The 2024 Internet Etiquette Draft: Share & Tell with Mina Kimes and Dan Le Batard

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

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

Instagram.

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All right.

I will be thrilled right now to be a passenger on this joyride as we head into the holidays.

Fast friends and

professionally professional.

Professionally giving a toast.

You're giving a toast at like the holiday party right now, at the end of the year holiday party.

Because I'm grateful for you guys and I'm not going to be able to talk to you again before the end of the year.

In all likelihood, we're not going to make content together and if we're not making content together i'm sure not going to hear from pablo maybe from mina but if we're not doing something that airs on pablo's show i'm not going to hear holiday friendship from him hey dan let's have a toast let's connect on a human level as sharers of the human experience I text with Pablo like every day, so I can't relate to that.

No, I understand.

You have a real friendship.

Here, he's sucking at the metal arc tea of make my content.

Let's follow my curiosities into the abyss, Dan.

Let's spend millions of dollars on me to make butter sculptures.

Come on, Dan, more me.

Butter sculpture was $3,000, just for the record.

Come on.

And also, I do communicate with you and Valerie, mostly because Valerie is sending Violet a gift as she does every year.

That's the other thing.

Oh, my God.

Violet hasn't fallen far from the tree in terms of being a taker.

Oh, oh my God.

She loves her unicorns.

Unicorn lights in the sky.

I'm hearing stories at home.

Oh no, I got her unicorn night last time as a book.

This year, spoiler alert, Violet, it's unicorn day to go with unicorn night.

Get out of here.

That's a great gift.

I'll play here just a bit of Violet's imploring of Dan Lebetard in terms of him lending her his teeth as well.

How unicorns fly.

I like their cover wings

and I like

everything

about them.

Thank you for knowing I love unicorns.

Bye.

I'm okay with both the visual of me breastfeeding Violet and also a new show.

And also a new show with Pablo and Violet that is called First Taker.

Her father took from me first

the spawn his daughter takes from me now.

I do want to start today's episode, though, with a different story, a story that also puts Dan in the role of increasingly ancient person, because the story is titled The New Commandments of the Modern Internet.

This is on the ringer, by the way.

Jodi Walker is the author.

There are some things in this, Mina, on this list that are resonant and also

completely off.

And I want to get your sense as a broad overview as we bring Dan into the specificity of an article that is subheaded, because as technological advancements push the internet to grow and morph into something ever more Byzantine, there are so many more opportunities to be annoying.

It is something that I'm trying to reflect on in our year end, sort of looking ahead to the new year capacity.

I really enjoyed reading this list because, as a creature of the internet, and I guess we all are pretty much at this point,

I obviously have opinions about what sort of online behavior bothers me, what

I try to avoid, fail to avoid, struggle with, and I think has some good suggestions and some that I disagree with.

We're drafting, I presume,

ones we agree with or ones that we have strong feelings about.

And so do I go first or are we snaking this?

How do you want to do it?

I think you should be able to take whatever you'd like off the big board that is of your own creation.

I'll start on book and take one of her suggestions.

And it is one that I agree with, one that I have violated once and immediately regretted.

And it's actually her very first suggestion.

It's very specific.

Dan, while you might not understand, like, this might not make sense to you in specific, I do think there's a broader thing here.

So, her very first commandment of

internet posting or behavior is:

thou shalt not put songs on Instagram posts.

And I,

so, this speaks to me, and this is where I want to bring you in, Dan.

Phones are too loud, generally.

I don't like opening things on my phone, not just Instagram, but this is, I think, a good, it's emblematic of the broader phenomena.

Websites, any social media, whatever, group chats, and it blaring noise involuntarily at me.

I understand that I blare noise involuntarily at people for a living and so on.

All the time.

But

I just, I just want more silence generally on the internet so it this is specifically about the IG thing which was a change that Instagram made about a year ago right where people could add songs yeah Dan Dan didn't realize when you post something now on what is called on main on your main feed you can now choose a soundtrack that plays when you basically begin to look at these photo parentheses s.

Yeah.

Funny, because it harkens back again, Dan, this is a different thing, but there used to be a website called MySpace, and you could put songs on your profile.

Yes, this take, my opinion, is partially because a lot of my scrolling time is with a baby who I desperately don't want to wake or, you know, and I don't want sound generally.

But this is a larger thing with me.

I just feel like the internet is too loud.

Is there any difference if you actually like the song?

Is no,

it's not about the song.

Yeah.

See, I'm with Dan.

I'm with Dan.

Sometimes I'm like, this is a great song

this is a well-chosen uh scoring for this for a photo instagram carousel

of of someone's last 20 meals but mina

instagram stories as a concept are a series of pop-up windows you did not ask for all blaring noise so why are you drawing the line you must be against instagram stories altogether, if that's the argument.

This actually creates real problems in my life.

I don't look at people's Instagram stories almost ever.

And so we'll

be in a social setting and everybody will have some film.

They're like, yes, we all,

you had an amazing outing to, you know, the Catalina Islands.

And I was like, that looked really fun.

And I have no clue what everyone's talking about.

In my own household, my husband will post things on his IG stories.

And prolifically is posting.

on IG stories.

No idea.

I barely remember to do it myself.

And I just don't look at them that often.

And maybe there's like a larger theme here, by the way, Dan, which is control, which is I don't like the internet pushing making me look at things and putting sound and video.

I like to be able to choose it myself.

That is great that you're still a part of that particular stubborn and thoughtful resistance.

I have succumbed there.

The internet feeds me.

It knows what I want, and it has tricked this old man into feeding me things that will forever make me chase the curiosities.

But one of the things on the commandment here is: thou shall not repost someone's entire Instagram story.

So your husband does that.

You would never repost his story because he would never.

You're saying she's oblivious to him even posting it, which is even

look at those stories that often.

You know,

are you a big story guy?

I am a big story guy.

You would know that if you ever clicked on my stories.

Zero clue.

So Mina does do something, though.

The story she posts, which I click on because I'm a good friend, keeping up with my friends.

She doesn't do it for her husband, though.

Like her, I wonder if her husband would be hurt by the fact that she has zero interest in the art he's making.

He is a producer.

He is a creator.

He is an artist.

And he is making stories about his life that his wife has no interest in.

He tells me about them in person in our house and plays the music for me and we have conversations about it.

I don't,

I mean, our relationship really has very little to do with the internet.

We met in like a pre-super social media time, and I'm not really public about it, and I don't keep up with him through his internet.

That sounds, I feel like I'm coming across as supercilious when saying this.

I'm just being honest.

This is just, we just don't are, Pablo, you have a similar dynamic, I feel, right?

Liz is offline.

Liz is largely offline by her own desire.

Yeah, but she's, she, I, she's also deeply embarrassed by how much of a showboat her husband is

needing to show his artistic eye in photographs.

And she she preferred not to be.

Valerie has complimented my artistic eye in photographs.

You have a great eye.

You have a great eye, but my guess is that your wife has no interest in your need for whatever internet.

Valerie is so much more interested in my photographic sensibility than my own wife is.

And it does, in fact,

feel quite conspicuous.

My second pick

is something that actually is involving Dan and Liz because oftentimes,

and this has been something that I've come around on.

I used to totally disagree with this take.

Now I'm all in on it because I've been, my eyes have been opened.

So when we drive during the holidays, for instance, it's me and Liz and Violet in a car.

And inevitably, I am plugging in.

I'm driving.

I have on car play

the podcast I listen to.

And invariably, I'm listening to the Dan Lebatard show.

And what I am doing is violating this commandment, which is thou shalt not use 2x speed within earshot of another human.

Oh.

So I tend to catch up on Dan's show.

I tend to catch up on lots of shows on 2x speed on Apple podcasts.

And I have been told that it sounds like I am actually psychotic for wanting to consume anything at this rate.

And it turns out that Liz and the author of this piece are in total agreement.

And when I heard someone else do it, I was like, yeah, this is stupid.

You guys basically drafted the same thing, which is my computer is just giving me too much noise that's frenetic.

It's either too loud or too fast, but it's just too noisy.

Well, his is a more of a social part, which is I was complaining about the computer doing it to me.

He was complaining about his preferences being projected onto other people.

Because I don't think you're saying it's wrong to listen to stuff at ultra speed.

I do it all the time.

No, but it sounds good.

Mina, he's got, I think, you guys correct me if I'm wrong on this, but I think that you two

have a certain brain power that would be

greedy about how it consumes.

So, of course, Pablo would want to do it at twice the speed that others are so he could keep

getting to more and more of it.

And if I were hearing that from nearby, it would make me.

crazy because that's not how human beings speak.

I don't even like being near the energy of why do you need to consume information that quickly

because you have like a 20-minute walk and you're trying to get through a 40-minute podcast.

I do 1.75 personally, Pablo, but I have had the same experience in a car where it's come on and Nick's been like,

this is awesome.

Or incomprehensible.

Yeah.

Yes.

But don't you guys find interesting that the stimuli

is

something that you need so badly that you need it twice as fast.

And sometimes the computer is yelling at you too loudly and that we're just filling all the silence with a speed and a noisiness.

I don't want, God almighty, I'm complaining about the internet.

But you guys, what you guys are talking about is just an energy, an information energy that is too, it's, it is

invasive.

I don't want it.

I'm not seeking the stimulus.

It's a time management issue for me.

I would love to have a life where I could just listen to a 45-minute podcast in entirety on a walk.

I just don't have that bandwidth anymore.

I think there's an interesting though point of differentiation between these two first and second commandments because one of them, I am choosing the stimulus that you describe for an inform informational purpose.

There's like a function.

The other is more, I don't like having it projected upon me.

I don't like having loud noises and things put upon me, especially if it's not like work related, I suppose, or something helpful.

So I do want to point out that Dan is onto something, though, because the author of the piece says

that such a sound, 2x speed from so close,

in a way that is insane.

She says that sound is merely an oral, funhouse reflection of humanity's need to consume, and it's terrifying enough to bring down this whole operation.

I am guilty of this in this sense.

I want to listen to Dan's show.

Dan pumps, I don't know if you guys know this, Dan pumps out a lot of content every day.

A lot.

And so my desire to keep up with the Dan Lebatard show with Stu Gotz requires me within a certain compressed timeframe to go to X speed.

However, the hypocrisy I was trying to allude to before is simply this.

If you tell me that you listen to my on 1.25, you're dead to me.

Really?

I, I, I, because I, I, I, I feel like we are making.

I'm flattered.

I'm like, wow, you want to get through this thing so badly.

You're compressing it.

You're speedrunning it.

I am speedrunning others, but demand a glacial pace for the art that I make, is what I'm saying.

I make something that is so deliberately precious, and I hate that other people are undoubtedly doing to me what I do to them.

You're asking us to see the art in a butter sculpture?

That's what you're asking us to do.

Don't speed through it.

Let it melt

slow.

Don't let it melt fast.

Does Dan have a draft pick or is Dan just going to sit there?

Yes, I have one.

I'm going to say, meaning time shows listeners.

We spent an hour and 45 minutes like breaking down Patriots, Bills, Jags, Raiders this week.

If you want to listen to that at 1.75 speed, more power to you.

My kings and queens.

I do have a draft pick.

My draft pick is thou shalt offer a little insight as a treat so that I don't feel like all I'm doing is consuming things that are empty calories, that when I put down my devices and put everything away, I have nothing to offer the world as learning.

Any little bit of insight, learning, I would like to

be a part of if as my empty calorie experience consumes me.

There is also, I mean, the subtext of that, which is that sometimes people will like hint at things.

They'll be like, guess what?

I got a new job, significant other, whatever else.

And then they'll just disappear or stop posting about that.

And people will be like, so what, what happened?

And Dan is crying out for, again, human context around this thing you told me was important, but it is now gone in your life.

Whatever happened to that?

Shouldn't we hold people accountable to the posts that they make in terms of continuity errors is what that commandment is also suggesting.

Got it.

You want us all to be grief eaters online, just plumbing the depths of each other.

Guys, if a person that you love has disappeared, tell me why.

Please show me all your vulnerabilities here.

When we're gathered, just let's treat this as a safe space where you can give me your softest things and we can rummage in them.

I feel the opposite, man.

I don't listen.

If people want to share details of their lies, as we often do on this podcast, more power to them.

But when they don't, I am intrigued.

I'm like, ooh, who's this genius?

What do they know that I don't, that they're living offline?

Can I give you guys some of my off-script ones?

Yeah.

Yeah, go off the big board.

I just wrote three that I thought, okay,

ranging in,

I guess, depth.

One,

do not criticize the way other people parent on the internet.

Do not share your opinions on just parenting generally on the internet.

Just keep it off the internet.

It's very controversial, man.

Every parent I talk to is like, man, all these parents have all these opinions.

Do you realize, Mina, that your take is itself a critique of someone else's parenting?

You're telling people to stop parenting by asking and critiquing parents.

They're not parenting when they're doing that.

They're lashing out.

Like the other day, I posted something.

This is back when my kid was like nine months.

I was like, Wow, sleep training crazy.

I don't know.

And

what a hell of a tweet!

That

you really had to rush to the internet to get that great take.

Yeah,

that's I wrote something better than that.

I don't remember what I wrote, uh, but all I remember is some guy wrote,

Really glad that it worked for you and that your child wasn't up all night screaming in terror and then like hating you forever and traumatized by the process.

I was like, Oh my god, sorry,

Okay.

This one's a little bit less

general.

It's an Instagram thing.

So, Dan, you probably don't know about this kind of format that people sometimes post.

You don't?

You might as well be speaking Mandarin right now.

But you're going to understand what I'm about to say.

There's a thing that people do on the internet where they'll say, like, Instagram versus reality, and it's two photos, and they're always hot in both of them.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Something.

It'll be like this.

Instagram versus reality.

It's like

this is what Instagram versus reality should be.

Instagram.

Reality.

Yes.

Yes, that is what it should be.

This leads me to my, if I can just piggyback off of that proposed commandment, which is people should post more ugly pictures of themselves.

Yes,

we have wrecked the curve on what normalcy looks like because everybody is like micro-editing.

And obviously, in the age of filters, it's impossible to know.

I assume everybody's using a filter all the time.

Let's zig while others are zagging.

Let's take a lane no one would dare to occupy.

Let's the three of us right now give the internet, which is forever, an ugly photo.

This is good audio, I think.

Mina, Mina likes to talk a big game about our movement that Dan and I are clearly actually aligned on.

But meanwhile, Mina will pick a screenshot from anything she does in which she looks great and I look like I have just vomited up something.

Pablo, have you ever turned on sports television and considered that there might be different standards for different humans?

Have you seen the things that we wear and the way that we look?

Nope, not familiar with this problem.

How many times a day do you get called mid just out of curiosity?

Dan, do you know what mid means?

Yes.

Look at my name.

That was insulting.

That was insulting to me.

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I thought we were going to get to talk about this Aaron Rodgers documentary today,

but neither of you guys have seen it.

Mina does not want to talk about it.

Dan wants to, but has not seen the thing.

I saw all three episodes, and so I was like, we're not going to get to that today.

And then a story dropped, Dan, that I know you wanted to talk about that brings us back into the realm of Aaron Rodgers, but more broadly, the New York Jets.

Yeah, the athletic, Diana Rossini, and Mike Silver.

And forgive me for not knowing who the third person on that story is, but they have dysfunction.

Zach Rosenblatt.

Thank you.

Uncommon dysfunction in the organization that includes some details of the owner, Woody Johnson, consulting with his teenage sons about things and consulting with their appraisal of Jerry Judy's Madden rating to not trade for Jerry Judy.

And it's not surprising that these owners, even though they are very wealthy and powerful, can be super clueless.

Also, not surprising that giant businesses would be run poorly by rich people who think they're smarter than everyone else, but actually aren't.

I don't know, Mina, if you're looking at organizational dysfunction chronicled in this story and saying, man, this thing is polluted in a way that even MVP Aaron Rodgers would have been swallowed by, because you cannot succeed in a system that has Woody Johnson doing some of this nonsense that has people calling him, what was it, Mr.

Ambassador?

He made everyone in the facility call?

Mr.

Ambassador Johnson when he got back from his appointment to the UK.

Yeah.

No, I actually, I

disagree with that.

I think if Aaron Rodgers was really good, none of this would really matter.

It's a lot of stuff around the margins, a lot of goofy stuff.

I think the thing that's most troubling, and I doesn't seem to get as much attention, is

his sons coming in and insulting players in the locker room.

That, to me, we should return to that.

But as far as whether or not, like, any player can overcome that,

I honestly think think if this team was good and well-coached, it wouldn't be an issue.

The Sons thing is so good.

Like the details about them.

So basically what happens is Woody Johnson goes, Trump appoints him ambassador to the United Kingdom, 2017.

His sons were 11 and 9 at the time, respectively.

Their names are Brick

and Jack.

So already I'm like,

this story rules.

Brick Johnson is a character.

And so they come back.

And again, Christopher Johnson had been running the team basically in Woody's absence because he's over there, overseas.

When Brick and Jack return, they're teenagers and they are walking around like they, I guess, do actually run the joint.

And so there's one anecdote.

There are a couple of them that are just like, I cannot believe Brick is the shadow owner of the New York Jets or maybe just the actual owner at this point,

where there's a game in which they win.

And they're about to give the game ball.

Aaron Rodgers is about to give the game ball to somebody else.

Uh, that Brick, yeah, Brick, before that can even happen, intervenes and gives what is described as a profanity-laden, like celebratory toast to, I believe, Garrett Wilson.

Um,

and it's just like this guy is actually interfering with how our team is operating.

Like they are getting in the way of everything.

And the Madden rating thing of like, whatever, Woody Johnson is consulting his sons, um, and they are citing like Madden ratings on why they shouldn't get a future thousand yard receiver this season Jerry Judy

is is both comical and also kind of how super wealthy people also operate in the world

lots of sons are a focus group for their dads who have lots of power and this seems to be both a caricature and typical at a certain realm of wealth I think that's Dan where I come down on like what I find so interesting about this story, which is, you know, it's full of hilarious and amazing anecdotes.

I really encourage people to read it.

But like,

to me, it's less like, I don't read that and say, oh, this is why they failed.

It's one reason why.

But what I find most interesting is kind of what Pablo described, which is this all just feels so emblematic of ultra-wealthy people believing they have expertise and mismanaging an organization because of it.

Oh, but let's look at this the way that it actually is.

If you think

rich people have giant toys, and you're describing to me kids, teenagers, spoiled brats coming from impossible wealth where daddy insists on being Mr.

Ambassador, but is an actual clown.

And you have these great riches that they've always grown up around.

And you guys are telling all of us they were walking around the facility like they own the place

because they do.

This is their toy.

And so, of course, they would act like they own the place.

They do.

I am reminded of a quote Seth Wickersham once told me, which is that NFL teams are billion-dollar lemonade stands.

Oh, Mina, the Lakers have been called a family business.

Like, unironically, for the entirety of their organization, basically, in LA.

There aren't checks and balances with these teams the way they are with,

you know, public corporations, with investors and boards, and executives and hr like they're they i mean they have hr but like ultimately

this is a great example of that small business mentality um

permeating throughout the organization i i can we go back to the thing about though them yelling at the players because Donald Sterling is the comparison that comes to mind, especially when you read about them being in the locker room.

And obviously, they're not being accused of the same stuff that Sterling did here.

But the story, there's an annual about like Woody Johnson just telling Mike White he sucks.

These teenage kids coming in and roasting players, like that, is a wildly inappropriate workplace behavior.

I found that much more damning than any of the funny stuff.

And

I don't think the NFL would, I mean, I doubt anything will happen or whatnot.

But like that, to me, is really outrageous stuff and maybe being a little bit underplayed here.

The reason why it's so off-putting and and the reason why it evokes this like insanely imbalanced power dynamic, even though, of course, these players are Mike White notwithstanding perhaps making money that the normal American, the average American could ever dream of, of course, it's because you just get in football this clear contrast between people who are in any way sacrificing something.

like personal risk, like it's a dangerous thing to do this, and the people who walk in

and are basically acting like they're internet commenters, but also your boss.

Like it's just incredibly off-putting.

Not that the NFL is a sacred place, but simply that it feels gross that you would not have some level of respect as to what your employees are sacrificing for you.

Power dynamic, though, is really interesting, right?

Because, and this is something, again, when we think about, I was.

I don't laugh, but when people say, wow, nobody's going to take the Jets job or no one's going to take the Jags job.

Yeah, they will.

There's 32 of these jobs, right?

A lot of people are going to want to take them.

GMs, coaches, this article won't change.

Maybe if you're a guy like Ben Johnson, who has his pick of teams, the office of coordinator for Detroit, you'd be deterred by this.

But for the most part, they're not going to.

And Pablo, it's the same thing with the players.

Like, there's such a power imbalance here because these jobs are so rare and they've worked their whole lives for them.

And

the owners know that, you know?

When you say the Lakers small family business, obviously that's a silly thing to say.

But at least in that scenario, it is the one business that family has had and grown up in, and they have no other businesses.

In the cases that we're talking about,

The team ownership is the thing on the side from the other wealth.

The games are the actual toy.

This rich family has a series of players that we can consider human and amazing, but this is the toy is the side business.

So when you add the power dynamic to that, spoiled teenage kids could arrive in a place when they think the athletes are like family pets.

You can kick the dog if you're coming home to a house where nobody actually respects the dog and there's the dysfunction in the house where there's anger.

Like this thing is a toy to a Woody Johnson that while he lives in the shadows, I think most of us know to be a clown.

Like most of us know, not just because of Jet's ownership.

Most of the details we know about Woody Johnson are not flattering to Woody Johnson or not things that say that Woody Johnson is excellent at anything that we know about.

It's also a job that it might be, I mean, God, are there any other examples in like

corporate America or, I mean, where somebody can be quote unquote running something and have zero qualifications, zero,

never climbed the ladder to get there and and some owners recognize that i want to be like i've heard stories about owners are like cool i don't know anything hands off here's my money which is the dream that is by the way yeah every gm you talk to will say yes they love nothing more than an older there are guys like yes very few though this very few though very there are they are the exception they are yeah there's and then there's a lot in the middle this appears to be at the extreme end of interference but like again this cuts back to the audacity the unearned sense of expertise and the entitlement.

You don't like

what gives you the right to believe you can even make these calls?

You know what it reminds me of, though?

It's like, so there's a story recently about succession.

And again, succession, it's sort of like, look, I'm a savvy person who knows about business on some level.

I'm a journalist.

Like, I know that succession is taking creative liberties.

Like, it's not actually as

absurd.

And there's a story that is seemingly soundly reported about how actually the Murdoch family was watching succession and they said, oh, we should figure out our estate planning because they were watching a show that was a parody of their own family in which they did not actually take the hint of like, we should figure this out until they watched the parody version.

Stories like this, they're just so on the nose sometimes.

where you're like, I can't believe that this is what it's like to win the game, the game of life, life, is that you are actually deeply

clownish in a way that, by the way, is surprising because I thought again that the story we were going to talk about was how much Aaron Rodgers and this documentary was itself shambolic.

And instead, Mina, like, and if you're to power rank like the winners of this story,

like Rodgers is up there.

Here we have actually some reporting relative to the previous news cycles all year that Rodgers was being not as powerful as we had thought on some level.

And then, of course, like the real winner, reading between the lines, the GM of the Jets, Joe Douglas, who just comes off being like, oh, well, okay, that guy maybe was

per this reporting, not actually the decision maker, maybe conveniently.

Well, he was, though.

I would just, again, to go back to what I said at the beginning, like all the major decisions that really have led the Jets to this point were not ones that, aside from firing Salah, not that the season was headed in, you know, a particularly glorious direction, were ones that the GM made.

So, but yeah, I think everyone involved in the Jets who's not the owner comes out better here because you're placing a lot of deserved blame at the owner's feet.

Who are the sources?

Who are the sources?

Whenever I read a story like this, I'm like, who benefits?

Who benefits?

What's the difference?

Literally, everybody but the owner comes across better here.

I named them anyone.

I do love the idea, though, that Aaron Rodgers is just like, man, this Netflix doc is not the thing that I thought it was going to be.

And he's like, time to talk to three different reporters who I've, one of whom I publicly insulted as someone who should never talk to me.

By the way, I did, so as somebody who watched the thing,

I was, can I just give you my one conclusion from the Aaron Rodgers three-park documentary so that you don't have to watch it.

Because beyond the fact that it's bad and beyond the fact that even like this culturally, politically ascendant figure is not really engaged with on the terms of why he is controversial, it's a lot of just like, Aaron Rodgers says a woman at the Tahoe Celebrity Golf Tournament, thank you for protecting my civil liberties.

And there's like music underneath, and it's like very inspirational.

Beyond that,

I have a profile of Aaron Rodgers that is very clear to me.

Number one, he grew up in a religious household.

Number two, he grew up with a father who was emotionally repressed.

He says that his dad cried only once.

Number three, he's a perfectionist, always teetering on self-loathing.

Number four, he's always wanted to transcend sports.

Number five, he's always rebelled against authority by asking uncomfortable questions.

Number seven, he says stuff like, quote, the feeling you get when you can be raw and vulnerable with men is special people just want to be seen and understood uh and number seven uh the last thing is you saw that dan danny had fireworks when you said that line about men and the last bullet point mina is that he has said stuff in spanish while on drugs so i'm just saying that i think i'm working for aaron rogers

I was going to say the same thing.

The fireworks that went off around me was me realizing, oh my God, I've looked in the mirror and Aaron Rodgers is me.

I'm an enigma.

Mina,

what is your story?

There's

been a few articles about this.

The one that I sent to you guys was The Wizard of Ozy.

Is how you say it?

Ozi?

Yeah, I believe so.

I was just about to ask you guys that because I was going to to call it Ozzy, but Ozzy is the way to go for now.

It is sort of like, wait a minute, what is this?

Where is this coming from?

It was a thing that was very broadly advertised, you know, like for a period of time on all sorts of podcasts and buses in New York City and commercials and all that stuff.

So this was a media company that was founded by a guy named Carlos Watson, who.

has a very interesting and compelling life story.

This article, which is by a former employee, and that there's a lot of layers to this that I think are really interesting, but it gets into his backstory.

The son of a black American mother and a Jamaican immigrant father, he attended Harvard, Stanford Law, worked from McKinsey, Goldman, founded a college prep company, sold it.

All of this is on the level.

And then he starts a media company.

And it's really founded on this idea of like diverse voices telling diverse stories.

And

that's the starting point.

What happened, and the reason why this is in the news again, is Carlos was just sentenced to 10 years in prison

for basically defrauding investors.

And there's been a lot of reporting on this, about this company, but

it was basically a house of cards.

It was a media company that had festivals and advertising and a show built around him that misled people about, misled investors crucially for the purpose of the

crime, about how many people were actually watching any of this, engaging with it, how many actual readers, listeners, viewers, whatnot they had.

And

he

had an unlike a really fascinating ability to just convince famous people to buy into him.

Investors.

I think Lorraine Powell Jobs was one of his early investors.

Mark Lazari, like big names, right?

Yep.

And then people who came on his shows: Bill Gates,

Priyanka Chopra, Ilhan Omar, Sean Spicer, randomly,

Jamil Hill.

Anyways, Ava Duvernay, whatever.

When I heard, when I realized, and by the way, I'm now being told it is in fact Ozzie.

Ozzy.

Of course.

Sure.

Why not?

When I was told that Mina was a guest on the Carlos Watson show, I audibly guffawed.

Today, I actually feel like there is a broadening of the sports broadcaster role.

Gender is one of the dimensions in which it's true, but I also see that racially, that it feels like it's gone beyond white and black, and you see more in different ways in a variety of ways.

I also feel like people are coming from different backgrounds.

You know, you talked about being an investigative journalist and business reporter, and I see more people who are coming maybe from unusual places.

Um, it's getting there.

That is, that must have been 2020, by the way, because that was like slapped together backdrop from early HQ days before I even painted the wall behind me.

So, yeah, that, so that, so this was, I think that's actually pretty important to the story, the fact that this was all happening in the pandemic, because this whole story is basically about like, fake it till you make it, right?

This guy who conned not just investors, but people to bureau's programs and whatnot.

And I, in some ways, kind of as we shifted to like remote programming, I think that probably made it easier for him as everything became digital, because that is such a fundamental part of the story too, the ability to fake things in media, in the digital age.

But the story of how I went on that was a

PR, ESPN PR person sent it to me.

I'm not going to name who it is.

And I wrote back, I looked and found the email thread.

I don't know who this is, right?

I was like, I mean, I guess I had a lot of time.

It was 2020.

And this person was like, well, all of these people have done it, right?

Like some of the people that I mentioned to you, famous athletes and whatnot.

So I was like, all right, sure, I'll do it.

Yeah, good investigative journalism, by the way.

I spent zero seconds looking into this, right?

But my point is like,

In an age where so much media, so much of we do is about internet presence and social media and basically being vouched for by who you know and who's on your who you engage with on the internet and who's on your programming as opposed to earned credibility.

It kind of makes sense that a guy like this who was really good at convincing people and then kind of building almost a Ponzi of names thrived in this moment.

And that's without even getting to a lot of the stuff this slate piece gets into about the diversity and DI aspect of it.

Part of what he did by Carlos Watson, who again was not a media figure until he decided to make himself one.

And therefore the audience, of course, was largely boosted by paid things and scammerish sort of strategies.

But part of the thing that he got in trouble for was there was a fundraising call in 2021

in which the guy he was working with, one of his like right-hand men who pled guilty ultimately in his own trial, misled Goldman Sachs by impersonating a YouTube executive, according to the New York Times.

And prosecutors contended that Mr.

Watson had helped set up the call,

had orchestrated this thing where they were raising money with Goldman Sachs for this large media company by just literally doing an impression of a YouTube executive for a big bank.

And it was, quote, egregious perjury, according to the judge.

The quantum of dishonesty in this case was exceptional is another quote from the judge,

which is like as if Stugats was James Bond, you would call it a quantum of dishonesty.

That would be be the album.

That would be the album that Stugatz would put out as a musical selection, the quantum of dishonesty.

It's a lot, Dan.

There's just a lot of scammerish behavior here.

Well,

let's talk about some of this, right?

Because there's one form of consumption that I have not enjoyed in entertainment or partaken in when it comes to watching things.

The murder era of content that we are in, where so many people are consuming murder stuff I've not partaken in.

you, but, but if you give me cults and you give me scams, I'm all in.

I will find the Bernie Madoff documentary.

I will find the bad actor documentary on Hulu.

You guys got to watch that one just because a guy who, who, who was a fool and a terrible actor ended up getting hundreds of millions of dollars to support his acting and to end up in films.

And I don't understand how a fool could fool so many people for hundreds of millions of dollars because he had people believing things that weren't true we are in the era of the scam we are in the era of being so shameless that you can continue to break the rules and hope to be above them because Look at what's happening all around you.

Are you willing to take the risk for the things you want and the shortcuts you want?

Miami is built upon that as a infrastructure.

Just fake it until you make it.

You guys are interested in which parts of this, the brazenness of it?

Because the scam in general is always interesting to me.

I don't know how these people sleep at night.

I don't know how they don't feel like they're always being chased because they've got so many lies, and how they have the pathology that allows them the delusion that they'll always be smarter than everyone else and they will not caught.

I've got to think that they don't have a fear of consequences.

I've got to think that there's some sort of blind spot that makes the pleasure not be something that makes them consider the pain.

The fact that this is a media specific scam that seems so easy to pull off, I think is really interesting, right?

Because

no one really knows these days how many people watch and consume anything.

There's so much

bull out there.

I have benefited from it.

I'm not saying that like I, you know, my, the things that I make are actually real humans watching and all of our numbers are on.

I'm just saying I am constantly seeing numbers being thrown around,

viewers, whatever.

It feels like this moment in media more than any in the past, nobody knows what's actually clicking and working and how real any of these internet numbers are.

A quantum

quantum of dishonesty.

It is a quantum of dishonesty.

So I do think it's very notable that this man picked this industry in this moment, Pablo.

Yeah, I think that right now, for people who don't know, like you see see arguments all the time, like, look,

this X broadcast has X times as many viewers as the nightly news or whatever, the entirety of the New York Times.

And you're like, what are the variables?

What are you measuring?

And they're all different, right?

Like, so just not to bore you with like a Nielsen household versus an X view versus a YouTube view versus an impression versus a podcast download versus a podcast listen versus, they're just a million different ways to measure and can be spun however you want by and large.

The reason why all of this is especially interesting to me is because it's a media company in the era now of what is now an era that's over, which is the DEI diversity sort of push for people who are not traditionally represented in media to finally be so.

And so there's, again, among the like awful statistics about Dan, you're sort of like

wondering about how can a guy sleep at night?

Like 90% of the staff, according to his own team and testimony, were people of color and/or women.

And so this was a diversity-plated scam in which the premise was: we're going to do, we're going to be the change we want to see in the world at a time when actually there's money flowing into that for the first time

to this degree.

And instead, it was a con that helped give ammunition to everybody who wanted to see a larger push for evolution as itself a broad scam.

Nobody knows these days what real consumption is on the internet.

Circa 2020, all of these corporations saying we need to check a box in diversity and say we put this amount of money into a diversity initiative.

He saw that, took advantage of it, and that is heartbreaking.

This story in Slate is by one of those employees, and it is really beautifully written.

And he talks about how upsetting it was to buy into this idea and realize that it was being exploited.

And as Pablo has said, now it can be pointed to as an example of of

what was a great idea and something that companies should be investing in,

but it's a scam.

And it's just, to me, like the most devastating part about all of this.

That's it.

Like for potentially my show, at least for this year, for lots of other things, institutions we hold dear.

What did we find out today, guys, at the end of the year 2024?

And also this episode as you guys get the hell out of here.

I found out that

Violet, and I did not know this because I thought the Torrey family was something that could be trusted.

I found out that the lovely Violet, who is bankrupting

all my accounts by having my wife buy her gifts, is every bit the taker her father is.

And I did not know that before today.

She looks like an innocent, sweet child, but she is somebody who is selfish and greedy and almost as insatiable as her father.

Found out that Pablo's feelings are hurt that I don't look at his Instagram stories.

So I guess, no, I'm not going to look at them.

I'm not going to lie.

Great.

Great.

I was going to say,

I found out that I probably should get better friends at some point.

Good luck with that.

And also,

how much better better are you gonna do than the one that you and your daughter take from?

Like, what I found out today is that I gotta get a teeth that's a little less hairy.

It's uh, it's it's gross.

It's gross what I have to do for money.

Pablo Torre finds out is produced by Walter Aberoma, 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.

And we will talk to you next time.