Share & Roast & Tell with Charlotte Wilder and Sarah Spain

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

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

Michael Jordan, like the hottest person ever.

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Oh, are you wearing your fing awful shoes?

First off, how dare you?

Okay, I don't.

Have you seen them?

Yeah.

Do you expect me to respond to that?

I don't want to gas Pablo up, but I saw those before I saw that you had them, and I wanted them, and I was really pissed they were sold out.

Because they rule.

But did you want them as a joke?

Like, oh, I host a basketball show, haha.

Or like, for real.

Somewhere in between.

Sorry, Pablo.

Full sincerity.

Somewhere in between.

I am not wearing them because I left the house in a rush.

And you forgot?

And I forgot.

How did you get them?

Those were hard to get.

I feel like I want a mentor podcast.

How'd you believe those?

I just want you to know I got a text last night from our mutual friends, well, Josh Bard and Tony Rialley, who I'm going to try to meet for lunch.

And I was like, I don't know if I'll have time.

If Pablo's on time, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot,

then I should be able to make it.

If anybody knows.

And then this morning, Pablo.

Anybody.

Anybody, sorry.

How I roll.

It is Josh Bard, who has not seen me on an Around the Horn conference call in approximately 10 years.

That explained your performances.

I'm going to confess to you guys that I'm moving slowly today, mentally speaking.

For the obvious and standard reasons or otherwise?

I don't know.

I will confess confess to you

that I feel like my brain has been some mix of Swiss cheese and scrambled eggs for at least a month now.

And what's your deal?

Couldn't tell you.

I don't know if you believe in the planets stuff, but somebody who does believe in it told me like a week and a half ago that some lengthy thing ended.

And if you felt like you were a mess for a long stretch, it should have ended about a week and a half ago or so.

So no, wasn't the planets messing with you?

I'd like to to embrace the planets as an excuse here.

You know, someone once said to me that astrology is not as much like

mysticism as it is a collection of data points over centuries about what people who are born at certain times are like.

I'm Aries son, Scorpio, Moon, which is potentially Scorpio Moon.

Are we in astrology podcasts?

Well, that's even me for a second.

I'm just saying it's potentially like the most horrifying combination a person could be, I think.

You know, so uh, an Aries is like you know, out there and mm.

I actually don't really know because it's also like confrontational.

Wait, what's the

just like

oh, it's me, I'm Ari.

It's a me, Aries.

I'm uh, I'm uh

sun sign.

Is it sun sign?

Yeah, okay, yeah, that's the main one that people know, right?

So, I'm sun sign, Libra, uh, moon, uh, Waluigi.

Yeah,

I'm Peach Rising, Bowser descending.

The first topic today is obvious from a big picture perspective because this has been, I would say, peak roast, peak beef.

We are living in a world where the things that everybody wants to talk about are people humiliating each other verbally Tom Brady Netflix roast

you retired then you came back and then you retired again I mean I get it it's hard to walk away from something that's not your pregnant girlfriend it's tough

hey

of course Drake Kendrick Lamar all of that

But Sarah, you brought a different sort of an angle that I didn't anticipate that I feel comfortable in your expertise about.

Okay.

Let me briefly explain how I got there, which is also fascinating to me.

Because my job changed in the last year and a half, and for the first time in eight years, I didn't have a nightly radio show.

And for the first time in 12 years, I didn't have just daily radio of any kind where I needed to know all the things all the time.

As a result, I decided to step back from social media.

Now, if you follow me, you're like, really.

I'm like, did you?

Have it.

So Instagram's still very active because it's like joyful to me.

And it's just, just, I use it to document my life in ways other people are much more if you've heard Sarah and Charlotte on this episode before, on this genre episode before, it's Sarah and 50 friends in a given Instagram photo.

Yeah.

And I just like, I'm an oversharer, just in general, but on like Twitter slash X, which is also another reason it's just getting progressively worse and less tenable.

So I just, I didn't need to be on there to engage every day and keep up with every joke and meme and thing to be able to host.

And it's made me just want to be nicer.

Now, literally, I think like neuroplasticity and the adversarial brain, which is you're telling your brain to go down these pathways the more you use them and it creates shortcuts so that you can get there faster.

And that's great.

It's an adaptation that helps us, but it also can be bad, which is why

Charlotte lapsed into a Mario impression.

Exactly.

For sure.

I actually, that's Rainbow Road.

That's that pathway.

Your brain created that to get there.

And you use it a lot.

Yeah.

But because I stopped engaging in a space that is so often like literally, I'm sure you guys understand this.

If you're going to tweet something, you check every word to make sure there isn't some loophole that someone can be like, well, actually.

And so I stopped.

I hate a typo.

Right.

A typo or like you say something.

I don't know in misinterpretation.

I'm just like that neurotic.

Right.

You said many instead of some.

And I wouldn't say many.

I hate the extra space that I accidentally.

Oh, that is the worst or an errant capital.

So anyway, long story short, it's made me want to be mean less and it's made me just less interested in diving into these beefs.

So when this Kendrick Drake thing started, first of all, I'm not a super fan of either.

I appreciate Kendrick's lyricism.

I understand that Drake can write a bop and he was funny on SNL.

I don't really care about either.

They're not my like number one.

And so I thought to myself, like, I also don't like people's pain and misery being just like harvested because like Drake's pulling up, Kendrick getting abused as a child.

Pretty much everything possible to embarrass the other person.

They are going to.

Right.

And then all the like, oh, he's gay or he's actually white or like, it just felt so mean spirited.

And I was like, oh, do we really need this?

There's like multiple wars happening and the world sucks.

Like this isn't where I want to spend my time.

And then I took a step back and realized that I had spent a good month listening to Taylor Swift's tortured poets department, like getting really involved in like, who's this one about?

Oh my gosh.

Okay.

So this is a song that Maddie Healy in the 1975 covered and like blah, blah, blah, my God, hell of a diss there.

Like she got him with that, like smallest man there, but like whatever.

And then I was like, oh my gosh, like this is the shaking hands meme of like swifty's and kendrick stands where we're dissecting lyrics and like decoding like disses and like we can all bond over that we could come together as a community and be like sometimes it is fun to see who might be getting ripped so i'm on the total outside of the taylor swift uh da vinci code right industrial complex

the best way i've ever heard it described as someone very much on the inside as a member of the illuminati

brought you guys here today is that the decoding of beef taylor Swift is actually a master of leaving clues for her army of fans and enemies to try and decipher.

And I didn't make the connection that Sarah made in the course of her usage of this social media hellscape.

And I realized, oh, right, this is an enormous part of how we do humiliation now is that there is the explicit, there is the overtext of like,

you suck and you have ghostwriters and I'm gonna murder you.

And then there's a subtext of everybody trying to figure out the clues beyond even, I would argue, what the author even intended.

And that part, I was like, oh, I'm in English class again.

Yeah.

Oh, this is English class.

Which we used to always do.

Like, do you think the author meant this?

Or are we just overanalyzing every freaking word?

It's like, it actually doesn't matter.

Like, that's sometimes what makes things great is that there's enough depth for everybody to find something of their own in it.

I'm about to say one of the most obnoxious things I've ever said on a podcast.

So please forgive me.

When I was in, in, you know, taking English classes in college and we came across new criticism and Derry Da.

And like, this is.

How did you become the first person to say Derry Da on my own show?

I sort of wanted to look at you,

if I'm being honest.

I was like, I don't think Pablo's done this one yet.

So, which is the school of thought of like, you have to divorce the author from the text.

I was like, this is bullshit.

I was like, I want to know everybody who, you know, this person was talking about Because this is something people have done forever.

Oh, since the Bible, when I took theology class in high school to one-up you with the word exegesis,

we would analyze the Old Testament and try to divine the divine.

Yeah.

And of course, we have no idea whether this guy meant it that way, but civilizations were actually formed on the basis of these interpretations.

Judaism has a whole, the Kabbalah, the Talmud, the mysticism of where these guys went back, because they were all guys at that point, and read the Bible and then wrote texts on the side of the Bible, being like,

I think God was dissing Abraham.

The original rap genius.

Yeah.

Also, guys, when I took a Hitchcock class in college, this is a real thing.

I was aware that he wasn't intentionally putting himself into every film at least once as a cameo.

So we knew that the artist.

A little Stan Lee of him.

Stan Lee in the MCU, just inserting himself into the story.

Yeah.

I do think

what attracts me to all this, I also, Sarah, spent, I mean, any Taylor Swift song.

I've like I got so deep in the lore that I'm like, well, okay, so if the 1975 used that beat because Jack Antonoff produced both of them, and Jack Antonoff actually plays into the Kendrick and Drake beef as well.

How?

How?

So Drake had a song called Taylor-Made that was AI, which also used some of Tupac.

His Tupac Estate was like, you can't use this.

We're going to sue you.

So Spotify took it down.

And then Kendrick had Jack Antonoff produce his next diss track.

So it was literally Taylor Made because the guy who makes Taylor songs.

I'm so out of my depth on all of this.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Anyway, what I think all of this is, is gossip.

And we all love gossip, and we always have, and we always will.

And my friend Kelsey McKenney, who does the podcast, Normal Gossip, has a book coming out about it.

Absolutely amazing.

This is the most fun way to bond is by what are other people.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I think for men, It's kind of like how I think WWE for a lot of guys is basically like going to a play, but they don't want to say it.

It's, I mean, you're just watching a play that's very homoerotic as well.

So like maybe you're kind of wanting to see a little bit of that, but you don't want to say it.

She's pretty straight.

It's like a giant man in a banana hammock hugging another giant man in a banana hammock.

Shoving his ass cheeks to another man's face.

That's super

mask.

But I think also like with rap beefs or other sports, like remember, and this is still the case, but there was a pivotal moment where we all recognized that the NBA offseason and who was going where was a bigger draw than the actual games.

People cared more about that stretch of like, who's going where, who hates who, is somebody literally getting trapped in a room with a chair under the door so that they don't sign with another team?

Let's post some emojis about it.

Like, we were following that more than the games because everybody loves it.

You just need to.

package it up in a way that people feel comfortable saying they're into, which Kendrick is basically turning everyone into Swifties.

Yeah, so I, I, uh, what a take.

Let's aggregate that.

They have a song.

They have like, they did Bad Bad Blood together.

Bad Blood, which was ostensibly not a great song.

Kendrick's verse made it better, but it is very catchy.

Who is the Drake, though, of Taylor Swift?

If Kendrick is Taylor?

Oh, everybody.

It's a long

time whoever wronged her.

On the most recent album, everyone thinks the manuscript is probably still throwing back to John Mayer based on the age remarks.

Or Jake Dylan Hall.

Or Jake Dylan Hall.

Maddie Healy, the guy from the 1975, is the focus of a lot of it, which a lot of people were critical of because Swifties would prefer that whole era didn't exist because he's a real douche.

But at the same time, it presents this much more multi-dimensional portrait of someone who was in a long-term relationship with someone who seemed like a good choice, but it turned out was probably like emotionally abusive or at the very least, completely distant and never wanted to take credit for her or show her off.

She gets out of that long-term relationship, literally writes a song, Fresh Out the Slammer, which is like a really lame name and also a pretty lame song, but it's okay.

But writes about like, then she immediately runs to the arms of this awful bad boy douche and everybody hates it, but it provides all of this like artistic influence that makes these songs that are very different than a lot of her other ones in the sense of like the guys she's singing about is not just like

it's he's like everyone's mad at her.

The fans are yelling at her for dating him.

Like it created this great aspect to the album that people didn't expect.

They thought it was gonna be a whole album about Joe Alwyn, the long-term guy she broke up with.

And instead, it's about this guy that was a couple months fling.

I just want to acknowledge how stupid my question was.

Of course.

I mean, but also, but also you could say...

Taylor is everybody who she's ever dated.

You could say it's Kim Kardashian.

You could say it's Kanye West.

You could say it's Carly Kloss.

You could say it's Scooter Braun.

You could say it's Scott Borquetta.

You could say, like, there are so many.

I don't even know the last guy, Borquetta.

He was a big machine guy who sold to Scooter.

Scooter Braun.

Her masters that she wanted to own.

I think, too, that, you know, I have gotten so deep down this rabbit hole that I'm like, okay, I think Taylor and Maddie for 10 years have had a will,

won't they?

They started maybe dating in 2014.

Then they, then they weren't dating, then she was with this guy, but she said that the song Cardigan, which she wrote in 2020, was about him.

And so I think that Taylor, at the age of 34, had the experience that I think a lot of women probably had in their 20s, where you think that this man who is, you know, very affectionate and then withdraws and then like...

is some sort of poet and you think he's smart and then and then you realize you're like oh he's just right he's just a non-committal douchebag who's treating me poorly And then you move on.

I think because she got famous, it was all mixed up.

And then well, I think there's a song, Peter, where she references specifically 1975 stuff.

So you know it's about him.

And he has a whole thing, Peter Pan phase, whatever.

She mentions that she basically waited for him to grow up enough for them to give it a real go, and then that that was never actually going to happen.

I have never felt less in control of my own.

Yes.

But okay, the Peter Pan thing, though, right?

I think that brings us to this general sense of like, look, no one here is especially mature.

Is that fair to say?

Like every, what, so part of what feels

like an arrested adolescence, which I am not above, I embody this.

Actually, my take about like the NBA soap opera for men is actually

it's too limiting.

It's that we all see soap opera in everything.

Yeah.

All of the time.

Music.

art, everything.

And when it comes to what the armies of interpreters are bringing, there's also, I would say, a brilliance to the strategy that feels at this point quite deliberate and intentional, which is part of how you win an argument, how you win a roast, how you win a beef is that you get democracy on your side.

You become, you are the trending topic above all others.

And the whole idea of I'm going to have my army of volunteer detectives solve this mystery is playing to the very mechanism of how the internet works.

What it is, though, is all like great storytelling because great storytelling is like when do you reveal what information.

And that is what's so impressive to me about like keeping this going through.

And the fact that I actually think that for me, this goes back farther.

Like I've spent the most time on genius that I've ever spent in this year, this calendar year.

This has been peak genius between Taylor and between Callback and also for me, Beyonce.

Yeah.

Cowboy Cardiff is my favorite album, maybe of all time.

It's insane.

Maybe of all time.

I never felt so connected to an album.

Who's she roasting?

She, well, America.

America.

And slavery.

But also she includes, she rewrites Jolene to be about the, you know,

Becky with the good hair.

So she is also, Beyonce, I think, is a step above everybody here because she is not only using her personal lore and the things that fans can connect things to.

And like even musically, I was like, oh, i think i heard that exactly

they literally call it a research paper album and in a good way yes they're like the amount of work that went into understanding every instrument every person every

like the languages based on specific like routes that used to be taken for black country artists going to different cities like all the stuff oh and she puts album of the year in her song by the way a-o-ty so speaking of roasting her husband literally gets on the grammy stage thank you for this lifetime achievement give my wife a f ⁇ ing album of the year What are you doing?

I don't want to embarrass this young lady, but she has more Grammys than everyone and never won album of the year.

So even by your own metrics, that doesn't work.

Think about that.

The most Grammys, never won album of the year.

That doesn't work.

And then she throws A-A-O-T-Y, How About Now or whatever, in the middle of a song.

It's hard to talk about roasts for me without sounding.

I don't think you'd be good at roasting, Charlotte.

I hate it.

I hate it.

So nice.

Thank you so much.

I hate it.

I don't, I don't like watching it.

The only thing Charlotte hates in the world, I think might be hate

is roasting.

Yeah, I do.

I mean, I do.

There, I do have some hate in my heart.

I told a really bad joke on Labatard last week.

Meh, tell my other favorite joke.

What's that?

So a grasshopper walks into a bar and the bartender says, hey, did you know we have a drink named after you?

And the grasshopper goes, you have a drink named Steve?

Oh, God.

Such a simple soul.

I think it's really funny.

It's really funny imagining a grasshopper named Steve being like,

Meanwhile, it's like, let's punch that up.

Hey, Steve,

your wife got by your manager.

And your manager liked her Instagram comment about it.

Steve's like, what?

If you're looking to add something special to your next celebration, try Remy 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, Feene Champagne, Fortune Alcoholic, Volume 4, by Remy Control, USA, Inc.

New York, 1738.

Centaur Design.

Please drink responsibly.

Topic number two today.

I feel like we're going to stay in the realm.

Closely related.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm going to mute my laptop.

It's just very popular getting texts from my mom.

It's about a thing that feels like a roast-worthy subject.

Charlotte, do you want to introduce that?

Yeah, sure.

It's very related to what we're talking about.

It's about aging pop stars.

It's pop stars who basically this was based on a Justin Timberlake, an article about Justin Timberlake in The Atlantic after he hosted SNL and Sarah.

No, I didn't host musicals.

Sorry, musical guests wanted to host

thirsted season

to be thirsting for a second.

And sorry, you sent that to all of us and I was like, oh, this is yes, because I had watched that episode and I was like, oh, God.

And my husband and I actually went on a deep dive of his older stuff of like when he hosted in 2006 with the tennis omelette bill.

And it was electric.

Oh, he seemed invincible.

It was a little cringy in that he's always been a little cringy.

Also, I think that.

See, I don't find him cringy in the past.

I have always,

maybe this didn't, like

when I was a teenager and people were like, oh my God, Justin's so hot.

I was like, I do not see it.

I have never seen it.

This is going to be a good point, counterpoint, because I have lusted after Justin Timberlake for long stretches.

Sarah's also lusted after Benny the Bull.

Fair.

True.

Added to the list.

Someone started making a chart of weird things.

Things Sarah's horny for.

Which always comes back around when we do this.

Which I love.

Michael Jordan.

Oh, I thought you were going to say always comes around to Michael Jordan.

Oh, don't look shocked.

That man is fing fire.

Why did you just make that face to Michael Jordan?

Jordan?

He's the hottest person ever.

Basically, all of this to say that he has not aged well as a pop star.

I would also argue J-Lo, which we and Katie know.

That's a perfect example.

Has not aged well as a pop star.

People who are aging well, I mean, like Taylor Swift and Beyonce.

And to me, it's a little bit like athletes, right?

Like pop stars, what they're doing physically, like what Beyonce is doing at, I think she's 42, maybe 43, physically is insane to me.

It's like watching lebron play basketball at the age of almost 40.

it's like how on god's green earth are you doing this or even taylor at 35 or 34 within three hours yes exactly where you're like oh you're your body's still holding hold on because j-lo is like but look at what i've been up to and so there's something else happening here yes except that you can tell I think audiences can immediately tell when people are trying too hard.

Yep.

And I think that what J-Lo and Justin Timberlake always had was this pop persona.

They had hits.

They also did not have lore.

The lore that they had was bad.

Justin Timberlake was like, wait, actually, are you a sh guy?

Like you, you, Britney Spears comes out with her memoir and says he made her have an abortion and these way or like all this stuff comes out of the bag.

Janet Jackson thing.

The Janet Jackson thing, exactly, where his career is untarnished, maybe even takes off more because of that.

She loses whatever she had in the industry.

She's actually banned from the Grammys and things that, which, by the way, I did a deep dive into that after we decided on this topic.

And I was like, what a different time.

She had a full nipple cover on.

We didn't even see nipple.

And she was banned from the Grammys.

Disney took a statue of Rhythm Nation out of the park.

It's like, we see almost 90% of every woman's boob all the time now.

It's crazy.

Which is like very common.

Yes.

Most dresses are just a nipple cover.

What Jayla wore to the Met Gala

was just nipple covers with some sparkles.

Rita Aura was just wearing some strings that hung in front and somehow managed to cover emily radikowski's dress was fully seasoned

so so nice one so basically i think that the the pop star part of it is very interesting because that's sort of the physical part of it but it's also as a singer-songwriter i think it's much easier to age like if you look at joni mitchell coming at the coming on stage at the grammys and i'm weeping every it's beautiful

Because what we go to singer-songwriters for is wisdom and feeling.

And as you get older, those are things that you can keep imparting.

And what Taylor Swift and Beyonce have done is incorporate, they are singer-songwriters and they have brought more into their world.

I think there's something else too on that, right?

Because it is about thirst.

It is about someone trying to visibly seem like they still got it, that their prime is actually going on right now.

The window is still open.

And I think Joni Mitchell's whole deal, right, has always been, or Tracy Chapman, who is like an even more extreme example, right, of like,

I don't care about public perception.

That's the singer-songwriter, I think, sort of aesthetic far more than the pop star, who is a pop star by definition, a box office concept.

And so I think about just like people who are, I guess it's this, what we're getting to is this question of like, what does it mean to age gracefully?

I think there are pop stars who somehow keep it authentic and working.

So I think it's more the thirst that you're talking about.

I think it's the desire to try to figure out the zeitgeist and continue to evolve with it in a way that for some people just works and for other people, it doesn't.

I also think whether your songs are good.

Like, I think if Justin Timberlake's latest album had some bangers on it, even if we looked at him and thought he seemed a little desperate, he would be back on the radio and he would be back and we would be, even in spite of ourselves, bopping along to it and being like, oh, this is fire.

And he doesn't.

The last two albums have not had a lot of great music.

And J-Lo, for all the talents that she does have, is not a great singer and hasn't had like the when she last said snl same place as justin where you're like this song sucks i i think i think what we're circling though is like something that i find fascinating which is what does it mean to be cool what it means to be cool is that other people can tell that you're cool with yourself yes basically like and i and i think that with what part of what i mean by like singer songwriter like beyoncé and taylor swift are still very much pop stars but i think that their music music is still good.

And Justin Timberlake's last album, no offense to Justin Timberlake, it was ass.

Right.

So

I think that that plays into it.

But I also think that J-Lo and Justin Timberlake, I would argue, have always had a little bit of, you're like, oh, God,

she's trying really hard.

And people, I think the audience picks up on that.

Taylor Swift is always trying really hard and tells everybody she's trying really hard.

There's an earnestness to Taylor Swift that feels also like she's self-reflective and aware of like kind of being dorky sometimes and all this stuff.

Whereas like J-Lo and Justin would never let you see a crack,

which makes it hard to then feel like they're being authentic because everybody has flaws.

But I would say with Justin, like,

I don't know if it missed you somehow, but like at one point he was like infallible.

People did not cringe looking at him.

He was the biggest star.

Like

between SNL and Jimmy Fallon and his music.

And he was an actor in movies.

He was an actor.

He was

every SNL was like appointment.

His comedy stuff was hilarious.

Like there wasn't that feeling of he's trying too hard.

It was like this guy owns the industry.

Yeah, now that you say that, I mean, Dick in a Box was, but also like he, I do, I want to say that I think Justin Timberlake is an unbelievable musician.

Like and called a dancer.

His new album.

I just said his new album.

I think

the what comes around, goes around, like the 2020 experience.

Like I love that album.

Yes, yes i am being too harsh on him right but there is this dynamic of like it's not just about age so like there are lots of old people who feel young right like jeff goldbloom oh like king the the just the panther like diane keaton physical presence yes people who can show up on a red carpet and are just like their pores are leaking confidence oprah oprah so these are people who are the elderly at this point.

Right.

And yet if you're saying to me, like, who feels like they're more comfortable in their skin?

And even more than that, who feels like

they're young right now?

I would say, I think of Jeff Goldblum before I think of Justin Timberlake.

Right.

Because it doesn't feel like Jeff Goldblum is fighting the hands of time.

Right.

I think Justin still looks good.

He's not like.

Yes.

I mean, he's clearly aging.

That's what it's about.

But he's still a handsome person.

But something about him doesn't feel young.

Yeah.

It's not not about so.

This is the thing.

And he can still dance well, and he's fit.

But like, I watched this thing of Jeff Goldblum at this red carpet, the Med Gala.

I'm really into him.

And I know, I just, guys, I just can't.

I can't blame you.

I can't.

Have you guys seen this video?

It's just like, again, this is just like one example of just like.

There's some Me Too stuff around him.

So I is there, really?

He's not been my king.

Oh, I just disappointed you guys so much.

I'm so sorry.

Yeah, I'm not, I'm not going to speak from authority, but yeah, God is damn it.

It's hard for me to get into floral.

Tee up a Jeff Goldblum sat.

Hold on.

Let me just...

Jeff.

Jeff Goldblum defends Woody Allen as the first.

God damn it.

God damn it.

Why?

So

my trainer is a sports guy, but doesn't follow anything other than watching the games.

So every week he'll have some new athlete that he comes up like, I love this guy.

And I'm like, Conor McGregor, someone,

this guy's amazing.

He has nothing wrong with him.

I'm like, homophobic slurs.

And he's like, why do you always do this to me?

I'm like, I wish I didn't know.

I wish I could just enjoy sports like everyone else.

But once I learn, I'm like, ah, I can't even quote Jurassic Park anymore.

The thing that sticks out in my mind when I think about like a JLo, for example, is the scene in This Is Me, dot, dot, dot, now, the documentary, where she's sitting in her gym and she's in workout clothes and she's like tousling her hair.

And she's like, my hair is curly.

It reminds me of when I was a kid in the Bronx, 16.

And all these people in the Bronx are like, okay,

first of all, also, it's come out that that scene took her like 12 takes.

People in the Bronx have been like, you never came.

Like, you left a while ago.

And like, we weren't, like, you're, you're using us now.

Yeah.

And so I think it's, it's when things like that happen.

I don't know what Justin Timberlake is.

That's what I'm saying.

I also feel really bad that I was so mean about him because I used to love him and I forgot.

So that's what I was.

Okay.

So I feel really

terribly.

It started off so strong.

I said he was asking where I'm like, wait, he's an unbelievably talented performer.

But that's what I'm trying to figure out.

So like you're, you can be in that place because you were never that into him.

I'm still clinging to wanting to, I'm like planning to go to his show this summer.

I want to keep loving him.

And he's giving me cringe.

And this is coming from someone that is like wholeheartedly.

supportive and i'm like i'm giving you the benefit of the doubt on everything and you're still cringe like i can't figure out exactly what it is like it's interesting jessica beal his wife posted this kind of thirst trappy photo of him and was like, He's never going to post this, but I will.

Like, you're welcome or whatever.

And instead of the comments being fire, hot, love, oh my God, thank you.

It was a lot of people that were like, Nobody wants this, or like, he definitely told you to post this.

And I'm like, He did my theory.

No, like, of course, of course.

But, like, we all know that's how the internet works, right?

Like, everyone, oops, someone caught me looking amazing.

Oh, sorry.

Was I too hot there?

Right, exactly.

Like, oh, what a funny photo, but my ass just looks amazing.

But it's definitely about how funny it is.

But anyway, like it was writ large for me.

Like, I already could feel the cringe.

And then I saw that I was like, oh, man, everybody is having this same like weird.

Of course, it has to do with Britney.

Of course, it has to do with Janet.

Of course, it has to do with this reckoning that we're doing about like white male power and how they were elevated for years while others were taken down and yada yada.

But it's all that.

But there's other people who have survived that and are perfect.

We're fine with it.

And we're able to say that was then, this is dot, dot, dot now.

And we know that things are different.

And as long as they, and he has said the right things about, you know, cultural appropriation, about his band, about Britney, about Janet, about

at a concert.

I'd like to take this opportunity

to apologize

to absolutely

nobody.

Oh, I didn't see that.

But in statements and in commentary, like

Janet put that in the middle of the day.

You feel to lose your Jeff Goldman.

I was saying about fish sticks the other day.

What happened to them?

No longer?

Is it a thing kids eat?

Pablo?

I haven't seen it.

So.

Ooga transition to children.

Nailed it.

This is a touchy topic.

Violet doesn't eat fish sticks.

Violet just got her first pet.

Oh, and it's a fish.

It's a fish.

And it's a fish.

Okay,

so I'm not feeding her

fish sticks.

Does she eat fish?

Yeah, but the fish sticks.

Okay, so on the subject of fish sticks, my frustration is that they're not really sticks anymore.

They're just like nugs.

That's

what I'm foreseeing.

How have I never even thought before about kids having a pet fish and eating fish?

Yeah, that was the first time I thought of it.

Seem like a different species.

Like if we, we would be very aware of like, if you had a pet dog and then you tried to feed your kid's dog, that they would be like, wait a minute, isn't this, you know, Ruffy?

Which was the first name of my dog that I named myself.

So, truly, what I wanted to get to here in my topic is our first pets and whether I'm doing it right.

I'm getting violated with a fish.

This is her pet fish.

Oh, so we got a tank.

We got a SpongeBob pineapple.

Angelfish thing.

This is a...

It's pronounced apparently beta, B-E-T-T-A, but beta.

Beta.

With their YouTube channel.

It's like a Google Goblin.

Beta.

just a beautiful fish.

I don't know how to pronounce it.

It is a beautiful fish.

I

got real live aquatic plants.

Those are real plants, except for the SpongeBob pineapple.

Everything else there is real.

It's beautiful.

Hate fake plants.

And this is the fish that Violet picked out.

The fish's name is Coop.

Like Cooped Up?

Coop.

Like hanging with Mr.

Cooper?

Coop, as in she wanted to name it poop, and we were like, let's negotiate.

And we settled down at Coop.

So that's Violet.

And that's Coop.

That's the story of my life these days.

That was my weekend.

And it's a big step.

A first pet, I didn't realize how big of a step it was until I was at Petco holding like

total cliche, all of the things you need to get a fish tank.

Okay.

Cleaner, gravel, substrate, real plants that are not fake, the fish itself, the

are the plants for the leaning thing.

Fake plants are actually my least favorite thing.

Fake plants are very proud of your plants.

And also, just like fake plants don't do anything.

They are a depressing simulation of something that gives you none of the benefits.

Yeah, agree.

Do you like the fact that the real plants give nutrients to the water?

Absolutely.

You can watch them grow.

Coop deserves that.

They can oxygenate and feed Coop.

If nothing else, the goodwill of the planet that we have

destroyed and taken him from or her.

I don't know if Coop is no way of doing that.

So, what are you worried about in terms of whether you're doing this right?

So, we start with the fish, and I just wonder, I've been warned that this is just one step.

The gateway,

the gateway pet towards what I am not ready for, which is ultimately a dog

as an apartment dweller in Manhattan.

But I was curious what you guys, what your gateway pets were and

how you felt about them in retrospect.

Oh, man.

Well, my mom has always loved animals and had dogs and cats.

I think when my parents met, my dad was not a huge dog person and my mom had two huge dogs and then he quickly became a dog person.

And so I've just grown up.

We always had a dog and we always had a cat.

And it wasn't.

It was sort of more of a given for me than like a please, can I have a pet?

And now looking back, I'm like, wow, my parents really, like,

they were ready to take care of stuff uh if they had because it's not a small thing to have a life and pets and sarah you have dogs you have to you know yeah they require a lot they require a lot yeah i have three one of them is a 57 pound 10 month old puppy right now that we just acquired so that one's adding a lot of work and he's the best his name his name's indy because we rescued him the day we left for indonesia which is a great plan is to rescue a dog and then immediately have to find somebody to watch him for 12 years.

Immediately abandon.

Well, he was in the shelter for his name was Spain in the shelter.

They named him Spain.

Okay.

I saw a photo.

I know.

I saw a photo.

Well, why don't we call my own name?

Like running around Spain, Spain.

It's a little, it's too much, even for me.

Leo.

But yeah, exactly.

So his name was Spain.

So I spotted him in January.

I'm like, oh my God, his name's Spain.

And he's so cute because I follow all the rescue things in Chicago.

I try to post the dogs for other people to see.

And then February, I'm like, Spain's still there.

That's wild.

Like, what a cute dog.

And then March, and I'm like, man, this dog might not make it because he's at the pound in Chicago.

It's completely overflowing and there's no warning on which dogs get put down every day.

Even the volunteers don't get told.

So like at any moment, he could just be like, well, okay, you've been here three months.

No one took you.

So you're dead.

It's awful.

And most people don't realize how many dies get dogs get killed every day.

And then they go buy a fucking fancy puppy instead of rescuing.

And then I want to sit them down for a nice long talk.

But

the point is, we had a dog when I was first growing up

that passed away when I was pretty young.

So we got Ruffy, who my sister and I got to name Ruffy.

And then we had Toby.

So we always had dogs, just one dog growing up.

I think they're really important for kids so that they're not afraid of dogs.

I think it's hard to raise kids.

They don't have to have one, but they should be around them so they get comfortable with them.

I also think it, best case scenario, they learn a little responsibility, although that's a lot to ask because the parents end up doing everything.

Yeah, right.

uh and then i had a fish that was so fat and lazy that it floated upside down instead of having to like use its fins to keep moving so we always thought it was dead over and over and over and then you'd hit the thing and it would flip back over and be like i'm alive

just me trying to wake up every morning um noticing a real bias in how sarah views and empathizes with different species of animal yeah no the fish conversation the fish was great it was just hilarious

names ending in why uh-huh fish Ruffy, Toby, Indy.

Good call.

I have two other dogs, Fletch and Banks.

They don't have Y's.

I actually forget the fish name right now, which is sad.

My dad watched him when we went to camp one summer and he didn't make it.

And I'm like, either he forgot to feed him

or he was not dead.

And my dad was like, oh, looks dead down the toilet.

He's like,

I'm not dead yet.

Can I tell you guys a name of the cat that I was brought home to?

What do you mean, brought home to?

Like when I was home.

When she was born, the cat existed already.

We had a dog named Bear

and a cat named Aaron Purr.

This is a challenge.

We're ahead of the game on Hamilton.

If anyone wants to know why I am the way I am, it's because I have parents who named a cat Aaron Purr.

Okay, well, I have a neighbor who has chickens, and they're named Gloria Steinhen and Ruth Bader Hensberg.

So those kids are also growing up in a very special podcaster.

I want to roast all of you.

Wait, so Paolo, I like the fish.

My gentle suggestion: if you can get another fish of the same type, it's gonna loosen or lessen the blow when the fish inevitably dies.

They just don't live very long, usually.

I feel like the beta beta fish

is they're two T's.

It's been, I've been, it's confusing to me.

I've always heard beta fish

until I got into beta fish YouTube, and all these people are like I've been wrong the whole time.

It feels like the conversation we had about uh pickup artists, alpha fish, beta fish, yeah, yes, yes.

I'm trying to um

avoid these fish

truly,

I would say, kino-escalating on each other, which is to say, ramming their bodies into the other, because that's a thing that these fish are.

Is there another kind of fish that you know gets along with a betta that won't ram or eat each other?

I think it's sort of like a so, I think it's like a

this fish is a real gunslinger.

Okay,

I

ranger, yes, solo will occasionally ram its own reflection in that, oh, in that uh reflective, uh,

beautifully clean glass.

I actually have a different take, Sarah.

I think that part of having a pet, which is good for kids, is understanding that death happens.

Like

when our dogs died, it was absolutely devastating, but it was also like, hey, this is a thing that happens.

I do think that there was something that felt

almost spiritual about it because it was like, oh, wow, okay, this isn't, it gave context to life.

Life ends.

And that, which is a horrifying thing as a kid but is also like

instead of growing up sanitized from it or being like this doesn't happen it it right it happens momentum mori remember we all die which is the whole value of life life would mean nothing if we didn't alternately have death yeah i i agree with that um i'm just trying to save pablo

what could be i mean look i people have heard who've heard me talk on various platforms know that my pet experience involved uh hamsters right i had hamsters and i feel like i need to ritually remind america of this fact the hamsters i had were not just drug addicts they were cannibals and murderers because i had horror too this story is horrifying i go buy hamsters i get a wired cage i get a plastic spinning wheel like an exercise wheel not unlike the one we saw in that video except vertical attaches to the wired cage.

So hamsters, what do they do?

They procreate a lot.

All of these hamsters are born in the circle spinning wheel, right?

That's cool, oh, a little nest.

But you know what else hamsters do, Katie Nolan?

Hamsters eat their young.

So, what happens?

Well,

hamsters begin to eat their babies inside of the plastic, translucent Patrick Bateman Ferris wheel of death.

And what else happens?

The hamsters decapitate their babies.

And so you have a spinning wheel that they're still exercising on.

So the wheel is still spinning, forming a literal death rattle of hamster baby heads that I watch every day when i wake up and see how are my pets doing the answer very badly they're doing very badly this is why you are the way you are it explains so much it explains so much

i can never trust or love again did they eat their own babies yeah

i once witnessed that never came back just decapitated their own young and ran around a wheel full of baby heads worried about dogs in a new york apartment and the work.

And I certainly don't want people to get dogs who don't have, you know, the ability to give them love and time.

But also, I feel like I'm like the for dogs, what people are with babies, where they're like trying to convince me to have kids.

I'm like, you'll just never understand love until you have your own.

And I'm like, I'm good.

But dogs, I'm like, I don't know how people literally live without coming home

to this thing that's like so happy to see you, wants to spend every second with you, gives you emotional love and security and snuggles and like the snuggles are so good yeah when we come home from vacation and our dogs are like staying with someone else and it's late dog voice opening the door to nothing is so sad how do you do that yeah i uh i can do more of it if you want just let me know what the doggy voice oh she's a really good girl oh my goodness

i once accidentally hit my phone recording and recorded myself i love you you're the best thing that's that's ever.

I love you so much.

Did you know that I, and it's just like, on, and I read it and I was like, oh my God, get old, your life.

This is why, I mean, partly why I can't have a dog.

Why?

You'd have to feel a lot of fun.

You don't have a dog.

Beyond dog voice, also just the clear anti-fish bigotry that you guys are both exhibiting.

You can't hug a fish.

Not with that attitude.

Fish doesn't remember you.

Get an octopus if you want a tank.

Octopus remember you will play games with you, has feelings.

It's probably smarter than all of us might be aliens a fish it's just

escalating quickly oh do some research on octopus no i have but i haven't seen the alien part uh people there's this like thing about how they don't share dna with almost any other species on earth so it's like where'd they come from and who are they oh sick right and also like Don't we think it's a little weird that this animal can just like change shape and color and texture just anytime they want?

Like nothing like a chameleon's like, let me get a little green.

Octopus like makes their entire body look like a rock.

Yeah, you can squeeze an octopus through the size of a quarter, like a whole size of a quarter.

There's an octopus that's

found a way out the like

air conditioning shafts of like a of a aquarium to become a octopus can unscrew a closed jar lid from the inside.

Octopuses also have a different personality in each of their tentacles.

Like there's a little brain in each tentacle.

So like one like would be a great lover by the way if you think about it which everyone started talking about after that my octopus friend movie where that guy was definitely

1,000%.

But if you think about it, which I did after watching that movie, I was like, did he f that octopus?

If they each have a different brain in their tentacle, like you could have a tender lover.

And guys,

I'm busy tonight.

I'm having a nine-way with this octopus.

What do we find out today, guys?

We're at the end of the show.

We've talked about more than I imagined and more than I even remember at this moment.

Same.

Well, because our brains are swift, cheese, and scrambled eggs.

That's right.

Our brains are moving slow, as we said.

Sarah,

what did you find out today?

I found out so many things.

One thing I found out, which I already knew that...

Shar came from a very specific household, but the combination of Aaron Perr and then also her remembering and reciting important facts she learned in English class continued to build my personal lore of who Shar is.

Agreed.

It's a lot of boats.

Wiki Shar is going nuts, right?

There's a lot of boats and very East Coast, but also like the kindness during the roast.

It's all coming together in a way that's very predictable, but it's just fleshing out the portrait I have of her.

Yeah, I'm trying to diagram mentally the sentence, the paragraph really that Charlotte had that started as a roast of Dustin Timberlake, then ended up with an apology.

She said he was ass and immediately was like, I feel awful.

She's one of the most hot people on the planet.

What am I doing?

What am I doing?

Oh, what are you doing, Charlotte?

You so silly.

You're just a silly one.

I have really nothing to say to that because it's exactly

right.

That is who, that is, that is who I am.

I think I found out that similarities between

all of the stuff we talked about,

the roasts, the diss tracks, even the aging part.

It's all it's all based on, you know, people's perceptions of things they don't have complete information on.

And I think that is fascinating because we fill in the blanks where we don't know things.

And I think that with the

idea that these things can go beyond what the author intended,

it goes to everything.

It even applies to the fish because it's like, because Violet's relationship with this fish will be what she projects onto this fish in a way that's beautiful.

What I found

is something that I did not even think was possible, which is that Charlotte Wilder could inadvertently mention the name of a Taylor Swift song without intentionally calling out the blank space

aspect

of this entire conversation.

That's right, guys.

He pretends he doesn't know, but he knows.

He knows.

Oh, I know.

You guys could roast me.

I would let you guys roast me.

It would just be about like dockers.

And the other day when you wore your, your amazing princess die outfit and completely pulled it off.

Thank you.

It would just be you being like a cute millennial.

Your Mario impression is masterful.

See, I don't believe anything anybody say.

Feels like you're reverse roasting me with compliments.

It's never good when you get a compliment and you're like, I can't tell if they're because you don't believe most of the things.

I think people say to me that sound nice, I'm like,

is it good?

I take all the compliments.

I'm like, I think they meant that in a nice way.

Like the meanest thing I get, I'm like, I think they meant that in a good way.

Big Leo energy.

I'm going to write the footnote on this.

Yeah.

I'm going to interpret this myself.

But as for the people who helped me fill these episodes with tiny breadcrumbs to use in Wars of Ego, Pablo Torre I finds out is produced by Michael Antonucci, Ryan Cortez, Sam Dawig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Loman, Rachel Miller-Howard, Ethan Schreier, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Chris Tumanello, and Juliet Warren.

Our studio engineering by RG Systems, our post-production by NGW Post, our theme song, as always, by John Bravo.

I gotta go feed this fish.

We'll talk to you Tuesday.