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

Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out.

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

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

Okay.

Met with the Aliens, period.

They are not what I expected.

Exclamation mark.

Right after this ad.

You're listening to Giraffe Kings Network.

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

In what way?

We have a number, 51385 Pablo.

People call that number with

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

I know, I know.

Shout out to these people for the mailbag.

I appreciate that.

It's not a mailbag.

It's a detective agency.

Again, we're not doing the stupid mailbag thing that every show does.

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

If we can play that first non-mailbag voicemail.

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.

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

Please and thanks.

Bye.

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.

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

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.

You know, we did a podcast a week ago.

We did Pablo Torre's podcast.

And

they talked a lot of shit.

They talked a lot

of shit.

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

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

But.

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.

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.

It was very once.

It was very fluffy.

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

It was a hit piece by that.

It was a little bit of a hit piece.

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.

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.

You know what I'm saying?

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

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.

Yeah.

It was a hit piece.

A hit piece.

What a great line.

They didn't remember that you, Ryan Cortez.

I know my name.

That

come on.

I am just bummed that

I thought we had bonded with them.

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

I was like,

I might be at this wedding.

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.

Clap back, Pablo.

Speaking of miserable assholes,

what's next?

Hey, Pablo.

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.

And I just like don't feel good.

It's like walking home from work.

It just felt gross all day.

And it had me thinking about David Sampson.

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.

Thanks.

Thanks.

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

to confess how miserable their ass actually is.

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

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

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.

Allegedly.

Well, I text him now

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.

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

72 hours later, things went horribly wrong.

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

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

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.

So to translate it, please.

Quote, my hole is on fire.

Well, so here's the thing.

I am not surprised because I believe David Sampson to be somewhat of a liar.

And I will tell you why.

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.

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.

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

He's just doing this for attention.

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

that David Sampson is Larsa Pippen.

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

Next voicemail.

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.

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.

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.

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

Something we need to know about all mascots.

It's honestly helpful for me to know this.

I did not know this.

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

I read that.

One of the great nonfiction writers on the planet.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I love that David Gran answered our mascot question.

Yes, thank you.

But speaking of people desperately trying to be first,

what's next?

Yo, Pablo, Billy from Brooklyn.

I saw on Twitter, X, that Woes blocked you.

What the hell could you have done to deserve that?

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

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.

Seams blocked you?

Oh, God.

Set me up for that.

Wow.

So Woach blocked me.

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

And so I don't know what I did.

I was surprised to learn.

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

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

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

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.

So you unfollowed me?

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

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

So he blocked you.

Yeah.

He unfollowed me.

Yeah, at least I'm not blocked.

Yeah.

So he really doesn't like that.

I have breaking news for you.

You undoubtedly just got blocked.

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I love our callers, man.

They're the best.

They're the best.

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

We can't say it enough.

513-85 Pablo.

That's right.

Call us and

we may play your voicemail like we are right now.

Hey, Pablo, this is Butterfly Jones calling from beautiful Key West, Florida.

Long time listener, first-time caller.

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

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

They are spectacular.

And I want to know who's behind them.

Thanks, blah, blah.

There's nobody in the Twitter sphere who I'd want to know more who's behind that account than Magic Johnson.

Number one for me.

It's an active mystery.

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

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

Like, I mean, I was there for that.

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

I know you're a journalist.

Thank you for reminding me.

I know you, and I know back in the day, you did journalists.

I've recorded stories quoting him.

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's 2019.

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

No, it is.

It is, dude.

Magic Johnson came to the office and it was embarrassing what you did.

Yeah.

Y'all shoot here too?

Yeah.

Okay.

So you had to move both of you because you were in North Carolina.

I was in North Carolina.

Yeah.

So congrats, man.

We're trying to be like you, man.

You're the best TV star in this building today.

TV star.

A businessman now.

Just business.

You're the suit of a businessman.

Well, you know, I got to run my business.

Matter of fact, I'm running to a meeting after this.

Absolutely.

God bless you.

Take care.

I am cringing so hard that I'm like becoming smaller.

So some background.

I'm filming that, obviously.

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.

The video picks up with the first words of you saying to him after having climbed the couch to dap him.

We can see eye to eye as if you're like Marveling it.

Yes, dude, you stuck on a couch.

Of course, you can see that.

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

Are you embarrassed?

Of course.

I mean,

the visuals on this are great, admittedly.

Like, there's a the dap I delivered.

Was it worth it?

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

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

There's like a leg kick.

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

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

from atop that couch, when I reached out to Magic Johnson's people, because of course he's a businessman with many many people, to go to the front door on this topic, we were told the following, okay, quote, thank you for reaching out.

Unfortunately, Mr.

Johnson respectfully declines to participate.

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

End quote.

That was from the vice president of Magic Johnson Enterprises, Alexia Grievous Henderson.

But I was energized.

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

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

What do they have to hide?

And so, yeah,

I called up Rob Lowe.

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

You know, we met because we were both basically the same age, from the Midwest.

He's from Michigan.

I'm from Ohio.

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

commonality.

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

And

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.

You know,

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

Wait, why?

Why were you banned by Pat Riley?

Well, because it was the 80s and I was single.

You were a bad influence, Rob Lowe.

That's why you were banned.

I was a very bad influence on the Lakers.

Meanwhile, Lakers love me.

Riley, not so much.

And it was during those years.

It was during the format where it was like 2-3-2.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So you'd be in Detroit forever.

Three games in Detroit.

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

So, you know, you can do the math.

And Riley was not a fan of that.

No, understandably.

Magic Johnson, by the way, was just named one of the four

current or former athletes to ever become a billionaire.

Right.

So it's him, LeBron, Michael, Jordan, Tiger Woods.

That was this week.

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

his Twitter account.

Yes.

And I think you know this.

You've been on pardon my take talking to them about it.

But you're like the foremost source.

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?

And you take pride in this, I imagine, at this point.

You're laughing at me asking this.

Yeah, I mean, listen,

I have it on very good authority

that he

dictates it.

He has somebody who,

you know, whatever occurs to him.

And

with the emphasis on whatever occurs to him, it's the best.

I mean, that's what Twitter was made for him.

Made.

Exactly.

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

I'm going to say, the world wants to know.

Yes.

Are you seated in a big smoking chair?

Are you doing it in a walk and talk?

Is there a fleet?

Because you're a billionaire now.

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

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

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

Like the world needs to know.

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

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

You know what I I mean?

You're like,

I love that.

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.

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

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

Exclamation point, which is, and the exclamation points, Rob, are

notable because for him,

on the Magic Johnson emotional curve, that that thing is Martin Luther nailing the 95 theses to the door.

When I was on the West Wing,

Aaron Sorkin will not use an exclamation point ever.

Oh, wow.

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

President Bartlin is shot.

No exclamation point.

No, he does not believe in them.

His theory with exclamation points is that it's the hackiest, sweatiest

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,

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 writing sensibility, on one end is Magic Johnson.

On the other end is Aaron Sorker.

And you're not going to confuse their Twitter accounts.

You're just not going to.

Yes.

By the way, are they preloaded?

Right.

Listen, listen, there's a world where what was preloaded wasn't.

Give me the quote about why the Dodgers lost it.

Give it to me again.

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

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

Okay, so that's preloaded.

Also, preloaded is

how about that Dodger pitching and hitting?

And that is why

we swept the Diamondbacks.

So you have the potential world in which Magic Johnson is a man for all seasons and outcomes.

He is ready with a Magic Johnsonism, no matter the event and its result.

Of course he is.

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.

And yet your kindergartner didn't paint it.

No,

no, no.

Jackson Pollack painted this.

Jackson Pollock painted it.

He's no kindergartner.

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.

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

Yes.

Oh my God, dude.

I had never connected this, but 100 million percent

percent

Magic's Twitter account has a little bit of Purd Hapley in it for a female perspective on this scandal.

We turn to a woman.

Leslie Knope, 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?

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

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

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

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

It's a lot of things.

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

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

Oh.

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

Yeah, yeah.

On top of the culture war.

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.

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

And then, in contrast, again, on this scale of extremes, I see Magic Johnson and I'm like, that guy seems happy.

He is happy

for sure.

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

And

it's not a pose.

It's not an image.

It really is

who he is.

And that sort of like guileless,

enthusiastic,

straightforward, no bullshit.

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

And I'm not saying that.

But there is a purity, though.

A purity.

Yeah, it's a purity about it.

And,

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

Right.

And

magic slash Irving is just being himself.

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

Is it just a performance because it's so consistent?

And then you're like, well,

why am I being cynical about this?

It's a gift.

Just accept the gift.

Just accept the gift.

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

Absolutely, Rob.

Absolutely.

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.

Exclamation point.

It just puts a smile on your face.

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.

Giant.

And they're so big.

Giant lemons.

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

And people are always like, it's clearly LeBron James.

And I'm like, if we want to who, who, who's nominating him?

Who?

Oh, wait, what?

The greatest physical specimen that Earth has to offer

in competition.

Because we assume,

Rob,

but people assume that we're going to want to go to war with the aliens.

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.

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

Okay.

Met with the aliens, period.

They are not what I expected.

Exclamation mark.

That's it.

You f ⁇ ing nailed it.

Isn't that it?

I can't improve on that.

And there would be a photo of Magic Johnson grinning ear to ear, hand over shoulder with a f ⁇ ing alien.

With a gray.

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

You should do it.

I'm sure you must do a parlor game, parlor trick game where you have three,

you have three quotes and one two of them are fake Magic Johnson and one of them's real.

You have to do that.

Absolutely.

We're going to find some Purd Happly best ofs and we're going to...

I mean, that could be the game.

Which is Purd Happily or Magic Johnson.

I mean, that's a game.

That's really good.

Okay, let's do this.

Let's get Sher, Yang,

you, and me on the pod like this, and play it.

Done.

I'm in.

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

Thanks, man.

That was fun.

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

I didn't know who he was.

I'm young.

What do you want me to do?

Please tell me you appreciated what just happened there.

I got lost watching it because there was a moment where I said, oh, I know who that is.

I recognized him.

The Westwind.

No, no, no.

Marks and Reck.

No, I'm probably not.

The Outsiders.

Great movie.

No.

Austin Powers, bro.

The eye patch.

I remember him.

Young number two.

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

over the pandemic.

Nirvana, bro.

So this is all,

this is a love language, Cortez.

But I did also want to be fair to any skeptics out there who wanted like the actual answer.

to the question our our our great listener left, right?

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

We know it's his voice incontrovertibly.

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

there was even more digging that I had to do.

Okay, what'd you find out?

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

But I did all of these, I truly like investigated this.

I did all of these interviews on background.

I got to somebody who was in the room actually

while it was happening, Magic Johnson with this mystery person

posting to the account.

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

than Alexia Grievous Henderson herself.

That's the name from the email, right?

That is the person who emailed us

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

I'm proud of you, man.

Like, that's actual journalism.

You did it again.

Good reporting by you.

We got to the bottom

of just, yeah, the greatest rich persons,

you think?

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.

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

Dude, I mean, there was a time we had.

Look, he's in the chair.

Okay,

okay.

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

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

As well as Dezus telling us that the poop in a crack house reminded him of creme brulee.

Okay, the smartest show in Metalark.

A little crust on the top.

Right.

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

Pablo, got a good idea for you.

We need to find out who of the Wu-Tang clan is the best chess player.

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.

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.

Now, I've heard of a lot of those people, obviously.

Shout out to Nirvana.

You know, I discovered rock music.

It's a musical knowledge is not the best.

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

It's amazing.

Proceed.

Yes.

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

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?

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

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 fing love chess.

And if I have any credibility with the Wu-Tang clan, it's because they get the vibe 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 Raekwon, there is Ghostface, there is Masta Killa, there's Capadana, Ugod, Inspector Deck, Rizza, Jizza.

There are lots of candidates.

Inspector Deck, that's a good name.

It's a great name.

Interesting.

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

I've heard of him.

To get a comment from Method Man himself.

Hey, Dan, what's up?

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

That's Stu Gatzer Method Man.

I know.

He's wearing a Jets hat.

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

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 Bhutan clan.

Okay.

He mentioned Masta Killa, he mentioned Ghostface, and he mentioned Jizza.

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

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

So this is an honor for me.

I need to tell you that.

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

Do I call you Killa?

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

What do you prefer?

Call me Jamel, man.

That's easy.

Master Killer is what I do.

Jamel, I got some intel.

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.

And the medals stand in no particular order is you,

Ghostface, and Jizza.

Does that sound right?

What's you, what's what's your scouting report?

Well,

if he said I was number one, that's correct.

He 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 recently where like Capadana was like working some sort of like chess tournament for kids.

Like he showed up there and I was like,

am I breaking news to you about this?

That's definitely news to me.

You know, I think we all play chess.

in our own ways, you know, because you know, it's definitely,

I would say affiliated 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.

And how often did you guys play against each other?

I'm asking you to rank every day.

Every day.

Every day.

Me and Jizza

played.

72 games one day.

I'm sorry.

Straight.

72 consecutive in one day.

72.

We started like that morning and we ended late at night.

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

we just played chess all day.

I mean, we had so many days like that, but that particular day,

we played like 72 straight.

We counted it 72.

Yeah, we love it, man.

What was the

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

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

What's your scouting report, right?

So, I want a self-scouting report of Mastequilla by Mastequilla on how he plays chess versus the other members of the Wu-Tang clan.

What distinguishes your game?

I'm just so all natural with it, you know.

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

I mean, knowledge is infinite.

So you can never stop learning.

There's always room for improvement.

There's always room to learn.

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.

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

I just like to be free with it.

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

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

That's what I got from what your scouting report just said.

I think we're all nerds.

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

Yeah,

I love it, man.

Like I said, you know, nothing like moving the pieces.

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

Nothing like a little smack talk

right here in your face.

You know, it's nothing like that.

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,

you know, if I can shake you before you get no 64 squares, hey, half the battle is won.

Have there been great

rap songs, lyrics about chess?

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

What's the best example of that?

I'm sure that

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

more than just the Wu-Sang clan plays chess.

I know that.

I think Jay-Z plays

over my years.

I've seen looks looks took him by the night.

Losing crown, but trying to defend the queen.

Checkmate before moves.

Wait a minute now, though.

I'm realizing.

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

So if I'm telling you, Master Killa in person versus Jay-Z at the chess board.

Oh, Jay's going down.

Jay's going down.

Jay's going down.

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

You know, there's no losses in chess.

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

The patience of choice

is the jewels of life.

Think before you speak or move.

And I think with that,

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

Mastakilla,

the best chess player officially in the Wu-Tang clan.

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

Thank you for joining Pablo Torre finds out.

I appreciate you.

Thank you for having me, brother.

Bro, the vibe of that guy, pretty incredible when you like juxtapose what his name is.

Mastaquilla.

It doesn't really seem like the type of guy that's going to murder you.

He's a great.

Well, he's a great hang.

And it is, to your point, a bit ironic that Mastakilla preaches patience and prudence more than a guy named Parakeet Cortez.

That feels a bit of a switch.

What do you think I do on Twitter that's different?

I know that you preach the opposite.

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.

I'd like to know.

Homicides are illegal and death is a penalty.

What justifies the homicide when he dies in his own iniquity?

It's the master of the mantis raptor coming at you.

All right, so Mastaquilla's vibe did inspire me some.

He wanted me to own

my nerd dom.

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

Hey, Pablo.

What I'd like you to find out is

where does human evolution stop?

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

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

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

Love the show.

Hope you use it.

So, thank you for loving the show.

But the word is meat sack.

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

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.

Those are his two bestsellers.

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

access to sports itself.

Okay.

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

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.

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

Wow.

The first.

I would have taken the over.

Right.

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

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

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

Like more people, 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.

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

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.

But some of it has also been

you know, assortive 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

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?

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...

could have an impact.

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.

Right.

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

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

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

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

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

have some

impact.

I got a very clear message from you, which is that Victor Embanyama

better better have a lot of sex.

I mean, look, if there were a thing,

if it were like you were treating it like a horse, right?

Like certain people's breeding rights would go for a lot of sex.

Oh, man, dude, his semen would be

so expensive.

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

Like my semen.

I didn't want to say it.

Is it not going to be worth as much as Victor Wembanyama?

Because that seems unfair.

I have a great Twitter account.

Cortez, what you found out today is that your semen

is mid.

No,

that's just one man's opinion.

I mean, it's science's opinion.

I mean, I'm not saying that mine is like,

you know, premium grade

height-wise.

Well, hold on.

My boat is definitely taller than your boat.

I mean, it's marginally taller.

I mean, relative to Victor Wembanyama, fair.

But, but, but speaking of

climax,

David also did point out something interesting, which is that we've probably

climaxed as a species in terms of height.

Like Victor Embanyama, 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.

It feels like as much as we can push it.

Unless he's standing on the couch, I mean.

I'm just saying.

I mean, that's all I'm doing.

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

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

There's, in that case, only one way to find out.

For the gene pool.

Exactly.

What's next?

Pablo, you need to find out where Cotton Ball Man is now.

What happened with him?

You have to find out where he is now.

Find out, Pablo.

So this is 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 it was special because we watched Maury with Maury.

And Cortez, my favorite clip from that whole thing was the clip of one of the phobia episodes that Maury Povich would do.

And these were iconic.

And this one in specific, and this is a genre where people who are terrified of shit confront that shit in studio, in person.

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

which was cotton balls.

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?

I am pleased to tell America that we have located Cotton Ball Man.

We got him.

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

And that's Dawn,

you know,

an entire suit made of cotton.

No, you've got to confront your phobia now.

This is the famous Maury Show

Cotton Ball Man.

My name is Jimmy Shearman, and I've worked for the Maury Show for over 20 years.

I was a driver, I was a travel assistant, I was an audience coordinator.

Then eventually I became a field producer.

The thought process when approaching a role like Cotton Man,

you have to keep in mind that Cotton Man is

evil.

He's a

demonic beast.

He's there to kind of terrorize.

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.

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

beast that is Cotton Man.

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

with cotton balls glued all over them.

And

I think it was like a box

with holes cut for the eyes and just cotton balls glued all over it.

You're backstage, okay, get out there.

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

you know,

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

Cotton ball man.

I followed her partially, and I think someone stopped me, possibly, because

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

You're back here.

Emily, come here.

There's nobody up here.

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.

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.

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.

Wait, wait, so wait, can we just replay him saying what his name is for the record again, just real quick?

My name is Jimmy Shearman.

Jimmy Shearman, Cortez.

That's ironic.

I mean, it's more than ironic.

There's a better word for it, actually.

Go ahead, right?

It's aptronymic.

An aptronym.

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

How did you know that?

It's amazing.

James Jimmy Jimmy Shearman, right?

Is Shearman is cottonball, man.

I mean,

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

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

I don't know who the Beethoven is.

Shout out to Rage Against the Machine.

God, none of this is a joke.

Bro, rock music is amazing.

I'm just saying, it's so good.

You don't save!

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