What It Means to Be Cool, with Kevin Wildes

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

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Please drink responsibly.

What's the situation here?

Are we

sweet?

Are we started?

I think we have.

Right.

This is a very loud nude chair as an FYI.

Okay.

I'm ready to make a proclamation, but you can start us.

I would like to start with your proclamation.

Wherever you think this podcast is going to go,

because you've caught me in such a unique headspace, it's going to go

further away than you think it's going to.

And here's the thing.

If you don't like it, I'm okay

just severancing this podcast and being like, you know what?

That never happened.

We, you know, we just delete it.

Yep.

I'm going to go home and have no memory.

Yeah.

Of like, oh, Weiss gave Wilds a pithy thesis while he was on vacation and he became like a different person.

You have a sheaf of papers and you're always full of ideas, but now you're like champing at the bit.

By popular demand, by the way, and Kevin Wiles, I should say your name aloud for people not watching on YouTube.

By popular demand, you're here and I thank you for that.

You sent me a text.

Maybe when I was on vacation.

Yeah, I think it was.

I was in Maui.

It took you a couple of days to the point where I was like, I don't know if Kevin likes this idea.

Well, that's another part, another leaf I'm turning over.

Less phone.

Like just enough with the phones.

So actually disengaging or doing the thing that I've been trying to do, which is also admittedly trying to be tardy enough so that everyone's expectations for my responsiveness are reduced.

Yeah, treat it like a letter.

like a very fast letter.

Like you wrote me a letter.

I got it.

I'm thinking about it.

Here's your letter back.

But it's very fast, a day.

In the olden days.

Right.

Not Ken Byrne's Civil War letter.

No.

But closer to

your birthday card from your parents.

Yeah.

It's coming.

All right.

So you sent me a text that said, one embryonic topic, and this was Saturday, 1:32 p.m.

One embryonic topic I'm meditating on for you.

I don't like myself as I read my words aloud, but this is what I am.

What it means to be quote-unquote cool, who the coolest people are, whether it can be taught, how effort intersects with cool, risks of embarrassment, the coolest things we've ever seen.

Yeah.

And you didn't respond for hours.

Actually, then you got to me and you said, quote, this is cool.

Yeah.

Nothing else.

And then you made me wait a day and a half.

And then Monday morning, you said, I'm back and working on this.

And now I have 20 pages.

So

this is where I was at.

So many papers in front of you.

Headspace-wise.

Because I figured when you sent me a text, you just want to talk about like,

hey, Michael Jordan sure sure was cool.

I'm like, yeah.

Hey, America when Vince Carter jumped over, Frederick Weiss, that was cool, right?

Like, yep, that's cool.

And, you know,

Led Zeppelin's cool.

Like, yeah, everybody knows that stuff.

So I'm like, how do I put a twist on this?

And I just so happened to be in Maui.

Have you been to Hawaii?

I've been to Kauai.

Oh, man.

We wanted to go to Kauai.

It's so good.

Kauai is even more nature-y than Maui.

It is.

It's where they film Jurassic Park.

Oh, okay.

So this will be right in your wheelhouse.

Were there whales there?

Of course there were.

Okay.

I know you're a big whale aficionado as well.

My bachelor party involved whale watching.

Did it really?

San Juan Islands saw a fully breaching humpback whale.

So did I.

Not at your bachelor party eight days ago, dude.

My skin's tingling.

Okay, so this is where it happened.

We get to Maui.

I wasn't aware prior to this vacation.

I didn't even know the humpback whale schedule.

Oh, yeah.

I didn't know what schedule they were on.

I thought they were just kind of roaming around.

Nope.

The humpback whales from Alaska and the humpback whales from Antarctica, they come and converge.

They have a little meetup to

give birth to their babies and then kind of nurture them in Hawaii.

In the warm waters.

Holy cow.

So anyways,

we get there and there's all these blowholes popping off in the horizon and we're screaming like maniacs.

And like, yeah, it's whale season.

And it's like when you

shout out to all the European tourists that come to Central Park and start taking pictures of the squirrels, like, guys, you need to chill.

There's plenty of them.

You don't need to take pictures of them.

I rarely feel cooler than when I am the guy just like pointing finger guns at tourists, being like, Yeah, this is what New York is.

Yeah, we got squirrels.

That was me with humpback whales.

So there's little kayaks you can rent kayaks.

Oh, you wait, you went in a kayak?

Dude, we get in normal kayaks that they rent to people at the hotel with a guide who's on a stand-up paddleboard.

What does this guy look like?

Awesome, obviously.

Dude's getting whale watching towards him.

He looks like a human stand-up paddleboard.

He's amazing.

He's amazing.

And his vibe is immaculate.

Of course.

That guy's day-to-day quality of life.

We should be jealous.

He's just fantastic.

Shout out to John.

So John takes us out because we don't know how deep to go.

We're chasing the blowholes.

So we're just hanging out.

And next thing you know, here come the humpback whales in the distance, but nearby.

Baby,

mother,

and then the escort.

Do you know about this?

Oh, wait.

Travel in pods of three.

So the escort is either like a senior whale or like mom's friend.

Like, it's not the dad.

And then the John tells, shows us, he puts his

GoPro.

He shows us a video of the GoPro.

It's the baby and the mom, like kind of side by side.

And then the escort's kind of just like, like, like a security guard for a celebrity.

Yeah, just like looming.

Not whale prostitute, whale.

No, whale has a bodyguard.

Yeah, yeah, bodyguard.

So, anyways, so then the whales start, the whales are doing their thing.

Me and my son, Russell, we're just sitting in the kayak, and then the big circles start to happen.

Yes.

We're like, what in the world?

Lunch feeding?

No, it's just the way it's just something's happening underneath us.

And then we're in a circle.

We're like, what in the world?

to start paddling backwards.

Whales come, then a whale breaches right in front of us.

Unbelievable.

Like whales, there's nothing you and I love more than a good pod.

Okay.

Oh, the whale pod you're talking about?

You know,

no puns, no puns.

Okay, so then I'm on the beach and I go under the water, right?

And I'm, you know, I like to swim under the water, look for nothing.

Body surfing, yeah, but this is, I'm just like patiently like just going under the water, just opening my eyes.

Oh, pop up,

old man with a boogie board next to me.

He says, Are you listening to the whales?

I said, What?

He said, You know, you can hear the whales.

I said, You can.

He's like, Yeah, it's like an elementary school concert of violins, poorly played violins.

So I go back, really?

I go back under.

I hear

So I popped up.

And I got your text at some point.

I'm like, the world is amazing, dude.

I was like, oh, like, this is a very spiritual moment for me and has like

changed my outlook on this particular podcast because I feel like

what's cool, what's not.

You know, you see the magazine list, oh, this is cool, and this is not.

Wearing your socks high is cool, and wearing them, what was not?

And it's just

there's an element of negativity to it.

OKW came back from Maui.

I've got a very loose door policy at Club Cool right now.

Very loose.

Hey, well, yeah, yeah, that's cool.

Come on in because

the world is great, and I'm feeling alive.

Now we can start the pod.

Okay, so number one, deeply jealous of your vacation.

I don't want you to be.

I want to share it.

I don't want you to be, I don't want you to have any negative feelings.

And I don't want to be like, ah, I did this.

I'm just saying, like, I'm here sharing it.

I'm trying to spread the positive energy.

Don't be jealous.

So, when it comes to the nightclub that you you are now,

you have a very,

I use the word Catholic in a different sense, a very Catholic policy, very open.

Come on in.

Yeah.

No velvet rope, just.

There's still a rope.

Few clubs have as much paperwork as yours.

True.

You're holding, you're double fisting.

You have, you've printed out what feel like, are those shot sheets?

You have photographs?

I can't read the words.

Well, what do you want to do?

I've got a lot of stuff to go through.

You want me to just kind of throw it at you and you tell me, you know.

You used to be a producer.

Now you're...

This feels like a meeting, though.

You're now an in-demand talent, and I'd like you to run the meeting.

Okay.

First off, so I googled what cool is, and AI came up with something.

AI

uncool?

It's fine, I guess.

It gave me a stupid list of what cool is.

It's AI doesn't work.

Oh, oh, we're scraping.

Okay,

you've thrown out the first piece of paper.

I mean, cool people are honest.

They're diplomatic.

They're good with others.

They use humor.

They have autonomy, independent, unconventional, don't conform, and they solve problems.

That's trash.

That's not helpful.

There's nothing.

You know what that sounds like?

A robot wrote that.

Reddit.

Oh.

The Reddit community.

So I went to Reddit.

This is just like kind of pulling the internet.

It's kind of starting an essay with like the definition of cool.

Webster's defines.

Okay.

Then Reddit had, there's two things that I pulled.

One was

kind of like psychology, which I got lost in.

And then the second one, this person wrote it, 2000 dragon, the handle is.

I'll answer this from a filmmaker's perspective.

The question was like, what's cool?

When trying to create cool characters, the formula is competence plus calm plus confidence.

equals cool

competence calm confidence yep It worked.

Okay.

It tracks.

Okay.

So I went through and so.

The CCC.

Yeah.

Four, even, even four there.

Oh, sure.

It was cool.

So it works.

Then I kind of came up with a Rosetta Stone of cool.

What does that mean?

So I understand the Rosetta Stone is a way of being able to understand other languages.

I kind of just liked the word Rosetta Stone rather than the Madden ratings of cool.

So I saw this video.

I wanted to get like something super famous.

Certainly walking on the moon is cool, but also kind of unattainable for most people.

Then I saw this guy.

I'd assume you haven't seen this video, but you are very online.

Extremely.

I know 2,000 dragons.

Dragon singular.

I like when I listened to the Chris Hayes podcast, and you guys were talking about esoteric random TikToks.

And he's like, yeah, that guy's great.

Yeah, the hammer guy.

What in the world?

Have you seen this guy?

I pulled a screen grab for it.

Oh, okay.

I'll describe it.

Yeah, please, for Theater of the Mind.

It's a gentleman fishing with a few of his pals.

Looks like he's got a Miller light in his hand, and he's tapping on the water, okay, to get the gators to come near.

Alligator comes right up to the boat, taps it a little bit more, so the alligator opens its mouth.

This dude takes an aluminum can of beer, pops it on the alligator's tooth, gives it to his buddy, who then shotguns it.

Some Flintstones.

Our bird is also our telephone.

Our alligator is our bottle of.

So here's the thing.

So I went back and looked at it.

Is he calm?

Yes.

Is this dude confident?

Yes.

Obviously.

Is he confident?

Oh, you want a beer?

You want a shotgun a beer?

Yeah.

Does anyone have a key?

No.

I have a gator tooth.

Great, dude.

It crushes it.

And what I really want to, so what I take away from that, it's obviously cool.

It doesn't matter how you look.

It doesn't matter where you live.

It doesn't matter,

you know, your haircut or your sneakers or any of this other stuff.

This is why my aperture is so open.

It's just, this dude's just being him, and he's getting down to the raw authenticity of himself and doing cool stuff.

Are you aware that so far a lot of your cool examples involve things that live in the water?

I'm just going where the data leads me, dude.

And this is where I just need to jump in to say that our friend Kevin Wilds, the co-host of First Things First on FS1 and also a former producer at ESPN, he really does love data.

He loves making sports infographics, actually, by hand.

And when Wilde was in the PTFO studio in January, listening to me and his co-host Nick Wright debate the smartest person in sports media.

Do I think I am the smartest guy in sports media?

Obviously, I think that.

One regret I had was that I didn't tap into Kevin's passion for charts.

And perhaps appropriately,

charts about maybe the opposite topic from who is the smartest person in sports media, which is to say, what's the coolest thing in the world?

And so today, before I get to my own story, which involves a guy I met named John,

I should warn you here that Wilds did not curate a list of five things or 10 things or 25 things.

What he brought us was

71 things that are cool.

We can discuss each of them on a 50-minute show.

Well, I'm going to fly through them.

Then the other thing you asked me was

coolest thing in the world.

Did you think of something?

I have to assign yourself that.

I have done so much less homework for this episode than you, but I have some takes.

Tier one.

I have some takes.

I ate

lunch alone the other day.

That's cool.

Went to Barney Greengrass, Upper West Side, establishment, great bagels, the Sturgeon King, more,

again, aquatic life.

And I was asked,

hey, there's no room for like a one person to get their own table.

There's a four top.

There's one guy here.

His name is John.

Great.

He's 80-something years old.

And there are two women there together.

Do you guys want to share one table?

All four of you.

All four of us.

Like just communal.

And choose your own adventure in terms of how much you want to talk to each other.

A lot.

And so I said, yeah.

Great.

Of course.

You should should have brought a microphone.

That would have been a great pod.

Believe me, I thought about it.

You should have a little travel kit.

So I almost

put a wire on because John, what happened was at some point, the waiter comes by and he's like, a table opened up.

Do you guys want to not do this?

Because this is, he acknowledges this is a little much.

And my move as a New Yorker is to say, and

you know,

whatever John wants to do, I'm cool with.

That's good.

And John, sort of like very blase,

like, no, I'm good.

Great.

And so me and John, that's my signal.

Door is open.

Time to start talking.

Yeah.

John, turns out,

yes, he's in his 80s.

I'm going to look up his.

Oh, you can look John up.

Because John and I are just like shooting this shit.

And he begins to explain that he's a writer.

And John is John Barrent, who is the author of a book called Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

Oh, yeah,

that's a famous book, dude.

Which happens to have been on the New York Times bestseller list for 216 weeks.

I think we have that book at my home.

Midnight spent 216 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list more than any other nonfiction book in history.

I never thought it would be a bestseller.

It became a movie.

Clinton used to have directed it.

So the point being that like John, who didn't give a f ⁇ about anything, was down to either talk or not talk.

He and I just started doing an unrecorded podcast.

Does he lead with that?

You know, I wrote Midnight in the Garden.

I go to that's a famous book.

It's not like a tiny book, it's like a record-setting about a thing in Savannah, Georgia.

Two things about John.

Very eager to talk about it, but was honestly happy to just read the New York Times until I said, So, John, what do you get here?

And then we talked about our order.

And cool to me is

showing up, putting yourself out there, and not knowing is this going to be painful or not and then being rewarded by the universe with the breaching humpback whale of one of the greatest authors it seems in non-fiction writing and at least uh you know well that's cool recent history of the united states that's what i'm saying eating alone

cool

competent calm Confident, all those things describe John.

Homerun, dude.

Home run story.

Is it the coolest thing in the world?

It's up there.

Not, no, but no, not.

And my list of 71 things, that's not number one.

Do you have a number one?

Because I think I have a number one.

Yeah.

I want to, we should alternate.

Or at the very least, I would like you to go next.

Well, I have two, I have two more.

I'll hold up two things, okay?

I have all of these.

Okay.

This is called, this one is called Massive List.

Yeah, it says it.

You wrote it in all caps across the top.

Yeah, that's how I organize stuff.

And this one is just the one that I think is the coolest moment.

But I'm not sure.

This moment can just fold into all of these.

Like this moment is not necessarily cooler than, I'll give you just number 12 in no particular order.

When owls turn their head around.

Yeah, that's cool.

I went to an owl cafe in Japan.

I've seen that.

It's.

So worth it.

Nocturnal?

Great question.

I also had, I was like, is this this one of those like

we are keeping the prisoners awake in a sort of like experimental torture situation?

And I didn't get clarity on that because it was the daytime and these owls were spinning their heads around and seemingly cool with it.

And they still

key and Gigi.

And they look so angry, but

I got to pet.

several increasingly tiny owls.

Oh, smaller.

Oh, yeah.

I would have gone the other way.

Nah.

huge owl.

Well, you start with the big one, and then you work your way to winning the trust of the smallest ones.

Yes.

Once you go through with your everything is cool, isn't it?

Filter on, it's endless.

I mean, the bird as a thing, like this is my whole con of mammals take.

Go ahead.

We fetishize the dog, and I see, is that a dog on.

Yeah, so I'm glad you bring it up if you want me to jump your take.

Well, here's a dog that herds sheep, but there's wolves out there, you know so you know what this dog has on him a collar of spikes

he's got a spiked collar the spikes on this collar about four inches long and it's so when a wolf tries to attack him his jugular is it's basically he's turning him into a dog porcupine

so that's number two go ahead keep talking about dogs uh calm yeah he is dude herding sheep just mind his business yeah i mean that's a good that's a good preempting of my take which was uh dogs overrated birds underrated because birds of course can literally speak english and we don't care okay dogs can smell cancer so like let's slow your roll here

okay

i want to i want to i want to substantiate that that is that is a thing so this is lucy she's a labrador cross irish water spaniel rob harris is training dogs to smell prostate cancer they take urine samples from eight different patients now one of the eight patients has cancer, and it's the dog's job to sniff it out.

They can smell like Alzheimer's as well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So that's a good counterpart.

We can't ask for, you know, how long are they?

At the same time, the real Jordan LeBron situation.

Dogs, birds.

Dogs have jobs, like several jobs.

Birds don't have jobs

with delivering messages.

Eagles, they've trained eagles to take down drones.

The Dutch National Police have found a unique way to to take the flying device down.

This is me.

I mean, I understand

Falconer wrist.

I do not want to be painted as anti-eagle.

I'm just saying you can come across dogs working.

Dogs have, like, straight up have jobs.

Dog, they're good, like, they're in the military, they're in police.

They do jump out of plants.

Yeah, they do all sorts of stuff.

They're at the airport.

Birds can literally fly.

So

this is my issue.

Cool parachute.

This is where I think that I don't want to get off on the wrong foot.

Yeah.

This has become contentious.

I think if you get the badge of cool, you're in the Hall of Fame.

I'm not.

Hey, were you Hall of Cool?

Are you Babe Ruth?

Are you a guy who just snuck into the Hall of Fame, you know, recently?

Doesn't matter, dude.

My plaque is up.

So whether you're, I had this originally, Jimmy Hendrix closes Woodstock with the Star Spangled Banner.

Number one seed.

Conventionally cool.

It's unbelievable.

One, Marvin Gate, the all-star game.

That's my one seed.

Are you kidding me?

That's my one seed.

Can you see

by

dark?

Or you're just a kid in Little League who hits a triple and decides to slide head first.

You both are doing your thing, dude.

That one is hammered to left.

It's off the glove of Clem.

And now to second and third.

Yamaguchi's going to score.

Heading to third.

And in there with a triple, Bruce Boucher.

What a day.

Well, so this gets to something that I think is integral about what we're defining as cool, though, which is deliberate versus spontaneous.

Right?

So you mentioned the slide, and I agree.

The counter argument to a good slide is that it feels so practiced.

So like, for instance, you know the thing that Baker mayfield does you've seen that that animated gif of like him i was saying i've seen it several times when he slides and then pretends to be a photographer yes unbelievable it's just like the fluidity yeah baker is sick dude it's just it's like that's that guy's cool that's cool yeah but then the question becomes like what if you apply the standard of

What does it look like when he was practicing that in the mirror?

He wasn't practicing that.

Okay, so this is a standard that we have to scrutinize.

Does it undermine the committee's case if this thing was practiced, practiced, practiced versus felt as Jimi Hendrix, I think, did and spontaneously performed?

No, you're allowed to practice it.

If you're looking to add something special to your next celebration, try Ramy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

This smooth, flavorful cognac is crafted from the finest grapes and aged to perfection, giving you rich notes of oak and caramel with every sip.

Whether you're celebrating a big win or simply enjoying some cocktails with family and friends, Remy Martin 1738 is the perfect spirit to elevate any occasion.

So go ahead, treat yourself to a little luxury, and try Remy Martin 1738 Accord Royale.

Learn more at remymartin.com.

Remy Martin Cognac, Veen Champain, a 14 alcoholic volume, reported by Remy Control, USA, Incorporated, New York, New York, 1738, Centaur Design.

Please drink responsibly.

Some of my lists are

just nouns, dude.

So, this is where I get into it.

This is where I started to get into like not just people.

So, you're talking about proper nouns?

No, just swords.

Okay, like just all swords?

I mean, I don't know, most swords.

If there was a sword here, I'd be like, that's cool.

Have you seen the the Instagram account that is

cool sticks?

Of course I have.

Hello, Stick Nation.

I'm here in Guara Paris, Pritzanto Brazil.

I found this beautiful, awesome stick.

It's a white, curly stick, and I found this here on this beautiful place.

Yes.

Official stick reviews?

Yeah.

They're great.

And everybody likes it.

So again.

That's an offshoot of swords.

Well, it's like, what if you didn't plan to make a sword?

Speaking to my practice thing and the nature and nature itself just presented you with an Excalibur made of bark.

Yeah, that's that's cool.

That's that's objectively obviously just raise.

I've got so much stuff here, and we're almost out of time already.

Just raise, just stop me when you want to talk about something.

Are you ready?

Yeah.

They're not everything cool in the world.

You actually have 71 things, but I'm looking at your paper.

And some of them have ABC.

Pablo gave me a job on my vacation.

Hey, can you go through everything and everyone that's ever existed and come up with a list?

And I only came up with 71.

You're asking for an aside, but

I wish everything ever.

Everything ever.

So I just, this is just stuff that just popped into my brain recently.

Surfers, obviously.

That dog with the collar.

Octopi.

I mean,

ejaculates out of its tentacles.

Come on, that's a side note.

Spies.

Bats, which is basically swords.

scorpions,

diving, but not necessarily Olympic diving.

Again, this whole thing of like this feels very practiced versus this feels like a thing you do spontaneously and ecstatically.

Old cars, cars from the future.

Okay, this is where I, this is a large, large catch-all.

Pretty much all musical endeavors, pretty much all artistic endeavors, pretty much all dancing hard, pretty much all mortars.

The committee needs a little bit more exclusivity than this.

No, we don't.

That's the point.

Pretty much all of you just included

a spectrum of women performance.

Yeah.

I know.

Pretty much every musical endeavor is cool.

Can I confess to something that I agree must be uncool?

I was at my daughter's ballet recital.

Okay.

And you know how this works.

Like there are like a hundred kids.

I've never, just because I'm in the boy world, I've never, I'm unfamiliar with like dance recitals.

As the father of a daughter, I went to this dance recital and they're like a hundred kids.

And violets, like in the last quarter.

And

I, I am embarrassed to admit this, but in the interest of journalistic transparency, I will.

Stuck an ear pod in.

That's allowed.

For like

the non- That's totally non-children of

mine in attendance.

My kids did a swim.

We did a, we're We're on a swim team for a little while.

It's like a five-hour thing.

And then my kid gets in there, flops around for 45 seconds

and then comes out.

I'm like,

no.

I was like,

we can't do this anymore.

He has to be,

even if he's on the bench in basketball, like, I'm looking at him.

He's there.

He's going to get some run.

Can't be there for five hours.

Yeah, I was, I was listening to podcasts.

You can't do it.

That's fine.

You want to keep going?

You want to argue about

skateboarding.

Pretty much all sports.

I recently discovered my sister in her house.

They have a skateboard, and I had never skateboarded before.

I spent a week just like

teaching myself.

How'd you do?

I've been posting Instagram videos that one of our producers here, Nadir,

he has been demanding that I show him what it looks like when I'm like, you know, this is me revealing I don't know how to skateboard when I'm taking off because all I'm doing is like taking a video of me like rolling along.

So I'm like

partially cool.

Yeah, just trying it is cool.

Thank you.

Almost all convertibles.

Almost everything with a gas-powered motor.

This includes, but it's not limited to, go-karts, dump trucks, chainsaws, weed whackers, monster trucks, and street sweepers.

What do you think about electric cars that have

a device that makes the sound of a gas-powered engine?

obviously practical necessity for safety to gauge speed and distance obviously

cool to compose it because it falls under all musical endeavors I was going to hold you to account

all turtles

There's a in Chinatown I grew up they sold tiny tiny turtles that like live in like a whatever a bowl of water and then inevitably die I thought they grew super big yeah they die but they were cool So does everything.

Yeah.

We had sea turtles and, you know, tortoises.

All turtles.

They get so old.

They get so old.

That's great.

My buddy's got a turtle that's going to outlive him.

They need to plant.

They have to do a state planning.

But there's something reassuring, much like a redwood,

which will outlive us, make us feel small.

So too does.

How long do you think those baby humpback whales are living?

A good amount, right?

Oh, they've seen some things.

Yeah.

Not the babies.

The babies have just seen Maui like me.

Almost all mechanics.

Maybe all mechanics

pretty much any job that requires having a lot of stuff a superintendent's keyring yeah that's yes that works for everything yeah just any

whether you're a lumberjack you know any job where you're holding a lot of stuff this is another catch-all that you'll probably be upset about stuff that is faster than that stuff usually is people animals or vehicles

Just a little bit just be fast just faster than the normal thing whatever the standard for that thing is if you're a little bit faster great The committee demands, this side of the committee demands

that you're trying to have your cake and eat it too.

You're trying to praise everybody for their efforts.

All efforts welcome.

No judgment.

This is an open division.

And yet, those who are surprisingly fast, you get bonus points.

Yep, there's a little bit of bonus.

There is a little bit of bonus.

Lily pads.

Also,

stuff that is much slower than that stuff usually is.

The last person who crosses crosses the marathon finish line.

Sloths.

Old jalopis.

Any car that you have to crank in the front of it to get it going.

Sunglasses.

This is an odd one.

People with long hair and barbers.

Figure that one out.

Venus flytraps, cacti, many trees, almost all sea life, almost everything that can fly.

Old guys wandering around in flip-flops with good vibes.

People with their shirts off.

Crossing a river on a horse.

Hold on.

The shirts off then.

Chill chefs.

The shirts off thing,

I don't know if I can be down with that.

In fact, I am not down with that.

I put this in any, in the same category as people dancing.

Okay.

People are like, are you worried about being embarrassed?

Everybody with every dude with the shirt off is usually just crushing it.

But it's a lot of, it's just being confident.

Who cares?

Right.

Don't let the internet trainers get you down because you don't have trapezius muscles.

Doesn't matter.

Look at the guy who popped the beer on the alligator tooth.

Most doormen.

Agree.

Fully agree.

Problematic zone.

Oh, wait, this is a this is the sheaf of paper that's just bank robbers.

What do you want me to do?

Sorry.

A lot of weapons.

Sorry.

Venomous Venomous snakes.

Mob bosses.

Spitting tobacco juice on the floor of a saloon and then looking at the bartender like, what are you going to do about it?

It's just, there's an element of badassery that is cool.

I don't quite, it doesn't quite hit the good vibes, but I'm also not going to ignore it.

Right.

The sound of a spittoon.

That's cool.

I've never heard

a, I've never heard that.

I mean, I, I,

right.

I mean, that's kind of.

Sorry.

I didn't mean to imply.

It's like a three-pointer.

This is in the category of stuff that are, of stuff that is in cartoons that I just assume happens in real life, but I've never actually seen.

Yeah.

So many people

dip and they have those like gross.

Dip is not cool.

No, dip is not cool.

It's not what's not cool.

I mean, it's kind of cool.

Again, I got a loose door policy.

It's kind of cool.

Guys got a big dip in there.

Turning me into a cool

nationalist.

Like I'm trying to close these borders.

It's cool.

I'm just saying spittoons probably can make a comeback.

If somebody wants to start a spittoon company, like you're going to carry around a Gatorade thing or a coffee, a Starbucks cup and spit into it, look, we've got a beautiful spittoon in the corner there.

Old bartenders, all amphibians, everything nocturnal, as mentioned.

Most people in rocking chairs, rocking chairs themselves, coolers, hammocks, anything that glows in the dark, including things and animals.

Have you seen bioluminescent aquatic life?

Swam in it in Puerto Rico.

Same.

Crushed it.

I had a friend, David Epstein, actually, friend of the show, fellow correspondent like yourself, a Pablo Torre Finds Out.

He told me his story.

He was in a, there's a lot of just

maritime life stories.

That's okay.

I think we're learning something.

I think we're finding out actually

something about what you're doing.

Can I tell you why that is?

Most of the earth is water, and most of the earth is cool thus far.

A manta ray jumped out of the water, covered in bioluminescent film.

Come on, dude.

Flopped on his kayak.

Yeah, that's all.

Yeah, that's awesome.

This is going in the dark.

Yes.

Beaver dams.

Most mammals.

A good amount of cash, but not as much as Floyd Mayweather has.

Huge waves.

Wave pools.

Most water activities.

See, See, now we're back here, okay?

I'm almost done.

We've oh, you're not done

driving a car through a huge puddle, which might be considered that's you can see how my brain works there.

I feel like I've seen how your brain works this entire time, and it's mostly water.

The universe, all the planets, especially Saturn's rings, comets, shooting stars, and black holes, also revolving doors.

That concludes the giant list.

Now I have a new category.

What's this new category called?

What is your most?

This might be your most famous.

I don't know.

Is this going to hurt your feelings?

I hope not.

What do you think your most famous take is?

So it's probably,

I mean, I probably am attributed.

Trust the process.

Okay.

I think you're right.

This is one of your famous takes.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

What's I wrote, wow, what an upset.

Pablo's 16 over a one.

So for people who don't know, I was going around the horn every single year because, of course, statistically, it was overdue.

And I would say, this is the year that a 16 seed will finally upset a one seed.

For two months,

we've been talking about how this season is going to be the season when a 16 upsets a one.

So on this show, around the horn, I am predicting Southern University will upset Konzaga tomorrow afternoon.

I did it for 10 years in a row.

And then the one year that it happened, UMBC upsetting Virginia, I picked another team.

You should have been able to just pick every 16 when I told Tony Reali.

You'd be like, I'm taking a 16 seed over all.

I got minus 300 points.

I mean, that's uncool.

Everything's cool, but just for the sake of this podcast experiment,

these are some surprising 16s over ones.

I don't want to get your reaction.

Don't totally understand the dynamic, but

I'm going to sit here and quiet it.

In a shocking upset,

Roadies,

number 16 seed, upset the band that they work for.

The number one seed.

Unbelievable.

The guys doing the wiring and the staging, cooler than the band itself.

Roadies have seen some things.

They're so cool.

They know some things.

Upset the band.

Wow.

No one could believe it except Pablo.

That's called it.

That's a one shining moment level upset.

And another huge upset,

being

very good at billiards falls to being pretty good at billiards.

I don't even really play.

Cooler than being excellent at it.

Okay, so this leads me to a clarification.

Go.

Guy who brings his own pool cue, guy who brings his own racket, guy who brings his own thing, unsheaths it and says, guess what I am?

An expert.

Cool.

Okay.

But if you just never play and you're like, wow, you're like surprisingly good, cooler.

It's an upset.

Another upset.

No, it's fun.

Shiny things.

Upset by old dull stuff.

Game worn.

You like Game Worn more than you like Fresh Off the Assembly.

Yeah, it's like that's a big in the watch world.

By the way, as AI world?

Well, I'm not, but I know I can tell.

Well, no, no, but like, if you send your watch away, you have to be like, don't polish it.

Oh, this is kind of like the cast iron theory of things where it's like, you don't want to, I don't, I don't cook or have a cast iron pan, but I'm told that if you were to like put it in your dishwasher, if you're like, no, don't do that, you got to keep the grime.

Shiny things take an L there.

All right, that's that list.

What is this?

This is kind of.

I wrote tough call for the bouncer at the cool club.

Not a definite no, but also not a definite yes.

Did I send you the the the the gif of isaiah thomas from the last dance where he's like i met the criteria but i wasn't selected yeah

ziplines

i i just i don't know i'm depending on my mood artificial plants

tough to argue it's just it's it's it's objectively like you get none of the it's stolen valor it's a stolen artificial plants aren't great they don't oxygenate the air they uh pretend like you are taking care of them it's an inauthenticity that you don't like.

Yes, I don't like the man-made nature stuff.

I just,

no, no.

Have you seen this meme of Cristiano or Ronaldo?

No, I somehow, despite being very fluent in what I thought were the universe of Ronaldo memes, no.

Ronaldo is about to take a penalty kick.

I titled this one Cool as a Renewable Resource because one of the questions you asked me was,

can it be a taught thing?

Yes.

Ronaldo might be the second best soccer player of all time.

There's an argument that he's the best soccer player of all time.

Sure.

Leo Messi, Maradona, Pele in there.

Pele guy.

He's in the mix.

They're all in that club.

He's scored over 900 goals.

Out of those 900 goals, 170, over 170, have been penalty kicks.

He is rich beyond his wildest dreams.

Most followed person on the internet.

Also, inarguably gorgeous.

Okay.

So he hits all those calm, cool, confident.

He's got all of those.

This video of him before he takes this penalty kick translated from it's for he's playing for Portugal is talking to himself.

He says,

you can cross the barrier

the same as always.

For you, it's normal to score.

He has to gas himself up

before

taking this penalty kick.

It is him saying very clearly these words as like a positive affirmation.

Yes.

And it's he is, there's so little

irony.

He looks legitimately like he needs to make himself less scared.

Yes.

So that this is okay, interesting conflict for the committee to consider.

We said confidence was a key leg of the tripod.

Yep.

This man in this moment

seems like he needs to lather himself up to get to that.

My most optimistic takeaway from this assignment was if you can are the second best at something in the world, or let's just say for the argument, the best, you've scored 900 goals, you are the face of soccer for your country,

and if you have self-doubt,

then of course it's okay.

if you're listening to this pod to have a little self-doubt but all you have to do is be like you know what i can do this.

I know that sounds

the barrier.

I thought that was super interesting.

You can cross the barrier, same as always.

For you, it's normal to score.

My son played in a little league tournament in Cooperstown, and I had seen this video a long time ago.

And, you know, you always got to like yell encouragement

to the batters.

And we're playing kids from all over the place.

Like, there's teams from California who are very good at baseball.

So, anyways, so my encouragement, after I watched this video, I wouldn't be like, come on, you can do it.

Straighten out.

And then people are trying to give actual tips, straighten up with your elbow all this.

My thing was, my son Russell, I was like, Russell, this is normal for you.

That's what I tell him.

I'm like, this is normal for you.

You do this.

This is normal for you.

It's the best thing you can tell someone.

It's the best thing you can tell yourself.

It's this is normal for you.

You can do this.

And if Ronaldo has to do it, it's good for you.

Final thoughts.

This is kind of, this gets me in trouble on first things first.

When I get a statistic that I don't totally understand, but get the gist of, and Nick Wright is like, hold on, what?

I'm like, I don't know, dude.

It's, but you get the gist of it.

Okay.

The biomass of animals.

Biomass is measured by the amount of carbon an organism contains.

Yeah.

Okay.

Carbon, primary component of all known life on Earth used in complex biological molecules and compounds.

That's not really my thing per se.

That should be a combine measurement, your biomass.

Comparing all biomass to life on Earth.

Bacteria, lots of it.

Fungi, tons of it.

Plants.

Protists.

I don't even know what protists are.

Well, most protists are single-celled.

Viruses, archaea, single-celled microorganisms, animals.

And then finally,

here's the point of this, okay?

Humans make up approximately 0.01% of all biomass on Earth.

So when you're accusing me,

you're just letting everybody into

Club Cool

because I can't have that open door of a policy.

Man, everybody can come in, and I'm only letting in 0.01% of all biomass on earth and a few fungi

and a few animals, and no bacteria has made it, and a few plants.

Some protests.

The moral of the story is

the world is amazing.

You got to believe in yourself because if Christian Ronaldo doesn't believe in himself, has to gas himself off, so can you.

And the fact that we're just

so few of us on this earth at this one time being able to see whales

you are cool even if you don't think you are part of what i found out today is that i think you did all of this work yeah just so you could throw your glasses onto a table did i truly do it sorry they're only 80

put them back i couldn't get them on it's more in frustration because i couldn't get them on everything i'm not used to wearing these things That's all I got.

Wilds.

What else you got?

Anything else?

Let me see my notes.

Got a free cup of coffee out of it.

Let me see my notes.

Oh, we didn't even get to magicians.

I know.

What the f?

The one thing I had prepped is magician takes.

I had a thing on illusionists, too.

You didn't even, they didn't make the list.

They are.

I skipped over them because I felt like,

don't get me started on mimes.

I got an issue with mimes.

Get them separate.

The one group that should not cross that barrier:

mimes.

I'm no fan of mimes.

Kevin Wilds, it is an honor and a privilege to be on this committee and also clearly, much like every other person on this planet, a member of Club Cool.

That's right.

I don't know if you did anything.

I'll tell you what was cool.

Tricking me into producing your whole podcast is you just sit here and I ramble.

Like a day off for you.

Honestly, you got to go on vacation more.

This has been Pablo Torre finds out a Meadowlark media production,

and I'll talk to you next time.