"Parenting First Take" (and the Super Bowl Halftime Stakes) with Mina Kimes

Transcript

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 1 I put it way too close to my face. You are actively crying right now.

Speaker 1 Right after this ad.

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Speaker 10 I can't remember who said it, but someone said that I have an older sister vibe with you, which I at first took as a compliment, but then I don't like being thought of as older than you.

Speaker 10 I'm like two weeks older than you. Yes.

Speaker 1 I say all the time on the record that I've looked up to you as an older journalist for

Speaker 1 so much of my career.

Speaker 1 Happy birthday, belatedly, to my birthday brother. Speaking of our familial relationship, that's pretty wild.
Libra gang. Libra gang.

Speaker 10 I induced, as you know, because I was like, I got to have him on Pablo's birthday.

Speaker 10 The other reason was that he was trending gigantic.

Speaker 1 Remains gigantic.

Speaker 10 Still gigantic.

Speaker 1 What's the toddler combine? What are his numbers look like?

Speaker 10 I think, so we're about to have the two. We haven't had the two-year-old appointment, but you get the percentile.
I'm pretty sure he's still 90th weight.

Speaker 10 Size is above average.

Speaker 10 He's definitely leaning out a little bit, though, now that he runs around. So, you know, but he's still very large.

Speaker 1 You're disappointed.

Speaker 10 I like the idea of having an extremely large son.

Speaker 10 He doesn't know his own strength, though. Like, sometimes he'll accidentally push me and I'm like, ow.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I like, I just have Nino pushing a sled, you know, like a blocking sled. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 10 He's very physical. He likes physical stuff.
He goes to like baby gym. Does Violet ever do like the little, do they have that in New York?

Speaker 1 My gym? We did, we did Ninja Class.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Various, just like, yeah, padded floors that you can just like bounce off of.

Speaker 10 On one hand, you're like, this is like equinox money for someone to just like sit on the floor while the children roll around. But on the other hand, like they do like balance beams and

Speaker 10 it's a lot of ball pits.

Speaker 1 Yep. Violet showed up one day, or at least as I experienced it, showed up one day at home and was just doing like forward rolls.
It was like repeated series of forward rolls. I was like, holy shit.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 10 That's a real, did she want to do gymnastics?

Speaker 1 She did, did she play any sports? She's in soccer.

Speaker 10 How's that going?

Speaker 1 She is one of the most methodical

Speaker 1 and deliberate, but slow dribblers. Like the videos are of her just like making sure she is perfectly nudging this along, but she is the slowest and most careful of all of the

Speaker 1 prospects in that class. Did you play soccer growing up? I played through grade school.

Speaker 10 Just through grade school?

Speaker 1 The Manhattan Kickers.

Speaker 10 Did you stop with basketball till high school?

Speaker 1 In grade school. I tackled.

Speaker 10 Did you play any sports after grade school?

Speaker 1 No. I mean, wait, yes.
Varsity, Lincoln-Douglas debate.

Speaker 10 Oh, my God.

Speaker 1 Do you now want to brag about your high school soccer career?

Speaker 10 No, I just can't believe this has never come up as you were a sports writer that you abandoned sports after

Speaker 10 elementary school.

Speaker 1 People just looked at me and they were like, this guy must have the credibility to talk about the greatest athletes in the world. They didn't really ask follow-ups.

Speaker 1 Wow. You played varsity soccer.

Speaker 10 I did. And I played club soccer through high school as well.
So I played a lot of soccer and it took up a lot of time and energy. And

Speaker 10 that is something I'm not quite looking forward to, like the ubering aspect of being a sports parent where you're just driving them places constantly, it sounds like, but it was a big part of my upbringing and important.

Speaker 10 I think for girls, playing team sports is so valuable.

Speaker 1 Yeah. I mean, look, right now,

Speaker 1 Violet is so young that it's all obviously co-ed.

Speaker 10 But when she's in games

Speaker 10 and you're on the sidelines and you start having opinions about the tactics, that's when you become a sports parent.

Speaker 1 I can't wait for that. So by the way, relatedly, what I'm realizing as like a

Speaker 1 sports parent to be is that also a lot of these clichés are true. Like parenting, my feelings, my circuitry being activated.

Speaker 1 Violet, who started kindergarten now last month, September, there was a point where we

Speaker 1 Liz and I brought her to

Speaker 1 the curb and put her on the yellow school bus.

Speaker 1 And there's a point at which she's like waving out the window of this yellow school bus, like receding across the horizon line. And I'm like,

Speaker 10 crying?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I'm like, of course. Like, I'm just, I'm just that.
I'm that guy. I'm that dad now.

Speaker 10 Everybody said that.

Speaker 1 But then you go to like the sports side of it and you're like, ah, yes, valuable lessons about teamwork. Right.

Speaker 1 And what it means to stand up for yourself and how to assert yourself in mixed gender environments. And I'm like, oh, yeah, this is

Speaker 1 also real.

Speaker 10 There's a reason why all the cliches about parenting end up, it's a pretty universal experience. The same feelings and concerns are activated for everybody.

Speaker 1 Give me a non-parenting cliché

Speaker 1 that you believe in, that you think people should be aware of.

Speaker 10 Like a take, like a hot take.

Speaker 1 Give me a take. Essentially,

Speaker 1 you're doing parenting first take.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 1 oh,

Speaker 10 I mean, this one is

Speaker 10 increasingly the older my kid gets, the more I, and this, maybe this is a cliche, so maybe it's a bad answer, but I believe I'm meeting him more than shaping him. Yeah.
Yeah. He just is who he is.

Speaker 10 And I get the once-in-a-lifetime experience of watching that become reality.

Speaker 10 But it's for all of the time I spend worrying about the tiny little things. What if we don't do this language thing? What if he starts preschool? Ultimately, he just kind of is who he is.

Speaker 1 Yeah. We are, we discover, we find out more than we are able to like inculcate.

Speaker 1 Um, we can't all be everybody, I think part of all the sports parenting stuff is that you want to be like Richard Williams or Earl Woods or whatever, and it's less that and more like figuring out, oh, this is who I'm living with.

Speaker 10 Yeah, and that's going to be a big, like, he might not want to play sports right now. He looks so physical and active, and he loves tumbling, and he's like just a boy in every, like, just such a boy.

Speaker 10 I mean, my son is just such a little bro.

Speaker 1 What does that mean when you're two?

Speaker 10 I can tell you what it means. I got him a, his little, he's part of this toddler crew and I got him this little stroller.
They all have, because they were all fighting over another kid's show.

Speaker 10 It's clearly a hot item on the playground. So I got him a little one from Target.
And the next day,

Speaker 10 I saw him with the stroller and he turned around and he had put a dump truck in the stroller. And he was pushing around the truck in the stroller.

Speaker 1 He sounded like a baby doll.

Speaker 10 Yes, instead of a baby doll, because that was his most most prized position.

Speaker 10 I feel like that pretty clearly illustrates what a little bro dump truck and big bus weren't his first words, but they were maybe his first compound words.

Speaker 10 Big bus, dump truck, forklift.

Speaker 10 Are you

Speaker 10 not exposed to any of this? Because you have a little girl, like the little boy universe. Like, for example, he has so many books about trucks.
It's crazy. Yeah.

Speaker 10 The most popular kids, like just Goodnight Construction Site, Trash Truck. there's so much content around

Speaker 1 trucks. I like that we are absolutely raising our children again or allowing our children to just express the most traditional gender roles allowing is the key.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I thought that Violet was into construction

Speaker 1 as a kid as a kid and she and she is but then compared to my nephew,

Speaker 1 Miguel, who is like younger and like there is an amusement park of trucks.

Speaker 1 It's like sick in a tractor.

Speaker 10 If a trash truck, especially one that makes noises, drives by,

Speaker 10 my son, it'll be like full Bugs Bunny eyes, hard eyes. Everything stops.
Pepe Lebieu turns around.

Speaker 10 We have to sit here. We have to watch it.
We have to comment on it.

Speaker 10 And then he like can't tear his eyes away from it. He thinks it's the best thing in the world.

Speaker 1 I'm looking up. Okay.
This is, this is what it is.

Speaker 1 Diggerland.

Speaker 10 Oh my God, that sounds like his dream.

Speaker 1 Berlin Township, New Jersey. The one and only construction theme and water park in the U.S.

Speaker 1 Look at this. Hold on.

Speaker 10 She's just not into this stuff anymore.

Speaker 1 She is, but it's just like she's wearing princess stuff. And I'm like, just

Speaker 10 like, look, there's like crane truck, excavator.

Speaker 1 It's diggers.

Speaker 10 The other thing about these truck-based books is they're all like cinematic universes. Do you you ever go to, we just go to Barnes and Noble and like hang out.
So you go to the kids section now.

Speaker 10 It really is like all content.

Speaker 10 Like there's obviously a lot of original and new ones, but if there's a hit like Goodnight Construction Site, then there's like 20 spin-offs, like Goodnight Construction Site, Valentine's Day edition.

Speaker 10 Because every single one of these popular books has a full spin-off series

Speaker 10 and you have to get them all.

Speaker 1 Has Nino gotten a whiff of like words he shouldn't say? And does he know about it? Yeah, there's a few. Yeah.
What are the words that I don't know?

Speaker 10 It's a lot of eschatological stuff.

Speaker 1 It's a, I mean, it is saying poop to Violet is like the funniest

Speaker 10 in the world. Yeah.
My

Speaker 10 brother-in-law got him a fart machine that makes different signs of farts. And he is just at the age where he understands it's funny now because he sees people's reactions.

Speaker 10 He's starting to develop like humor now, right? And starting to see people's reactions. By the way, do you think people enjoy hearing us talk about our kids? Or because I, I, I, I sometimes

Speaker 10 realize that if people don't have kids, I really try to remember they do not want to hear about your kids.

Speaker 1 I feel like that's a risk I'm willing to take.

Speaker 1 Can't hear.

Speaker 1 Let's talk about our kids. My take, my last take in the kids section of today's programming is like,

Speaker 1 it's okay to not throw a birthday party. Ooh, that's a hot take.
Because what I've learned is that every kid needs to invite every other kid.

Speaker 1 It's a whole thing, and there are a zillion of them every weekend. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 1 I just think

Speaker 1 we cannot do that.

Speaker 10 We cannot do that. You want to opt out.
Yeah. I'm sure your five-year-old daughter would be totally cool with not having a birthday party while everyone else in her class does.

Speaker 1 I can't wait for Violet to find out that we're not throwing her a birthday party at Diggerland.

Speaker 10 So Nino just had a birthday party. It was Elmo-themed.

Speaker 10 It was what themed?

Speaker 1 Elmo-themed. Elmo-themed, great.

Speaker 10 Yes. Yeah.
So I was just asking her, I'm like, what kind of stuff do I have to get? And all my parent friends were like, you got to get this, this, this, this.

Speaker 10 So what I didn't account for was it was Nino's first exposure to juice, apple juice

Speaker 1 in particular.

Speaker 10 He's never had like pure uncut apple juice.

Speaker 10 And at this party, so it was in a little play area. So the kids were all penned in, which was the kind of most important thing at this age.
And every time I turned around, he would be like,

Speaker 10 it was like watching like the beginning of like Requiem for a Dream.

Speaker 10 And I swear to God, that party was two weeks ago. I wake up, I take him down to get his breakfast, and he looks at me and he goes, apple juice? And I'm like, we don't have that.
And he gets so mad.

Speaker 10 And it's been two weeks and he's still thinking about the high of drinking. He drank like four apple juices at his birthday.

Speaker 1 Can you blame him?

Speaker 10 I mean, it's good.

Speaker 1 Nina's going to, this is like what happens when your parents are super strict. The strictest parents raise the most

Speaker 1 uncontrollable children.

Speaker 10 I wasn't allowed to eat sweets growing up. At all? No, we were, but not like, we ate like a lot of fruit.
I didn't have like junky cereals.

Speaker 10 So when I would go to like my friends' houses, like Lucky Charms, holy shit. Oh my God.

Speaker 1 Encountering a loose charm?

Speaker 1 Damn.

Speaker 10 Did you ever eat in college the charms out of the lucky charms?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 10 I got to college and I was a menace with the bad for you foods cafeteria.

Speaker 1 This is like when you discover that they just sell the stuff in an Oreo. Oh my gosh.
Just stuff.

Speaker 10 I also like gained a lot of weight because I stopped playing soccer, like, not a lot of weight, but like, I didn't realize that it turns out when you don't work out five hours a day, you can't have Taco Bell four times a day.

Speaker 10 It took me a while to learn that lesson. But no, I'm not even that strict with Nino's food.

Speaker 10 It just, he just literally, it's funny because he's had like cake and cookies, and it's nothing has hit like apple juice has hit his system. Nothing.

Speaker 1 You got to get that apple juice live read on your show.

Speaker 10 I know. Sponsor me.
He saw me drinking a beer and thought it was apple juice and got mad the other day. He was like, Mama apple juice.
I'm like, this isn't apple juice.

Speaker 1 It's special mama drink. Special mama drink.

Speaker 1 The subtext of all of this is that both of us are now 40 years old.

Speaker 1 I know. I hate it.
I know. You're wrapping yourself in a very

Speaker 1 luxurious sweater. Thanks.
It's very soft. It looks very comfy.

Speaker 1 If you're like me,

Speaker 1 which I think you are to a degree,

Speaker 1 you're not trying to think a lot about that.

Speaker 1 Like mortality, mortality, like what is it?

Speaker 1 Look, I had a great birthday. I choose not to dwell so much

Speaker 1 on, like, yeah,

Speaker 1 what does this, what does this mean?

Speaker 1 What does this mean? Yeah.

Speaker 1 I don't know. Does it, did it hit you?

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 10 not so much in

Speaker 10 like I'm taking stock of my life and what I'm doing with it.

Speaker 10 More so, it does, it does feel like, wow, I'm in a really different phase of my life, but I would say a lot more of that is having, it's because my son's birthday is two weeks after mine.

Speaker 10 And I think it was funny for me to like have his birthday, but even ahead of my birthday, which is like supposed to be this big momentous birthday, I was thinking much more about his birthday and planning it and what that means.

Speaker 10 And

Speaker 10 I suppose that's the such been such an overwhelming change in my life and how I see the world and think about things and all of that, that it's kind of subsumed me and my own personal milestones.

Speaker 10 If that does that make sense, yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, it's a long way of saying, yes, I too do not choose to engage with what this means for me personally.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 1 It's the most conventional dividing line of

Speaker 1 we were young, now we are not. And I think both of us

Speaker 1 benefited and in my case, at least, like, you know, took pride in the fact that, look at everything that I'm up to. And I'm not even this age yet.
And now I am that age now. Yeah.

Speaker 1 And I feel very proud. And this is not a woe is me in any way.
It's just, it's just, I think everybody feels like they're still young is my hypothesis. Like we're not unique in that.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But, you know, it's undeniable that we are not.

Speaker 10 You know what I think I feel now

Speaker 10 that I think is is very much like, well, I'm a gerryashm millennial and I'm 40. And the biggest difference between me and is I

Speaker 10 and I don't think this was true 10 years ago when I was 30 thinking about people in their 20s.

Speaker 10 Maybe some of this is due to having a kid, but like I worry a lot more for people who are younger than me and I don't envy them.

Speaker 10 And I think it's a really hard time to be in your 20s. It's a really hard time to be growing up.

Speaker 10 And

Speaker 10 I don't think I felt that way when I was like, when I turned 30.

Speaker 10 But I don't think that's about me and my age so much as it is like the world and the state of things.

Speaker 1 So that's a fair point.

Speaker 10 Well, so your kid to kind of bring this full circle is three years older than mine. Yeah.
What is something that I have to look forward to in the next three years

Speaker 10 as we now turn two?

Speaker 1 It's the greatest,

Speaker 1 God, to be the most cliche person. Like still to me,

Speaker 1 the feeling I chase the most like a drug. Apple juice.

Speaker 10 Is your personal apple juice?

Speaker 1 Sweet, sweet juice.

Speaker 1 It's just Violet laughing.

Speaker 10 Does she still laugh at your jokes?

Speaker 1 But what's happening is that she is laughing less on command. Yeah.
And so it used to be a tickle. was just like enough 100% success rate.

Speaker 10 Oh, no, I can't.

Speaker 1 And now it's just sort of like, oh, no, there's, there's, you know, she used to ask for like,

Speaker 1 there's this thing we do where she's like, I created these, or maybe she created these two characters, Barnaby and Theodore.

Speaker 1 Theodore is a rabbit, Barnaby is a lion. And I would tell her a story, a Barnaby and Theodore story, in which like I just tell her, like, one day.

Speaker 10 You were making your, making them up on

Speaker 1 Riffin. Okay, storyteller.

Speaker 10 Just, just, you know, you know, people use Chat GPT to do this now for their kids.

Speaker 10 It's so depressing to me. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Just like putting in.

Speaker 10 Yeah, like make up a story about a rabbit.

Speaker 1 You're a great dad

Speaker 1 you love to tell your kids stories about so i'm just like making inc but now it's like the bar is like i need to be better at it yeah you gotta level up yeah so i've been accused of like and viola says something like that was too short

Speaker 1 i'm like trying to end the story and i need to like have character development yeah

Speaker 1 like my go-to move is like

Speaker 10 something to look forward to this sounds challenging and

Speaker 1 but it what it is is like when it when you succeed it's it's it's it feels more like communication yeah where there's a back and forth i'm like that's true yes this is

Speaker 1 different but fulfilling um yes and you feel like you're just like actually getting to know that person more right like i can't just do the story where they get hit with a shrink ray which is like 90% of my

Speaker 10 shrink rays yeah yeah and there's a guy who lives on the 10th floor of our building who has a shrink ray and we always go to visit this guy gym and he has a shrink ray and she's like you gotta we gotta vary up god i am stories here now you've given me a fear i didn't even know i had which is the day that my son stops finding everything i do to be the funniest thing in the world i think i've mentioned this before like i'll pull out stuff from like 90s humor he thinks i invented smoking

Speaker 10 He's like, wow, my mother's a comedic genius.

Speaker 10 She should be playing the Riyon Comedy Festival. Play her a million dollars.
These jokes are incredible.

Speaker 1 He also, like, do not go in there.

Speaker 1 It's like you just are all Jim Carrey.

Speaker 10 My character is the tickle monster, and he, and I, and I give him a look, and he just knows it's coming. He just loses it, and he starts running away.

Speaker 1 So I do that, too. And I think you have a character here.
We call it a tickle monster. Oh.

Speaker 10 IP violations. That's my character.

Speaker 1 Tickle monster, parentheses, Pablo's version.

Speaker 10 Do you do like a menacing walk towards him?

Speaker 1 I just do. I do this.
Oh, that's it. You do two index fingers.

Speaker 10 I walk like I'm in the ring.

Speaker 1 Like, I'll flip my hair forward and like crawl.

Speaker 10 It's actually quite terrifying. It's amazing.
Maybe that's why he screams and runs away.

Speaker 1 I just like how so far all of your mothering is ripping off movies you've seen.

Speaker 1 This has inspired me to whip out opposite day.

Speaker 10 Opposite day.

Speaker 1 It's like that's a violet. That's a great picture.
On opposite day.

Speaker 1 All right.

Speaker 10 Got her.

Speaker 10 No, but that I think

Speaker 10 what you're describing is like, you know, whenever people always ask me, like, what is the best thing about being a parent now? And there's a million things I could point to. And

Speaker 10 kind of how it rewires you to see the world in a different way and makes you a more like simultaneously like a more optimistic and negative person or like negative is wrong but anxious.

Speaker 10 Like having a child in this world at this moment, like I feel better than ever about humanity because I witness like, oh, this pure sunshine.

Speaker 10 But then you're also like, you feel concerned all the time and scared.

Speaker 10 So that, that's big. But I think what you talked about is something that I think is maybe the best part of all, which is, you know, a child is their own person.

Speaker 10 You're meeting them and they get to, they surprise you every day in new ways and,

Speaker 10 you know, some frustrating ways. But like.

Speaker 10 When you get older, you lose your like capacity to be surprised in a pleasant way. And to have someone who reminds you that that exists is really nice.

Speaker 1 Also, the next phase, I'm thinking about like kindergarten, like we just visited Violet's class and I'm like, you see, and maybe at two,

Speaker 1 Nino's already doing this, but like the self-portrait.

Speaker 10 Oh, gosh, yeah.

Speaker 1 And you just sort of like see how they see themselves. That's really nice.

Speaker 1 How they see you?

Speaker 10 How did she draw you in a funny way?

Speaker 1 Oh, she has drawn me. Violet will draw portraits where After like there's a disagreement with me and Liz in which she wants, she like loves seltzer.

Speaker 1 that is her apple juice actually and so she's called spicy water when do kids start doing that spicy water an LA thing I mean it's an LA thing they all call it spicy water now over here on the east coast we know we know it as seltzer

Speaker 1 whatever the hell you guys are are lying to your kids about um

Speaker 1 we have we have seltzer anyway the point being like violet drew a picture of her next to me and Liz and she's like crying

Speaker 1 and like and like we have like a can of like seltzer that she's like,

Speaker 1 she's, she expresses her emotions. Um, she's crying because you won't give her seltzer.
Yes,

Speaker 1 it's really funny. She's like emotionally holding us hostage by depicting us.

Speaker 10 Uh, so Nino doesn't draw yet because he's two, he can only draw like a squiggly, angry line.

Speaker 10 But he, in terms of like representation of me, he does something that is also equally very telling, or at least

Speaker 10 kind of gets to me.

Speaker 1 If

Speaker 10 there's a commercial and there's an Asian woman, he'll point to it and say, Mama.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. And I'm like,

Speaker 1 Nino, my guy.

Speaker 10 Doesn't always have to be the Asian woman.

Speaker 10 We don't all look the same. I know you're two.

Speaker 1 Yeah, there's, there's, I don't know. I could do parents' talk,

Speaker 1 it turns out, longer than I planned on doing parents' talks.

Speaker 10 People love it. No, they don't.

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Speaker 1 You check your feed and your account.

Speaker 11 You check the score and the restaurant reviews.

Speaker 11 You check your hair and reflective surfaces and the world around you for recession indicators. So you check all that, but you don't check to see what your ride options are in this economy.

Speaker 11 Next time, check Lyft.

Speaker 1 My timeline this week has been AI slop and bad bunny takes.

Speaker 10 Yeah. And sometimes the two merging.

Speaker 1 I just think the NFL, from this perspective, from like the cultural perspective, this is what I wanted. I actually did want to talk about it.

Speaker 10 What a transition. How do we get from

Speaker 1 so good at storytelling? You should have

Speaker 10 been from the kids' book part.

Speaker 1 There is a shrink ray.

Speaker 10 Speaking of bad bunnies who are running away.

Speaker 1 Speaking of

Speaker 1 Theodore, a good bunny, I want to tell you about a bad bunny.

Speaker 1 I just think it's so funny that the NFL is like suddenly this radically progressive institution because they chose the number one streaming artist in the world.

Speaker 10 Yeah, I know. It is kind of wild that for all of the

Speaker 10 whenever people ask me about the NFL and like, you know, politics of it, this is obviously during the Kaepernick era. There was more of a discussion around this.

Speaker 10 But now that that's like kind of in the rear view, I always say like, the politics are money, man. Like, I don't know what to tell you guys, like, this is not,

Speaker 10 these aren't stands.

Speaker 10 Like, they're what, but it is very funny that, like, this institution, which is, I don't think, perceived as being on one side or the other, the culture war has gone back to back with Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny.

Speaker 10 I know. That's, like, pretty interesting, right?

Speaker 10 But yeah, like, they're following the money. They're following culture.

Speaker 10 They're They're following the international audience, especially with this move, which is any, like, it's impossible to watch, if you actually watch football in the last few years and not recognize that it's like the fight as a priority for the NFL right now with games overseas.

Speaker 1 It's very telling that they like, according to the reporting, wanted Taylor Swift

Speaker 1 and went to Bad Bunny. Like the motive in both is there are demographics we would love access to and there are zillions of people in those demographics.

Speaker 1 And as they say, The Simpsons, money can be exchanged for goods and services. So we want more money.

Speaker 1 But then, like, I'm looking at the coverage of this, as always, and some of this is the most predictable, but like, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, says, quote, well, it sounds like he's not someone who appeals to a broader audience.

Speaker 1 So that's his take on like why Bad Bunny is just like this.

Speaker 10 That's a little bit of a in and of itself, a crazy sentence that the Speaker of the House is weighing in on Bad Bunny playing.

Speaker 1 He wanted Lee Greenwood.

Speaker 10 Does he do what's he does one of the USA songs, right? Lee Greenwood.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he does the one song. Oh, the only song, God Bless the USA.

Speaker 1 I'm not like a giant Bad Bunny fan.

Speaker 1 It's not that I dislike him. I just haven't listened to a lot of his music.
It's very clear to me, though, among my.

Speaker 10 He was right.

Speaker 1 Mike Johnson was right.

Speaker 10 I don't know any pop.

Speaker 10 We talked about it. We're both watched.
I'm 40. I don't know.

Speaker 1 Yeah, you're re-watching The Mask.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, the streaming artist astride popular popular culture is escaping our view.

Speaker 1 But it's just very clear that like, if you speak Spanish

Speaker 1 and you live in and around this continent, he's the guy.

Speaker 10 Yeah.

Speaker 1 So it's not to say like, how dare you not know who Bad Bunny is. It's merely to say like, look how much money Bad Bunny is going to bring to the bottom line of

Speaker 1 a sport that has only one consistent principle, which is like

Speaker 1 growth.

Speaker 10 The reactionary stuff I've seen has been along either one of two lines, one of which is that a lot of, I think, most of his music is not in English. So that's a thing.

Speaker 10 Or that he himself did a, has been outspoken about not performing in the U.S. right now because of the ice crackdown.
And he had a residency in Puerto Rico.

Speaker 10 I think I read somewhere was like, it was like a GDP booster. Like it was like a crazy amount of money injected into the economy.

Speaker 1 Which is, again, technically part of the United States.

Speaker 10 So I think some of the back rush I've seen is in, well, he's been critical of this country. And

Speaker 10 I said this to you, but the craziest part of it all to me is like, there's a lot that's wild about it.

Speaker 10 I feel like if he was announced as a performer 15 years ago,

Speaker 10 it wouldn't have been controversial. And it's wild.

Speaker 10 Like that's in it, like a crazy thing, right? Like that

Speaker 10 we're moving backwards in terms of like how these things are perceived. But don't you feel like that's true?

Speaker 1 If this was 2012 or whatever? I feel like we were far more culturally adventurous. Yeah.
In terms of like what we're willing to tolerate as a matter of like what makes

Speaker 1 political news.

Speaker 10 Yes.

Speaker 1 Right. So in terms of what the Super Bowl is, like there are two ways to see Bad Bunny agreeing to do it.

Speaker 10 Well, that's interesting, too.

Speaker 1 So he agrees, despite all of this, knowing, by the way, that the NFL, in terms of its general cultural signaling,

Speaker 1 is again, if they are progressive, it is in the service of an economic motive. Right.
And so what are you, what are you aligning?

Speaker 10 Yeah. What does it mean to do it? Yeah.

Speaker 1 And recently the signal had been, of course, we want to get along with this administration

Speaker 10 from the NFL. Yes.

Speaker 1 We're not going to, whatever. We're end racism in the end zone, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Whatever. It ended.
We ended racism. The end zones were.

Speaker 1 And those end zones.

Speaker 10 Enough touchdowns were scored.

Speaker 1 Mission accomplished.

Speaker 10 His side of it, I think, is really interesting, right? Because, like I said, he has been taking this,

Speaker 10 what was perceived as a principled stand, and that's what led to some of the backlash. And I saw some folks kind of accuse him of selling out, you know?

Speaker 10 And I think I don't agree with that personally.

Speaker 10 There's two things. One, let's see the show first.

Speaker 10 Like just starting there, right? Like maybe before we talk about what he is and isn't accomplishing with this and let's see it, right? I think that's a thing. But I also think like

Speaker 10 at this particular moment in American history,

Speaker 10 when

Speaker 10 so many

Speaker 10 Latinos in this country are being targeted, harassed, families ripped apart. I mean, I live in Los Angeles and seeing like just hardworking people afraid to go work to work and congregate in public.

Speaker 10 But a moment while all this is happening.

Speaker 1 The fear could not be more real.

Speaker 10 To have the world's biggest artist take the world's biggest stage is in and of itself inherently a radical. And more than, maybe that's the wrong word.

Speaker 10 It's a powerful, like it, it shows people that they're still represented and they still have soft power. And

Speaker 10 I don't think that's insignificant. I don't.
And it's a reminder of,

Speaker 10 One, what art is capable of in moments like this, where we all feel pretty futile. You know, I think a lot of artists feel like, what are we even doing?

Speaker 10 And also like of values that this country is supposed to be about, which is like celebrating difference. And that's, so he has the opportunity, I think, to do something like kind of important.

Speaker 1 I will point out that like when Kendrick performed and

Speaker 1 did his show,

Speaker 1 it was less political than it was certainly like racially conscious

Speaker 1 and personally

Speaker 1 insulting to Drake.

Speaker 1 Like the question there was like, what is Kendrick going to say about Drake? And he said, quite a bit. And Samuel Jackson played a role that was very well cast, but was not like actually.

Speaker 10 It wasn't hitting you over the face with, yeah, like politics.

Speaker 1 Exactly. With politics.

Speaker 1 So, in that way, like

Speaker 1 you always wonder when the NFL makes this choice. And again, this is a job that is not paid.

Speaker 1 Halftime performer is not a paid job. It is a job that you get paid through

Speaker 1 the exposure and platform, which is unparalleled, as you said.

Speaker 1 The question is always, like, is there an agreement to just like understand

Speaker 1 we're playing to the biggest and only really the only big room left in this country? Yeah. Please don't abuse that privilege.

Speaker 10 I think I was in the Kennedy thing. I was interested in that regard.
I was like, is he going to do something?

Speaker 10 I remember when Lady Gaga performed, that was also like, is she going to say, like, is there going to be? And

Speaker 10 routinely, no. It's been just about the music.
I think, you know, I guess what I just feel strongly, though, is like the music itself is kind of enough at this moment.

Speaker 10 I really believe like it's a big thing.

Speaker 1 But yes, hearing Spanish on the Super Bowl halftime show feels, to your point, it does feel radical given what everything else is signaling to Spanish speakers in America.

Speaker 10 I think back to the Kendrick, by the way, performance and there was so much.

Speaker 10 This is sort of connected to what you're saying about like what's actually popular and what do people really want and who was actually like,

Speaker 10 you know, there was all that talk about like, people are going to change a channel. Nobody's changed a channel.
The ratings were insane.

Speaker 10 And no one's going to change the channel this time.

Speaker 1 They could put a football on a table and they would drop millions. This game sucks.

Speaker 1 Yeah, right. Like a literal football, I mean, like

Speaker 1 a children's book football. Yeah.
With like a talking face on it.

Speaker 10 I have one of those actually at my house. People give me so much football stuff for my kid.
He now knows how to say, he says hut, hut, hike when he sees it.

Speaker 10 Hut, hut, hike. He probably listens to Bad Bunny.
He's two.

Speaker 1 Probably knows the words. Hugo.
He wants that.

Speaker 1 Manzano. Hugo de Manzano.
Dame Hugo. Moss.

Speaker 10 He says Moss, actually, when he wants more stuff. He's a big Moss guy.
Live Moss.

Speaker 1 Dude, did you order the new iPhone 17 Pro? Got it from Verizon. The best 5G network in America.
I never looked so good. You look the same.
But with this camera, everything looks better, especially me.

Speaker 1 You haven't changed your hair in 15 years. Sylvies? Check, please.

Speaker 2 With Verizon, new and existing customers can get the new iPhone 17 Pro, designed to be the most powerful iPhone ever, plus a new iPad and Apple one.

Speaker 6 See Verizon.com for details.

Speaker 1 You check your feed and your account.

Speaker 11 You check the score and the restaurant reviews.

Speaker 11 You check your hair and reflective surfaces and the world around you for recession indicators. So you check all that, but you don't check to see what your ride options are.

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Speaker 1 What did we find out today?

Speaker 10 That we

Speaker 10 apparently are not going to talk about football.

Speaker 1 Oh, we did. We had a oh, shit.
There was a football story I wanted to talk about. Yeah.
No,

Speaker 1 genuinely, I am interested in the there's this football story that I want to actually talk about. Okay.
It's a Seahawks story.

Speaker 10 A Seahawks story. A Seahawks story.

Speaker 1 So what's the name of your kicker again?

Speaker 10 Jason Myers.

Speaker 1 So the Jason Myers thing, in which your Seahawks beat the Cardinals in a very dramatic

Speaker 1 fashion. From 52, the kick wobbles,

Speaker 1 but makes it through.

Speaker 1 And the Seahawks win it at the gun. This field goal was clutch.
Clutched, yeah. And it came with this like warning label around like

Speaker 1 a prohibited substance.

Speaker 10 It was not prohibited.

Speaker 10 So he took a big whiff of smelling salts, which are not prohibited if you bring your own, which that might be the only instance in recorded history of drugs being okay if you bring your own.

Speaker 10 They're not drugs, sorry. Yeah, yeah.
Spanned substances, BYO.

Speaker 10 Versus teen provided smelling salts. But clearly it worked because he banged that sucker

Speaker 10 It's weird to me that you haven't done this on this show. It feels like something way up your alley to try smelling salts.

Speaker 1 Do we have the salts?

Speaker 10 No one has the salts lying around.

Speaker 1 Yeah, bringing the salts in.

Speaker 10 Wait, really?

Speaker 10 Oh my gosh.

Speaker 10 How did I predict this?

Speaker 1 I almost forgot. I'm like, what is the one thing we prepped?

Speaker 10 Oh my God, I've never actually

Speaker 10 experienced this. Instant energy and mental clarity.
How long does it last?

Speaker 1 Wow. A fleeting moment.

Speaker 1 100% natural. This is

Speaker 1 boom, boom, nasal stick.

Speaker 10 Mine says instant energy and mental clarity, and it has kind of like a monster energy looking logo. Where did you guys buy this on the internet? Let me see.
Look at the ingredients on that one.

Speaker 1 It says ideal for athletes in tiny text on the bottom.

Speaker 10 Ingredients. Ammonium carbonate.
This feels more

Speaker 1 illicit.

Speaker 10 Yeah. So I just

Speaker 10 shake it and then unscrew it.

Speaker 1 They're saying don't put it too close to your face

Speaker 1 This is meaning of

Speaker 1 smelling salts

Speaker 1 Oh my god

Speaker 1 oh no

Speaker 1 close to my face You are actively crying right now

Speaker 1 I feel like I could kick 20 fuel goals

Speaker 1 Oh, f.

Speaker 1 That was so strong.

Speaker 1 Holy shit. Oh, Jesus.
You know what that felt?

Speaker 1 That felt like... That all went into one nostril, too.
That went entirely in my left nostril, and it felt like I just got shot with a chlorinated pool.

Speaker 10 Jesus Christ. Yes, it's the chlorine feeling, but like times a million.

Speaker 1 Oh, my God.

Speaker 10 Did it give you, I mean, if I was.

Speaker 1 My left eye is tearing because it went in my left nostril. My right nostril, I think, is congested.

Speaker 10 Oh, this is, it can't be that strong on the sideline because people would be freaking out constantly.

Speaker 1 I'm ready to f podcast.

Speaker 1 Jeez.

Speaker 1 Boost focus.

Speaker 10 I do feel focused.

Speaker 1 I feel incredibly focused. I have instant energy and mental clarity.
Holy shit.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that should be illegal.

Speaker 10 Oh my god. That should be illegal.
Do you think this would actually help you kick a field goal?

Speaker 1 I feel like I I could kick a f ⁇ hole through this wall.

Speaker 1 Oh, God. Wow.

Speaker 10 Yeah, that is, I see, I always thought it was not like that.

Speaker 10 I thought it was more like a coffee type feeling, not like a being injected with compound V type feeling. I feel like somebody just walked up behind me and hit me with the opposite of a tranquilizer.

Speaker 1 I just don't think I'm going to forget that smell for the rest of my life. It's just like it just permanently

Speaker 1 sold a share of my brain to

Speaker 1 this ripoff monster energy drink smelling salt.

Speaker 10 You hit it though. It really does feel like jumping into like a pool

Speaker 10 that's been like chlorinated.

Speaker 1 Because too many kids have been peeing in it and they like, no, they got to really chlorinate it. Like that's what the inside of my brain smells like.

Speaker 10 Oh my God.

Speaker 1 Can you imagine just like doing this before NFL live?

Speaker 10 I don't think this would actually help my performance in any ways because I feel focused, but not in a good way.

Speaker 1 Do you feel focus, strength, and energy, which are the three icons that are? I definitely don't feel strength.

Speaker 10 I feel like somebody with a gigantic hand slapped me in the face.

Speaker 10 Trying to describe to the podcast audience what's going through my mind right now.

Speaker 10 I feel like I dunked my head in cold water. I pulled my head out.
Somebody slapped me in the face.

Speaker 1 What I found out today is that these smelling salts, much like everything I've learned about parenting and everything I've learned about uh aging,

Speaker 1 is a cliche we should respect.

Speaker 10 Um, that's a good one. Yeah, I learned that I'm gonna have to start innovating my own stories for my kid, which I haven't even thought about that.

Speaker 10 I'm gonna have to start getting more creative, and maybe I'll have to take some of those before bedtime.

Speaker 1 I know what Barnaby and Theodore are doing next.

Speaker 1 Smelling salts, they're ripping some salts,

Speaker 1 somebody stop me.

Speaker 1 Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Averoma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McRae, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumanello.

Speaker 1 Our studio engineering by RG Systems. Sound design by Andrew Bersick and NGW Post.
Theme song, as always, by John Bravo. And we will talk to you next time.

Speaker 1 Dude, did you order the new iPhone 17 Pro? Got it from Verizon, the best 5G network in America. I never looked so good.
You look the same. But with this camera, everything looks better, especially me.

Speaker 1 You haven't changed your hair in 15 years. Selfies, check, please.

Speaker 12 With Verizon, new and existing customers can get the new iphone 17 pro designed to be the most powerful iphone ever plus a new ipad and apple one with eligible phone trade-in and unlimited ultimate best 5g source root metrics aid in united states 1 each 2025 all rights reserve trade and additional terms apply for all offers see verizon.com for details you know how everything's a subscription now music movies even socks i swear if it to continue this ad please upgrade to premium plus platinum uh what no anyway blue apron this is a pay-per-listen ad please confirm your billing oh that's annoying at least with the new blue apron there's no subscription needed needed.

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