A Revolutionary Share & Tell with Mina Kimes, Dan Le Batard and Pablo

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

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

He looks at me and he goes, your friend has a lot of hair on her face.

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Am I allowed to say that you have a giant child or no?

What are the rules here?

I don't know if he's depends on your standards of giant.

He's big.

He's a big boy.

I don't know if he's giant.

I wouldn't say giant.

I don't mean that pejoratively, except on this TikTok, which I don't know if Dan has any idea what we're talking about.

Hi, Dan.

Hello.

Hello.

What are you doing?

What's Dan doing over there?

I don't know.

I'm texting.

No, I'm reading.

Mr.

Oh, I'm so addicted to this device.

I'm reading the stories that we're talking about.

That's what I'm doing.

I appreciate you studying for the test while taking the test.

So what I want to know is not just, is Mina familiar with this Minnesota tiny mom with big babies who went viral?

It is not for the weak.

I don't know if I'm just weak or my babies are just chunky, but

I wanted to know, has the thought already crossed her mind that her kid might play football?

100%.

Yeah.

It's so my husband, every now and then, he's much more like idealistic.

And, you know,

I'm the pragmatist in our relationship.

He'll be like, do you, the other day,

he was like, you know,

do you ever worry that our son might be bullied?

And I looked at him and I was like, Nick, he will be the bully.

Like, how have you not processed this?

Our gigantic son is going to be a jock.

He's huge and strong.

To put it in perspective, he's five months and he's over 20 pounds.

Laura Relich, who has NFL Live, her kid is like, I think eight or nine months.

They're the same size.

The Asian population needs a giant baby to save us when it comes to representation.

We really do.

I know parents are annoying because they always like to say their kids are advanced.

I am not saying my son is advanced mentally.

I'm saying he's advanced

physically.

I want to start with this Caleb Williams story and the story about parenting because Kaylin Collar at the Athletic has this story from late last month that sort of helped explain what was happening where Mino was at the NFL Combine in Indianapolis.

Because Caleb Williams not doing stuff there wound up being an enormous story in a way that spoke Dan to topics that you've been covering and talking about forever.

Caleb Williams is believed to be the first invitee to the scouting combine to decline to participate in the medical exams.

For the medical stuff, I'll be doing the medical stuff, just not here in Indy.

I'll be doing it at the team interviews.

You know, not 32 teams.

can draft me.

There's only one of me.

And so the teams that I go to for my visit, you know, those teams will have the medical and that'll be it.

What What is that player supposed to do when he actually recognizes the power that he has or at least has a dad who might be a person who listened to the Dan Lebetard show?

Because when I look at this story and like, why is it that Caleb Williams is not doing stuff that many quarterbacks throughout time have done, it all goes back, Prithe Athletic, and various reporting to his dad, Carl Williams.

And Carl, meana, Carl Williams' takes on stuff, they are right out of, if you've been been listening to any of the three of us talk about sports, it's like, why is there a draft?

A draft is unjust.

What about the rookie wage scale?

The rookie wage scale is unjust.

These deadlines, medical testing, all of this stuff.

Carl is the guy, seemingly behind the guy.

And I guess, Mina, just you were there at Indy.

Like, how much of this story feels to you like a revolution or something else?

Because it feels big to me.

If there's a revolutionary aspect to it, or if there's any sort of sea change, I would say this coming from Indy, it's the fact that this has transcended Caleb Williams.

None of the top three quarterbacks did much at the combine.

Heck, Jane Daniels wasn't measured, but none of them did the throwing drills.

Caleb,

I believe, you know, his statement on that, he didn't do medicals for every team because the reasoning was, well, not every team's going to have a shot at me.

Like when I visit with teams, I'll do the medicals.

But it was, it went beyond Caleb.

You know, you really felt like a sea change with all these top quarterbacks.

And that, to me, feels a little bit different.

Now, that's certainly not

grabbing your power

on the scale of, you know, demanding a trade or asking for equity, which is a huge facet of the story, or,

you know, questioning the Brookie Wage scale.

But it is a small revolution nonetheless.

And one that.

every single personnel person at the combine agent who I talked to didn't really have a case for why they shouldn't do it this way.

Archie Manning, a long time ago, did this for Eli Manning and wasn't protective father, was quarterback who wasn't protected as a player when he played in New Orleans and was great and understood how much the body would hurt and was trying to protect his son from ending up with a bad team.

I

enjoyed at the very end

after LeBron James did all the things he did, Tom Brady looking up and saying, wait a minute, I have real power.

I don't have to be under the thumb of the Patriot Way.

It probably took him about 15 to 16 years before he realized it.

So, of course, all of this would trickle down in sports to Aaron Rodgers realizing at about 38 or 39, if I go to the Jets, I'm my own economy, I'm my own value system, I should ask for ownership.

Of course, it's rejected.

I think most sports fans don't think of the draft as un-American,

the rookie wage scale as un-American, as freedom-inhibiting.

I think they're so normalized that what will happen is that Caleb Williams and his father will be demonized for trying to shape the system up.

They will be like Uncle Dennis was for Kawhi Leonard in asking for the world when he went to the Clippers.

So the Uncle Dennis part is a fun, I didn't make that connection before, but yes, there is something to the idea of

essentially a guardian being the bad guy here.

And it, the Uncle Dennis story, Vita, it also in the doing of that

saga, it kind of took agency away from Kawhi Leonard.

Like that was the story.

It's like Uncle Dennis is doing all, he's this like wizard behind the scenes.

He's like making all these demands.

Can I get court side seats?

Can I get equity?

And part of what this reporting athletic is suggesting is that actually like maybe a story inside of the story is how much Caleb Williams does or doesn't want any of this.

And so the question about equity, which you'd referenced about like, look, in July, right?

There was this story in Sports Business Journal that reported that NFL owners had just voted to prohibit, quote, non-family employees from taking equity in teams, end quote.

And the reason why is because per the athletics reporting, Carl Williams, Caleb's dad, was broaching the topic with agents, really like trying to get, the reason, in fact, Caleb, it seems, didn't hire an agent is because the family, the camp, it's hard to disentangle them for now.

They were saying, hey, could you find a way to get us out of the rookie wage scale?

Like, can you actually find loopholes?

And no, so they didn't hire an agent, which is, you know, again, savvy if nothing else.

Does he need to pay someone?

What are they?

It's 2% to 5%.

I can't remember for the players now to negotiate a deal that's already set in stone.

stone doesn't, I mean, like that to me makes the most sense out of any of this.

Although when you go against the agents, and we saw this with Lamar Jackson, we've seen this with other players who have chosen to represent themselves, because the agents talk to reporters, that means that your way of doing things will be questioned.

Okay, so as far as the demonization, which Dan.

talked about, I think it's worth separating two things here.

One is the idea of Caleb Williams or any other player rejecting the draft.

And it's it's very easy to see why fans would not like that.

Because fans, your reward for your team sucking is that you get Caleb Williams or whatever, right?

So any player who questions that sort of order of things, there's a logic to it that I understand.

You can say there's other,

you know, it's pocket watching, it's disempowering, you're siding with owners, whatever.

But I think from a fear football perspective, I can understand why there's some tension there between NFL fans and players, rookies, rookies' families.

Sure.

The equity thing is different, though.

So the equity story, and I believe Kaylin reported that Aaron Rodgers' camp also,

if it was rumored to ask about this,

that resurfaced during the season, even though the story came out last July, during the season at some point, the aggregators, one of the terrible aggregator accounts, resurfaced it and it went viral.

And people got really mad at Caleb Williams all over again, even though it's unclear what he actually asked for,

what his family asked for, whether it was just asking questions or how serious the inquiry was.

That to me

is something that fans should not be upset about.

That is siding with billionaires over millionaires, and it has nothing to do with your football team.

And it's also something that players should, quarterbacks in particular, should ask for.

I mean, we, this morning, Dan and I were talking about a team, the Denver Broncos, who traded away the farm and paid 245, China's $245

because they were so desperate for a quarterback.

And then now it's so desperate to move on from that quarterback, they're absorbing $85 million in dead money.

That is how important this position is to your franchise, to the team, to the business of it.

Why should that position in particular not partake in the long-term success of the franchise?

No good explanations to me.

I got to think that the grand majority of people listening to this, if I told them, here's the deal, you're coming out of college and you're the most valuable person in the universe at this occupation.

Do you think you should go to the city of someone else's choosing and your leverage means nothing because your salary is slotted?

Nobody listening to this would want that situation for themselves.

The only time right now that Caleb Williams could shake up the system is by him and his father asking all the questions right now about why do we have to do it this way when, if my son simply went to a sport that didn't have a salary cap, people like Jerry Jones and Dan Snyder fighting over needing a quarterback would go through the roof to pay that person

a value that they would assign, and then rich people would fight with each other over seeing who could get that quarterback.

The salary cap to me is simply

theirs because owners know they can't control themselves.

And Caleb Williams and his dad should try to get anything and everything they want, but they're not going to get any of what they want.

What's going to happen is they're going to get frustrated by this system because I'm not sure that they come from where it is that Archie Manning would come from, which is a lifetime of being able to protect his child's money with his own wealth.

I do think the moment at which you sign the paperwork is the moment at which you lose power, right?

That's kind of the recognition here.

Like, why is the Combine this pivotal moment, Mina?

It's because as soon as they sign that rookie deal, you have literally legally relinquished your right to negotiate in the ways that any sort of person would want to use the power of competition to pit various employers against each other, to try and get the best deal for yourself.

All of the stuff that Carl, so basically, Carl Williams has been framed as largely a quack in ways that, of course, anonymous people who leak to agents would like to make him out to be because he's not hiring an agent and he's coming for the very status quo that they profit off of.

So that to me is not in much dispute.

Like what is the incentive here?

What's so interesting though, what's really interesting to me though, is that you now have this generation of guys, because it's beyond Caleb Williams, as Mina said, this generation of guys who are seeing the audition.

as not their audition, but teams auditioning for them.

Like prove to me that you're the place that I should go as opposed to, again, I'm nervously cramming for this test because I got to figure out what my IQ is going to be on record here and my bench and my 40 time.

That just seems to be this change that seems like it won't stop changing unless you saw what, why are you shaking your head there?

Well, I think it's less about because none of these guys are going to try to control where they end up.

Let's be real.

I mean, that's what we're talking about, right?

Like, it's not going to happen.

I would be shocked.

But what they are doing is trying to control the process to maximize their earnings where they do end up to get drafted higher.

Right.

You know, like, for example, a player like Jayne Daniels, who's excellent quarterback, prospect, rising up, now pushing for number two in the draft, two makes more than number three.

It's a big deal.

He's really thin.

And that's a big question mark around him is his build.

And so him saying, yeah, I'm not going to weigh in at the combine.

I'm going to weigh in at the the pro day

is him saying, I am going to control when you see how heavy I am.

For example, I'm just using that as an example.

Basically,

it's less them saying, hey, all of you teams have to, you know, I'm the employer here.

I'm the hirer and all you teams have to come to me.

It's more saying, okay, you're the hirers.

You're all my potential hirers, but you're only going to see, I'm only going to take the ACT instead of the SAT to use.

The nerdiest possible example that resonates fully with me personally.

But it's saying like you're not going to get all the information you want.

I'm going to control because I want to

put forward the best possible case for myself.

But even that little act of saying you only will get to see X, Y, and Z, that is different from previous years when there was more desperation, or at least it felt like more control on the part of the employers.

It's such an interesting tension, though, because you know, Mina, and you know this too, Pablo, the entire football establishment has

maybe it's changed some in recent generations, but my entire lifetime, it's about we control you.

We control every aspect of your contract, of your freedom, of your structure.

You can do some things when you go home on your own, but we've got control over you.

And what it feels like now, a different generation of players who have seen athletes buck on that system is they want some of that control back.

But none of this is going to change, right?

Caleb and Carl are, I mean, you called Carl a quack for having perfectly reasonable ideas about freedoms his son should have.

Quoting someone else calling him a quack, to be clear.

No, I'm not, I'm just saying, but I'm saying that

Carl is being dismissed.

They are being dismissed because everyone's used to, of course, the football team gets control.

And I'm asking, how much more control would you like football teams to have?

They already have plenty.

Dan, that's what I love about this story because

he was, he has been portrayed to me in the press,

the combine, as you know, stage dad, over-involved, how crazy it is that he's demanding this.

But if you took this athletic article, which kind of outlines the actual things that his Caleb Williams dad has asked about, not even like demanded, but just kind of inquired about,

and you presented all of those things to anyone anyone outside of our sport, I think to a man, they would all agree this is eminently reasonable.

Oh, you have, imagine this was like the tech industry and your son was like, you know, the had, I don't know, invented some sort of product that every company wanted.

And if you were going to all these companies, your Facebooks, your Twitters, and you said, yeah, he would like.

equity.

He would like some control over his contract.

He doesn't want to go through your song and dance.

Nobody would question any of that.

And it's one of those things where, like, when you step outside of football, you see how wild it is, the process.

Yes.

And, but, you know, it is presented as being anything but.

Well, it is funny, right?

Like the idea that

in scouting, you're trying to basically psychoanalyze all of these prospects you might pay nine figures to.

And the trait that Caleb Williams and his family are exhibiting is an extraordinarily

detailed and sophisticated understanding of how they're trying to attack a defense right now.

The defense just happens to be the institutional status quo of the sport itself as opposed to, you know, the linebacker lining up across from him.

How about the institution of fatherhood?

Because when she says to a man, any father with that child would want these freedoms we're talking about.

Like there's, you will get no disagreement from a single father that loves his child.

All right.

This was a similar discussion around Lamar Jackson and his mom.

His mom had, right?

Yeah.

Can you, can you, yeah, can you imagine?

Let's say Mina's kid is an NFL prospect, what Mina is like at these.

Like, what kind of stage mom are you going to be for your offensive tackle, offensive lineman?

I mean, I'm such a rules follower.

You know that.

And she loves the NFL.

And she loves the NFL about as much as she loves Nino, so she might side with the NFL.

Come on, Nino.

We're going to comply, right?

We can get along.

Run the 40.

Run the 40.

Come on.

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Should we go to saying no?

Because that feels like a segue?

Sure.

Can't say no.

My story is not about sports, although I guess it is, in a way, coming off of the story, there is a little bit of resonance when you think about it.

It's about saying no, right?

And yeah, I guess it's the two articles that I both sent you both came out around the same time, which is kind of funny.

One, the one that caught my eye first was by Leslie Jamieson, who's a nonfiction writer I really love, by the way.

It's a beautiful writer.

In the New York Times, it's called The Mind-Boggling Simplicity of Learning to Say No.

The other article was in the Atlantic,

also

about the same topic.

It says, overwhelm, just say no.

This one's by Arthur C.

Brooks.

Pretty similar.

Both articles talk about the reasons why people have trouble saying no.

And both articles give some practical tips for those who want to get better at saying no.

uh and there's some overlap in the tips as well um just to kind of summarize the reasons though i thought this was an interesting kind of diff the reasons they arrived at were a little bit different the atlantic story um talks about two things one

not valuing the future with present so that really is more like a time management which something we've talked about aspect of saying no basically being like yeah sure i can do this in the future not really considering what that means for your schedule.

And then the other one is sort of future FOMO, like the fear of regret.

If you say no to something, opportunity, friendship, meetup, whatever, you will regret it in the future.

Leslie Jamieson's piece

brings up a different reason why people say no.

She talks about how it resonates with women in particular, but perhaps you guys will identify with this too, which is sort of like the fear of offending people or hurting someone's feelings, although she's a very, very thorough.

She characterizes it not as an unselfish act, but actually selfish one, which is you want people to think you're a good person.

You want to, you don't want to lose like social equity.

Can I just jump in on that?

The thing about how you don't say no or I don't say no often, because I don't want the other person to feel bad.

It's a problem with me to the point where I have been in conversations where the impulse to protect someone from my perception of their humiliation is such that I will not correct people about things that are absolutely wrong about me.

I will just go along with it.

Like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you misheard me saying that like Dune is the worst movie of all time.

Now I'm locked into this take.

Because if I were to say 10 seconds in that actually you've been wrong for 10 seconds, I feel like that would shatter you as a person.

So I'm going to just eat this for the rest of this conversation.

Okay, I just want to tell you this.

I love the our caretaker we've hired to help me out with our child.

His nanny.

Every day she has all these, she gets books from the library.

She has a book that she's been reading to him for about two weeks now.

It's been in our home.

And every time I walk by, she points to it and she makes noises and talks.

And she's like, yeah, see, he's learning Korean because I'm Korean.

The book is Chinese.

And I can't figure out how to explain to her.

That is exactly what I'm saying.

One million.

Perfect example.

Perfect example.

I don't, I've actually had conversations.

I'm like, Nick, should I tell her at some point?

Because it's gone on for so long now that I feel like it's too late for me to say anything.

Now you have to learn about China.

You're in the chat.

For the follow-up conversation.

She has a panda on the cover.

Come on.

Come on, man.

It's a panda.

I don't have trouble with no this way.

And I don't know.

It wasn't hand-me-downed in any way.

And I don't know that it was something that I saw very much of.

I think, Pablo, so it sounds like for you and me, we both share this.

And it's much more about the social dynamic than it is about time management or the fear of missing out on something.

Is that my correct in diagnosing this?

I feel uncomfortable when someone else feels uncomfortable.

It's

same.

Like, not to make myself into a hero, but I feel the pain of others, Dan.

And so

I guess I'm just better at being a person.

You guys are afflicted with something here that I don't believe

that I don't think of you as both having a great deal of trouble with boundaries,

generally speaking.

So, this is a very specific type of boundary that is being crossed because you're not setting it.

And I don't think of it as either one of you.

I don't think either one of you have trouble in other areas with the setting of boundaries.

This is a very specific one that involves another person coming to you and asking for something and you unable to say no, as opposed to you setting it firmly because there's not a request being made or wherever it is that someone else would send, wherever the other places are that you would set boundaries.

I just don't want to make them feel bad.

Yeah,

I guess it just hurts less to do it as opposed to watch someone process me saying,

actually this idea, and this is my translation of what the word no is.

What a fucking stupid idea.

Never bring this to me again.

And I'm like, oh, that seems harsh, even though I've just said no, period.

That's my translation of it.

Okay.

I actually thought these tips were really good.

One of them was both of these articles had the same tip, which is you have to document your no's.

Both of them wrote them down or in the case of the Atlantic writer shared them with a friend.

Basically, like if you say no to something, let's say your husband knows or you have a friend who shares, perhaps Pablo and I could be in a no society, a no club.

You tell someone, you say, hey, I said no to something today.

And you become then more inclined to do so, knowing that you have some kind of accountability or in this case, reverse accountability for doing it.

The Atlantic writer also talks about like viewing it as an like saying yes as not the default being like an opt-in sort of mentality.

And then the other thing, and I thought this was also very helpful,

waiting a day before saying yes,

giving yourself some time before you say yes makes you less likely to do so.

It just resolves itself by me never actually answering them.

Which is why I have 15,000 unread emails right now from various college students that I will get to because I care about the future of journalism in America.

What is the worst thing you've ever said yes to?

For fear of

not, you know what I mean?

For fear of events.

Well, but here's what happens.

Here's what you guys end up running into if you don't say no, because I learned this.

This was something that I learned with Stugatz and a friend of Stugatz who came by the studio one day and with his family.

This person spent about an hour taking pictures with me, with everybody else.

It wasn't just a quick in-and-out thing, just kept making requests, kept making requests.

And I didn't say no until he said, where's your father?

Can I take your some pictures with your father?

And I'm like, My father didn't come in today.

He's not here today.

And then the request was, Can you ask him to come in?

No.

Yes, no, that was the god.

And I'm like, No, I'm not going to ask him to come in.

And that's where I drew the line.

But then I went to Stugatz and I told him the story.

And you know what Stugatz's reaction was?

Yeah, buddy, you keep asking.

You just keep asking for stuff until someone says no.

There's no shame in just keep asking for stuff because you'll keep getting stuff if you keep asking for stuff.

And that's where you guys both get trampled if you don't say no.

Dan telling that story reminds me of one of my favorite yeses, which is to say the worst yes that I can recall right now, which is a call I was on with Charlie Kravitz, our mutual friend, and Stugatz.

Because Stugatz was pitching me during the pandemic on somehow, I don't even know if Dan knows about this, maybe he knows all of it.

Stugatz pitched me on co-hosting a show with him called Stick to Sports.

And I said I would get on the call with him because I didn't know where this was headed.

And the show involved me and Stugatz giving takes and then also wearing velcro suits with a velcro wall so that after we give the take, we literally have to jump at the wall and stick to sports.

No.

This call was like 45 minutes.

Like it wasn't like

this is stupid.

Let's stop this.

It was wait.

was the second take one?

Has he ever pitched you on second take?

Oh, what's that?

Oh, oh, awkward.

He's never pissed you on second take.

It is exactly what it sounds like, Pablo.

I got the first draft of second take.

Wait, I got Stugats workshopped his idea with me and then came to you with the more evolved version after I gave my notes on this.

I seriously engaged him with this for 45 minutes.

You gave him notes?

Second take was pre-pandemic, so

we should put up on the

safety school.

I was Dugats' terrible cheating on Dan sports show safety school.

I didn't know any of this, not surprising.

I've told you guys before that I am William H.

Macy in boogie nights.

I show up all the time, and there is my marital partner in the driveway,

having sensual relations about sticking to sports and second takes.

He

is all of the things that we say he is, but I did not know that his idea, David Letterman, we can show this was done a long time ago, David Letterman jumping off of a trampoline and sticking to something as Velcro.

Can we have the trampoline out?

Now this wall is again covered with

the other half of the Velcro, right?

All right.

But it's the only idea he had.

He just has the funny visual of sticking to something and then he'll build it out from there.

But there's only there's not much of an idea there other than the funny thing of,

I don't know what you're going to do the second week of shows once it's these were most of my notes.

These were most of my notes.

And let me just tell you something.

As I expect Mina to give us, by the way, the worst yes she's ever given.

What I was trying to do, imagine how ineffective it is for me to gently try and get Stugatz to back off of this premise when all he has is the premise and all he has is the instinct to keep forcing it down my throat.

That's why the call was 45 minutes.

The thing about Stugatz though is when you say yes to him, you do so knowing that it probably won't go anywhere.

So

I actually feel comfortable just saying, yeah, sure, yeah, definitely send me a proposal, knowing the proposal will never come, right?

Like, so actually, it's not as the

asks are not, except for the thing I did for his book, but typically the asks.

Well, but wait a minute.

But wait a minute.

Because that took many years of him not doing anything.

And then eventually what ended up happening is an assortment of people did it for him.

And you ended up during the Super Bowl writing more for his book than he will write for his book.

That's a thing that happened.

Exactly.

And every,

yeah, well, but this is,

I just got done telling you the story.

He will keep asking.

And every once in a while, you're going to get backed into a corner and you're going to end up writing his book for him.

My worst yes is,

unsurprisingly, being a woman are all dates

all throughout my life, just dates that I didn't want to go on, that I knew I didn't want to go on.

No.

And, you know, actually, this brings me back to the article because the

Leslie Jameson story starts with her complaining to her father about being asked to basically do overtime at a job at bakery or something.

And her father says something that she, it really resonates with her, which is that person has every right to ask, and you have every right to say no.

And that the people, the

when you're reluctant to say no, you bear some responsibility for the interaction.

And when I think back to some of the dates that I went on,

in a way, like if you know, I

certainly made it worse by saying yes, knowing that it wasn't going anywhere.

Now, I do think that ignores the fact that some people can be quite pushy and relentless, not just about dates, obviously, but about anything.

But that I think stuck with me a little bit, which is that when you are a relentless, like when you are a person who constantly says yes,

you do bear a lot of responsibility for what follows.

Not to not to plumb the depths of your traumas, but is there a date where you're like very quickly of the understanding this was a terrible yes to give?

It's not a good story.

It paints me in a horrible light.

But

I guess, Dan,

I can't believe I'm telling this, like, Doyle.

There's a guy that he, in his picture for the, it was like a pre-app stage of the internet.

He was kind of like being like,

what's happening?

Here we go.

For the YouTube.

Oh, he was like kind of hiding behind his hand.

He was coily hiding behind what?

What's your hand hand standing for?

For his actual hand?

Like a mine?

I met up with him, public place, bright of day.

Yeah, I was kind of like, I don't even know how to phrase it.

Anyways, he had an eye patch in real life, but you couldn't see it in the photo.

That explains some things in retrospect, doesn't it?

I met up with him.

And, you know, it's like, okay, you know, it was a little bit surprised, you know.

We weren't successful

looking man.

Look, I don't know how you telegraph to somebody that you're trying to hide something.

He was, okay, now

he was standing behind a wall.

No.

Here, honey.

Like Shaq behind that tree, that meme.

I don't know.

Let me bring.

I need to get to the conclusion of the story because it's what rescues me from being the horrible person in the story.

So far, I'm pretty sure you're not going to be rescued.

Just as a side note.

But I don't think you're horrible, though.

He's starting with a dishonesty.

Thank you.

We meet for coffee.

He's kind of mean.

Um, and we're walking around the East Village, and we pass a girl I know who's sitting outside with her husband.

And I'm like, Oh, hi, this is a person's name.

I'm, I'm not like, we just were on our first internet date.

We walk away.

He looks at me.

And he looks at me and he goes, Your friend has a lot of hair on her face.

Oh, no.

What?

Sir, not all of us are as good at covering the things on our face with our hand as you are.

Anyways, I shouldn't have said yes to that.

I knew something was weird.

I knew something was weird, but I went along with it anyways.

And to my credit, I said no to a follow-up.

I mean, of course that guy was mean.

He's got the seething resentment of unsuccessfully trying to hide that he's got one eye from

women he's trying to trick.

I still feel bad about it to this day, even though I was not in the wrong.

So bad.

So, what should I say to my nanny, though, real talk?

Yeah, I think you should say,

It's too late.

It's too late.

You've lived the lie for too long.

Like, you're gonna.

You just gotta become Chinese now.

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Dan,

what you got for us, buddy?

This is an article from the Atlantic: How Happy Couples Argue.

They don't try to control each other.

They try to control themselves.

It is by Derek Thompson.

The reason that I wanted to bring it in front of you is at least in part because I've just learned a great deal over, I don't know, all the time I've been with Valerie, who sort of upended the way that I have done things all of my life.

At one point in my life, I was someone who was in relationships and would be proud to say something along the lines of we don't argue,

which doesn't seem

like a terribly bad thing on its face.

But when I did talk to my therapist about this, one of the things that she said is like, that's not probably the most human way to go through these things.

And so I have learned how to argue better, but I follow or I fall into some of the same patterns and traps sometimes where I have to be self-aware about things that I have done because I'm not quite formed, but these patterns are deeply entrenched.

And so I just wanted to talk to you guys about how it is that you argue because I've done a a lot of learning on this front, and I now have sort of a voice inside of me that tells me I'm doing that thing while I'm doing it.

So

I know how to eject from some of my bad patterns.

I just want to point out that Mina and I simultaneously started making roughly the same face, but her face was more conspicuous.

So I want to see what she's thinking about.

judging you would

not judging you at all.

Um,

I, I, I like this article a lot.

I mean, it really, the conclusion is basically like the way you argue is more important than what you argue about in terms of like, you know, healthy relationships.

I think that's absolutely true.

That's something that I have found to be true in my own relationship.

And

I was smiling actually not because of what Dan said, but because I was thinking of something that

occurred to me recently, which is

I have found that the way I argue in my marriage is exactly how I argue on the show first take,

which is to say,

and

I think success correlates with the same patterns for both, not getting overly emotional in the moment, presenting a neutral to smiling facade as much as possible, not raising my voice, leaning on facts,

not trying to make the other person feel small

and acknowledging what they've said.

I try to do both of those things and I find that both, in both cases, it works best for me.

I relate to that in the sense that Liz has accused me at my worst because we've established on the show previously, I don't really yell, I don't raise my voice, but I do tend to lapse into a debate mode if I am like really convicted about something.

And Liz has called me out for this.

I did high school debate, obviously, gas bag on sports television.

And it just snaps me back into the reality of like, oh, right.

The person I'm trying to convince is not an audience, a third-party judge.

It's the person I'm talking to.

And as soon as she says it, I'm like, oh, f.

Like, so much of this article that hit to the core of me was about how,

and this is specifically something that I relate to, about how oftentimes men, me,

will try to solve a problem, like dissect it, analyze, provide a solution to it.

Yeah, that's

a problem.

Yes, because I'm like here to be solutions-oriented, be constructive with my argumentation, let's say.

And a lot of it I've learned over years and years, and also this single paragraph at the very top of Derek Thompson's story.

People just want to have their emotions expressed and confirmed so that they fundamentally feel like they're not alone processing this.

And that, to me, I just skipped that part in my brain so often to like, how can I fix this?

Yeah, that's as opposed to how can I just sit with this.

I want to read this to you guys.

In his new book, Super Communicators, the journalist Charles Duhigg writes that one of the most common sources of conflicts in relationships is when partners don't agree on the type of conversation they're having.

Some conversations are practical.

Let's solve a problem together.

Others are emotional.

Let's talk about and understand our feelings.

Many fights mistake practical for emotional conversations and vice versa.

Well, I think actually both my husband and I are default to.

You want, you, oh, you, you brought this to me.

You want my advice.

You want me to fix it.

And to Pablo's point, it's often not what the other person wants.

Something I've started doing, started over the last few years, is almost at the very beginning, I try to suss out, okay, what do you want me to do?

Like, what, what are we doing here?

I think setting the terms of, and this is kind of what the article gets at what the goal is of the conversation really, I have found to be really helpful

in making that conversation.

Are we venting?

Are we venting or fixing?

Like, do you just need to be heard here?

Or do you want?

I underestimated so stupidly the value of venting.

Just like sometimes you just want someone else to be there as you relay what happened to you that day.

And in fact, I've been informed reliably by sources close to the situation, when you jump in with your thoughts, you're like just getting in the way of them feeling and literally being heard.

And it's just the fact that lots of people do this, it makes me feel somewhat better.

Also worse, though, because it's just a cliche.

Like I, I, I, I just realized in the course of reading these articles that, oh yeah, I am, I am a stand-up comic cliche.

Men do this and women do that.

I'm telling you, okay, let me me just jump in here.

A lot of women I know are fixers and have the exact same problem.

So it's not a clue.

It's not, I think, I don't think it's gendered at all.

So now you're being a cliche because you're trying to associate this with Melchadorski.

No, I think, if anything, it's a type A quality, which is not particularly gendered.

It's unsurprising to me that all three of us, while maybe we have different attitudes or relationships with the word no,

are similarly

annoying.

Believe we have solutions.

Let's put it that way.

I do find some of this to be particularly tricky, though, like because I really have had to learn it because there's an inner voice, wherever it is that I feel the deepest forms of love, I'm with someone I trust so implicitly who's not really ever looking to argue with me gratuitously, that generally speaking, I now know, and this is a fairly amazing thing to realize at my age.

I now know if we're arguing, I've probably done something wrong that I'm not yet aware of that's about to reveal itself.

I mean, if it's not about some silly thing, it's because

she's not looking for the places where she can win an argument with me.

And she's so consistently loving about everything that I just trust it now.

There has an introspection has been forced upon my blind spots that just wasn't there before.

I do like that one of the things you said before, Dan, as you go through your journey of perpetual self-discovery

is that your therapist was like, you should, you should fight more.

What are you repressing, right?

If you're never arguing, like, it doesn't seem, I mean, I'm sure there are many couples that get along so harmoniously that it's just not, you don't have to do it, but it doesn't work for me is what she was saying.

This was specific to me.

I don't think she was saying in general, couples should never argue.

She was talking, she's done analysis.

Like, I've done, I've done both.

I've done therapy with my wife.

I've done therapy with myself because

I want the tools that I need to learn the things that I need to learn about.

all of the things that I don't know that I thought I knew and have, you know, have really been turned upside down.

And so it was specific to me that, Dan, if you're not having, if you specifically aren't having occasional conflicts with people, you're not doing it right.

So I was listening to, I think, my husband and I don't fight very much.

Like the fact that we don't fight very much, comedy, that's the word I was searching for,

is also like a real privilege.

I alluded earlier to the fact that, you know, we have a nanny who's in the other room who works, you know, during the week.

Who thinks you're Chinese?

And that's fine because

my infant pooped all over the crib this morning.

Point is the closest we come to fighting every week is on Saturdays when it's just us because you are pushed to the limit by a child.

Money buys peace, y'all.

Like

the fact that we, yeah, like

I only have to

make those decisions as little as I do is something that I have purchased in my own life.

And something that has occurred to me, Pablo, is if that wasn't the case, oh my God, life would be much more full of potential.

Obviously, money helps with those things.

And I'm here to tell you that not having kids helps with those things, because if you have not slept and are irritable like there is all sorts of shrapnel and ancillary stuff that can make an appearance that has almost nothing to do with your relationship i am definitely the special teams coach of my household like liz has all of the other jobs basically um and i need her to do that and my frustrations often when i lapse into debate mode are about how i fear i feel at least um that she doesn't necessarily take seriously the job that I have, which is why I'm stressed, which is why she needs to do that stuff because I need to do a show with my friends about how I'm a enlightened person now.

And she's getting in the way right now with her complaints about how I'm not enlightened enough.

None of us, none of us take saving.

None of us take you seriously, Pablo.

And Liz is raising two toddlers.

It's two toddlers.

She's married to one of them.

And only one of us on the bed recently.

So.

What did we find out today as I try to get both of you back to your families and me to mine at the end here?

I found out that Stugatz had two other scams he was trying to execute with two other of my friends.

I'll add it to the library list.

It is many stories high of all the things Stugats has done to try and find the thing that can allow him to exist away from me.

Yes.

I found out that Pablo will never say no to me if I ask him for stuff.

So I should start asking you for stuff more often.

Oh, God.

I resent the fact that I most related to Mina.

I found out today that I most related to Mina being unable to push back on someone

miscasting her country of origin.

I was like, yep, been there.

I have been in so many Ubers where I'm just like, yep, I'm Hispanic, dude.

You got me.

Too late now.

The second time I started whispering because

you don't want her to know.

You're like, how can I tell her?

And I'm thinking, Mina, just say it a little louder into the microphone.

She's in the other room.

Should I suggest you listen to this podcast, which definitely will never happen?

Send her this link.

Send her this.

Send it with Chinese.

The Rainbow Coalition.

What if I buy a Korean book?

Okay, Nina just put her hand to her mouth like a

one-eyed catfisher.

Look, Nina's trying to trick a man that she wants to date into thinking she has a nose.

But as for our locker room here, because we're in a tight ship here at Pablo Torre, it finds out, and our team includes Michael Antonucci, Ryan Cortez, Sam Daywick, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Loman, Rachel Miller-Howard, Ethan Schreier, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Chris Tumanello, and Juliet Warren.

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

And yeah, we will talk to you on Tuesday with yet another very different episode.