrate celebrate greatness.

This was not it by a long shot.

This was a stunt.

I said what I said.

I went in the studio hot.

I didn't talk about it again.

I thought it was very funny.

It was a constant.

Okay, very last thing.

I just think it's funny that, or I like that Austin's such a home base.

For you, I was hell-bent on moving to Austin.

And then what I was also debating is like, or do I go to Asheville?

And I love Asheville.

We ended up in Nashville and I love that.

But you have a place in the Blue Ridge, yeah.

So I'm going mid-October with my best friend from Detroit.

We're going to leave Nashville, ride motorcycles, be stationed in Asheville, and then do rides

every day out of there.

And just, how lovely is that?

Oh, my goodness.

Blue Ridge Mountains is heaven.

We don't have each other.

Get it off.

I'm going to send you places you need to stop.

Do the whole thing.

It's magic.

Honestly, there's no better thing than just like getting outside and feeling small.

Yeah.

It's the best.

We spent our summers up in this place and you look at it like a bald-faced rock and our kids go and throw rocks at streams all day.

I took my daughter when she was three, just the two of us went to Asheville.

We went to Looking Glass Falls, Sliding Rock.

And yeah, we sat in a river for like seven hours and played.

And I'm like, this place calls me.

This is special.

So, I don't know.

In that way, I feel like we're long-lost brothers because we're being pulled to all the same places.

Everybody, listen to Served with Andy Roddick.

You have the number one tennis podcast for a reason.

I hope everyone checks it out.

And this has been goddamn delightful.

I appreciate you.

I had to like check myself.

I'm such a huge fan of the show.

So I'm really happy to be on.

Thank you.

All right.

Be well.

Cheers.

Thank you.

We hope you enjoyed this episode.

Unfortunately, they made some mistakes.

I'm going to tell you, this has lifted my spirits.

I want to thank you.

Oh, good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm happy about that.

Yeah.

I entered feeling

like I was dying.

Yeah.

And now I feel happy.

Good.

Conversation can do that.

Especially when it's revolving around Travis's penis.

Oh, that's it.

Is that what did it?

No, it's just for a lot of laughing.

And you said I had spray on my lips.

Well,

which I did, technically.

You did.

Nicotine spray, not

spray spray.

That's right.

And not pea from your catheter.

Nope.

Not orange, McDonald's orange.

Did you?

Did I

save some?

Want to taste it?

Oh,

Rob, will you put a picture up of the McDonald's orange drink just so we can

check in with the color?

Because I want you to know.

Yeah, you see that orange drink.

Yeah.

And that's not orange soda.

I think it's high sea.

High sea.

It's more like a high sea.

I remember at a birthday party, you could get the big jug, that big McDonald's cooler, right?

A dispenser and dump the powder in and then the water.

And then it was, you know, that was the orange drink.

Okay.

So I don't think it was carbonated.

Okay.

But they probably did have orange soda as well.

In the fountain.

We moved past.

Yeah, we're going going to move on.

It's not worth 10 fact checks.

I have one more question, though.

Okay.

Because we did move past me being correct about the UTI.

Oh, uh-huh.

Because when you were in pain, I was like, it kind of sounds like a UTI.

And sometimes some men do get them sometimes.

Sure.

Were you like,

I don't want a UTI.

That's a women's thing.

Oh.

Did you feel emasculated a little bit?

No,

which is not to say I couldn't.

Sure.

But, you know, all these things is like, what's the chain of events?

Yeah.

What happened?

Right.

Like, if you have an infection in your prostate and then that gets into your urethra, that then you have a UTI.

Like, is it a UTI that then somehow infected my prostate?

Or did I have prostitutes, which in fact?

And I don't think we'll ever know.

But because it's not obvious to me, I didn't.

go down the path of like Jesus how'd I get a UTI fucked a guy and I didn't pee afterwards exactly that's generally how the women I know in my life get it.

Well, no, you can get it a lot of ways.

You could have, it could have been a, sorry, it could have been a wiping situation.

I don't want, you don't wipe your penis.

I think you accidentally

got some

monocle.

Okay, okay.

I'm just, okay.

I did not.

That's it.

That would be an accident.

No, it's not impossible.

You could have dutied, as we talked about, you duty sometimes in the toilet.

Yeah.

And then maybe just the penis hit it on really quickly.

And oh, it like bounced into the bowl and it touched just

a very,

I still think, um, and this is why guys don't get it as much.

Yeah.

We have a lot longer distance between there and the bladder.

Exactly.

Where you need the UTI to really take

fine purchase.

And wiping is a different scenario, but that's why I don't think this was wiped.

I would have peed,

you know,

the odds of that.

in your hypothetical making its way all the way to my bladder are very low, which is why I think it's rare that guys get them.

Right.

But people have got to be tired of my medical condition.

So normally UTIs are first and then it starts spreading everywhere.

Okay.

And that's bad.

Okay.

Well, the guy did say the prostate is hard to get medicine into, and it's hard for infection to get out of it.

Yeah.

It's really

in its own little universe.

Yeah, it's got like a nice, I guess, protective barrier.

It lives on its own island, physically and emotionally.

I think people are up for a GLP-1 update.

I've heard people ask, like, hey, what's the updates?

And then I certainly would like one.

Okay.

Well, we can do a mini update because we're probably going to have Dr.

Isaacson on a fact check coming up to talk about all of our blood results.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

He says we both have interesting results.

And so I'm curious

what that will be.

When we first got our results after the first cognitive test and he did all the blood work and went through it all.

He basically said I was a medical marvel.

Uh-uh.

Okay.

I forget why.

Uh-huh.

It wasn't the was it a good kind of medical marvel?

Yeah.

Oh, it was.

It was like

really unique stuff was happening.

I think anomaly might be a better word than Marvel.

I prefer medical marvel.

Okay.

And one thing, I don't remember if we talked about this back then, but

they found randomly this one little like gene,

one little elevation in numbers on this one little thing.

And no one would really look at it because who cares?

But they looked and then they did a deep dive and that correlates to

late onset epilepsy.

Whoa, really?

Whoa.

Isn't that crazy?

Wow.

So in a world of where CRISPR is over the counter, do you think you get that gene edited out and you go off of your Cepra and your wow, that's a great question because would I feel safe enough to go off of the medicine, even if I knew the gene itself was cut out?

Because you got to remember, in order, it's like you went on Keppra and then you needed to go on antidepressants,

or I shouldn't say needed.

No, I needed to went on Cepra

and then you went on antidepressants.

Yeah, but we have different, I think, well, look, Kepra,

Kepra can be associated with depression.

But

I believe deeply that that was, that just,

again, it was, I had a seizure.

I had to put on this medication, COVID.

Started right away.

So much was happening that it just pushed me over the edge.

Yeah, hard to parse out.

It's hard to parse out.

I, knowing me, knowing my family history,

I believe I needed antidepressants before that.

Yeah.

And would have needed it regardless.

But who knows?

Who knows?

Who knows?

And

I wonder if I would feel safe enough to get off of it.

Also, antidepressants often cause weight gain.

Right.

They can, yes, they can.

And

then there's a...

fourth thing in the mix that causes weight reduction.

You know, at least from my perspective, it does look like there could be a whole chain of events that starts with one thing.

Yeah.

It'd be interesting if you didn't have that one thing,

where we're at with all the other stuff.

I don't know.

I don't know either.

I don't know.

I know for sure that

being on the Triz

has not

impacted my

mood.

For a while, I was like, oh, we call Trizepet Triz.

Oh, yeah.

Like, I think for a while, I thought, oh, maybe there'll be a reduction in anxiety or depression because I had heard that there might be some things there.

Sure.

That is not the case.

But again, I think that's like, if one of your things is you're in a constant shame spiral that you've eaten in a way that you don't want to eat, but you keep eating and this thing stops that, then of course it's going to impact depression.

Right.

That's right.

But you were not, you're not there.

Yeah.

That's not you.

Yeah, correct.

You weren't like living in any shame spiral.

I mean, the drinking was, that was, that's part of the mix.

And that's been interesting to follow that whole journey.

That was one of the main reasons I wanted to do it was to see my relationship with it.

And at first,

I did notice a change.

I think what I said was I was drinking less, but frequency the same.

Exactly.

Amount is less.

With dosage lowered.

And I think that's still correct.

I think for sure

I reached my capacity soon earlier, but it's still, I still drink every day, basically.

So that's been kind of a bummer.

A letdown.

But part of that is like, it's mental.

Like there, there will be, and this is bad, but there will be times where I'm like, I'm not even, I'm not even in the mood to drink.

Like, I don't really want to,

but I'm here and I will.

Yeah.

So that's

whatever that is.

I don't know what that is.

Habit, I guess, or just, oh, we're out.

Like, I might as well.

Look at Charlie Sheen.

Did you finish the doc?

No.

The craziest thing is no one could get him off crack.

They couldn't figure out how to get him off crack.

Yeah.

So they convinced his dealer, because his dealer loved him.

Yeah.

To start titrating.

So because you make Coke out of cocaine.

Right.

I'm sorry, you make crack out of cocaine.

He could add however much baking baking soda he wanted to dilute it.

And over the course of a year, he just reduced the crack to having almost no cocaine in it.

Wow.

And eventually,

and then Charlie's just thinking, well, I've reached the capacity.

I can no longer get high.

And he stopped.

Really?

He's just like, I don't know why the fuck I'm doing this.

It doesn't do anything.

And then he switched to drinking.

Then he became a really bad alcoholic for a year or two.

But they got him off of crack by tricking him and titrating him.

Whoa.

So what's interesting is you're at the point where it's like like you've kind of been titrated in a way that you're like, I don't even really want it.

Yeah.

But just the muscle memory and habit is like, but I'm going to do it.

Yeah.

But it's interesting if someone could trick you the same way.

Right.

And all of a sudden had no alcohol in it at some point.

You still do it.

Still do it.

Yeah.

Like right now, I'm like, I'm in.

Sounds good.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's weird.

It's weird.

I have noticed like, oh, I, I don't really.

Okay, sure, I'll get a martini.

Like, that's how it, that's, I'm not craving it, I guess, in the same way.

So that is interesting.

It's just so social.

Yeah, it's a good time.

It's a good, it's not even that it's a good time.

I mean, it is a good time, but it's

just what you do.

It's something to have in your hand.

It's something, I don't know.

Maybe I'm, maybe I'm heading towards sobriety.

Doesn't sound like it, basically.

Well, you're on a medicine.

Yeah.

But also,

I have have definitely lost weight.

We don't know how much.

It was not the goal, and I don't know how much because I don't weigh myself.

But what's interesting is

Dr.

Isaacson did weigh us on intake, but we didn't get weighed at this.

I know.

So I think we need to get weighed.

He's going to want to know that.

I mean, I'm kind of dying to know what the difference is for you.

I'm curious.

I think you've lost about 65 pounds.

This is like, could be the biggest minefield ever to play a game.

How much do you think I lost?

I know.

60, 70 pounds.

I don't know.

What do you think?

There's a lot of traps in this type in this conversation because I, and like, I don't mean to like trigger anyone.

Um, I'll just, I can only talk about me and my body.

Yeah.

I'm already, I'm small.

I've always been small.

Yeah.

So because somebody asks, like, oh, have you had to go down and size on your, in, on your pants?

Yeah.

Um, people are going to hate me for saying this.

No, because

I already wore the smallest size.

Okay, right.

There's nowhere else to go.

So, yeah.

So it's not like

safety pinning any of your so yesterday.

I put, I did put on a pair of pants and I was like, oh, they like they are about to fall off.

So I am, you know, I've lost weight in a way that I don't want to lose more weight.

I don't want that.

Like, I, I, my parents, I saw my parents for, you know, my aunt.

And my, first thing, my mom saw me and she said, you've lost a lot of weight.

And I was like, no, I don't think so since summer.

And she was like, yes, I think so.

And then I went to the next room and saw my dad.

First thing he said.

Okay, but here's, okay, okay, there's a lot going on here.

A, they're like, they're already dealing with something of sadness.

So like, is she depressed?

Is that the explanation for the weight loss?

Oh, sure.

So that's an obvious fear.

Yeah.

But I'll add that when I go back to Michigan, back i used to go back to michigan yeah and people treated me like i had full-blown eggs they're like

why are you so thin like totally concerned right and i was like i just got to acknowledge like the baseline of what way too thin is in la is is just way different

yes and

truthfully i'm with like six of my friends growing up and they've all got that you know they're all hovering around 235 and they got a nice gut they've earned and that is how you look so when you don't have it it looks crazy to them it'd be one thing if it was the other family members who said that but my parents do see me a fair they saw me in the summer and they

have i again i've always been small so it's not like they're like

why aren't you looking thicker like i i think to them it was drastic yeah whatever that's whatever the the weight except i I will be honest, and Dr.

Richard Isaacson is really not going to like this, but it is the truth.

I have lost a lot of muscle.

Oh, uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

And that is bad.

And I, the whole, I've been trying, you know, trying to actively build bone density.

Yeah.

Farmer's carries.

Yeah.

I haven't done farmers' carries.

Well, I'm afraid to ask you, but how much effort have you put into muscle carries?

No, because I,

now they're too heavy.

Shit.

Okay.

So now we're in a weird, now I don't really know what to do because

I'm weaker.

Oh boy.

I'm definitely weaker.

There is a new one, as you know.

There's a new one that you're going to be able to switch to very shortly that specifically prevents that muscle loss.

Oh, really?

Yeah, there's a new one.

I'm seeing different people on my feed talk about it.

Okay.

And I guess it's close to being approved, but yeah.

It's like a triple inhibitor.

Oh, it's a GLP-3.

Yeah.

Well,

it's like semaglutide plus this plus that.

And

it does

counter that muscle loss issue that is quite prevalent.

Okay.

That's interesting.

Yeah.

But it's hard because what I like about this GLP-1 is I do, I feel safe on it.

Like there's been at this point so many studies we've had enough people on that have been like, it's pretty good.

So to do this other one feels a little more risky.

Yeah.

I should probably just try to do more farmers carries, but they're so heavy.

Yeah.

Oh boy.

I'm like starting to get nervous.

You're going to fall down in your apartment and just be like,

I did.

I will.

You shouldn't have lost your ability to carry those things you could carry two months ago.

I know.

So quickly.

But I was stronger.

Right.

But

you needed to stick with it a little more, I think.

I don't know how to say this, but you.

They were heavy.

Yeah, but they wouldn't have been heavy if you kept, if you never stopped.

I know, but I know, but then I was tired.

Like, if I don't squat for a month and a half, I'm not going to be able to go squat 250 like my normal thing.

And I'm going to have to drop down.

But you can, within a couple of weeks, you can be back.

I can work my way back.

I can't.

Yeah.

I have to start off with fives.

Whatever it takes.

And then next week you do tens.

I do.

I need to.

I need to.

I am a little nervous about the lack of

muscle.

But I want you to.

I know.

I'm aware of it.

It's bad.

That's the one thing before I got on it, Dr.

Richard Isison was very clear that I needed to monitor the muscle and make sure I was, and I didn't do it.

Yeah.

I didn't do it.

Look, we're not perfect, Monica.

I know that.

that I have to get back on that and I will

um I have been really tired and maybe I just have a bug

but there are these weird cycles where like you're eating less and so you have less energy and so you don't want to work out because you have less like that part's bad.

I do need to break that cycle.

I have been going to bed at seven for the past couple nights

and sleeping till like I have two, but I'm dying.

I know you're sick.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, I have thought, like, this isn't exactly right.

I'm a little concerned with these updates.

Going to bed at seven.

It was weird.

I can't lift five pounds.

I weigh somewhere around 76 pounds,

but I'm still drinking.

The only thing I'm

staying.

The only thing I've really committed to is I am, you know, I don't even want to, but I get through it.

I force it down.

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Oh, no, but you know what?

I think you got to try the Mel Robbins 54321 approach to this.

Okay.

Which is her first book, and she became wildly popular over it.

Easter egg.

Well.

Which is.

When is it an Easter egg?

And when am I just telling people?

Well, that's.

Yeah.

That's the question.

That's too big of an Easter egg.

egg.

If I say Mel Robbins and then you say Easter egg.

But her thing is, you think of what you want to do

and I want to get out of bed.

And then you start thinking,

it's cold out there.

I don't want to get out of bed.

Soon as your brain starts,

you're not going to get out of bed.

But at the second, if you can start training yourself, the second you have a thought, like, I should do farm, you'll be sitting in your house, i should do some farmer carries and then immediately go five four three two one and on one stand up and do it oh

because you're interrupting that cycle of convincing yourself not to do the thing you know you have to do i like she's like people are just waiting for motivation to hit them and it doesn't that's not what happens you have to interrupt

And this is a very well-worn technique that works.

Okay.

So I don't know.

Report back.

Let's see.

Try the 5-4-3-2-1.

The second you think of something, just immediately go 5-4-3-2-1 and stand up and do it.

Okay, so it'll be like, I don't really want a martini.

5-4-3-2-1.

So you don't need any help.

Shake, shake, shake, shake.

You're already doing it somehow with not wanting the martini in head.

No, this is good.

That's helpful.

That's good for my farmer's cares.

But I got it.

The problem is, you encouraged me when I was very strong

to do 240s.

And I could do that.

Yeah.

I bought those.

Now I don't have the right equipment.

I don't have like 230s.

Right.

But just, I think a standard farming carry goal is your body weight.

Right, which I don't know what that is.

Well, you know, you know it's above 80.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So

listen, 80 is not too heavy for you.

It's just, you're not going to be doing as long as you want to.

But you got to do it.

You just do that weight and do it for however long you can count.

And then next time you you got to do it one second longer.

Okay.

All right.

I'll try.

Okay.

I can't do it right now because we're in the, I can't do five, four.

Five of you just stood up.

You go five for it, and then you

just left.

Well, all right.

I do.

Okay.

So those are the updates.

Like, I guess they're mixed.

Yeah, it's mixed.

Yeah.

Um, and when we get our blood work, we'll know more.

Yeah.

And I am really, really curious about that.

I'm very curious about my cholesterol.

Yeah.

And even blood sugar and things like that.

Yeah, me too.

So TBD on that.

TB diesel.

So for this motorcycle trip.

Yeah.

I'm going to send you a picture, Rob.

Can you put it on the screen?

Sure, can you want me to email it?

Yes, please.

Okay.

Yeah, you're going on a trip.

Yeah, this is so exciting.

I'm so lucky and spoiled.

I want to own this because if I was a dude listening to this, I'd be like, you know what?

Fuck you.

You have money.

But I have great relationships with all these different motorcycle manufacturers.

Yeah.

I go to track events with them.

I'll be in their videos, whatever.

And so people loan me stuff.

Yeah.

Which is so awesome.

Yeah.

Sustainable.

Very sustainable.

And I have a motorcycle down in Tennessee.

I have a gorgeous Motogutsi.

I have not gotten the title yet to plate it.

So it's like, I've got this great tour bike that I'm dying to ride on this motorcycle trip.

Okay.

And I can't ride it because there's no plates.

Oh.

You're going to let that stop you?

Well, I'm like, well, I wasn't going to.

I was like, okay, I'm going to bring a plate from one of my other motorcycles and just slap it on there and then pray I don't get pulled over.

Or if I get pulled over, the guy doesn't know the difference between a Modogutsi and a Ducati.

Of course, I was going to go the outlaw route.

But then the responsible part was like, hey, you've got a couple good relationships.

Why don't you see if you can borrow a bike while you're down there?

Also, a lot of these places are based in Atlanta.

So it's like, not that far.

So I was able to borrow two motorcycles for Aaron and I.

Because also, Aaron was going to drive 600 miles on his motorcycle.

He was going to ride for basically 12 hours to my house and then get up in the morning and ride with me for 400 miles.

Oh, yeah.

And he, and then he, at the last minute, he's like, I can't do it.

I'm going to rent a truck and I'm going to put the motorcycle.

And then I was like, oh, hold on, let me just see if I can, and then you could fly in.

It'd be so much easier.

I got this super awesome Harley Pan America, which I, I had, I've never ridden and they've like,

they've gone full gusto.

It's super fast, crazy good brakes.

I'm really excited.

And then, and if anyone is into motorcycles, growing up, you're like, a Goldwing?

That's like a grandpa's motorcycle.

Okay.

It's like a catheter?

It's like a catheter.

I don't want to say that because Honda is, they're loaning me.

I love Honda.

Yes.

So growing up, you're like, oh, yeah,

that's for old guys.

So I hit Honda up.

I'm like, hey, do you have anything in the fleet?

And then my man said,

I'm going to pitch you the Goldwing.

Like, for this kind of ride, I'm just going to consider the Goldwing.

And I was like, you know what?

I think I am up for a Goldwing.

Wow.

So this is a big moment for me.

Okay.

Okay, Rob, please show the the picture.

So the Goldwing arrived yesterday.

Monica, look at this motorcycle.

Look how big the back seat is.

Rob, zoom.

First of all, it's a six-cylinder motorcycle, which is bonkers.

What is that?

Ducatis are like generally twins, two, two-cylinders.

Okay.

Maximum four in line.

This is a six-cylinder.

And this back seat.

So I sent this picture to Aaron.

Yeah, it looks like a first-class plane seat.

Absolutely.

Even the rider's seat is incredible.

And then you see the speakers built in.

I've got like a a huge sound system oh aaron i sent this picture to aaron and immediately we both had the same thought we were like why are we gonna bring two motorcycles you guys are gonna ride tamp look at this thing isn't it begging for just the two of us to be on

the motorcycle oh my god dude look at that back seat where do you is the back seat where you is no you see that big backrest that's the passenger then you look lower that's where my butt goes there's a little lip i'll point oh oh this is for the passenger.

Oh my God.

Yes.

How can you see above?

I'm thinking, I think I'd rather be a passenger on

this thing with Aaron riding and me just sightseeing the fall colors.

Yeah, so I'm entering the Goldwing phase of my life.

Wow.

I'm done being cool.

You're ready for comfort.

Oh my God.

I just, that thing looks so fucking comfortable.

It might ride itself there.

Wow.

Oh, my God.

All right.

I just want to show you.

That's going to be cute.

You two on there together.

I mean, we're going to bring the second one.

But who knows?

We might do, you know, because we're going to do rides every day and come back to Asheville.

Yeah.

We might take a two-up ride one of these days.

Are you guys going to stay in a cute hotel?

Yeah, yeah.

We got it.

Yeah.

No, the vacancy was almost non-existent because, because people do go there for the colors, I realized.

Because I searched everywhere and I was two months out when I booked this.

Whoa.

And there was slim fucking pickings, but we're in a cool little boutique hotel downtown.

Cute.

And then I hit up our sweet boy Luke Combs.

Oh, yeah.

Asheville native.

Yeah.

I said, where should I eat?

And he's like, boom, boom, boom.

The ribs here are impossibly good.

Yum.

Go here for fish.

Not going to happen, but whatever.

You could try it.

Not going to happen.

You could enter that phase of your life too.

I've tried it.

Okay.

Okay.

Facts?

Okay, facts.

Thanks for indulging my motorcycle story.

Yeah, that's fun.

I'm excited to hear.

I hope you guys are careful.

I have to say that.

Yeah, we will be.

And I hope you have so much fun.

Thank you.

Wow.

That was a fun one.

It was.

And it's fun to have sports experts on, like athletes.

I would guess they're called athletes.

He was also very mature, was my conclusion.

I was like, I felt like we were peers, but I am nine years older than him.

Oh, well, he's lived just such a big life.

Yeah.

And he does have a very evolved perspective on it, I think.

I agree.

Yeah.

I enjoyed him a lot.

I felt we felt contemporary, but we weren't.

Well, at what age are you not like?

Well, let's just put it this way.

I was graduating when he was in third grade.

I know, but

once you hit a certain age, when are you not contemporary?

It does diminish.

Yeah.

Like a 60-year-old and a 50-year-old are far different than a 10-year-old and a 20-year-old.

Exactly.

I think when you're 40 years old.

Or a 10-year-old is zero years old.

Yeah.

I think if you're 40 or above, you're all the same.

I saw a really comforting graph this morning.

I think it was in the New York Times.

And it was,

oh, yeah, because Harvard has done like

a very, very long study on a lot, a lot of people about happiness.

So all this data has come out of this, the happiness study at Harvard, I guess.

Oh, and it's new?

I think I'm getting that right.

Well, in that there's always going to be updates, right?

Because they've been studying them long term.

So I'm sure there was revelations midway through the study.

And so like one of the fun revelations is like the income achievement level of all the people in the study, which there were many,

was not influenced

whatsoever by their IQ.

There's like no correlation.

Interesting.

So I love that one.

Yeah.

It's like you thought you did shitty on IQ tests and you didn't do good in school.

It doesn't mean shit.

Yeah.

As far as just at least that.

But anyways, in this, this, this.

chart I saw, there's a very predictable curve for everyone's happiness.

And the lowest point across the board, men and women, is like 50, 53.

And then it just starts going up and up and up.

And it gets as high as it'll ever get your happiness in your 60s.

And I was like, really?

Well, that's great news.

I just kind of lived through or I'm currently living through the worst time.

I can't even imagine how happy I'm going to be in 10 years.

I was, I really like this graph.

It's kind of weird.

Makes sense for women because menopause.

I wonder why men.

I think the stress of like, am I going to make it?

Can I support everyone?

All that stuff on your shoulder.

You're getting a glimpse of like, you made it.

You're going to get across the finish line.

Failure's off the table.

You did it.

You have a savings.

You own your home.

Family's safe.

I think a lot of the pressure that you put on yourself evaporates.

Oh, you mean, oh, you're saying professionally.

Oh, yeah.

I guess I meant why is it so low

in your 50s?

Yeah.

Well, I think it's that, as we would say, that inflection point between

I had this identity, go build, go create,

save, buy something.

And then this little bit of a moment of like, and for what?

Again, these are like, this is the broad arc of data, which is most people in whatever their given profession is, generally, they hit their peak financial effectiveness in their 50s.

That's when people get paid.

Whatever your chosen occupation was, that is where it doesn't happen in your 30s or 40s.

It generally happens in your 50s.

And then you're halfway through life, so you're depressed.

That's what I was about to say.

I bet maybe you're really like age becomes very present when you turn 50 and i'm halfway done and all i did was work but i think most people are looking at this moment going i'm so sick of working yeah it didn't make me feel awesome and and i can't quit because i'm they're finally paying me what i deserve and i gotta get paid this number So they might be looking at like a 10-year out window before they're well, if they're waiting for social security, they are waiting a bit.

Or just your standard retirement age.

Yeah, which I think normally, I think 65s, yeah.

But yeah, so that's really interesting.

Yeah, so my happiest years are like ahead of me and yours too.

Well, that's great.

My saddest years are ahead of me, too.

I don't love that.

Yeah, that's great.

I don't love that's not great.

That's not great.

Okay.

They're just slightly like the graphs are slightly like.

The low points a little different for women than the men.

But in general, it's only off by a few years and it is the exact same curve, right?

It's like follows the same trajectory.

Interesting.

Also, part of it maybe is that on average, probably around that age, 50, 53, your kids are maybe leaving.

Not here in this case, not in LA, but on average in the country, probably

that age, your kids might be heading out on their own.

Yeah.

That's depressing.

Just gotten through the teenage years.

Or yeah, exactly.

Huh.

Very interesting.

Yeah.

But all very positive positive and optimistic.

Yeah, great.

Okay.

I can get through those three years.

Yeah.

Who?

Who can?

What will I do?

Okay.

His brother went to Georgia.

I just wanted to say go dogs.

Yeah, go dogs.

Go dogs.

But a big dog's day here in the

garage.

I don't like saying the garage.

It doesn't have the same ring as attic.

I say garage.

We can't say attic.

Well, we can't say attic because we're not in it.

Exactly.

But I wish garage had the same.

And it should.

Garage band, garage beer.

There's a lot of cool garage.

Yeah.

But I don't know.

You think it's...

Well, the attic is very special.

Yeah, very few people have like an attic space that they've made a clubhouse out of, but a garage spot.

Probably a lot of people have garage podcasts.

Yeah, yeah.

But this is where we are.

And we're in a garage, yeah.

And you're probably upset about that because you're 50, but I'm not.

Yeah, you haven't bottomed out yet.

You're not at the nadir.

That's right.

Okay, his brother's name is John, in case anyone wants to look him up.

I wonder if his brother's as cute as as him and if he's single.

Let's see.

He coaches.

He's a coach.

Hey,

most coaches are married, I think.

Yeah,

I think so, too.

It doesn't say on his Wikipedia.

I can text Andy and this.

He's 49.

Oh, okay.

I thought it was going to be.

He's about to be depressed.

Yeah.

Shit.

Okay.

Okay.

Let me kick this down the road to you're 48 and he's coming out the other side.

What's the Happy Gilmore quote?

He kind of like half said a Happy Gilmore quote.

It's golf requires goofy pants and a fat ass.

Oh, I don't even know that quote.

Yeah, it's from Happy Gilmore.

Okay.

Okay, yeah.

So he had the record for the fastest serve,

but now it's Sam Groth, and that's 163.

No, 116.

No, 163.

He was 155.

Oh.

Oh, my God.

It's at 163 now.

You're right.

He had been dethroned by someone at 156, but now it's jumped to 163.

Yeah.

It was at a Challenger event.

Challengers.

I love that movie.

Yeah.

Threesomes.

I love that movie.

Really hope you have a threesome one day with a couple of real dream boats.

Me too.

Yeah.

Sounds so fun.

It's like a four hands massage.

I mean, the threesome thing is just so interesting because, again, it has to be so specific.

For me, it has to be two men yeah i find extremely attractive yes and um but again what i have found in my own experiments you'll like one more than the other and then and then you're like i kind of just wish i was with this one well then why do you want this for me well i still want it for you it'd be fun sounds like a lot of anxiety

um

well maybe hopefully best case like they're good at different things yeah yeah yeah so then

it's very titillating.

Yeah.

Okay, honey deuce, he said, is a chambord, lemonade, gray goose sprite.

I think he pretty much nailed it.

Okay.

It is gray goose, lemonade, raspberry liqueur is such a chamboard.

Honeydew melon balls.

This doesn't say sprite, but he's probably right.

He knows his tennis.

Seem to know his shit, yeah.

Yeah.

I'm really excited.

And you'll be seeing him next year at it.

I'm excited to one day have this.

Do you know why it's called honey deuce?

Could you go?

Many deuce is part of tennis.

Yeah, good job.

Yeah, yeah.

It's a tennis term for a tide score of 40-40.

That seems like something that would come up in my mind.

I've only heard deuce.

I've never heard anyone call it honeydeuce, but that's great.

Oh, no, honey, because the honeydew melon.

Okay.

Okay, he said Mayor Dinkins changed the flight pattern so it wouldn't fly over the U.S.

open.

I thought that was so interesting for someone else.

Yeah, yeah.

Priorities.

That's so crazy, but it makes sense.

And yeah, he did it.

Change the flight pattern of planes over the U.S.

Open in 1990 by negotiating with the Federal Aviation Administration, FAA, to reroute takeoffs from LaGuardia Airport to avoid the noise over Fleshing Meadows Corona Park.

Just on that day, I assume.

Yeah.

In exchange, the city agreed to pay the U.S.

Tennis Association up to $325,000 annually for excessive flyovers that occurred during the tournament.

That's weird.

They built in a penalty.

It was like a favor, and then on top of it, I'm going to penalize you if you violate it.

Yeah, that's weird.

Yeah.

Good for them.

They had a good negotiator.

Okay.

Silver being worse than bronze.

The silver metal complex, also known as silver metal syndrome, a psychological phenomenon where second-place finishers, silver medalists often appear less happy than third-place bronze medalists because they engage in upward, counterfactual thinking, focusing on what they could have done to achieve the first place rather than appreciating their accomplishment.

In contrast, bronze medalists tend to focus on the alternative of finishing in fourth place or not receiving a medal at all, leading to a greater satisfaction with their outcome.

Yeah.

So if your friend says, I have SMS, don't think like, yeah, we all have SMS.

Texting, think they have silver medal syndrome.

And then you can ask if they have SAD.

Seasonal affected disorder.

That's right.

And then you can ask if they have UTI, urinary tract infection.

And you should ask because they might be struggling like you are.

Okay, I looked up the most expensive sports because we started talking about how tennis is a lot of, there's a lot of meritocracy.

We feel like it's pretty meritocratized.

Meritocratic?

I like meritocratized.

Okay, it's nice.

Yeah.

Like democratized.

Yeah.

To participate at the highest levels, Formula One racing.

equestrian sports, polo, and competitive sailing are among the most expensive sports in the world.

Yeah, those have some pretty devastating built-in costs.

Exactly.

These sports require massive investments in elite equipment, maintenance, logistics, and skilled personnel.

Oh, also high-cost youth sports.

Ice hockey says an average annual cost of $2,583 per child.

Ice hockey is rough because you got to get ice time.

at places throughout the year when you're not by a frozen lake or if you live in any state without frozen lakes.

Yeah.

So ice time becomes really pricey.

And then, field hockey, ice.

Okay, those are youth.

Now, this says elite-level individual sports, golf is most expensive.

Yeah, it says high-end clubs can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars for a membership.

Professional players pay for equipment, caddies, coaches, travel, and tournament fees, which can exceed 1 million per year.

1 million per annum.

What's that mean?

A year.

Per atom?

Per annum.

Oh, wow.

Don't you like it?

It's a gentle way to say.

That was cool.

Yeah, per annum.

Skiing is also on here.

And boxing.

As affordable ones?

No, those are high.

Okay.

Yeah, those are high.

They don't have boxing rings on every corner in the city, but they do have parks.

Yeah, training camps, sparring partners, and specialized coaching and nutrition.

Nutrition.

Yeah.

Well, that's interesting.

Let me see.

I think I got them all, but let me just double check.

That's everything.

That's everything for Andrew, Robin.

Oh, we love them.

We were charmed.

Very charmed.

Charmed, I'm sure.

What is charmed, I'm sure?

Charmed, I'm sure.

I don't get it.

It sounds like a sarcastic way to say you're charming.

Is it like, okay, if you're talking to me and we're shaking hands, who says it?

Like, who's charmed?

Yeah.

I feel like I would have said, I'd say it like, they were charmed, I'm sure.

Oh, for sure.

By you?

Yeah, like, you're telling me, oh, and then I met so-and-so.

charmed, I'm sure.

They were.

I don't know.

I know, but normally it happens, I feel like in a greeting.

Like in the old times, they would like greet each other and say, charmed, I'm sure.

So are they talking about themselves?

Like, I just charmed you, I'm sure.

No, no.

I think they're sure that they've been charmed by their guest.

Okay.

They're sure of it.

It's bad grammar.

They're like, let me check in.

Yeah, I feel charmed.

I think we owe it to everyone at the end of this ride to compile our

50 sexiest male guests.

I'm just saying that Andy's definitely on the list.

50 feels like too many?

Yeah.

You're the one that always wants me to reduce the list.

But there'll be at that point,

there'll be over, you know, like 1,200 guests.

To do 10

would be

one percent, half a percent.

Okay.

You're 10%.

We want to keep it to 1%.

I can agree to that.

It's either going to be 10 or 100 because you don't let me do hundreds and you only let me do tens.

Okay, then it's going to be the top 10 sexiest.

He's still on the list.

Wow.

But, man, you think of Carmelo Anthony.

Your pants exploded.

You think of like Brad Pitt.

Brad Pitt, you think of Maddie.

Yeah, there's a fucking

thoroughbreds trotted.

Alexander Scars.

Dwayne Wade.

Did you know I learned in my aunt's memorial, comma sutra, comma

means

fun.

Oh, shit.

It means fun, like full of life.

And now that makes sense.

Kama Sutra, like fun set.

Sexual fun.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I learned a lot.

My favorite type of fun.

All right.

All right.

Love you.

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