Share & Swear & Tell with Jessica Smetana and Kevin Clark
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I'm Pablo Torre, and this episode of Pablo Torre finds out is brought to you by Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.
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Jess has me shook because now I don't know whether I can say b or not.
You should just call yourself a p and spa
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Jess, have you been following the
string of golf course brawls now captured on social media lately no but in canada last week go on and today there was a guy who got arrested in florida and so essentially golf courses are too packed and people are hitting into other people and now there's massive brawls and social media is capturing it
This is Monday night at a course in West Kelowna.
It starts with some shoving, cursing, and club pointing, then escalates with two men exchanging punches.
Audio suggests that one of the groups may have been playing too slowly.
People are more eager to punch on the golf course.
Yeah, I was going to say, what's the difference between a golf course fight and like a target or airline gate flight?
Well, I'd say the airline gate thing is analogous because you're still going to be like, you're still going to see the guy.
You're both getting bags around.
Yeah, you're going to get with a brawl with him and then be like, all right, we'll go back to where we were.
The airline and the golf course, the thing they have in common is that you could be having a really bad day at both yes if you're playing bad on the golf course and then someone hits you in the leg with their shot that went way out of bounds and didn't yell for yeah you're you might get in a little bit of a fight over that if you're playing really well though i mean you got to let that one slide i will say this i had a thing a couple years ago uh at jacksonville beach golf course where i was paired up uh with my buddy and we were we were paired up with these two random people we did not know the other people we do not know hit into the group in front of us unbeknownst to us.
The sun was coming down.
We couldn't see.
It was downwind.
We didn't know the ball was going to go that far.
So it either hits the guy like in the shoe or almost hits him, gets close enough, but doesn't hurt him.
So the guy brings his cart up and is like, we're going to fight with the other guy.
And so I look at my buddy and I go, what's the etiquette on if you're in a group?
with a guy who's about to get in a fight.
Do we have to get in a fight with this guy?
Cause we were paired up with him?
Do we keep our distance?
I'm going with get in the golf cart, drive away.
You two, leave them behind.
I'm going to tell you what I did.
I came up with this idea in the moment.
It's the only good idea I've ever had.
I said, this guy who's about to fight doesn't know we don't know that guy.
So we're just going to go make ourselves big as if we were fighting a bear and we're going to stand behind them to be like, you're going to fight all of us.
And then we're going to defeat the situation.
I would pretend I've never met this person.
I don't know this person.
And just like Pablo said, drive to the nearest halfway station or whatever and like, pretend I have to go to the bathroom.
Yeah.
Well, yeah, yeah.
Sounds like nobody would want to be paired with you on the golf course, yes.
I hope they're not.
I like playing by myself.
It's great.
I like the idea that Kevin Clark was like, look,
if we join forces,
this guy is going to be scared to death by this is like the one guerrilla versus 100.
I was going to say, this is, I think, a thing that would definitely fail the guerrilla test.
And I'm going to infer based on the what city was this in?
Jacksonville.
Oh, that is scary, actually.
I'm very glad that both of you are here.
Jess, Smetana, Kevin Clark.
I summoned you because you share a love of the sport that I don't know a lot about, but I've assigned Jess
to not only teach me about when it comes to this specific story, but also do a bit of reporting.
And I was in Jess immediately when the elevator pitch was
F1
is banning profanity.
Drivers have come together to openly criticize the head of the world motorsports governing body, the FIA, haven't they?
They've released a collective statement through the Grand Prix Drivers Association calling on Mohamed Ben Suleim to treat them like adults.
The FIA, the governing body of Formula One, has decided recently a battle that they want to pick in Formula One is that they do not want swearing to happen, specifically in post-race interviews, but more vaguely in general around Formula One races.
And they want their drivers to clean up their acts, basically, to stop swearing on camera.
And the question, Kevin, I have fundamentally is why the f would they care?
Yeah, I think they're making a mistake.
And when researching this, it was so funny.
There was just a thing in NASCAR
with Joey Logano and his teammate, I believe, Austin Sindrick, who and they were just F-bombing each other on the radio over and over again.
That is racing to me.
You're in these like hundreds of miles per hour rocket ships, and everybody like does all these crazy neck exercises to make sure they can handle zero gravity and all this stuff.
And sometimes when they get mad at each other, because literally life is on the line, they drop an F-bomb.
That's what racing is.
And so there's been, there's a precedent, I guess, in World Rally Championships as well, where there are fines for some F-bombs over the radio.
so i would guess if i had to guess jess it would be on some sort of like let's clean this up it's more marketable it's better for the sponsors or whatever but i'm going to go the other way the i i i look at f1 and as a travel show right and at this very basic you can experience you can experience uh f1 at whatever level you you want to experience it.
If you want it to be purely tech, it can be purely tech.
If it's purely competition, it's that.
If you just want to look at how Ferrari develops its cars versus McLaren
aspect.
Correct.
The biggest point of entry, the one that I'm in, is for dumbasses.
And in that regard, this is a travel show where you turn it on and they're in Monaco and you go, I'd love to be in Monaco right now.
And as part of that, I have...
F1 is also the white lotus for lots of people.
Correct.
I have a friend who calls F1, Josh Robinson at the Wall Street Journal, calls it the Real Housewives of Monaco.
As we establish how prevalent cursing had been in F1,
I also want to establish, of course, Jess Smithana, as somebody who's on the record, of course, as a subject matter expert, an expert witness in this regard as well.
You.
Yeah.
More finger-pointing.
I don't know if you should call yourself a
in this specific
well.
I thought that part was funnier.
No, Jess has me shook because now I don't know whether I can say or not.
You should just call yourself a p in Spanish.
And that apparently, Jess,
is how a lot of the drivers in this sport also are talking.
As Kevin said, swearing seems like it's part of driving, right?
The famous expression is rubbing people the wrong way is racing.
That's what you always hear drivers say.
So I was really surprised when the FAA, thanks for the chuckle, Kevin, decided to.
No, I got what you were doing.
I just wanted some more.
I wanted some more of the Carolina.
Pablo probably doesn't know that rubbing is racing is the phrase
she changed the rate the phrase yeah it feels like his pot was cleaned up for uh real gearheads rubbing is racing for the ivory tower so we can understand it yeah thank you i appreciate that
and it feels like one of the first things that happened is that the
the young the young uh superstar max verstapen uh got into oppressor this is in september at the Singapore Grand Prix, another location known for its harsh regulations around appropriate conduct, I suppose, Singapore.
And did say, quote, when asked about the state of the car he was qualifying in,
it was fed.
I went into qualifying.
I knew the car was
thank you, Max.
Let's watch our language going forward.
The F1 quote-unquote stewards.
Yes.
The stewards summoned him.
What the hell is that about?
They summoned him for a conduct hearing.
He got punished.
And the punishment, and this is crucial, Jess, was not a fine, but rather what?
He had to serve community service and he ended up serving community service, I think in Rwanda around the time of the F1 awards at the end of the season.
Yeah.
So all of this now is not merely the White Lotus, but also the character on the White Lotus who like is trying to go to a foreign country and be like a better person.
Correct.
Piper Net.
What?
Yeah, Piper.
Max, no.
What is happening?
Community service?
This is a thing.
Like, this has not happened in other sports that I am familiar with.
Community service.
I would assume, Jessica, that there is no financial penalty high enough to make a dent in these guys' lives.
So the only thing you could actually punish them with is taking away their time.
That'd be my guess.
And then a month later, Charlotte Clare, a driver for Ferrari, also drops an F-bomb in a post-race interview and immediately realizes his mistake.
I had one oversteer, and then when I recovered from that oversteer, I had an oversteer from the other side, and then I was like, f.
But luckily, sorry.
Oh, no.
Oh, no.
I don't want to join Max.
Wow.
Of course,
he actually did the no, no,
Max, no.
So, so these guys, what did he get, by the way?
What befell him in lieu?
He was fined.
He was fined 10,000.
He was fined 10,000 hands.
He was joined.
Right.
10,000
for Charlotte Leclerc.
Right.
Which is like Kevin can speak to this also.
The FIA and the way that they hand down punishments in races, but also outside of races, it's wildly varied.
Like there's no, there's no chart where you can look up like, oh, this person
is getting a penalty for overtaking when they weren't supposed to.
This person gets a penalty for this thing or for their, you know, speeding in the pit lane.
This is what it equals.
Like it really is wildly varied.
And this is just another example of like, you don't really exactly know what your punishment's going to be sometimes.
There's no real chart.
There's no chart where they say this is the punishment.
They kind of make it up.
So the assumption was that this meant you can't swear on TV,
right?
Or that you couldn't swear in a race.
And I should also clarify for those not familiar with the sport you guys love that when you are racing, you are, by definition, mic'd up on television?
Or how does this work?
Yeah, the radio feed can go on to television, yes.
Or an app or any of the internet stuff.
You can basically listen into anything anybody's saying.
Which is incredible, by the way.
So that is the, that's like the anti-NFL, like that's the opposite of what the NFL's approach has been, which is, wasn't it like Sam Darnold said, I'm seeing ghosts out there, and then everyone was like, we can never let anybody be this vulnerable ever again.
Seeing ghosts.
Seeing ghosts.
That's not good.
So all the NFL films and mic'd up and all that stuff, you can hear the raw audio of it.
And then, a, and this is every sport, it's not just the NFL.
Yes, NBA also uses it.
And then you get like a,
you know, mid-week, you get a kind of a sanitized version of what was said.
And sometimes you learn a lot, sometimes you don't.
But I have, I know someone who once heard the full uncut audio, or I'd heard it a lot, and said that if it ever leaked, actually, sort of like the Mets, the Terry Collins thing, if you remember that, where they're just screaming at each other.
How do you know that?
Terry, listen, I'm telling you, our ass is in the jackpot now.
Okay.
Okay, that's what I'm just telling you.
You know what?
A mic'd-up game is just so intense and insane because they know that the sanitized version is getting out there that if it ever leaked and a 60-minute game got onto the internet,
it would maybe change sports forever.
Right.
In other words, to quote the umpire yelling at Terry Collins, everybody's ass would be in the jackpot in that case.
Yes,
but what's funny is that like, that leaked, and it seems sort of like a medium-level argument with the umpire.
And we've been talking about it for a decade.
To your point, Pablo, the in-race audio communications between the drivers and their race engineers is something that, to me, is so vital as a fan.
There have been some extremely memorable moments that have come out of it, both funny, both like interesting.
There's been things that you've learned throughout the race.
Like you, if a if a driver is concerned about their tire temperature or they have an issue with their car, or famously, a couple weeks ago, Charlotte Clare said to his audio engineer, the same Ferrari driver we just heard from,
there's something wet on my seat.
I think there's water on my seat.
Is there a leakage?
A leakage of what?
I have the seat full of water.
And his engineer said back, must be the water.
Must be the water.
Let's add that to the water freedom.
I don't think he thought he pissed himself, but I guess we won't really ever know.
And then in March, we should clarify.
The FAA was like, no, this doesn't include in-race communications.
But that was already after there had been such a huge reaction to people thinking it was.
So it's, again, like, just apparently they're not going to be worried about that right now, but they obviously can change their minds and decide that that's not the case if they feel like it.
which again makes drivers sort of anxious and scared and confused.
The other other thing all of this makes me think of, Jess, the whole ambiguity, the whole why is this even necessary?
Why does this feel like this is a top-down thing that nobody actually wants?
It reminds me of the NBA dress code, where there was some aspect of like, this sport is actually like too urban, too black, and we need to make this saleable so that.
living rooms across America feel like they can show this to their kids and everybody can have a grand old time.
What I don't get about this, though, is that when I am thinking about like the spectrum of sports across the world, like that concern applies to so little of what I imagine F1's issues are as a marketing issue.
Yeah.
As a marketing problem.
What are they worried about?
And that's, I think, ultimately the question, right?
It's like, why are they doing this?
And to your point about the NBA dress code, there were some very pointed comments made by the head of the FIA, Mohamed Ben Sulayim, about not wanting drivers to be like rappers.
And Lewis Hamilton, who is the only black F1 driver, one of the best drivers of all time in Formula One, came forward and said, Hey, man, it feels like you're making a pretty like obviously racially coded commentary there about not wanting your sport to seem black when you're using the term rapper.
So that's ultimately the question.
Why are they doing this?
And there was also another incident where there was an attempted jewelry ban a few years ago.
And Lewis came to his press conference at the Miami Grand Prix tons that week with three watches on, tons of rings, and all this jewelry on just to prove a point.
Jess, was there not a driver who indicated that maybe he had his private parts pierced?
Lewis Hamilton himself
joked that he had a piercing because he has a nose ring and he was saying that there was a piercing that he, other than his nose ring, that he couldn't take out
that people can't see.
And it was a joke, but for a very long time, many of us believed it was not a joke.
How did he confirm it wasn't a joke?
That's true.
I mean, he just
now separate, ongoing PTSD.
This is a different investigation.
Is Lewis Hamilton's penis pierced?
I am looking at the photo that is available here.
And it's an important detail, I think, for those not watching on YouTube.
This was 2022.
And Lewis Hamilton has three watches.
He has a zillion rings.
He has so many necklaces and is also wearing a mask.
Yes.
Which is just like to prove the point about all all of the gear that was.
Do you know that Jessica and I were supposed to voice the international ABC intro to that race that the Lewis Hamilton was protesting at?
And I lost my voice and I couldn't do it.
And I got replaced by Chris Whittingham.
I was on it, though.
I was.
I was right there.
I remember.
I remember.
And I watched it.
I wish I could, but
I didn't say that.
I didn't say that.
In a world where this guy's c is pierced, many drivers gather.
It was a really good intro.
I don't know.
How did you hear it?
It was really good.
It was a horrible day for me.
Wow.
Instead, it was witty.
And he was like, in a world where this man's penis is pierced with a ring.
And then I was like watching it with you guys, and you were getting texts from all your family members.
And I was just like, oh, I'm so happy for you guys.
I'm just so happy.
I love this.
I definitely love this.
I love that this worked out like this.
So
it's so Awesome for you guys.
It's just so cool to see others succeed.
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So, Drive to Survive, right, is the showcase in which, by the way, like, it became clear that swearing is key to the sport.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like the the who's the character there where it's like meet this guy and know what it means to be profane.
Daniel Ricardo.
Daniel Ricardo.
Yeah.
He's Australian.
Does that answer your question?
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
That does answer my question, actually.
There's a scene, I'm not going to, there's a scene in three or four where like the opening scene is Daniel Ricardo calling Netflix, the entity of Netflix, the C-word.
Netflix are a real bunch of aren't they?
I'm not for them to point out.
I just wanna tickle my scrotum and touch my nutsack.
People would argue that they're the same thing.
Maybe they are,
but scrotum is ticklish.
Ticklish it is.
I don't even know if it was a wicked one.
Bad shit at home.
Are you happy with your hair?
I don't know.
I I haven't seen it.
If you've asked me, then it must look
like testing 3-4.
Trying to survive introduced people to so many characters in the world of Formula One and is the reason why a lot of Americans specifically fell in love with Formula One.
And part of that is learning people's personalities and getting to know them and understand them and feel with them and laugh with them.
And swearing is part of that, right?
Like not having to censor yourself on camera is a thing that people consider authentic and they connect with.
And I think is one of the reasons, it's not the only reason why F1 became popular.
It's not like people like Daniel Ricardo because he swears, but I think people like Daniel Ricardo because he's funny and that's a component of his humor.
And so these things are all sort of connected, right?
Like you want these athletes to be themselves and you want to feel like you know them.
And when you're getting a sanitized version of who they are, it can probably, you know, turn people off and also
sort of fly in the face of what's made this sport really interesting in the last five years to its newest fans.
As there is now talk, as you were referring to, Jess, of like this galvanization of a driver's strike being threatened, we're reading,
as the FIA is threatening to take away points as a matter of enforcement.
I wanted to get to the reporting around the science of this that you did, which I was a bit surprised to hear would enter the conversation as we have been fairly legal and profane in our legality.
But what did you find out?
Yeah, this show, unlike the rest of America, still believes in science, Pablo.
We reached out to a
linguist and a professor of cognitive science at UC San Diego.
His name is Dr.
Ben Bergen to talk about the science behind swearing.
And so we talked to Dr.
Ben Bergen, who is the author of What the F, what swearing reveals about our language, our brains, and our cells, a great title of a book.
And we asked him about swearing's physical impact on the body.
There aren't a lot of ethical ways to hurt people in laboratory studies, but one way that you can do it is you can have them stick their hand in ice water and hold it there for a long time.
And it turns out that the duration that they can hold their hand is a good measure for how a proxy for how painful it is to them, right?
And there have been a bunch of studies like this where you assign people randomly to either swear or say words that are not swear words, just kind of neutral,
you know, anodyne words, brown, chair, whatever.
And it turns out that the people who are randomly assigned to swear can hold their hands in the water about 50% longer and report substantially lower pain subjectively.
So you could imagine that in lots of dimensions of athletic performance, you know, where pain is a limiting factor in what you're able to get your body to do, swearing might actually make it easier to push through whatever that limitation is.
So I'm understanding this clearly.
I want to just ask you, Jess, he's suggesting that swearing is also kind of a performance enhancing drug.
It can increase your pain tolerance.
It's like they did like the Gom Jabbar test in Dune and let people swear.
And the people that swore were like, we're good.
And the people who were like, fear is the mind killer were, they were actually not so good.
But now the other part of this, I imagine, is, look, it's not even really
up to us.
Like this is just a thing we need to do because it's a release.
What is, what is our, our professor, author, scientist friend saying about that?
Yeah, he's saying that swearing releases adrenaline.
And adrenaline is this hormone that your body releases in these types of situations and it causes an increase of blood flow to your extremities.
It increases your pupil dilations.
These are things that could advantage drivers during races.
And the more adrenaline you have in your body, the more you might swear.
There was a fun study that did this.
So it
wasn't with driving, but they tried to induce a state of emotional arousal and
physiological arousal by having people, this was with gaming actually, have them play either a golf simulator or a first-person shooter.
And then they gave them a task where they just had to produce profanity, as many profanities as they could within a minute.
And the people who were first assigned to the first-person shooter simulation.
were able to produce significantly more profane words.
If you've ever been in a high-stress situation, you probably are familiar with the feeling of that situation ending, but you still have like the same amount of adrenaline coursing through you.
You don't just get to flip a switch and all of a sudden you're just not stressed anymore.
Well, this is the comedy of watching any, certainly any playoff game in the NBA and watching any post-game interview in which they are like sweating from every pore and like huffing and puffing.
And then they have to answer, you know, questions from fill in the blank, your favorite sideline reporter here,
you know, asking them to contemplate their successes, failures, and existential fears.
What were the wolves doing on defense in the third quarter?
Yeah, my answer would be,
I am exhausted and I just want to puke and I just want to actually curse at you for asking me that in a state.
When I walk out of the Lebetard show studio after four hours of stress and adrenaline and anxiety, Pablo, I don't immediately take a nap.
I go for a walk for a couple hours and let it burn off me and then I take a nap.
This is the same if you're an F1 driver.
And then it's just like the demographics of this because these guys, again, when you mentioned Dune, I'm like, yeah, Shalamay looks like an F1 driver.
These are all, doesn't he?
Am I wrong?
He's tiny.
He's too tall, though.
I think he's too tall.
George Russell's the only real tall guy.
I think Shalamay.
How tall is Shalamay?
I think he's like 5'11.
5'10, according to an increasingly flawed Google search results.
Well, George Russell's tall.
Isn't there one?
Ricardo's probably like five foot.
Sevon O'Connor was really, was really tall.
Yes, he is tall.
So he would be on the taller end, but from a frame standpoint, like his physical frame, I do think he could.
I took a photo.
Let's get this up there in the post show, and it's of Yuki Sunoda standing next to
Jalen Phillips, the Dolphins defensive.
Why were they in the same room?
Because it was the F1 Miami.
And I took a photo, and it was unbelievable.
Oh, my God.
Yes.
It looks like, so it looks like Jalen Vloves is going to hold Yuki Sunoda in the palm of his hand and throw him across the field.
These are mostly young guys in their 20s.
Yes, they're young dudes is my point.
That's the shallow of it all.
The shallow of it all is that they're young dudes and they grew up, a lot of them, sim racing, gaming, online, a
traditional place where you're not really censoring yourself a lot of the time.
Like Max Verstappen is a full-time sim racer and a part-time Formula One driver.
So he grew up on the internet sim racing.
The larger gaming culture may have an impact on the amount of profanity and sort of the desensitization for some people to swear more.
I've had undergrads who have looked at this.
So they, you know, where they survey, this is not peer-reviewed research, but anecdotally, where they ask people how offensive they think words are and separately ask them how much time they've spent on various different sorts of gaming platforms and in certain different specific games.
And it turns out that there are specific words that show up a lot in Call of Duty, for example.
And if you are a Call of Duty player, then those words you judge to be less offensive than if you are a gamer, but not a Call of Duty player.
That is simultaneously a deeply interesting
research finding and also the least surprising research finding imaginable
that people who play Call of Duty don't understand why it is that all of you guys are offended when they call someone, fill-in-the-blank, uh, slur wrapped inside five other slurs.
I also just think it's, I think it's, if I'm just trying to like power rank the least censored places in life.
And I do think like
video game, multiplayer, uh, Call of Duty
and the chat function for any illegal stream for someone.
Oh my God.
I was going to say my grandma's house.
My grandma's car.
My grandma's phone.
My grandma's phone.
She actually was the first person to text me.
I love that you called Lebatar to.
Wow.
To your point about why the FIA is doing this, Pablo, I still don't know.
I think that there's a larger conversation at play here between the FIA and the Formula One relationship and how much the FIA is trying to impinge itself upon that relationship and enforce rules and declare its power.
And I think there's, you know, a very obvious pushback from Formula One.
There's been some really high-profile FIA resignations in the last few months.
There's been a lot of scandals around the FIA and things like this, but also things involving racing regulations and the things that actually determine the fairness and the outcomes of races that drivers really don't like.
So this is really just one thing in a long string of very unpopular FIA rules that drivers are not happy about.
Yeah.
Kind of feels like the FIA, to quote our resident expert,
being a real bunch of f.
Your words, not mine.
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Speaking to clinics
of the human language, Kevin Clark, you did something that felt like a real make-a-wish experience for everybody in sports.
Can you tell us what you did last week?
I hosted the Paul Feinbaum show in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Like, like Jessica, I know the Carolinas well.
So I went down to Charlotte.
The day before I was supposed to host, or I did host, I was a guest with Paul in the 6 p.m.
hour, which is very important because I got to pick his brain.
I got to figure it out.
I had talked to people who had hosted before,
and their advice nearly universally was let the callers talk.
That it is.
Especially when it's a guest host, it's the caller show.
Yes.
It's not, I'm a steward of the callers.
As
F1 likes to say, you are a steward.
And so the idea that I was going to come in and like grab the bull by the horns and be like, no, no, no, you're, this is my world.
Welcome to the jungle.
You know, I turn into Romie and just start dumping callers, right?
That, that wasn't going to happen.
I was, I'm so respectful of the institution of Feinbomb because
in another world, like somewhere in the multiverse, there's a world in which it's, it's Kevin from Florida on a cell phone, right?
That's, that's there's a world there.
You're on a tremendous amount of meth.
Yes, and I'm an insurance adjuster, and all I want to do is talk about Carson Beck.
Okay, that's all I want to do.
And I opened up the show by, and by the way, that's not a million miles from where I am now as far as the meth and the wanting talk about Carson Beck.
Um, but the uh, don't roll your eyes, don't roll your eyes at me, Jessica.
That wasn't an eye roll.
That, yeah, it was a
roll.
Um, but no, I had opened up the show by saying, like, I remember driving around Florida and it's hot as hell and it's April and there's literally no college football content.
And all I wanted to do was find when Paul was syndicated the right dial and just listen to him talk about like Connor Shaw and how South Carolina is going to do that year.
Like I remember this.
And so to be that voice, to be that voice
on my side, on my, on, on that side of the desk was.
Incredible.
Well, well, what's funny though, Jess, about Kevin's sort of description of
the sickness that you also share, right?
Is that to me, it's never more vivid than in the universe of Paul Feinbaum.
Correct.
Like these callers, and we did an episode about this on our show talking to some of the, some of the greats, specifically the greatest.
Legend.
Legend.
Like legend is this personification of that sickness.
For those who missed Kevin Clark playing the role in your playbill tonight of Paul Feinbaum,
My favorite call did sound like this.
It's Legend.
Legend, hello.
How you doing, brother?
How you doing, man?
I'm doing great.
So first of all, before we start, we have a mutual friend in Mr.
Pablo Torre, who did a great episode of his podcast, Pablo Torre finds out about you.
Pablo is an amazing person.
I love learning about you.
So I'm so happy you're calling in right now.
Man, I appreciate that.
Pablo Torre is one of the great journalists today.
We all know ESPN, all they love these days is former players, you know, with seven or eight concussions telling us what's going on in life.
But thank God for great journalists like Pablo Torre.
Man, that dude's off the hook, man.
Dude's off the hook.
One of the best.
Great guy.
Great guy.
Great guy.
But I'm worried about you, dude.
I'm worried about you, man.
I don't know if you're going to make it or not, man.
You look like you got into Mr.
Rogers' neighborhood there and got into his closet.
What you doing there today, man?
I mean, what's up with that outfit, man?
You're on the Paul Feinbaum show.
You supposed to come in here, man.
Blazing.
What's up with this outfit you got going on?
Paul Kernigan, legend.
I thought this was okay.
I love being some Pablo.
But you remember this right here.
You are with the insane.
You are with the lame.
You are with those that may not have a brain.
Protect yourself, brother.
Protect yourself.
Appreciate you, legend.
Has left to build it.
I mean, yeah.
So it was a roller coaster for you.
It was.
So
like you were not embraced as no, I was hated.
So there were a couple of
so this is the first hour.
Let me tell you guys the journey.
So the first hour was calls like that.
No, not to that level,
everybody.
Yeah, of course.
Yeah.
You didn't send everybody to
dog me.
But
Jim from Tuscaloosa, who is a frequent caller,
who gets on guest host quite a bit.
He called me a horrible host in the first hour.
You need to get your act together.
I mean, really.
No, can I ask you a question, Jim?
Well, go ahead.
If you could clear up one misconception about you that you think other callers have, what would it be?
I don't know.
I'm not answering no hypothetical.
Ask me a straight question.
I won't assume any of you.
I'm horrible host.
I already found out you're a horrible host.
And then I just hung in there.
I did, I embraced the process, did what I wanted to do.
And eventually, Jim from Tuscaloosa called back to tell me I was doing a good job.
I heard somebody, I can't imagine who, said that you did not address.
Let me tell you something, Kevin.
You have the best-looking outfit I've seen on this show,
maybe ever.
That's a great looking outfit.
I appreciate that.
Have you maybe, I don't want to be too forward, have you backed off your earlier assessment that I'm a horrible host?
Well, at the time, you were
you you bought into some idiot uh yeah so at the time i was he said yeah um
he also he also spent a good deal of time saying i'm a good-looking guy so i went from footage not found but no it's in there it was in there so he went from i'm a horrible host narrator i'm no longer a horrible host and i might be hot wow yeah in one hour in one hour what a what a i mean
i would say that among the things you could do as a college football unhinged
maniac,
this is, this is, this is up there, man.
It was like I was a fantasy camp.
I was like, let's get four college.
I got Mina Kimes on.
And we talked about draft.
But other than that, it was three college football writers.
And it was just like me.
It was Kevin Clark finds out about college football, basically.
And I just, I, I loved it.
I loved it.
Yeah.
First of all, that's trademarked, so you can't use that.
Second of of all,
legendary turn for you.
I mean, I mean, I said it was Jim.
So Jim and Derry turn for you.
Oh, Jesus.
Becoming less hated on the show.
I think that it's not just the fact that, you know, it's not the dream to sit in the chair, right?
The dream is to sit in the chair, but to get invited back.
The reward in TV is getting invited back.
Like that's, that's the goal.
Like that's the reward.
Like whenever it's like, hey,
you get no feedback in this industry.
None.
Not ever.
It is, it is true.
You get none.
There's some several hundred comment long Reddit threads of feedback that I could show you about
my performance.
I could not imagine.
I think the callers have a lot of influence over Feinbomb because I think that if it wasn't actually,
if the Feinbomb callers were not having a good time with me, I probably would not be invited back.
You know, because it just wouldn't be that fun of a show.
Like if people don't call or if I was like a jerk to them,
I was thinking about this afterwards And I was thinking, if I was a jerk, if I wanted to do like, I'm from New York, I went to Miami, I'm not an SEC guy, if I wanted to go full heel, the bar for me to be funny would have to be so high and it would have to be so antagonistic.
It would be end up being so stupid.
You'd have to end up being like, be like the corporate era of The Rock in the early 2000s, where he like had a guitar and would sing songs about how much she hates the Sacramento Kings and Sacramento and stuff.
Like that is how you go just full heel.
And the easiest thing would be to just embrace, first of all, be who you are, which I was, and be like an obsessed college football fan and just explain to them that I have the same affliction that they do.
Yeah, I would recommend anybody who is forced to host a show talking about a sport they don't actually like to find perhaps a profanity scandal that would allow them to spend upwards of 30 minutes discussing it.
That's a really good idea, Pablo, if someone were to do that.
Even though it sounds Jessica like Notre Dame's new hotbed is Charlotte, North Carolina.
But back back in the old days, it was they recruit nationally.
Yeah.
Yeah, so does Miami.
They just do a little better.
But one of them's not a playoff team.
Who's the next game on the calendar for both of us?
Each other.
See you there.
Oh, boy.
All right.
So
at the end of every episode of Bob, you don't even live in Miami anymore.
Which has been
hijacked perpetually by the ongoing feud between no one.
I was just there for the Orange Bowl.
I don't need to go back.
No one cares about the rest of the world.
What are the tremblings?
We're moving on.
We've moved on.
We end by saying what it is we found out today.
Oh.
Jess, what did you find out today after this journey into the
profane heart of this sport that you love and also Kevin's dream?
I found out that Daniel Ricardo was saying the C word, not c,
because in my notes, I had written down c, but he was saying a different C word.
So, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was a good thing to clarify.
I learned, great, great nugget.
I learned that Jessica has never met an Australian because there's no way,
there's no way you didn't know that they overuse the C word.
I was just giving him the benefit of the doubt.
I was like, he meant he was saying penises there like it wasn't the it wasn't the super awesome c word that we can't say on camera what i found out today is that jess matana's grandma is yeah more than qualified to be the through line through this episode as either an f1 driver or a caller into paul feinbaum's radio show jessica holy
I got the most gorgeous
roses.
I don't think I ever got that many roses in my whole life.
Certainly not from your lovely grandfather.
God, may his soul rest in peace.
Thank you.
Oh my God.
They are beautiful.
I'm flabbered as
I mean.
Holy shit.
I don't know what it's for, but I love you for it.
Thank you.
You've made my day.
I mean, they are gorgeous.
I mean, holy crap.
Well,
I will talk to you later.
you're probably working whatever um
and i hope you got your oranges i never i didn't hear whether you got the damn oranges or not so um when you get a chance you can give me a call back i'm sitting here looking at those roses and i cannot believe what the hell you did
holy shit
They're gorgeous.
And I'm going to sit and look at them all damn day today.
Never had so many roses in my whole life.
85 years.
Holy shit.
Okay, dear.
Thank you.
Love you.
Talk to you later.
Bye.
Beautiful.
Man, beautiful voice.
Speaking of the orange bowl, I did get the oranges.
So just to close the loop on that.
Wow.
There it is.
Where does your grandmother live?
Illinois?
Chicago, if you're suburbs, Skokie?
Chicago.
The city.
Yeah.
Oh, wow.
We're in the city.
Do you want me to dox my grandma?
Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Averoma, Ryan Cortez, Sam Dawig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McRae, Rachel Miller-Howard, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, Chris Tumanello, and Juliet Warren.
Our studio engineering by RG Systems, our sound design by NGW Post, our theme song, as always, is by John Bravo.
We will talk to you next time.