The Truth About Magic Johnson's Tweets, and More of the Internet's Most Important Mysteries

Speaker 1 Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

Speaker 3 Here's my pitch on Irvin's tweet post Meeting the Aliens.

Speaker 8 Okay.

Speaker 9 Met with the Aliens, period.

Speaker 3 They are not what I expected. Exclamation mark.

Speaker 11 Right after this ad.

Speaker 12 You're listening to Giraffe Kings Network.

Speaker 13 Cortez, every so often on this show, we turn into a detective agency.

Speaker 16 In what way?

Speaker 17 We have a number, 51385 Pablo.

Speaker 19 People call that number with

Speaker 20 their mysteries they want us to solve and just solve the f ⁇ out of those mysteries.

Speaker 21 I know, I know. Shout out to these people for the mailbag.

Speaker 22 I appreciate that.

Speaker 20 It's not a mailbag.

Speaker 17 It's a detective agency. Again, we're not doing the stupid mailbag thing that every show does.

Speaker 24 I believe that what we're going to do here with this voicemail will prove that we're not just any show.

Speaker 1 If we can play that first non-mailbag voicemail.

Speaker 26 Hey, Pablo, I saw your your name in the headline of a New York Post article. It says, Larsa Pippin and Marcus Jordan trash, quote, miserable, end quote, Pablo Torre over a podcast interview.

Speaker 26 So now that you officially have a feud with the Pippins and the Jordans, I need to hear your response. Please and thanks.
Bye.

Speaker 2 I'm going to have to wear this because we taped an episode of our podcast in which we interviewed Marcus Jordan and Larsa Pippen about their love.

Speaker 21 Yeah, watch that one so you don't have to listen to their god-awful podcast.

Speaker 1 Well, now we got to listen to their god-awful podcast as an excerpt because they, of course, actually said the things that that caller was alleging.

Speaker 30 You know, we did a podcast a week ago.

Speaker 31 We did Pablo Torre's podcast. And

Speaker 7 they talked a lot of shit. They talked a lot

Speaker 7 of shit.

Speaker 31 You know, and I'm, you know, I wasn't too familiar with the format of his show.

Speaker 31 Maybe that's on us not doing our research or whatever. But.

Speaker 31 Yeah, I feel like the first half segment of the show was talking crazy. And so, you know, it's just funny because then when we did our interview, they didn't really keep that same energy.

Speaker 31 You know, I felt like, you know, obviously they were, um, they had listened to the podcast, they were familiar with it, but they, our interview was very fluffy.

Speaker 30 It was very once.

Speaker 7 It was very fluffy.

Speaker 31 And I feel like their commentary that aired before our interview was, you know, was pretty biased.

Speaker 30 It was a hit piece by that.

Speaker 20 It was a little bit of a hit piece.

Speaker 31 And now, actually, having watched it back, I wish that that producer, you know, there was some off, I can't remember the dude's name.

Speaker 31 I just wish he was there because I feel like our interview would have taken a different tone and we would have been able to clap back a little bit.

Speaker 32 You know what I'm saying?

Speaker 30 It's funny because I feel like the people that have so much to say are so miserable in their real lives.

Speaker 30 If we took five seconds to research them, which I would never even do because they're not worth our time, you'd really realize these people are a bunch of losers.

Speaker 32 Yeah.

Speaker 8 It was a hit piece.

Speaker 9 A hit piece.

Speaker 37 What a great line.

Speaker 38 They didn't remember that you, Ryan Cortez.

Speaker 1 I know my name.

Speaker 39 That

Speaker 7 come on.

Speaker 40 I am just bummed that

Speaker 2 I thought we had bonded with them.

Speaker 42 That's how you left the interview that you thought you had.

Speaker 44 I was like,

Speaker 45 I might be at this wedding.

Speaker 33 Like, I was hoping for a follow-up episode where we're at the wedding, listening to Michael Jordan give the best man's toast.

Speaker 37 Clap back, Pablo.

Speaker 13 Speaking of miserable assholes,

Speaker 2 what's next?

Speaker 26 Hey, Pablo.

Speaker 26 So I ate some really yummy Thai food last night, but it was so spicy. And this morning, I had the spicy shit of my life.

Speaker 26 And I just like don't feel good. It's like walking home from work.
It just felt gross all day.

Speaker 26 And it had me thinking about David Sampson.

Speaker 26 And I'm just wondering if you could find out if he has any strategies for like mitigating the impact of a spicy shit and also find out if his butthole is okay.

Speaker 50 Thanks.

Speaker 7 Thanks.

Speaker 46 I just want to say that I love that we are a safe space for listeners of all genders

Speaker 13 to confess how miserable their ass actually is.

Speaker 21 Yeah, I also have had the same question about how that's gone for him.

Speaker 13 So we had David Sampson on for an episode about how he lost smell and taste due to COVID and how

Speaker 48 truly because we did the hot ones like hot sauce challenge and he tasted hot sauces that were draped his wings in hot sauces that were like a zillion Scoville units or whatever it is and was totally unaffected.

Speaker 21 Allegedly.

Speaker 13 Well, I text him now

Speaker 8 and in the present tense, he reports this, quote, when it comes to hoop burn, use your imagination, my days are spent not with prevention, but treatment.

Speaker 25 I thought I was in the clear after the hot sauce challenge with Sean Evans, host of Hot Ones.

Speaker 36 72 hours later, things went horribly wrong.

Speaker 6 So I have two letters for you, A and D.

Speaker 17 I believe that's like an ointment that you put on like baby butts.

Speaker 19 And he says, unfortunately, my loss of taste and smell did not come with the concomitant loss of anal nerves, but the juice is worth the squeeze.

Speaker 56 So to translate it, please.

Speaker 17 Quote, my hole is on fire.

Speaker 21 Well, so here's the thing. I am not surprised because I believe David Sampson to be somewhat of a liar.

Speaker 58 And I will tell you why.

Speaker 21 Juan Galendo, our great, one of our great video editors, was telling me that he noticed out of the corner of his eye that after all of this took place in our studio, that David Sampson retreated to the back where like you could get milk and water and so forth.

Speaker 21 And David was alone. And Juan just saw him and was like noticing how David looked like he was in so much pain and he was like trying to hide it and he was sweating.

Speaker 18 So you are accusing David Sampson of fabricating the entire premise of this episode, which is that actually he feels everything.

Speaker 1 He's just doing this for attention.

Speaker 42 Oh, you put me in a tough spot because that is

Speaker 9 that David Sampson is Larsa Pippen.

Speaker 21 They both could use like, you know, some help.

Speaker 44 Next voicemail.

Speaker 60 Oh, what's up, Pablo? This is Jack calling from Venice, California. I have a college mascot question for you.
I know there's a long sorted history of indigenous mascots.

Speaker 60 Some are like the flagrant example of like the Chief Wahoo and the Washington football team I won't name. But we'd love your explanation on what the hell an Oklahoma sooner is.

Speaker 60 It's given real killer of the flower moon energy to me, but would love your take. Let me know if I'm on the right track with it being particularly bad or maybe it's harmless.

Speaker 27 So he's asking us to tell him whether or not this is a problematic mascot and where this mascot even comes from.

Speaker 21 Something we need to know about all mascots.

Speaker 13 It's honestly helpful for me to know this. I did not know this.

Speaker 1 We reached out to David Gran, author of Killers of the Flower Moon.

Speaker 38 I read that. One of the great nonfiction writers on the planet.

Speaker 6 Who wrote the book, Yes, of the New Yorker, who wrote the book that got turned into the Scorsese movie, and he gave us this.

Speaker 63 It turns out that the term dates back to the land runs of the late 19th century in what was then Indian Territory and is now part of the state of Oklahoma. The U.S.

Speaker 63 government had a long policy of trying to drive Native Americans off their lands and open up these prairies and territories to white settlers. And so it had arranged to have these races.

Speaker 63 They were these mad dashes for lands where at the sound of a gun, settlers would gather and at that sound they would race down.

Speaker 63 And if they got to a parcel of land first and put in their stake, they would lay claim to it during the land run of 1893

Speaker 63 thousands tens of thousands of settlers gathered waiting for the start of the gun and the term sooner came from those who tried to sneak across the line early so i didn't know any of that the idea that okay it's not that the nickname itself is like problematic but the people it describes Apparently are these people who were these settlers that were treating like Native American land like it was a Walmart Walmart on Black Friday.

Speaker 21 Also, it's pretty amazing that like this amazing author from the New Yorker and all these books is like wasting his time answering our questions. I do love that.
It's amazing.

Speaker 20 I love that David Gran answered our mascot question.

Speaker 36 Yes, thank you.

Speaker 14 But speaking of people desperately trying to be first,

Speaker 62 what's next?

Speaker 26 Yo, Pablo, Billy from Brooklyn. I saw on Twitter, X, that Woes blocked you.
What the hell could you have done to deserve that?

Speaker 6 Why is it about what I must have done you probably did something let's

Speaker 13 i want to be clear about this whole entire thing i'm not here to be as messy as the top of the show indicates actually i'm not realizing how much i am apparently this controversial character how'd you discover you were blocked so the morning of the hardened trade i get all these texts and i'm like what the happened and i go of course to the nba's biggest newsbreaker and I find out that the man who broke the hardened trade had blocked me.

Speaker 68 Seams blocked you?

Speaker 20 Oh, God.

Speaker 69 Set me up for that.

Speaker 69 Wow.

Speaker 58 So Woach blocked me.

Speaker 14 Woge blocked me, which is strange because I am, of course, his former full-time colleague, now part-time colleague at ESPN.

Speaker 41 And so I don't know what I did.

Speaker 23 I was surprised to learn.

Speaker 6 And my only theory is that because I work for Metalark and I work with you,

Speaker 66 that the Miami Heat propagandists have put a stain on my good name.

Speaker 21 You might be right in terms of me being to blame for this because I have my own story story with woj in the past on twitter what

Speaker 21 i do with a lot of people you do so i had been following woj for many years as most people do and i noticed one day i got a notification that said adrian wojanowski followed you back and i said oh i missed you he used to follow me as well i was like proud and showing people yo woj follows me now and like two days later i noticed wojan followed me And that shit pissed me off.

Speaker 8 So you unfollowed me?

Speaker 58 You had the nerve to go to my pro you were that busy.

Speaker 21 You're the busiest man and news breaking and you hate my profile so much that you had to unfollow me.

Speaker 58 So he blocked you. Yeah.
He unfollowed me.

Speaker 59 Yeah.

Speaker 20 At least I'm not blocked. Yeah.

Speaker 42 So he really doesn't like it.

Speaker 1 I have breaking news for you.

Speaker 20 You undoubtedly just got blocked.

Speaker 27 I love our callers, man.

Speaker 16 They're the best.

Speaker 45 They're the best.

Speaker 18 They leave voicemails that sometimes just sync perfectly with the that I'm already like wanting to investigate.

Speaker 21 We can't say it enough. 51385 Pablo.

Speaker 45 That's right.

Speaker 27 Call us and we may we may play your voicemail like we are right now.

Speaker 71 Hey, Pablo, this is Butterfly Jones gone from beautiful Key West, Florida. Longtime listener, first time caller.

Speaker 71 And I was hoping you could find out who writes the beautiful, the incredible tweets by Magic Johnson.

Speaker 71 They are so amazingly earnest, but they read like GPT negative 3.5 combined with the enthusiasm of my great aunt Patty.

Speaker 61 They are spectacular, and I want to know who's behind them. Thanks, Baba.

Speaker 21 There's nobody in the Twitter sphere who I'd want to know more who's behind that account than Magic Johnson. It's number one for me.

Speaker 48 It's an active mystery.

Speaker 45 And so, of course, we had to get to Magic Johnson, which is, it turns out, kind of difficult.

Speaker 21 But you remember you've met him before, right?

Speaker 33 I was there for that.

Speaker 52 I've interviewed him at Sports Illustrated a couple of times, actually.

Speaker 21 I know you're a journalist. Thank you for reminding that.

Speaker 42 back in the day you did journalists.

Speaker 33 I recorded stories quoting him.

Speaker 21 Back when you and I did high noon on ESPN at the Seaport office at ESPN, there was a day, if you remember, I believe it was 2019.

Speaker 56 I don't think it's that helpful to relive this.

Speaker 1 No, it is. It is, dude.

Speaker 21 Magic Johnson came to the office, and it was embarrassing what you did. Yeah.

Speaker 49 Y'all shoot here too?

Speaker 8 Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 12 So you had to move for you because you were in North Carolina.

Speaker 49 I was in North Carolina.

Speaker 49 Yeah.

Speaker 12 So congrats, man. We're trying to be like you, man.
You're the best TV star in this building.

Speaker 49 TV star.

Speaker 75 A businessman now. Just business.

Speaker 8 And the suit of a businessman.

Speaker 75 Well, you know, I got to run my business. Matter of fact, I'm running into a meeting after this.
Absolutely. All right.
God bless you.

Speaker 75 Take care.

Speaker 28 I am cringing

Speaker 19 so hard that I'm like becoming smaller.

Speaker 37 So some background.

Speaker 21 I'm filming that, obviously.

Speaker 21 And the reason that it's clipped off in that manner, sort of abruptly, is I was furiously trying to get my phone out because you're sprinting to hop over a couch to go say hello to Magic Johnson.

Speaker 21 The video picks up with the first words of you saying to him after having climbed a couch to dap him. We can see eye to eye as if you're like marveling at.

Speaker 8 Yes, dude, you stumped on a couch. Of course you can.

Speaker 24 I stood on a couch like Tom Cruise being interviewed by Oprah.

Speaker 43 Are you embarrassed? Of course. I mean,

Speaker 44 the visuals on this are great, admittedly.

Speaker 6 Like there's a...

Speaker 45 The dap I delivered.

Speaker 58 Was it worth it?

Speaker 21 You got the clout of like, hey, I dapped him up.

Speaker 15 Yeah, but it was, it's not worth it.

Speaker 4 There's like a leg kick.

Speaker 2 I like sort of like wound up because I cared about the dap so much that I kicked my leg out like a pitcher.

Speaker 27 So what's sad now, even sadder now to me, is that despite that clear connection that me and Magic made

Speaker 62 from atop that couch, when I reached out to Magic Johnson's people, because of course he's a businessman with many people, to go to the front door on this topic, we were told the following, okay?

Speaker 16 Quote, thank you for reaching out. Unfortunately, Mr.

Speaker 48 Johnson respectfully declines to participate.

Speaker 25 He is elected not to discuss the behind the scenes of his social strategy.

Speaker 16 End quote.

Speaker 1 That was from the vice president of Magic Johnson Enterprises, Alexia Grievous Henderson. But I was energized.

Speaker 48 And so what I did was I reached out to a different Hollywood power broker,

Speaker 23 an actor in this case, that I know has also been obsessed with this now official mystery, by the way.

Speaker 40 What do they have to hide?

Speaker 56 And so, yeah, I

Speaker 34 called up Rob Lowe.

Speaker 14 And so, Rob Lowe, what was the first memory you have of meeting Magic Johnson?

Speaker 3 You know, we, we met because we were both basically the same age from the Midwest. He's from Michigan.
I'm from Ohio.

Speaker 3 We're in Los Angeles. We're young.
We're having success and we're on each other's radar. And so that was obviously the initial

Speaker 3 commonality. But then over the years, you know, I got to know him as a man.
And

Speaker 3 it was really through amount of time spent in and around the Lakers and the Laker organization, traveling on the road, on the team plane.

Speaker 3 You know,

Speaker 3 Riley, you know, at one point banned me from staying in the same hotel because.

Speaker 18 Wait, why?

Speaker 24 Why were you banned by Pat Riley?

Speaker 3 well because it was the 80s and i was single

Speaker 3 and you were a bad influence rob low that's why you were banned i was a very bad influence on the lakers i mean well lakers love me riley not so much

Speaker 3 and it was during those years it was during the format where it was like two three two yeah yeah yeah so you'd be in detroit forever Three, three games in Detroit.

Speaker 37 You're like, there's not a lot to do up by the Pontiac Silverdome.

Speaker 3 So, you know, you can do the math. And Riley was not a fan of that.

Speaker 8 No, understandably.

Speaker 1 Maggie Johnson, by the way, was just named one of the four

Speaker 19 current or former athletes to ever become a billionaire, right?

Speaker 11 So it's him, LeBron, Michael Jordan, Tiger Woods. That was this week.

Speaker 13 But inside of that larger context is this ongoing fascination that many people have around

Speaker 33 his Twitter account.

Speaker 5 Yes.

Speaker 77 And I think you know this.

Speaker 1 You've been on pardon my take talking to them about it, but you're like the foremost source.

Speaker 44 You have advanced the ball more than any other human being on the question of like, what is up with Magic Johnson's Twitter account?

Speaker 29 And you take pride in this, I imagine, at this point, you're laughing at me asking this.

Speaker 79 Yeah, I mean, listen,

Speaker 79 I have it on very good authority.

Speaker 37 Yes.

Speaker 36 That he

Speaker 3 dictates it. He has somebody who, he, you know, whatever occurs to him.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 with the emphasis on whatever occurs to him, it's the best. I mean, that's what Twitter was made for him.

Speaker 67 Made. Exactly.

Speaker 78 But I'll ask Magic next time I see him.

Speaker 3 I'm going to say, the world wants to know. Yes.
Are you seated in a big smoking chair?

Speaker 3 Are you doing it in a walk and talk?

Speaker 80 Is there a fleet? Because you're a billionaire now.

Speaker 3 So I'm assuming it's a fleet of people, not just one person,

Speaker 3 who's instantly, you know, putting it in on their phone.

Speaker 10 And if it's on their phone, how does that get on your Twitter?

Speaker 37 Like the world needs to know.

Speaker 13 Yes. I imagine like a nuclear football level of chain of custody here.

Speaker 80 My favorite is always like, we've got to do better when the Lakers are getting blown out.

Speaker 36 You know what I mean? You're like,

Speaker 8 I love that.

Speaker 13 His catchphrases are stuff like, quote, tonight we learned the world champion Denver Nuggets are going to be very tough to beat in the NBA playoffs period.

Speaker 29 Quote, we're all disappointed that our Dodgers didn't hit or pitch well.

Speaker 46 That's why we lost the series to the Diamondbacks.

Speaker 68 Exclamation point, which is, and the exclamation points, Rob, are notable because for him, on the Magic Johnson emotional curve, that thing is Martin Luther nailing the 95 theses to the door.

Speaker 3 When I was on the West Wing,

Speaker 3 Aaron Sorkin will not use an exclamation point ever.

Speaker 36 Oh, wow.

Speaker 3 It could literally, he could, in the script, it could say

Speaker 3 President Bartlin is shot.

Speaker 3 No exclamation point. No, he does not believe in them.
His theory with exclamation points is that it's the hackiest, sweatiest

Speaker 3 thing that you can do to make something sound exciting that probably isn't. I happen to disagree with that.
I think an exclamation point,

Speaker 3 there's absolutely a place to, they're overused for sure but i don't go the other way where it's like you don't use them i mean to me that's a bridge too far on the scale of of writing sensibility on one end is magic johnson on the other end is aaron sorket and you're not going to confuse their twitter accounts you're just not going to yes by the way are they preloaded right

Speaker 37 listen listen there's a world

Speaker 3 Where what was preloaded wasn't. Give me the quote about about why the Dodgers lost it.
Give it to me again.

Speaker 34 We're all disappointed that our Dodgers didn't hit or pitch well.

Speaker 15 That's why we lost the series to the Diamondbacks exclamation point.

Speaker 3 Okay, so that's preloaded. Also preloaded is

Speaker 3 how about that Dodger pitching and hitting? And that is why

Speaker 3 we swept the Diamondbacks.

Speaker 83 So you have the potential world in which Magic Johnson is a man for all seasons and outcomes. He is ready with with a Magic Johnsonism, no matter the event and its results.

Speaker 37 Of course he is.

Speaker 3 That's why he's a billionaire. Of course he's ready for every eventuality.
It's like abstract art. It really is.
It's where you go, I'm pretty sure my kindergartner could have painted that.

Speaker 78 And yet your kindergartner didn't paint it.

Speaker 7 No.

Speaker 68 No, no. Jackson Pollack painted this.

Speaker 78 Jackson Pollock painted it. He's no kindergartner.

Speaker 3 And you know what else is a little bit in there? And this is, we have a mutual friend, Alan Yang, who wrote on the show that I did, Parks and Recreation.

Speaker 3 And one of my favorite characters in Parks and Recreation has a little bit of Irvin's Twitter in him, and that is Purd Hapley.

Speaker 22 Yes.

Speaker 74 Oh my God, dude.

Speaker 62 I had never connected this, but 100 million.

Speaker 47 6%.

Speaker 3 Magic's Twitter account has a little bit of Purd Hapley in it.

Speaker 35 For a female perspective on this scandal, we turn to a woman. Leslie Know, I'm about to ask you a question right now, and that question is this: the lewd photo, just how big a deal is it?

Speaker 52 Well, frankly, Purd, it's not that big a deal, if you know what I mean.

Speaker 35 I don't know what you mean, but it had the cadence of a joke.

Speaker 60 I'm Irvin Johnson, and I love to play basketball.

Speaker 84 It's hard work, but it's a lot of fun, it's a lot of things.

Speaker 53 But when the ball goes through that net, the team gets two points.

Speaker 16 Is there a person who is better at being rich than Magic Johnson?

Speaker 50 Oh.

Speaker 14 And I see Elon Musk as, of course, fantastically accomplished, wildly wealthy, real life Tony Stark, all of that stuff

Speaker 29 on top of the culture war shit.

Speaker 41 But the point being, I watch him on Twitter and I'm like, oh, that's a man whose brain has been eaten by the internet.

Speaker 41 It seems like he is doing Twitter, the product he bought for $44 billion incorrectly.

Speaker 66 And then in contrast, again, on this scale of extremes, I see Magic Johnson.

Speaker 40 And I'm like, that guy seems happy.

Speaker 37 He is happy,

Speaker 80 for sure.

Speaker 3 One of the things I love so much about Irvin/slash Magic is their outlook on life. And

Speaker 3 it's not a pose.

Speaker 3 It's not an image. It really is, you know, who he is.

Speaker 79 And that sort of like guileless,

Speaker 3 enthusiastic,

Speaker 36 straightforward, no bullshit.

Speaker 3 And I don't want to say childlike because that has a connection that it's somehow unsophisticated or not smart.

Speaker 10 And I'm not saying that.

Speaker 9 But there is a purity, though.

Speaker 78 A purity.

Speaker 3 Yeah. It's a purity about it.
And,

Speaker 3 you know,

Speaker 3 you read LeBron James's thing and you get he's always trying to be Nilson Mandela.

Speaker 41 Right.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 magic/slash Irving is just being himself.

Speaker 27 This is maybe the thing about his Twitter account is that it's so authentically his voice that you wonder, like,

Speaker 68 is it just a performance because it's so consistent?

Speaker 66 And then you're like, well,

Speaker 41 why am I being cynical about this?

Speaker 79 It's a gift.

Speaker 37 Just accept the gift.

Speaker 76 Just accept the gift.

Speaker 3 It's one of the few, by the way, it might be the only joy left on Twitter.

Speaker 47 Absolutely. Rob, absolutely.

Speaker 47 The only joy I have left is Magic Johnson on July 17th of this summer posting on Twitter, quote, Positano, Italy is so beautiful and they grow the biggest lemons I've ever seen in my life.

Speaker 36 Exclamation point.

Speaker 3 It just puts a smile on your face.

Speaker 41 We're both grinning in a very sincere way because without even showing you the tweet, you know that Magic Johnson in both hands is double-fisting giant Italian lemons.

Speaker 36 Giant.

Speaker 44 And they're so big.

Speaker 3 Giant lemons.

Speaker 66 There's the question of like when the aliens come, who do we want to nominate as our like gladiator on behalf of Earth?

Speaker 44 And people are always like, it's clearly LeBron James. And I'm like, if we want to.

Speaker 76 Who?

Speaker 80 Who's nominating him?

Speaker 78 Who?

Speaker 76 Oh, wait, what?

Speaker 48 The greatest physical specimen that Earth has to

Speaker 10 competition. Because Because we assume this is the thing, Rob.

Speaker 76 This is the thing.

Speaker 36 But people assume that we're going to want to go to war with the aliens.

Speaker 68 And meanwhile, what you and I are on the same wavelength about, I think, is that if we want to like diplomatically figure some stuff out, I want Irvin Magic Johnson with two giant lemons approaching.

Speaker 3 Here's my pitch on Irvin's tweet post meeting the aliens.

Speaker 8 Okay.

Speaker 3 Met with the aliens, period.

Speaker 3 They are not what I expected. Exclamation mark.

Speaker 13 That's it.

Speaker 24 You nailed it. Isn't that it?

Speaker 40 I can't improve on that. And

Speaker 44 there would be a photo of Magic Johnson grinning ear to ear.

Speaker 76 hand over shoulder with a fing alien.

Speaker 36 With a gray.

Speaker 3 The gray can barely be in the photo because the grays are like two and a half feet tall.

Speaker 3 You should do it. I'm sure you must do a parlor game, parlor trick game where you have three,

Speaker 3 you have three quotes and two of them are fake Magic Johnson and one of them is real. You have to do that.
Sure.

Speaker 36 Absolutely.

Speaker 69 We're going to find some Purd Happily best ofs and we're going to, that's, I mean, that could be the game.

Speaker 76 Which is

Speaker 36 Purd Happily or Magic Johnson.

Speaker 73 I mean, that's a

Speaker 3 really good. Okay, let's do this.
Let's get Sher, Yang, you, and me on the pod like this, and play it.

Speaker 36 Done.

Speaker 50 I'm in.

Speaker 13 Rob Lowe, on that note, all I have to say to you is, in the words of Magic Johnson, thank you, exclamation point.

Speaker 78 Thanks, man. That was fun.

Speaker 21 I knew the name Rob Lowe going into the video, but like I didn't know who he was.

Speaker 42 I didn't know who he was. I'm young.
What do you want me to do?

Speaker 27 Please tell me you appreciated what just happened there.

Speaker 21 I got lost watching it because there was a moment where I said, Oh, I know who that is. I recognized him.

Speaker 29 The Westway. No, no, no, no.

Speaker 47 Parks and Rec.

Speaker 32 No, I'm probably Outsiders.

Speaker 29 Great movie.

Speaker 37 No, Austin Powers, bro.

Speaker 8 The eye patch. I remember him.

Speaker 59 Young number two.

Speaker 19 I just want our new friend of the show, Rob Lowe, to know that I understand his oeuvre, even though Ryan Cortez, by the way, you also like discovered rock and roll as a concept

Speaker 22 over the pandemic.

Speaker 76 Nirvana, bro.

Speaker 44 So this is all,

Speaker 38 this is a love language, Cortez.

Speaker 5 But I did also want to be fair to any skeptics out there who wanted the actual answer to the question

Speaker 19 our great listener left, right?

Speaker 45 Because we know now that it's Magic Johnson dictating the tweets.

Speaker 2 We know it's his voice incontrovertibly.

Speaker 77 But in terms of the person who is physically writing them, who is writing this account,

Speaker 1 there was even more digging that I had to do.

Speaker 62 Okay, what'd you find out?

Speaker 2 So they wanted to keep all this a secret, obviously, the social media strategy.

Speaker 56 But I did all of these, I truly like investigated this. I did all of these interviews on background.

Speaker 16 I got to somebody who was in the room actually while it was happening, Magic Johnson with this mystery person

Speaker 74 posting to the account.

Speaker 14 And what I was told, okay, the person who physically posts for Magic Johnson was none other

Speaker 52 than Alexia Grievous Henderson.

Speaker 45 Herself.

Speaker 21 That's the name from the email, right?

Speaker 44 That is the person who emailed us

Speaker 1 saying that they elect not to discuss the social media strategy is the person behind the social media strategy.

Speaker 21 I'm proud of you, man. Like, that's actual journalism.
You did it again. Good reporting by you.

Speaker 4 We got to the bottom

Speaker 29 of just, yeah, the greatest rich persons.

Speaker 20 Should she get a raise, you think?

Speaker 17 You know, if she wants to maybe help put me in touch with Magic so I can dap him up on like C-level, maybe we can, yeah, work out a recommendation, a public endorsement from Pablo Torre finds out.

Speaker 11 Cortez, it's obvious to everybody that we are the smart show at Metalark Media.

Speaker 51 Dude, I mean, there was a time we... He was in the chair.

Speaker 62 Okay.

Speaker 36 I mean, I didn't want to say it, but now I'll say it.

Speaker 21 There was a time we had Action Bronson on and he was talking about shit into a warm toilet and how it emptied out his whole bowel system.

Speaker 52 As well as Deesus telling us that

Speaker 34 the poop in a crack house reminded him of creme brulee.

Speaker 20 Okay, the smartest show at Metalark.

Speaker 34 A little crust on the top.

Speaker 52 But I do want to get to an objectively smart voicemail about an objectively smart topic, if we could.

Speaker 87 Pablo, got a good idea for you. We need to find out who of the Wu-Tang clan is the best chess player.

Speaker 87 I've read a number of articles over the years that they played chess together when they were recording the 36 chambers. Rizza and Jizza seem to be the most open about their chess playing experiences.

Speaker 87 And Jizza said he played 78 hours straight against Master Killer. So who's the best? You need to find out who of the Wu Tang is the best chess player.

Speaker 21 Now, I've heard of a lot of those people, obviously. Shout out to Nirvana.
You know, I discovered rock music.

Speaker 3 The musical knowledge is not the best.

Speaker 56 This is, I like how the through line of this episode is Ryan Cortez finds out what music is.

Speaker 1 It's amazing. Proceed.

Speaker 36 Yes.

Speaker 21 So I just wanted to know who all is in the Wu-Tang clan.

Speaker 17 Okay, so this is a hard question for even like the most Wu-Tangologists to answer because, again, I just want to re-rack this for everybody, right?

Speaker 1 There are lots of people in the Wu-Tang clan.

Speaker 23 They're, according to several actual music critics, one of the greatest just groups ever, let alone rap groups based in Staten Island and they love chess and if I have any credibility with the Wu-Tang clan it's because they get the vibe of of you know people who maybe like yeah like to do some nerdy things sometimes and so they have songs about chess they play chess and there are lots of possible answers here to answer your question as to who the best chess player might be because there is method man there's old dirty bastard there is raekwan there is ghostface there is mastakilla there's capadana you god um inspected Deck, Rizza, Jizza.

Speaker 46 There are lots of candidates.

Speaker 21 Inspector Deck, that's a good name.

Speaker 16 It's a great name.

Speaker 57 Interesting.

Speaker 11 And so, what we did was we reached out to our reporting intern to get to the bottom of this story, Dan Lebitard.

Speaker 81 I've heard of him.

Speaker 1 To get a comment from Method Man himself.

Speaker 88 Hey, Dan, what's up?

Speaker 88 It never ends, right?

Speaker 49 You see my hat?

Speaker 49 Yeah.

Speaker 88 King's in New York right now, you know.

Speaker 88 I'm just thinking, thinking, what if Anne Rodgers never got hurt?

Speaker 1 And this was mostly just Method Man giving us Jets takes.

Speaker 36 Is that Stu Gotzer Method?

Speaker 32 I know.

Speaker 67 He's wearing a Jets hat.

Speaker 65 He's like lying down on like a floor somewhere.

Speaker 62 But he did follow up, thankfully, with a text message where he put three names, three names on the medal stand of best chess player in the Bu-Tang clan.

Speaker 16 He mentioned Mastakilla.

Speaker 2 He mentioned Ghostface, and he mentioned Jizza.

Speaker 13 And that also, obviously, was not enough for my journalistic tastes.

Speaker 1 And so we called up the first name that he mentioned.

Speaker 38 So this is an honor for me.

Speaker 47 I need to tell you that.

Speaker 83 I'm a fan and also a journalist with a question.

Speaker 41 Do I call you Killer?

Speaker 82 What should I, Pablo Torre, say to you as a way of addressing you?

Speaker 34 What do you prefer?

Speaker 81 Call me Jamel, man.

Speaker 20 That's easy. Master Killer.

Speaker 81 Master Master Killer is what I do.

Speaker 82 Jamel, I got some intel.

Speaker 47 And I should say that our source is your colleague, Method Man, who power ranked the three greatest chess players in the Wu-Tang clan.

Speaker 38 And the medals stand in no particular order is you,

Speaker 29 Ghostface, and Jizza.

Speaker 66 Does that sound right?

Speaker 9 What's your scattering report?

Speaker 73 Well,

Speaker 72 if he said i was number one that's that's correct

Speaker 56 you didn't provide an order but i'm open to your order this is why i'm calling you up i'll be honest and say you know the number one slot could go between me jizza and rizza at any given time what's crazy about this to me is that there's actually like plausible cases for so many of you guys like i don't know if you know this but i just saw an article out of like arizona uh recently where like capadana was like working some sort of like chess tournament for kids like he showed up there and i was like

Speaker 81 am i breaking news to you about this that's definitely news to me yeah

Speaker 81 you know i think we all play chess in our own ways you know because you know it's definitely um i would say affiliated with with life you know what i mean it teaches you so many lessons that's what drew me to the game in itself just the patience the patience that you learn.

Speaker 82 And how often did you guys play against each other? I'm asking you to rank.

Speaker 45 Every day.

Speaker 50 Every day.

Speaker 81 Every day.

Speaker 81 Me and Jizza

Speaker 81 played

Speaker 84 72 games one day.

Speaker 50 I'm shocked.

Speaker 67 72 consecutive in one day.

Speaker 84 72.

Speaker 72 We started like that morning.

Speaker 76 And we ended late at night.

Speaker 84 I mean, we took breaks and we ate it and we, you know, listened to music or whatever, but the whole day

Speaker 84 we just played chess all day. I mean, we had so many days like that, but that particular day,

Speaker 84 we played like 72 straight.

Speaker 81 We counted it 72. Yeah, we love it, man.

Speaker 54 What was the

Speaker 45 win-loss record for you, Masta Killa, playing Jizza 72 games consecutively in one day?

Speaker 84 Oh, man, I can't remember the win-loss, but more than likely, I was on top, you know.

Speaker 14 What's your scouting report, right?

Speaker 1 So I want a self-scouting report of Master Killa by Master Killa on how he plays chess versus the other members of the Wu-Tang clan.

Speaker 33 What distinguishes your game?

Speaker 81 I'm just a little natural with it, you know.

Speaker 84 Some of my brothers, you know, they study books, which you should.

Speaker 81 I mean, knowledge is infinite.

Speaker 84 So you can never stop learning.

Speaker 81 There's always room for improvement. There's always room to learn.

Speaker 84 You know, some of my brothers, they study different chess masters. I'm just a natural.
I absorb and adapt to my opponent, you know, and I like to just stay free like that.

Speaker 84 I don't like to box myself into any, you know, certain openings or, you know,

Speaker 84 I just like to be free with it.

Speaker 82 I'm hearing you say between the lines that you're unpredictable.

Speaker 38 Some of your nerd friends in the Wu-Tang clan are more predictable.

Speaker 13 That's what I got from your scouting report this time.

Speaker 81 I think we're all nerds.

Speaker 46 I get the sense reading between the lines here again that you like the psychological warfare of an in-person chess game.

Speaker 81 Yeah, I love it, man.

Speaker 84 Like I said, you know, nothing like moving to pieces.

Speaker 72 You know, nothing like hitting the clock, you know, right here.

Speaker 72 Nothing like a little smack talk.

Speaker 72 right there in your face.

Speaker 84 You know, it's nothing like that.

Speaker 84 It's nothing like the thrill of that, you know muhammad ali won a lot of his fights before he even entered the ring you know mike tyson had you intimidated before you even entered the ring you know so i kind of took a little bit of their strategies and um

Speaker 84 you know if i can shake you before you get no 64 squares and half the battle is won have there been great

Speaker 18 rap songs, lyrics about chess?

Speaker 47 Whether, I don't know if you've written them.

Speaker 10 I don't know if you've performed them.

Speaker 1 What's the best example of that?

Speaker 84 I'm sure that

Speaker 81 a lot of artists have made some references to chess, you know, because I know

Speaker 84 more than just the Wu-Chang clan plays chess.

Speaker 20 I know that.

Speaker 84 I think Jay-Z plays.

Speaker 90 Over my years, I've seen looks get taken by the night. Losing crown, we're trying to defend the queen.

Speaker 8 Check me before it moves.

Speaker 65 Wait a minute now, though. I'm realizing.

Speaker 9 Okay, so I know Jay-Z plays chess too.

Speaker 1 So if I'm telling you, Mastaquilla in person versus Jay-Z at the chess board.

Speaker 84 Oh, Jay's going down.

Speaker 76 Jay's going down. Jay's going down.

Speaker 80 It's either you give a lesson or you learn one.

Speaker 84 You know, there's no losses in chess.

Speaker 84 But that day, I'll be given a lesson.

Speaker 84 The patience of choice

Speaker 81 is the jewels of life.

Speaker 81 Think before you speak or move.

Speaker 8 And I think with that,

Speaker 84 you will be so much better off in life in general, in so many situations, probably all situations.

Speaker 46 Mastaquilla, the best chess player officially

Speaker 13 in the Wu-Tang clan.

Speaker 82 And I would say the king of all rappers when it comes to chess.

Speaker 82 Thank you for joining Pablo Torre finds out.

Speaker 84 i appreciate you thank you for having me brother

Speaker 21 bro the vibe of that guy pretty incredible when you like juxtapose what his name is mastakilla it is doesn't really seem like the type of guy that's going to murder you he's a great

Speaker 38 well he's a great hang and it is to your point um a bit ironic that mastequilla preaches patience and prudence more than a guy named parakeet cortez that feels uh a bit of a switch what do you you think I do on Twitter that's different?

Speaker 38 I know that you preach the opposite.

Speaker 19 I do want to get out of this topic, though, as we anoint Mastaquilla as, of course, the gold medalist in the Pablo Torre Finds Out chess tournament among all rappers by reminding you, Cortez, what Mastaquilla does actually rap about on the way out of this segment.

Speaker 21 I'd like to know.

Speaker 91 Homicides are legal and death is a penalty. Word justifies the homicide when he dies in his own iniquity.
It's the master of the mantis raptor coming at you.

Speaker 52 All right, so Master Killer's vibe did inspire me some.

Speaker 13 He wanted me to own

Speaker 38 my nerd dom.

Speaker 27 And so let's get even nerdier at the end here, which is a dangerous thing, of course, but what's next?

Speaker 61 Hey, Pablo.

Speaker 61 What I'd like you to find out is

Speaker 61 where does human evolution stop?

Speaker 61 Are we just going to get a new Victor Wemen Yama every 15 years where they break all the, you know, anatomical molds?

Speaker 61 Or is there some sort of leveling out that will eventually have to happen before,

Speaker 61 what's your phrase, bag of meat and bones, we all just fall apart and nothing works anymore.

Speaker 84 Love the show.

Speaker 61 Hope you use it.

Speaker 19 So thank you for loving the show.

Speaker 48 But the word is meat sack.

Speaker 44 So, we called up for this story my smartest science friend, Cortez.

Speaker 70 You know him, David Epstein, the best sports science writer in America, the man who wrote a bestseller, a best-selling book, Range, and also the sports gene.

Speaker 33 Those are his two bestsellers.

Speaker 33 What's funny about this one is that he pointed out that the answer to this listener's question is actually less about the genes of the next great athletic specimen than, like, also

Speaker 48 access to sports itself.

Speaker 20 Okay.

Speaker 86 I think we probably overestimate the portion of the global population that has real access to any reasonable opportunity to do sports.

Speaker 86 Like Pablo, I think I mentioned to you that at the recent world championships in track and field, a guy from Botswana won a medal in the 100 meters.

Speaker 86 That was the first African man to win a medal in the 100 meters in the world championships.

Speaker 36 Wow. The first.

Speaker 29 I would have taken the over.

Speaker 24 Right.

Speaker 86 Whereas many people of recent African ancestry have won many, many medals in the 100 meters in the world championships. And I think that just goes to show that

Speaker 86 most people in the world don't have real access to this kind of stuff, to training.

Speaker 18 You overestimate the idea that the people who could compete are already competing.

Speaker 86 Yeah, so I think there's tons of hidden or undeveloped talent out there.

Speaker 86 As sports get more competitive, more people are selected out either because of their genes or because of their opportunities and training environment and stuff like that.

Speaker 86 So I think there's a lot of the world still,

Speaker 86 you know, still a lot of talent to explore. A lot of the increase in height over generations has been nutrition and decreased childhood infection, things that stunt height.

Speaker 86 But some of it has also been

Speaker 86 assorted mating, taller people having kids with taller people. And if you look at this research, even people who have higher VO2 max, which is their ability to

Speaker 86 move oxygen through their body to get it to their muscles, it's a predictor of endurance, tend to have kids with other people who have higher VO2 max, right?

Speaker 86 So there may be a lot of this so-called assortive mating, which is people procreating based on characteristics that are similar, whether they think about them or not, that I certainly think could have an impact.

Speaker 86 I still think, though, that there's a lot of ground left to be had in more, more, again, so-called freaks and just like giving access and opportunity to a lot of the world that doesn't have it.

Speaker 55 Right. So, in other words, Victor Wembanyamas, which is to say, guys guys who are increasingly extreme,

Speaker 74 tall, long, thin in ways that would be truly like as if, I don't know, Bob Koozi were to encounter an alien.

Speaker 46 More guys like that, you can see arriving, but simply because they're already out there and now they might have a more comfortable fit on an NBA team.

Speaker 86 You know, and maybe pro like NBA and WNBA players having kids, like, you know, two people who are seven feet tall

Speaker 86 have a kid it's still unlikely that that kid is going to be seven feet tall because that's so extreme but it's way more likely than just a random chance that they're going to be seven feet tall so i do think that you know athletes having kids could could have some some impact i got a very clear message from you which is that victor wambanyama uh

Speaker 29 better have a lot of sex

Speaker 85 I mean, look, if there were a thing,

Speaker 86 if, if it were like you were treating it like a horse, right? Like certain people's breeding rights would go for a lot of horse.

Speaker 19 Oh man, dude, his semen would be

Speaker 1 so expensive.

Speaker 21 What you just said, ridiculous though it is, is humbling to me as someone under six feet compared to Victor Wimbinyama.

Speaker 27 Like my semen, I didn't want to say it.

Speaker 21 Is it not going to be worth as much as Victor Wimbinyama? Because that seems unfair. I have a great Twitter account.

Speaker 52 Cortez, what you found out today is that your semen is mid.

Speaker 39 No,

Speaker 21 that's just one man's opinion.

Speaker 83 I mean, it's science's opinion. I mean, I'm not saying that mine is like, you know, premium grade

Speaker 37 height-wise. Well, hold on.

Speaker 29 My boat is definitely taller than your boat.

Speaker 21 I mean, it's marginally taller.

Speaker 62 I mean, relative to Victor Mbanyama, fair.

Speaker 57 But, but, but speaking of, of, of

Speaker 62 climax, um,

Speaker 13 David also did point out something interesting, which is that we've probably climaxed as a species in terms of height.

Speaker 19 Like Victor Mbanyama, you know, seven foot four and rising, architecturally, athletically, we're probably not going to do taller than him, not much taller, even though there have been like exceptions.

Speaker 21 It feels like as much as we can push it, unless he's standing on the couch, you mean?

Speaker 59 I'm just saying. I mean, that's all.

Speaker 40 Unless he's standing on a couch or, you know,

Speaker 62 trying to f a WNBA all-star, okay, which I'm also in favor of, by the way.

Speaker 17 There's, in that case, only one way to find out. For the gene pool.

Speaker 20 Exactly.

Speaker 25 What's next?

Speaker 71 Pablo, you need to find out where Cotton Ball is now what happened with him you have to find out where he is now find out pablo

Speaker 11 so this is a an appropriately desperate plea because we did this episode one of my favorite episodes i love all our episodes like they're my kids but this one our interview with maury povich was special and

Speaker 36 it was special because we watched mori with mori

Speaker 54 and cortez my favorite clip from that whole thing was the clip of uh one of the phobia episodes that moripovich would do and these were iconic.

Speaker 27 And this one in specific, and this is a genre where people who are terrified of confront that

Speaker 2 in studio in person.

Speaker 14 And this woman, Emily, had a very clear phobia,

Speaker 50 which was cotton balls.

Speaker 21 You know what I'm going to ask you. You know why we're here.
Did you do your job? Did you find this guy?

Speaker 11 I am pleased to tell America that we have located cotton ball man.

Speaker 36 We got him.

Speaker 89 I have done things with cotton that nobody's done.

Speaker 89 And that's dawn,

Speaker 89 you know,

Speaker 89 an entire suit made of cotton.

Speaker 63 No, you've got to confront your phobia now. This is the famous Maury Show

Speaker 88 Cotton Ball Man.

Speaker 89 My name is Jimmy Shearman, and I've worked for the Maury Show for

Speaker 89 over 20 years. I was a driver, I was a travel assistant, I I was an audience coordinator.
Then eventually I became a field producer.

Speaker 89 The thought process when approaching a role like Cotton Man,

Speaker 89 you have to keep in mind that Cotton Man

Speaker 89 is evil. He's a

Speaker 89 demonic beast.

Speaker 89 He's there to kind of terrorize.

Speaker 89 So in approaching that role, you know, back in the day, I used to do a lot of side acting for the show where I would be, you know, a jealous spouse murdering his wife or whatever.

Speaker 89 I think I took some of that intensity from those roles and applied it to the

Speaker 89 beast that is Cotton Man.

Speaker 89 And I remember getting the outfit and it was basically like oven mitts.

Speaker 89 with cotton balls glued all over them.

Speaker 89 And

Speaker 89 I think it was like a box cut with holes cut for the eyes and just cottonballs glued all over it.

Speaker 79 You're backstage, okay, get out there.

Speaker 89 And you're just, you know, Frankenstein coming to,

Speaker 89 you know,

Speaker 89 coming to wreak havoc on this person, this poor person, this poor unsuspecting person, and, you know, basically reveal their biggest fear.

Speaker 88 Cotton ball man.

Speaker 89 I followed her partially and I think someone stopped me, possibly, because, you know,

Speaker 89 there came a time where it was like, okay, the joke is too, like, we don't want to get too mean.

Speaker 63 Bring her back here. Emily, come here.
There's nobody up here.

Speaker 89 And if the person's really freaking out, like, let's just cut it. So I think security might have stopped me or something like that.

Speaker 89 I don't think wearing the suit made me afraid of cotton. I still wear cotton.
I wear cotton shirts and cotton underwear and just like everybody else.

Speaker 89 Yeah, I don't think that it increased my fear of cotton or anything. I don't have a fear of cotton.
I don't like the way it feels sometimes. Being the cotton man, I think I know cotton.

Speaker 41 Wait a minute.

Speaker 77 So wait, can we just replay him saying what his name is for the record again, just real quick?

Speaker 89 My name is Jimmy Shearman.

Speaker 41 Jimmy Shearman, Cortez.

Speaker 20 That's ironic.

Speaker 40 I mean, it's more than ironic.

Speaker 29 There's a better word for it, actually.

Speaker 20 Go ahead, right?

Speaker 40 It's aptronymic.

Speaker 62 An aptronym.

Speaker 52 It's a name that's amusingly appropriate for the occupation of the person that has said name.

Speaker 85 How did you know that? That's amazing.

Speaker 77 James Jimmy Shearman. Right.

Speaker 40 Shearman is cottonball man.

Speaker 53 I mean, I'm just glad that he gave a middle finger to God when he took this position.

Speaker 47 513-85 Pablo, please, please call, send Ryan Cortez more musical suggestions so we can find out.

Speaker 17 I don't know who the f Beethoven is.

Speaker 21 Shout out to Rage Against the Machine.

Speaker 36 God, none of this is a joke.

Speaker 20 Bro, rock music is amazing.

Speaker 12 I'm just saying, it's so good. You don't say

Speaker 52 this has been Pablo Torre finds out a Meadowlark media production.