Share & Tell & Age with Domonique Foxworth and David Samson

Speaker 1 I'm Pablo Torre, and this episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by Remy Martin 1738, Accord Royale. Exceptionally smooth cognac for all your game day festivities.

Speaker 1 Please drink responsibly because today we're going to find out what this sound is.

Speaker 2 Can I get an amen?

Speaker 1 Right after this ad.

Speaker 1 I am very excited to do this.

Speaker 1 Please allow Moment of Sincerity. We have not done this enough, Dominique,

Speaker 1 David,

Speaker 1 at a table together. I refuse to allow Moment of Sincerity.
Instead, I would like to continue mocking you

Speaker 1 for chasing around Jordan Hudson and somehow claiming that you deserve a bee body.

Speaker 2 I didn't tell you this. I was sitting with Pablo right as a People Magazine article came out with his mug on it, on the thumbnail of it.
And what I saw, and I said this to you at the time, so

Speaker 2 we're here amongst almost sort of friends. And you could tell this

Speaker 2 warm aura of invincibility flow over him like some sort of mucus

Speaker 2 when he was on people.com. And the irony is he walks around the studio talking about Murrow and talking about serious journalism.
Peabody.

Speaker 1 Peabody.

Speaker 1 Right?

Speaker 2 So I'm wondering whether, Pablo, and I meant this, this, I didn't ask you before, are you going to put that as part of now your elevator speech about PTFO?

Speaker 2 Because you mention, obviously, all the awards.

Speaker 1 You're asking, are we folding it into our awards budget? Exactly.

Speaker 1 Somehow gotten smaller since we won the awards. I don't think

Speaker 1 that's a good thing.

Speaker 1 And like when you were advertising the show, are you going to say, like, I won this, I won that? And I was on people.

Speaker 1 I was on, yeah. I have a question for you, though.
Is your, do you believe?

Speaker 1 No, this is this is a kind question. Do you believe that your ego is any

Speaker 1 bigger and your desire for these type of this type of recognition is any bigger than anyone else's? Or you think you're right in the middle, but you're more honest about it. Right.

Speaker 1 Let's rank our egos. Can we do that? Can we power rank?

Speaker 2 It's going to be a tie for first in this room. There is no shortage of ego in this room.
Nope. It just manifests itself in different ways.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 For instance,

Speaker 1 you walked into the office today and you had a paper bag full of some stuff and you had your sneakers on, your multicolor sneakers on. And you had...

Speaker 1 What else do you have?

Speaker 2 Well, it was a sandwich and some chips and a ginger ale because we did all this for Dominique.

Speaker 2 And so I drove two and a half for this show. And now I'm driving back.
two and a half just to do this because this was your only window.

Speaker 2 This is what I was told.

Speaker 1 Let me tell you this live. This better be Pablo.

Speaker 1 Whoa, whoa, whoa. Sorry, it was completely true.
Credibility

Speaker 1 paramount to me

Speaker 1 and my episodes. Completely true.
Please fact-check yourself, Dominique. It's completely true.
We made, we, you,

Speaker 1 we together said, David, we want to do this in person. There's going to be a moment of sincerity even.

Speaker 1 And it's just going to require you to be here in person. And David drove two and a half.

Speaker 2 Well, I asked for all sorts of other hours of opportunities to do it. And Dominique was a no on every one of them.

Speaker 1 But Dominique came from DC.

Speaker 2 It's okay. If you guys manipulated me, it's fine.
I got in the car.

Speaker 1 Guys, no one's been manipulated. It's just all honesty and truth between us.
We're ruining the moment of sincerity.

Speaker 2 It passed for me.

Speaker 1 It's gone. I mean, there is no sincerity.
It's gone.

Speaker 2 I've been thinking a lot about you. I haven't seen you in a while.
It's good to see you. You too.

Speaker 1 When are friends, like, when are male friends sincere? How often does that happen?

Speaker 1 Like, I don't, I'm not.

Speaker 1 We've gotten better with it as an adult, but most of the time I just, I just roast my friends and they know that means that I love them. Right, right, right.

Speaker 1 Should we each say one sincere, nice thing about each other? No.

Speaker 2 I don't think that's interesting.

Speaker 1 Okay, great. Oh, God.

Speaker 2 Who? I wasn't ready. It's one, two, three, Brett, about raising.
We just don't guilt us into

Speaker 1 you for free. It really is, Brett.

Speaker 2 We're announcing today our new charitable endeavor because after all these years, they still haven't cured f ⁇ ing Parkinson's.

Speaker 2 And it's unbelievable that they haven't. So we have to keep doing these athletic events.

Speaker 1 Dominique, do you see what happens when we get us in a room together?

Speaker 1 What is the

Speaker 1 highest level of science you made it to?

Speaker 2 10th grade.

Speaker 1 That's true.

Speaker 2 I don't know why you're laughing. Do you have a cure for Parkinson's?

Speaker 1 I don't, but I recognize that it's probably hard. And I'm not out here like, man, these motherfuckers better hurry up.
I've been waiting all day, like, like you ordered a sandwich from a deli.

Speaker 2 Michael J. Fox, when he started his foundation, said that he expects to be out of business within a decade.
So it didn't quite happen that way. And

Speaker 1 if I may have yet a third moment of sincerity, because now we've had that one, and that's like obviously sincere. The third moment of sincerity.

Speaker 1 You think that he's ordering a cure for Parkinson? Like it's a goddamn chopped cheese.

Speaker 1 I've been waiting waiting for 10 years.

Speaker 2 I am not waiting anymore.

Speaker 1 At it.

Speaker 2 Anyway, it's been quite telling since we were all last together in Miami that Pablo has just shot himself out of a cannon.

Speaker 2 and it's all due to the ring camera.

Speaker 1 And I was not just that three episodes a week.

Speaker 2 I would like to ask though on the shirt issue because this was important to me and we had an

Speaker 1 creative issue. Oh, I agree.
I think I know where you're going and I agree with you.

Speaker 2 You agree that the shirt should have been off.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 2 A hundred percent. Now, if you had

Speaker 2 Donald Eek's body, would you have had shirt off? So I had because he also is very soft.

Speaker 1 Okay. A little squishy.
Listen, I have a lot Parkinson's races in which I complain about Parkinson's scientists, but I am somebody who, you know, I still have my fighting weight.

Speaker 1 It's just redistributed. It is disturbing when I realize that fighting weight is light heavyweight.

Speaker 1 I was like,

Speaker 1 are boxers, have boxers always been this small? Yes. Yes.
It's crazy. It is crazy.
What a heavyweight boxer was. See, I answered your question.
If I had Dominique's

Speaker 1 breasts, yeah, I would have, I would have flashed those off.

Speaker 2 He claimed it was a journalism decision.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I don't want to be the, look, I, I need, I think it was a check. I need to preserve some element of credibility.

Speaker 1 Uh, and I think that was, again, as we say on Dominique's show, we have to thread the coward's needle.

Speaker 1 And I believe that my threading of the coward's needle was, I'm going to do this, but I just can't be so much of the story, actually.

Speaker 1 Okay.

Speaker 2 That is so ridiculous.

Speaker 1 I regret the moments of sincerity.

Speaker 2 Can you pull up a photo of Lenny Kravitz at 61? It just got released. He looks amazing.
Now, Lenny Kravitz looks unbelievable.

Speaker 1 So, okay, so we should talk about it. PDs? What are we doing?

Speaker 2 It's not normal. He has a full six-pack.

Speaker 1 Nice.

Speaker 2 At 61. Good for him.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow.

Speaker 2 Are you looking at the same thing that I recently saw last week or something?

Speaker 1 Men's health.

Speaker 1 Lenny's ripped.

Speaker 2 Now, is that natural?

Speaker 1 Probably not. You can't.
But I mean, I feel like it's a lot of that in Hollywood.

Speaker 1 There's no P-Man in Hollywood who's covered around testing you like. There's no P-man at Avengers Headquarters.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Actors say they did. Will Smith talked about it.

Speaker 1 They go up and down

Speaker 1 for movies. I wanted to do an episode about this actually for a long time.
Like, why are all these actors ripped now?

Speaker 1 So if you watch, like, certainly you watched White Lotus, they're just like, everybody's jacked. I'm like, your character does not require you to be obsessively working out.

Speaker 1 You're not a former NFL player trying to reclaim former glory. Why are you exercising?

Speaker 2 The irony, of course, is that you can add abs in post. I mean, if there's a budget for post-production, which some shows have and some don't, but you can add stuff.

Speaker 2 And so you don't actually need to look that way in real life. So I don't know why there's all of a sudden.

Speaker 1 I would imagine that they aren't adding stuff for people whose character doesn't need it, right? Like, so to Pablo's point, the white Lotus guys, they probably just...

Speaker 2 Well, one is Schwarzenegger. I assume that he's.

Speaker 1 But the season before, there was the dude who was like the founder of a tech company and he was like, you know, this part Asian dude. And he was like clearly not required to be jacked.

Speaker 1 And that guy was, again, a guy whose shirt I would take off if I was him.

Speaker 2 I'm embarrassed of my body.

Speaker 1 Why?

Speaker 2 Because it's not a good body.

Speaker 1 I don't have a good body. I mean, fortunately, you're, I mean,

Speaker 1 nobody cares.

Speaker 2 Well, I do, but again, I do.

Speaker 1 Well, I think I would say that on the power rankings of people who are

Speaker 1 older than they look,

Speaker 1 Lake lake rabbits

Speaker 1 uh esp announcer mark jones oh ageless ageless mark jones is was at last check in his 60s also has more pop culture references than me 63 he's much he's much internet fluid yeah he's much closer to to the meme game than your boy and uh david sampson's on that list i'm doing well from the neck up

Speaker 1 i have slight concerns about you know what i think down is interesting is like the changing um to this point it feels like the

Speaker 1 ideas around like plastic surgery which is it's only reasonable that over time as it has been around because it feels like when we were young it felt relatively new like the idea of getting enhancements and whatever it was like it was a big deal if someone had breast implants it was like oh my gosh look at this breast implants and like it's been around long enough now that i feel like we're getting to a point where

Speaker 1 the type of person that is going to get things like the idea that men get height surgery,

Speaker 1 and that's like an extreme version of it. But like, I know people who've gotten their hair transplant and it's like go to Turkey? Yeah.
No, I mean, you only go to Turkey. Turkey is the place.

Speaker 1 You only go to Turkey to get it cheap, though, right? You can get it.

Speaker 2 Oh, it's quality. Oh, it's better quality.
The best quality is turkey for hair and for veneers, actually.

Speaker 1 Oh, nice. Why is that?

Speaker 2 Listen, I assume they stayed at a Holiday and Express, but whatever the reason is that people save their money to go to Turkey to get it and then they come back with plugs.

Speaker 2 I don't get the whole thing.

Speaker 1 Why not? I mean, you see, if you, I don't understand how you don't get it.

Speaker 1 You've never contemplated getting your legs broken and then extended and then healed over so that you could be three inches tall.

Speaker 2 So I was short and I will tell you exactly what I did.

Speaker 1 I'm doing that as a past tense.

Speaker 2 I am short. Thank you.
Appreciate that. Dominique, thank you for your Phlemy-filled laugh of disdain.

Speaker 1 It's not disdain.

Speaker 2 It's more contempt.

Speaker 1 It's a good joke. I'm being a good teammate.
I hung from

Speaker 1 the bar. Michael Jordan did that.

Speaker 2 And I would spend more time than I wish to acknowledge. So there's a bar in my doorway in the apartment where I grew up.
I grew up in a room, in a bedroom, and it's like

Speaker 2 a expandable stick that is supposed to be used for pull-ups and push-ups. But I didn't do it for that.
I did it. I put it high so there was no weight, just so my fingers would fit right above it.

Speaker 2 And that's it. And I would hang.
And I I mean, like for hours. Oh, my God.
Weirdly.

Speaker 1 And because the adverb was unnecessary.

Speaker 2 I had been told that it actually works.

Speaker 1 I remember Come Fly With Me. I assume that you guys are familiar with this tape by Michael Jordan where nobody in his family is close to 6'6.
And he said that he saw an episode of the Brady Bunch.

Speaker 1 As you can tell, I watched Come Fly With Me far too many times.

Speaker 1 An episode of the Brady Bunch where someone did this and he said that he did it.

Speaker 1 He doesn't suggest that that's the reason why he's tall, but he said that when he was young, he wanted to be tall and he tried it.

Speaker 1 So when you hang from the bar, the idea is that the gravity extends your spine.

Speaker 1 That's the whole thing?

Speaker 2 It's nothing. So what it did is I would get, my arms would be sore.
Right.

Speaker 2 So, but I would do it because what I thought, because I had been told by coaches, like in middle school and in elementary school, that after the sore is where the improvement comes.

Speaker 2 So I always felt like I had to get to the arms arms hurting, and then I had to hang on even longer because that's when the growth would happen.

Speaker 2 I also slept always on my stomach with my toes over the bottom of the bed.

Speaker 2 And so I wasn't near the top of the mattress, but I would go to the bottom of the mattress because I had read as a kid, so it may have been written by Dr.

Speaker 2 Seuss, that if you sleep on your front with your legs extended, toes over the bed, that while you're sleeping, your legs grow too.

Speaker 1 Man, we could have made so much money money off of a young David Samson dunks.

Speaker 2 These aren't costly fixes.

Speaker 1 But we could have sold you some of those. I think that's a good thing that you could have.

Speaker 1 Those dunk shoes. Remember those dunk shoes? Oh, yeah.
I remember those.

Speaker 1 My parents wouldn't buy me the dunk shoes, but I did buy a parachute to get faster when I was young. Of course you did.
That was great.

Speaker 2 Did you run with it behind you? Yeah, of course.

Speaker 1 That's funny. Was it, hold on.
Was it a parachute for the purpose of NFL prospect training or was it a generic parachute that you were like, I think this is going to do the job?

Speaker 1 Well, I think I saw somebody using a parachute on TV. And so I was like, yeah, I think this is going to do the job.
And I mean, the funny thing is I had this conversation.

Speaker 1 I did another podcast recently. And I was talking about how it wasn't until I was like in my mid-20s that I realized that

Speaker 1 I believe that hard work was like much more

Speaker 1 important to my success than

Speaker 1 like the genetic makeup. And I was like, I would look around at other people like, you're just not working hard enough.
It's like, eh.

Speaker 1 Get your nurture up, son. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But I mean, I think that there are incremental gains, obviously, but fundamentally, I was like born.

Speaker 1 Now you're team nature.

Speaker 1 Sounds like it. I mean, there is some nurture aspect, but what I can't, what you can't do is work your way into being an athlete.
Like you can make yourself a better athlete.

Speaker 1 Oh, David, David's, David's frowning thoughtfully.

Speaker 2 So I believe that the increment, you have to have natural ability, but I think the differentiating factor is the hard work you put in, which would count for purposes of this conversation as nurture.

Speaker 1 Right. No, I don't disagree with you, but I'm saying that if you are born

Speaker 1 from a couple of non-athlete parents, no matter how hard you work.

Speaker 1 What, what if

Speaker 1 what if I, what if I hung on a bar for a really long time?

Speaker 1 I thought it hilarious that David kind of turned his nose up at people getting hair transplants when clearly if you were.

Speaker 2 There's a big difference between plastic surgery, transplants, and hanging from a bar. That's au naturale.
I didn't take test stop, by the way.

Speaker 2 I didn't take any of the stuff, the growth hormone, the Leal Nessie got some HGH and kids do it all the time.

Speaker 1 Grew, I guess, minimally, but enough. They do all the time.
That's a new thing. Yes, it is a huge thing.
Even without any sort of ailment that were required, they're just getting on ACH.

Speaker 2 The fight that we had with our son because we had, I'm short still, and my wife at the time was short. Well, not average for one, but he was worried because his older sisters were short.

Speaker 2 So he was panicked and he wanted to go on the juice.

Speaker 2 And he had friends on the juice who had other small Jewish parents.

Speaker 2 And we said

Speaker 1 with what intent? Just like general looking around. No.
Watch that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 It wasn't to be an athlete. It was

Speaker 1 to grow.

Speaker 2 And you go to doctors who they chart you and they say, hey, you're going to end up being around 5'5, around your dad's height. And he wanted to be 5'10.

Speaker 2 And so he wanted to go on the juice. We said no.
And by the way,

Speaker 2 other similar parents said yes, which made us look even worse.

Speaker 1 But he appreciates you now.

Speaker 2 Hard to tell.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Did you speak to him in the language of the kids? We got to get some of those kids to get sick man we need those kids to start passing out

Speaker 1 oh yeah get some therapeutic use exemptions we gotta get them kids to start passing out so you can say see

Speaker 1 see

Speaker 2 i'm not wishing his best friends ill

Speaker 2 so we watched it on sleepovers these kids would come over to the house for sleepovers with stuff that had to be refrigerated and they had to shoot themselves during sleepovers. This is the real deal.

Speaker 1 And they were still terrible at basketball.

Speaker 2 Oh, this was not. Yes.
This was not done to be good at basketball.

Speaker 1 I know, but I'm just saying you couldn't get some residual hooping skills or something, get a little bit of.

Speaker 2 Their parents were Jewish bankers.

Speaker 1 So that's why we could.

Speaker 2 I thought you just said that you can't.

Speaker 2 I thought we just went over the.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, no.

Speaker 1 My point is like in the higher levels, like you're not going to work your way from being an average athlete to being a pro-level athlete, but you're a high school kid shooting some testosterone in

Speaker 1 your butt.

Speaker 1 Like, I feel like you should be be able to whoop some high school ass it's hgh actually oh hgh which is which is safer i allegedly i i would view all of it we were a no-to-all did you when you told parenting good job when you parented did you speak because you come from the world of baseball as former president of the marlins a team that i presume by the way at some point in the course of your oversight encountered cases where it was like, I think this guy's doing something.

Speaker 2 Oh, we knew our guys were doing it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 No, I came from the land of being short and i said to my son i'm short and i'm great like it's you're gonna be fine you have to own it and learn it and learn to deal with things stand on your tippy toes during photos there's just things you can do uh to try to maximize your 65 inches but he wanted he didn't want that the irony of course is he ended up being five eight or five nine

Speaker 2 i went half i mean he was here so he's he's doing fine yeah i don't know if you've met him it's caleb he's great

Speaker 2 but it's it's just a funny thing what parents do. When I was growing up and I was not on the growth chart, when I'd go to the doctor, it was very stressful with Dr.

Speaker 2 Malashak, where they would chart where you are before each school year. And I was always, you know, 10 percentile.

Speaker 2 And you're hoping for the growth spurt because the doctor says you're going to have a growth spurt. It's going to be because my father wasn't short and it never came.

Speaker 2 And so those were always such anxiety-producing appointments.

Speaker 1 I'm just getting a sense of David's origin story when it comes to his deep distrust of doctors and scientists.

Speaker 2 It's going to happen.

Speaker 1 Screw it. You're going to get a cure.
It's happening.

Speaker 2 It really is such a scam, isn't it?

Speaker 1 All these diseases that they're going to be. Okay,

Speaker 1 I dix it. I mean, maybe it is.
I don't know, but I assume it's not.

Speaker 1 This is not the kind of live-to-tape episode I wanted to have where you are questioning the profession of my parents, incidentally, who did do something to me as a kid where they put a lock on the power cord of the television.

Speaker 2 So you couldn't watch TV.

Speaker 1 So I couldn't watch TV. Nice.
I was born in the darkness, raised in it, molded by it.

Speaker 2 My parents undid the cable.

Speaker 2 At apartments, cable comes in through one outlet.

Speaker 2 And so when they'd be out, all the TVs wouldn't work and there were no computers, no anything.

Speaker 2 And so I would spend, just to screw them, I would spend the entire time searching the apartment looking for any way to watch TV.

Speaker 2 And I found in one of their closets behind the French francs and Swiss francs, which I didn't steal because I was far more interested in a little hurricane ready battery um four inch black and white tv and so i would take that out of the closet and i'd watch it while they were out just to screw them because they wouldn't let me watch tv what were you watching back at that well there were three channels i mean anything that didn't matter to me i watched howdy duty it was victory there's so many you almost every sentence you utter just has so many avenues

Speaker 1 i like the european currency person yeah it's like funny he said i didn't steal it was you gonna do with it david go to the bank and exchange it. What? What?

Speaker 1 So, I guess I'll date the adventures of Lil David Samson, like it's Muppet Babies, by the way. Just going to the bank with some Swiss francs.

Speaker 2 French francs before the Euro is French francs. Now you say, Excuse me, can I exchange?

Speaker 1 His voice is exactly the same. Lil David Sampson is exactly the same voice.

Speaker 2 I don't know what you did as children, but he's marginally smaller.

Speaker 1 I watched TV. I wasn't abused like you guys.

Speaker 1 Watch TV and got girls, man.

Speaker 1 I think about that a lot when I'm like raising my kids about like, what am I overreacting to? And is it appropriate to overreact to it? Because like

Speaker 1 the not watching TV thing. I don't imagine that either of you would unplug the TVs when your kids were home.
We monitor screen time, but we are not trying to put locks on.

Speaker 1 And so I think that's probably like AI probably falls in that category now where it's like, I'm vigilant about my kids at school. I mean, not using it.
So you're not. Not using AI.

Speaker 1 They really don't have much interest in playing with it. It's like just interest in using it to help them with their schoolwork.
And it's like, you can't do that, but like,

Speaker 1 obvious, or it seems obvious to me that by the time they are in the workforce, it's going to be something that it'll be better to be good at than not, which is like

Speaker 2 why don't you allow them to be right.

Speaker 1 I know that's what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 Because I believe that there are skills that you need to develop, like writing and like reading and summarizing things yourself. Like those things are skills that I think you need to develop.

Speaker 1 Maybe they won't need to develop them. It's like how

Speaker 1 I'm not sure how important typing is going to be going forward. It's not even taught anymore.
Right. Yeah.
Corseness. This is not taught anymore.
Well, penmanship, let alone typing. Right.

Speaker 1 Remember, I mean, God, right?

Speaker 1 Kids today will never know the pain of trying to write a cursive Z.

Speaker 2 People don't recognize what that is.

Speaker 1 I don't think you should recognize it.

Speaker 1 You can't predict it. And I think that like you guys would both.
It seems like you attribute some of your academic success to the fact that your parents forced you to avoid. Yeah.
TV, right? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Yeah. By the way, the typing thing is interesting because one of my superpowers is fast typing.
And that is now increasingly obsolete.

Speaker 1 So you became an intellect in part because you weren't allowed to watch TV. And David

Speaker 1 learned to scheme and scam. They were like, we're going to take the course.
And he was like, I'm going to look around. He tried to sneak and steal some stuff.

Speaker 2 David was always doing the work around.

Speaker 1 David was burgling his own home.

Speaker 2 You happen to be 100% accurate. And I'm not the only kid who goes through his parents' stuff looking for things.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 It's it's christmas time every year

Speaker 2 but i was more not interested in some of the things like little maquettes didn't that uh little sculptures like a little henry moore maquette like a little sculpture this big that you could just whatever so

Speaker 1 raised by international spies literally is what i'm getting so far what i was interested in the maquettes was was the little tp just the walter pp7 with a silencer it does sound like weapons

Speaker 1 rcp90 ever giving golden eye weapons now

Speaker 2 you shouldn't need to find out what a maquette is. It's a pretty well-known word.

Speaker 1 No, it's not. I've never heard maquette.
You've never heard the word maquette.

Speaker 1 Hold on, let me just go. It sounds like a knickknack to me.

Speaker 2 No, a knick-knack.

Speaker 1 A little bit of pattywhack.

Speaker 1 I mean,

Speaker 2 it's a year's worth of salary for the three of us is what them knickknacks are.

Speaker 1 A maquette is a small three-dimensional model or preliminary sketch of a larger piece of art, such as a sculpture or building. Wow.
Yeah. Yeah.
So it's basically. What you making it up? No, no, no.

Speaker 1 No, no, no, we didn't think you're making it up. I just never heard of a maquette before.
What this is, though. It sounds like McDonald's meal.

Speaker 1 It's kind of like, yeah, like a happy meal version of a rich guy's favorite thing.

Speaker 2 They can be, they're very valuable.

Speaker 1 You were hamburged, right?

Speaker 2 They're very interesting pieces of art and pieces of sculpture. They're wonderful to live with.
But my point was different is that I always knew at a young age

Speaker 2 how to maximize my time to get exactly what I wanted. And what I wanted was to not give them the last word and me having to do my homework all night or phone time was a big thing.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 Where it wasn't, I didn't have a cell phone, obviously. So I'd be on the phone trying to be popular with a girl or a guy.
And then all of a sudden your mom gets on the phone.

Speaker 2 And that because she would set a time. And I, my, she didn't, I don't know how she knew when the six minutes was up, but somehow, I don't know, she was counting down.

Speaker 1 Six minutes per call. What were, what was she afraid of?

Speaker 2 Six minutes.

Speaker 1 She was just like, we can't have David having friends.

Speaker 1 Minute seven.

Speaker 2 I was never allowed to have sleepovers.

Speaker 1 But I guess I understand, while I may not agree wholeheartedly with the TV idea, I understand why they'd be like, all right, you can't watch TV unlimited. Like, that makes sense.

Speaker 1 I don't understand why you can't talk to friends.

Speaker 2 There's just homework to do.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay. So it wasn't about.
If you had finished your homework, she would let you talk.

Speaker 2 There's always, I never, I never was able to because then there's a book report or a book to read or an extra thing to do.

Speaker 1 She went to a very fancy school. Do you ever think about the cost? Because it feels like both you guys see these experiences as being beneficial, but nothing comes without a price.

Speaker 1 Do you think that there was a cost to being raised in that way, like a negative?

Speaker 2 Do you? I mean, I find myself to,

Speaker 2 I have friends now,

Speaker 2 you know, one or two or a half.

Speaker 2 And so, no, I think that the benefit of the disciplined life I had is it made me disciplined.

Speaker 1 I would say that I probably be less enamored of weed as an adult if I was not sort of like told to, you know, be at the other end of the spectrum when it came to just like

Speaker 1 that this is not just true of this conversation about the things that impact us, but just overall, I think that we often want to make a domino style cause and effect to the things that happen in our lives because we like to tell stories in movies and TV shows and all that stuff.

Speaker 1 It's like we want to be able to tell that story. But oftentimes I think the results of things that we think are because of one thing are not at all because of that.

Speaker 1 So like get back to the point of saying that like, I thought that my hard work made me an athlete until I realized that like, yeah, my hard work made me an NFL player, but like I was always going to be a better athlete than most people.

Speaker 1 I'm guessing that, David, your disposition is probably that of someone who is more prone to discipline because we could have these situations.

Speaker 1 I remember with my wife, with our kids, like I was pretty strict about early on about like what they were eating and how much sugar was around. And she was like, well,

Speaker 1 what's just going to happen is then they're going to get out into the world and then they'll be free to eat a whole bunch of sugar.

Speaker 1 And I was just like, well, actually, I don't think we know how any of this will impact them.

Speaker 1 Like, this could lead to someone who's like incredibly disciplined because they had a disciplined upbringing. Or we could tell the other story where it's like, oh, I was so disciplined with that.

Speaker 1 Then you get out of the house. What that crack talking about?

Speaker 1 Let me, let me, let me, let me holler at a couple of them rocks. Let me.

Speaker 1 Like, I don't know. I just think that we want to be able to explain things.
I like that lifetime movie, though. What that crack talking about.

Speaker 2 I was allowed candy from October 31st to Thanksgiving Day was it during the year. Because you'd go Thanksgiving, then you'd have to pour the bag out, then it would be gone through by your parents.

Speaker 2 They'd take out everything that was not wrapped, obviously, because it has razor blades in it. So I just told it.
I don't know if anyone else heard that story.

Speaker 1 I heard it one.

Speaker 1 Never actually saw it.

Speaker 1 Never actually had a friend who got that razor blade candy.

Speaker 2 It's a lot of effort to put razor blades in an apple, but I'm fine, whatever it is. And then one a night.

Speaker 2 And so anything over, let's say Thanksgiving is November 24th, you get 25 pieces of candy, the 31st and then through November 24th, and then the rest gets thrown away. So

Speaker 1 and now you obviously are, from what I understand, a candy addict. So why do you think that that

Speaker 1 candy discipline resulted in you becoming an addict and the

Speaker 1 no-phone discipline resulted in you becoming a nerd. I'm not a nerd? I mean, I don't know how you would call it.
I am not a nerd. I'm not a lot of things.
Well,

Speaker 1 let's live in this definition for a second. What do you...
Or discipline. I'm sorry.
You said disciplined, right? Yeah. Okay.
Wait, you're not. Those aren't synonyms.
No, they aren't synonyms.

Speaker 1 I was thinking about Pablo.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 2 I don't find him nerdy either.

Speaker 1 Thanks.

Speaker 2 Do you think you're nerdy?

Speaker 1 Well, so that's what I wanted to live in for a second. Okay, relative, baby.

Speaker 2 Okay.

Speaker 1 Compared to

Speaker 1 NFL NFL bound 36.

Speaker 1 36, Dominique's screen name growing up. Yeah.
Classified, self-classified as Josh.

Speaker 2 That's so awesome.

Speaker 1 Jimmy sung that.

Speaker 2 And you made it happen.

Speaker 1 I love that. It was my screen name.
It was my Black Planet page name. We're still looking for that.
We're still looking for the archive of Dominique's Black Planet profile.

Speaker 2 Did you wear 36?

Speaker 1 My first year. So I graduated from high school early and went to Maryland early.
And so the spring I had 36. And then training camp came and I got six.

Speaker 1 But yeah, that was my, so it was when I, yeah, I had 36.

Speaker 1 See, I love that.

Speaker 2 That may be the coolest story you've ever told me about yourself.

Speaker 1 Ooh, I got some stories, boy. Turn these mics off, doggie.
We used to go to Vegas. Oh, whoa.

Speaker 1 How many franks were involved?

Speaker 1 Man, you can't, you can't imagine what I could do with a macinette.

Speaker 1 Not a mackerel.

Speaker 1 What's it called? Macquette. Oh,

Speaker 1 it's a Macquette to you. It's a Maconette to me, boy.

Speaker 1 David, did you have a screen name?

Speaker 2 No.

Speaker 2 How would you, with what screen?

Speaker 1 It was AWL Instant Messenger, America Online. Did you ever have to come up with a code name for yourself?

Speaker 2 I stayed in hotels when I was president of the team under Jay Trotter. Nice.
That was my name.

Speaker 1 Jay Trotter. Why?

Speaker 2 That's the lead character in Let It Ride.

Speaker 2 Jay Trotter, played by Richard Dreyfus.

Speaker 1 I don't think I've ever seen him. And so I was image that I look up from the movie be in black and white? Jay Trotter?

Speaker 2 No, it's Let It Ride from like 1991. It's a great movie.

Speaker 1 89. How tall is Jay Trotter?

Speaker 2 Richard Dreyfus is not a tall guy in real life. But, you know, the players, I don't know.
Did you use a pseudonym?

Speaker 1 No.

Speaker 2 At Team Hotels? But you guys are always in for one night.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, we didn't have the same situation as you guys.
It was like the hotel was pretty much. No one was trying to poison your food.
No.

Speaker 2 It's not about that. It's about the phone call.

Speaker 1 I don't think that. So like the team would have the hotel.
So I'm not sure that any of our names were on, not the whole hotel all the time, but sometimes.

Speaker 1 But I'm not sure that any of our names were on specific rooms. And there'd be security.
So no one was let into the hotel out.

Speaker 1 Cause like you mentioned, it wasn't like you guys who were on the road trip. We come in,

Speaker 1 land at like four o'clock the day before, play a football game and don't return to the hotel. So like we spend the night, one night there and fly out.

Speaker 2 So it's not the same.

Speaker 2 So it's a whole McGilla when you check into a hotel with the baseball team because it's a lot of rooms, much like football, but you're there for a much longer period of time and you don't have the whole hotel.

Speaker 2 So, there are people around, but pre-cell phone, the way you'd reach players is through their hotel phone. Literally, the hot, like, hey, connect me to room, you know,

Speaker 2 one two six nine. So, you had to have a manifest of where everyone was.

Speaker 2 So, we'd get two manifests: one with the names that were with the pseudonyms, and then one with the key, meaning who, yeah, what the decoder. The decoder.

Speaker 2 So then the traveling secretary or the manager or the GM would know how to reach everybody.

Speaker 1 Our hotels were always, I would imagine, much more boring than baseball or any other sport hotel because we were in and out. We had curfews.
It was

Speaker 1 ran a very tight ship. And I imagine that you guys don't do, like, I know basketball players.
I don't know very many baseball players, but like

Speaker 1 you're there for so long that they live their own lives. So I imagine you guys have much better stories than that.

Speaker 1 Like the most fun stories we had is somebody just didn't show up to the game or skip curfew or something like that. It wasn't anything that interesting.

Speaker 2 Never you.

Speaker 1 Nah, I didn't start drinking till I was 35. Did you know that about him?

Speaker 2 We're funny. I didn't start drinking until I was 31.

Speaker 1 We're a bunch of nerds. I got bad news, guys.
We're nerds.

Speaker 2 Wait, do you not drink now?

Speaker 1 I drink so much less now.

Speaker 1 Quite socially and happily enjoy it.

Speaker 2 The thing about hotels I find with players is that they get very comfortable because they know they're going to be there three nights, nights, four nights, whatever. So they move into the room.

Speaker 2 And it used to be when I was younger, players used to share a room. And that was a huge collective bargaining issue when they wanted their own rooms because it doubled the cost.

Speaker 2 But you had grown-ass men who were sharing.

Speaker 1 Yeah, high school debate tournament style, baby.

Speaker 2 And these are professional athletes. I assume the NFL was like that too in the 70s and 80s.
Oh, probably.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm sure. The NFL is notoriously cheap.
They probably were like that in the 70s and 80s. It wasn't training camp, my rookie year training camp.
I shared a room

Speaker 1 on the preseason games, but excuse me, after that, we were all by ourselves. I imagine college, we share rooms.

Speaker 2 Even the top schools like Alabama.

Speaker 1 Road roommates was a thing. I don't know.
I can't speak for them, but and it may have changed now. But when I was in college, we shared rooms, which that led to more interesting stories.

Speaker 1 I remember we did an episode with Nate Tice, who was Russell Wilson's road roommate at Wisconsin, which is to say that, yeah, this is a proud tradition that even, you know, maybe things have changed now that it seems to be even more and more money in college sports.

Speaker 1 But yeah, that was, and when you're a college kid, your decision-making is a little bit inhibited. Not that when you get to the NFL, all of a sudden it gets better, but like,

Speaker 1 yeah,

Speaker 1 me and my roommate definitely had friends over sometimes, which was not a smart idea.

Speaker 2 What's the tennis movie that we just watched? And I'm totally blanking.

Speaker 1 Who's this?

Speaker 2 I'm so excited. Challengers.
Challengers.

Speaker 1 I haven't seen it. That's good.
That's good.

Speaker 2 There's a fantastic, threesome

Speaker 1 scene. I heard about that.
With the two people. I heard people complain that it was like not.

Speaker 1 They didn't actually pay it off. Yeah.
That it wasn't as exciting as they had sold it to be.

Speaker 2 Oh, the payoff was her payoff. You liked it?

Speaker 1 I was screaming way too much. I loved what she was doing.
I feel really uncomfortable. Yeah.

Speaker 2 You shouldn't. It's a great scene.

Speaker 1 No, no, no. I'm uncomfortable with how excited you are because I haven't seen the scene, so I don't know how to react.
I don't know if I should be agreeing with you or you didn't like the payoff?

Speaker 1 You're a Zendaya on a visual of this. Yeah, you're sitting in between two people who are ever closer.
I am obviously

Speaker 2 who are trying to be close to you. And you can do spoiler alerts for that movie.
It's your older pleasure.

Speaker 2 They're trying to do a threesome, right? And they all want to be with her. And she wants them to be a bit of a drink.

Speaker 1 Is it trying to do a threesome? Is that the

Speaker 2 trying to have a threesome? Be a threesome.

Speaker 1 I don't know how that you do them.

Speaker 2 I say, well, you do do them. And the payoff for her was that they got all dressed up and ready to go.
And then she said goodnight, boys

Speaker 2 and left the room. That's a pretty powerful payoff.

Speaker 1 That is a figurative payoff.

Speaker 1 Let's rank our worst decisions. David, you go first.

Speaker 2 my worst decision was going public with the fact that one of the things we used to tell our players was to pleasure themselves before checking into their road hotel

Speaker 2 because we thought i thought that it would make them get in trouble less

Speaker 2 and it's and so dominique and i did an episode about post-not clarity Yes, you did.

Speaker 1 And this is the same philosophy.

Speaker 2 It was the same philosophy, and it was a, it should have been kept in-house.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I feel like, hey, guys, can you just jack off real quick?

Speaker 2 feels like an hr thing right so i i would have done it differently i don't disagree with why i did what i did and i don't disagree with the results i think we only had like three or four arrests in 18 years not terrible so

Speaker 1 oh you stayed by the science of it exactly about 30 divorces three or four arrests

Speaker 2 a few restraining orders you know just to Tuesday

Speaker 1 three or four arrests

Speaker 2 think if they hadn't jacked off, it would have been even more.

Speaker 1 I agree.

Speaker 1 Man. So the players were like, okay.

Speaker 1 I mean, I don't think that they were influenced by it. You think? No.
When you went public with this, where did this go public?

Speaker 2 So I was giving either a speech.

Speaker 2 I was doing something where the audience just wasn't

Speaker 2 necessarily ready for this conversation. Oh, And I regret doing that.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Nice.

Speaker 1 I don't feel like.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's mild as far as worst decisions are concerned. Well, Marlon.

Speaker 1 Personally, that's professionally.

Speaker 2 You're asking me if I've made bad personal decisions.

Speaker 1 Oh, no, no, no.

Speaker 2 As I sit here divorced. I mean, what do you mean?

Speaker 1 That was a great decision.

Speaker 2 Which, to get divorced?

Speaker 1 And to get married.

Speaker 2 I stand by every decision I've made. They're just not all great, but I wouldn't redo any of them.
I don't like people who say, if I had to do it again, I'd do it differently.

Speaker 1 Oh, really? Why not?

Speaker 2 Because I don't like that. You should think of that before you do it the first time.

Speaker 1 I don't like people who say, I have no regrets because

Speaker 1 this is where I was supposed to be. Like, when someone asks you that question, that's the whole point.

Speaker 1 I don't know.

Speaker 2 What are your, I have no regrets.

Speaker 1 What are your regrets? You have zero regrets.

Speaker 2 I have, I have myriad mistakes. Zero regrets.

Speaker 1 So you are fine with telling the YMCA audience that you wanted your players.

Speaker 2 It's not ideal, I grant you you know i don't i don't love the fact that i went into an all-black church trying to get votes for the stadium and i stood up there and i said can i get an amen

Speaker 2 i don't love that i did that but i did i didn't know that you did that oh i gave a whole sermon your mistake is in now telling us that you did that you should regret telling us that i gave a sermon what the does that I gave a sermon to a major black church in Miami because I needed their support for public money for the ballpark.

Speaker 2 So hold on. I was the only white guy in there.

Speaker 1 Jewish.

Speaker 2 I am Jewish.

Speaker 1 I am white.

Speaker 1 The white is the same.

Speaker 1 Okay, so I want, because we know, Dominique, that David regrets nothing in terms of his process, even though the outcome may not be what he desired.

Speaker 1 What was your, how did you dress? What was your approach?

Speaker 2 So, how I dressed is I went to visit a black teller.

Speaker 1 I said we weren't going to eat anything. Oh, no.

Speaker 1 Hold on. No.

Speaker 2 I'm telling you what I did. And I had a suit made for me by Andre Dawson's tailor.

Speaker 2 So I looked like Andre Dawson, and it was awesome. If you know the Hawk, he's the most impeccable dresser you'll ever see.

Speaker 1 He was probably at Lebatard's wedding, as a pure side note.

Speaker 1 Was he really? Yeah, Andre Dawson.

Speaker 2 He is just a wonderful dresser. He was the coolest guy in the world.

Speaker 1 Andre Dawson's dress.

Speaker 2 I don't think you'll see it on Google, but just very, very good dresser. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 How many buttons did your suit have?

Speaker 2 It's the only suit I ever had. It had six buttons.

Speaker 1 Oh, what year was that?

Speaker 2 This was 2008.

Speaker 2 2008.

Speaker 2 And so we needed the votes. So I had a.

Speaker 1 You're a king of comedy.

Speaker 1 What is this? Not colorful.

Speaker 2 I can't even. I had a concigliary who was Cuban, and we had a plan of all the different people we had to get votes from.
So we went to the Cubans, we went to the non-Cuban.

Speaker 1 100%.

Speaker 2 I had to go get one

Speaker 2 personally made, a Gallavara. So I had to wear that to the cubita.
Say that one more time? I think it's Gayavada.

Speaker 1 I don't really know how to say what it is, but I appreciate you

Speaker 1 increasing the flexibility of your armpits while you were saying that.

Speaker 2 You guys are funny, but

Speaker 2 I did give the sermon and I did, I felt like I had the room enough.

Speaker 1 What does a sermon?

Speaker 2 It was about all the things that this 65-inch white Jewish guy could do for them by having a ballpark built with their money. This is what I will deliver for you.

Speaker 1 You were a prosperity gospel panderer.

Speaker 2 I was. What's the, this would have been great if I had it right in my head.
The guy,

Speaker 2 the music man, and it starts with T, which stands for trouble, Music City. What's the main character you jack and just played on?

Speaker 2 Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 No idea.

Speaker 2 You really don't know. You don't know either.

Speaker 1 Somehow.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 1 the thing.

Speaker 1 You know, David Sampson's a method black preacher when he doesn't know the name of the music man Man character. What is that? Harold Hill.
Harold Hill.

Speaker 2 You never heard that name. Anyway,

Speaker 2 so that's, I went in and I am trying to explain to this large audience about what public funding means. And I'm standing in my suit and in my pointed shoes.
You got pointy shoes.

Speaker 2 Long, pointy shoes that were like size 10.

Speaker 1 Please tell me that the suit was like

Speaker 1 black or blue or like a normal dark

Speaker 1 tan, maybe? I think it was tan. Okay, that's straight.
That's good. That's good Obama.
I didn't it was you went six button Obama. We should have gotten the point

Speaker 2 It was something a fascinating

Speaker 2 It was going great and I had I I had eyes with my it was going great.

Speaker 2 It was so they were giving you amen I did not know I just had I had the view that I had their attention.

Speaker 2 I had the view that they were looking at me as though I was right one of them and so I built up to this crescendo and I look over at the bishop His name was Bishop Curry.

Speaker 2 Bishop Curry was his name in Miami. And I look at the bishop.
Then I look out at the audience. I look back at the Cuban conciglieri and I look at the crowd.
I say, can I get an amen?

Speaker 2 And then I walked out.

Speaker 1 And it was awesome.

Speaker 2 Side note, we got all the black commissioner votes.

Speaker 1 Did they? Oh, so they did say

Speaker 1 amen.

Speaker 2 Oh, we got the amen. We got the votes.
Oh, we got it all.

Speaker 1 Wow. I was going to ask you, have you ever been pandered to?

Speaker 2 Probably.

Speaker 1 You don't know? Like, I feel like when I'm being pandered to, I recognize it and I dislike it. When you're pandered to, does it look like this photo of Bishop Michael Curry?

Speaker 1 We're going to put this on the YouTube channel, but

Speaker 1 this is him?

Speaker 2 It's Victor Curry.

Speaker 1 Sorry, Victor Curry. Victor Curry.
Not Bishop Curry. It's Bishop Victor Curry.
Oh.

Speaker 1 Victor Curry is the author of A Charge to Keep I Have, Fulfilling Your Life's Purpose, which feels like a book that all of us might have read in our most vulnerable moments, hanging from a bar for hours at a time.

Speaker 2 You guys,

Speaker 2 I'm happy to be with you guys again. You make me think of things I hadn't thought of in a very, very long time.

Speaker 1 How long have we known David and we only now get the

Speaker 1 story? Whenever we're together,

Speaker 1 I think David thinks that this is an example of me like pandering to him, but it's not. Whenever we're together, David's always the star.

Speaker 1 100%.

Speaker 1 Of the three of us, people would guess, I would assume, that the least interesting and least entertaining of us would be the former club president, not the people who are on TV for a living or played professional sports.

Speaker 1 But always,

Speaker 1 it is always David is somehow the star of the show.

Speaker 2 I think we're now coming in tied for second because Pablo is now at a different level. He has left us in the dust.

Speaker 1 You're talking about old Peabody over here? Dominique was trying to

Speaker 2 even talk to us going forward.

Speaker 1 He was trying to.

Speaker 1 I was also about to see David as Ara Zendeo. And instead,

Speaker 1 I

Speaker 1 swung back around.

Speaker 1 We're going to Photoshop that. We're going to have our graphic squad

Speaker 1 Photoshop that. No, thank you.
That's going to be really

Speaker 2 funny, actually.

Speaker 1 Sounds like a waste of graphic squad, buddy.

Speaker 2 Hey, listen. Welcome to Metalark.

Speaker 1 At the end of every episode of Pablo, Dorio finds out even one that is entirely live to the tape.

Speaker 1 I don't think we're making a single edit to this because I want people to understand what it's like for us to sit at a table together because it is this.

Speaker 1 What did we find out today? Gentlemen?

Speaker 1 The snacks were around here is depressing, boy. I found that out.
That shit is

Speaker 1 Hungry. Episode we just did.
You just are mad that we didn't have the good snacks.

Speaker 1 And it takes a lot of energy to be this entertaining.

Speaker 2 I found out that Dominique believes that in order to be a professional athlete, you have to have some sort of nature versus nurture.

Speaker 2 And I am still thinking about the parents of big leaguers who we had whose parents were not athletic at all.

Speaker 2 And they were big leaguers, or the people who like Steffi Graff and Andre Agassiz, who have kids who may or may not be professional athletes, Michael Jordan's kids.

Speaker 1 They tried.

Speaker 2 They didn't make it. My old friend.

Speaker 1 I think, I mean, you need to go do some DNA tests on these people who somehow became athletes without a shred of athleticism in there. They might find out something that they don't want to know.

Speaker 1 They're like, go ahead, go ahead and look at the NFL draft. Go ahead and look at the NBA draft.
Them last names get more and more familiar. I think that there was a time when they was different.

Speaker 1 No, and now it's crazy. It's absurd.

Speaker 1 And even if you're not, even if it's not someone else who played, like your mom was a college athlete like it just it just doesn't happen anymore where it's just like my dad was a plumber and i think part of it is that women's athletics has grown to the point i think a lot of times the athletic gene could come from your mother you wouldn't recognize that because there was a time when there was not um uh like adequate women's sports and so you'd be like hey this kid came out of nowhere he's an athlete his dad ain't but he can ball like yeah his mom probably was a tremendous athlete but didn't have the opportunity so i'm guessing that these big leaguers that you talk about, maybe

Speaker 1 something a little different happening over there.

Speaker 1 The most prolific university when it comes to generating NBA draft picks is in fact the University of Former Professional Basketball Players assembled together as one group. It's crazy

Speaker 1 how many Nepo athletes there are.

Speaker 1 We're all kind of Yao Ming being produced by the Chinese government, allegedly.

Speaker 1 What I found out today is that David Sampson has probably rummaged around the drawers in this office and found all sorts of things that are of value to various Europeans.

Speaker 1 He hasn't found that much because I tell you one thing, drawers.

Speaker 1 A couple bags of nuts and an empty beef jerky container.

Speaker 1 What are we doing? It's depressing. It's sad.

Speaker 1 There's a maquette of jerky. There's a smaller jerky

Speaker 1 that stands in for the full size of the business. It's tough times, man.
Yeah, it is tough times, man.

Speaker 1 Jerky, man, that just reminds me of David Sampson's YMCA story.

Speaker 1 This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Meadowlark Media production.

Speaker 2 And I'll talk to you next time.

Speaker 2 and ticket.