Lavar Ball, Tiger King Recap, Fyre Fest, Journalist Robert Moor On Tiger King

Speaker 1 Hey, pardon my take, listeners. You can find every episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube.
Prime members can listen ad-free on Amazon Music.

Speaker 2 Give it up for Chicago.

Speaker 4 Sebastian Maniscalco's new stand-up special, It Ain't Right, is coming to Hulu on November 21st.

Speaker 2 30 years ago, Jeff Bezos, complete nerd. Bezos now ripped to shreds on his super yacht, and the boxes keep coming.

Speaker 4 Sebastian Manascalco, it ain't right. Premieres November 21st, streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bundle subscribers.
Terms apply.

Speaker 1 On today's part in my take, we have LeVar Ball.

Speaker 1 It's a weird interview. It's exactly what you'd expect from LeVar Ball.
I don't think we asked him one serious question.

Speaker 1 I don't think he'd want one serious question, but it was good to have him hear his laugh, hear his cackle, hear his bravado.

Speaker 6 He's been gone for too long. He's been out of the national lexicon, and I'm glad that maybe we can do a small part and bring him back.

Speaker 1 And they're re-relaunching Big Baller brand, not small baller brand. We got into that.
We also have

Speaker 1 our Tiger King review. So we review the documentary that has everyone talking this week.
The weirdest, not the weirdest documentary, but maybe...

Speaker 1 Maybe the one documentary I've watched where I hate every single person that's in it.

Speaker 1 I don't think I've had one of those before. What? What? You don't.
There's some lovable characters. Maybe the side characters.
I'm talking about all the main characters.

Speaker 1 They just kept on, like, here's another person you should hate. Here's another person you should hate.

Speaker 6 I like Jeff Lowe's wife. She seems like just a good sport.

Speaker 1 Poor lady. When he was like, Yeah, you got to get back in the gym right after you pop out this kid.
Fuck, Jeff Lowe.

Speaker 6 Well, if I'm going to get a nanny, she might as well be good lucky, right?

Speaker 1 Yeah. All right, so we're going to get into all that.

Speaker 1 We also have a special guest on to talk about that, a reporter who has been covering this story, who's met all these people, and we talk to him about what exactly exactly is going on here, get some answers to some questions I'm sure people have.

Speaker 1 We have some sports debates, we have a Mount Flushmore,

Speaker 1 and we have a Fire Fest of the Week.

Speaker 7 Before we do that, part of my take is: When cool, creamy ranch meets tangy, bold buffalo, the whole is greater than the sum of its sauce.

Speaker 7 Say howdy, partner, to new Buffalo Ranch sauce only at McDonald's for a limited time at participating McDonald's.

Speaker 1 Let's go.

Speaker 1 Now in the street, there is violence.

Speaker 1 And then a lot of the songs work to be done.

Speaker 1 Look at the hannah, no washing.

Speaker 1 And then I can't blame all on the sun. Oh, no, we're gonna rock down to Electric Avenue.

Speaker 1 And then we'll take it higher.

Speaker 1 Oh,

Speaker 6 Welcome to part of my take presented by the Cash App.

Speaker 1 Go download it right now and use code BarStool for $10

Speaker 1 for free. $10 to ASPCA.
Today is Friday, March 27th. And I'm going to admit something, guys.

Speaker 1 I need

Speaker 1 the country. I need whoever's in charge, whether it be Cromo, whether it be President Trump whether it be dr.
Fauci I need someone to tell me I'm doing a good job.

Speaker 6 You're doing a great job.

Speaker 1 I need a pat on the back.

Speaker 1 I'm at pat on the back level of quarantine where this feels like it's doing nothing and all they have to say a little treat and be like hey Big cat, you've saved 10 lives today.

Speaker 6 You know what they should actually do is just they should mail us medals for staying inside because we are saving lives.

Speaker 1 Great generation.

Speaker 6 Yeah, exactly. This is RD Day.
They should just ship us. They should create a new type of life-saving medal from the U.S.

Speaker 6 government and send us like a new one every week so we can pin them to our shirts and walk around and feel good about ourselves.

Speaker 1 Don't you agree, though? We're at the...

Speaker 6 I need a participation life-saving certificate.

Speaker 1 Right, we're at the point of the quarantine where

Speaker 1 I think we all know that we're doing the right thing and hopefully it's helping, but I need someone to get in front of a camera instead of doom and gloom and deaths, deaths, deaths, and coronavirus, be like, hey, you, yeah, you sitting on your couch eating the sixth bowl of cereal you've had this morning.

Speaker 1 You're doing a great job. Keep doing exactly what you're doing, which is nothing.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it's like, you know, how at the bottom of cereal boxes, you get a prize once you eat all of it?

Speaker 6 There should be like a little token at the bottom of all of our beers that we're drinking in bottles of wine where you get to the bottom. That's the metal.

Speaker 6 It's like by drinking this and staying inside, you have saved one life.

Speaker 1 Yes, so I need a pat on the back. I need a little pat on the head.

Speaker 6 I think that what we are seeing, though, is our communities coming together and rallying around each other and supporting each other. Small businesses are even contributing.
For example,

Speaker 6 I got this text from a local small business last night, and it really made me feel good about just about people in general.

Speaker 6 It said, I hope everyone and their families are safe through this global pandemic. I would like to thank you all and keep you updated.

Speaker 6 On our end, we're taking the right precautions to make sure we keep everyone safe and our SUVs clean and disinfected

Speaker 6 by providing hand sanitizer and disinfecting the SUVs after every ride.

Speaker 6 We are still renting the SUVs as long as the roads are open

Speaker 6 going from 1 p.m. until 11 p.m.
because there are curfew restrictions in certain areas and we want to keep the roads clear. And that was from my weed guy.

Speaker 1 Hell yeah. Yeah.
There it is. Shout out to a drug guy.
Not a drug guy. Not a drug guy.

Speaker 6 Not a drug guy. Shout out to the local small businesses that are doing their part.

Speaker 1 I would imagine that that is one of the industries that is recession proof right now. At least everyone's sitting at home.
I actually have.

Speaker 6 I've been funeral directors. Funeral.

Speaker 1 Well, that's a little. Okay.

Speaker 1 You did that. Wednesday, you were down.

Speaker 6 Let's restart.

Speaker 1 Wednesday, you were down.

Speaker 1 Monday, I was down. Today, we got to be up for it.

Speaker 6 Let's restart. Here we go.

Speaker 1 It's Friday.

Speaker 6 Hey there, all you big cats and kittens. Welcome to Pardon Legion.

Speaker 1 Welcome to the Tiger King.

Speaker 1 I've actually been fascinated with what industries are doing well and will be doing well. And one that I've noticed that is probably booming right now is sign language people on TV.
Yes.

Speaker 1 There are some people who are like, they just got called up to the majors. They've been waiting for a really long time.
Maybe they've been off to the side of like an auditorium. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Where they can't really be seen. Now they're front and center.
I don't know.

Speaker 1 We're going to talk about the Mississippi governor saying that he doesn't want it to be China, so he's not doing a lockdown.

Speaker 1 I don't know if you saw the Mississippi sign language guy, but he looks like someone who could be in Dog the Bounty Hunter's crew.

Speaker 6 Do you do accents when it comes to sign language to really convey the sound of the person's voice? That's a good question.

Speaker 6 If it's from Mississippi, are you holding a Mountain Dew in one hand and like a Newport in the other? It's a good question.

Speaker 1 It's a good question. But these, look at this guy.
That's a sign language guy from Mississippi. Oh, I love you.

Speaker 1 He's wearing all black and a mullet.

Speaker 6 That guy is a walking accent.

Speaker 1 That's perfect.

Speaker 6 So yeah, these guys. He's got like a bag of money that says to Cam Newton's father on it.

Speaker 1 Yes. And it's sign language.
Shout out to the sign language people out there who are getting up there every day. I would like them to dress up maybe like a little, like a tuxedo or something.

Speaker 1 Like a white tux. So that you can be like, whoa, that guy's classic.

Speaker 6 I agree that there should be something to denote that that is a sign language person.

Speaker 6 Because I always, for the first like half second, two seconds, I'm looking at it, I'm wondering if that maybe that person's just Italian and they're very demonstrative.

Speaker 6 They should wear the orange mittens like the NFL people do when they stand on the field during commercial breaks.

Speaker 1 De Blasio's got.

Speaker 6 And I guess you couldn't see the fingers. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Okay, I'll workshop that. De Blasio's got a ponytail guy with a soul patch, and it's like, this guy's a badass.

Speaker 6 That's awesome. It's like the guy from Tiger Cave.

Speaker 1 It's just show up and be like, hey,

Speaker 1 here's your message with my hands.

Speaker 6 I really feel like soul patches are making a comeback, too.

Speaker 6 I've been seeing more and more of them.

Speaker 1 Now,

Speaker 6 they're mostly from weirdos and documentaries and magicians and lead singers of Smash Mouth. But overall, I feel like we've been exposed to more soul patches than usual in 2020.

Speaker 1 Yeah, probably. Keep an eye on.
Yeah, we're probably at our soul patch capacity right now. It's probably hitting early.
That's probably hit our quota real early.

Speaker 6 That's a curve that you want to flatten. Yes.
You don't need a spike in soul patches.

Speaker 1 But yeah, so we're basically, every day is the same. Every day is Groundhog's Day.

Speaker 1 I've just been playing a shitload of video games. I think everyone else is.
You've been watching Game of Thrones, right?

Speaker 6 I have not started. I've been thinking about starting Game of Thrones.
So I'm getting prepared for that.

Speaker 6 I've been writing a lot of songs. One thing I want to do is actually every day write a song.
Oh, wow. So maybe just text me in the morning.

Speaker 6 I'll pick one person who replies to the part of my take tweet that I tweet out every morning. Give me a topic to write a song about, and I'll write a 30-second song by the end of the day.

Speaker 1 I mean, I have a challenge. I don't know if you'll be able to pull this off by the end of the show, but I was just going through the DMs, and

Speaker 1 at Aaron Solomon24, asked, can we get a PMT or PFT song to listen to to get stuck in our heads for 20 seconds while we vigorously wash our hands? Oh, so that's your challenge tomorrow?

Speaker 6 Write a 20-second song challenge. Okay.

Speaker 1 Maybe go live from the PMT Twitter account and debut it tomorrow at like noon. Okay, got it.
I'll do it. Yeah.
After your race.

Speaker 6 Well, no, noon doesn't work for me. Oh.
I'm going to be passed out for at least two hours. Yeah, you have to do your race.
I'm racing against some golf bros tomorrow.

Speaker 1 This is where we... I mean, someone tweeted at me.
They're like, so is your day just consist of? You have to. I think you'll beat them.
Yeah, you will. They're like, you.
Oh, for sure.

Speaker 1 Does your day consist of just fake

Speaker 1 horse racing and video games? It's like, correct.

Speaker 1 Correct. I've just gone back in time.
I have a Nintendo in my bedroom and an Xbox in my living room, and that's, I'm basically just switching. Yeah.
Like, I'm just walking into my bedroom.

Speaker 1 Back and forth, going to my living room, and then switching again. And And back and forth.

Speaker 6 I'm getting into cooking again.

Speaker 1 Oh, wow. Yeah.
You were into cooking.

Speaker 1 Cleaning up isn't it? You were into cooking?

Speaker 6 I cooked more when I worked from home like four or five years ago.

Speaker 1 Got it.

Speaker 6 But I almost lit the apartment on fire last night. Not good.
Fun fact: ground pepper is very flammable, and so it looks like you're welding if you just put it into a hot fan.

Speaker 1 That is a fun fact. That's a really fun fact.
We also have the sports world is trying to figure out what the fuck to talk about.

Speaker 1 So we're going to do the thing where we just wait for them to talk about something and then we just make fun of it and then we look smart.

Speaker 6 Here's how bad, real quick, we'll get into that in just one second. It's gotten so bad in my house that now Leroy is sick of me.
Yeah, all he ever wanted.

Speaker 6 Dogs were big, benefit, they benefited so hard from the lockdown for like the first week. We're like, oh, my person's around all the time.
This is awesome.

Speaker 6 Now it's like Leroy's, dude, give it a break. You're smothering me.
Well, I've had like a simp for Leroy now. Like, can I get you anything, Leroy?

Speaker 1 I've had the moment where it's like we've just gone back in time. I was texting with KFC or I was G-chatting with KFC this morning.

Speaker 1 I was sitting there writing a blog with Stella sitting right next to me. And I was like, everything that we've done the last five, six, seven years, we're just back to square one.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 We're back to square one. We're just doing this all again.
I'm writing blogs. I'm putting fake polls.
Like, we're just back to square one. So here we are.

Speaker 6 I clicked on your poll. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Did you? Got me. It was good.
Well, I wanted to. What I wanted to do.
It looked legit.

Speaker 1 Well, what I really wanted to do was back in the day with our website always being at the cutting edge of technology, there used to be a poll system that was one to five stars.

Speaker 1 And so you could only do, it could only be a binary thing. Like you couldn't do three options.

Speaker 1 So I would always do three options and I'd be like, choose one for this, choose three for this, choose five for this. And it would always end up at three and people would get mad at me.

Speaker 1 So I couldn't do that. So I went to the old, old school and just pasted a picture of a poll in.
But yeah, here we are. So

Speaker 1 the sports world. So like I said, we're just going to make fun of everyone else because we're just basically going back to basics.

Speaker 1 Two things caught my eyes today.

Speaker 1 The first was Sports Center tweeting out their starting five Kevins, all-team Kevins for NBA. Said no one could beat the best five Kevins of all time.

Speaker 1 It was Kevin Johnson, Kevin McHale, Kevin Garnett, Kevin Love, and Kevin Durant, I believe. That was it.

Speaker 1 So we're going to do our five top five Kevins that we will tweet out, but let's do it Mount Flushmore style so we just pick the worst Kevins.

Speaker 6 Worst Kevins of all time. Good Kevin, bad Kevin.

Speaker 1 Kevin Spacey.

Speaker 1 Number one starter on our team. He's bringing up the ball.
That's a really good starter. He's calling the plays.
He's shooting the ball.

Speaker 1 He's not passing the ball unless he lets you have a few drinks first. He is number one Kevin on our bad Kevins.

Speaker 6 That is honestly tough to follow up.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Because

Speaker 6 I think he's like the runaway worst Kevin of all time.

Speaker 1 Well, here's another one I had. What coat?

Speaker 1 Kevin Federlein. No, disagree.

Speaker 6 Kevin Federlein hacked the American Dream. Everything about Kevin Federlein is something that you should strive to do.
You get married to a superstar in her field. You get a shitload of money.

Speaker 1 You wear jeans, suits all the time.

Speaker 6 You have three do-rags and a hat on at all times. And

Speaker 6 usually no shirt. And then you just live off the teat of being like a guest appearance on a reality show twice a year for the next 15 minutes.

Speaker 1 Named Kevin. Kevin Nash, the wrestler.
Ah, Ah, yeah, I mean, we could put him on there. I think we have to put Kevin Federline on there just because we don't have enough Kevins.

Speaker 6 I don't know. Kevin O'Leary, Mr.

Speaker 1 Wonderful. People didn't like that interview.
Put him on there. And, yeah.
Yeah. Who's and yeah, well, yeah.
Yeah, and yeah. Who's the other one? Kevin O'Leary, Mr.
Wonderful, because, and, yeah.

Speaker 1 Kevin Nash was a wrestler.

Speaker 6 I mean, he's a big body.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Got arrested.

Speaker 1 Kevin James is a big body. Not a bad guy, though.

Speaker 6 Not a bad guy. I feel like Kevin James is a guy who is awesome to hang out with, and I just hate his movies.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Although

Speaker 1 he was also the American dream in King of Queens because his wife was very, very hot, and he was 300-pound slob. Well, that's how TV works.

Speaker 6 Yes. Just like any commercial, it's always just like some guy who's like a three or a four and a smokeshow wife.

Speaker 1 Yes. So who else do we got? Oh, we could put Kevin McHale, the TV actor, on there.

Speaker 1 Okay. So let's just put that guy on there.
And that's our list of Kevins.

Speaker 6 Kevin Love in the playoffs.

Speaker 1 Ooh. That'll be good.
It doesn't really show up. Kevin Love when John Beelines is coach.

Speaker 6 He did lock down Steph Curry, though.

Speaker 1 He did that one time.

Speaker 1 Any other Kevins we should think of?

Speaker 1 I don't know. I just looked on.
I just typed in famous Kevin. Kevin Hart, but it's a picture of.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah, we can put Kevin Hart on there.

Speaker 1 We can't put Kevin Hart.

Speaker 6 I would say Kevin Hart is the worst Kevin Tweeter of all time.

Speaker 1 Yes, I'd agree with that. All right, so our final list of Kevins.
Our top five Kevins, Kevin Spacey, Kevin O'Leary, Kevin Federline, Kevin McHale, the TV actor, last spot, Kevin Hart. Kevin Jonas.

Speaker 1 He's the ones that broke up the Jonas brothers. There's another Jonas? Kevin is the worst.

Speaker 1 Oh, he is? Yeah. I thought it was just Nick and Joe.
No, they're the greatest. Oh, Kevin.
Put him in there. He's Fredo.
We can't say that. Yes.

Speaker 1 Sorry, Andrew Cuomo.

Speaker 6 Well, you can't. No, Chris Cromo.

Speaker 1 Well, both. I think they're both Italian.
Yeah, I know, but Andrew.

Speaker 6 I feel like Andrew doesn't mind the Fredo because

Speaker 6 he knows that his brother is the Fredo. Right, right, right.

Speaker 1 Like when that was both Fredos.

Speaker 6 But no,

Speaker 6 when that video came out,

Speaker 6 he was like, yeah, absolutely, Chris is a Fredo. Right.
Good job. Right.

Speaker 1 Okay, so our last one is, wait, what was it? What was it? Kevin Jonas. Kevin Jonas.
I'm just looking at. I can't believe there's another Jonas.

Speaker 6 I'm looking at Kevin Jonas.

Speaker 1 One of the funniest, if there's a documentary about the Jonas brothers, and when they broke it. Which there will be.
No, it's out there. Oh, this is a scene in it.
Credit me.

Speaker 1 It's so funny they were all hated each other and nick and joe told kevin they're like hey don't come to the concert like we're not even gonna perform our songs together like it was like their last contracted like performance they did before they broke up and so kevin didn't go and then nick and joe just played all their songs it's just like kevin being like i had to watch them like play all our songs together blah blah blah blah blah it was it's very mean but it was it's hilarious yeah so we'll we'll put that out there maybe we should put an asterisk next to kevin spacey and then be like clearly the worst kevin captain captain worst Kevin.

Speaker 1 Because the other Kevins don't really deserve to be in.

Speaker 6 Associate with him. Yeah, he's at a Pantheon all-in-one.

Speaker 1 Maybe that would just be our top five. It's just Kevin Spacey, number one.
And that's it. I like it.
And then the other thing we had was top five quarterbacks of all time.

Speaker 1 That everyone's it is truly debate season where people can just throw out anything and it becomes like, hey, I'll spend the next three hours sitting on Twitter debating this.

Speaker 1 So I think Stephen A. Smith started this one when he did top five quarterbacks.
He had Joe Montana, John Elway, Peyton, Brady, and Aaron Rodgers. Okay.

Speaker 6 That seems right to me. No borders on there.

Speaker 1 That's a little bit. Yeah, I think Marino probably should make it, but that's just me.

Speaker 6 I don't mind.

Speaker 6 Once you get into breaking down where these guys fall on that list,

Speaker 6 there's a specific type of person that puts Aaron Rodgers above those other names.

Speaker 1 The person who puts Aaron Rodgers just wants to debate for the rest of the night.

Speaker 6 Well, it's also a cheat code because you can say he is the best quarterback that I've ever he makes all of his physically gifted.

Speaker 6 That, yeah, if you're designing a quarterback, you would design Aaron Rodgers. And you're like, well, Drew Brees has been really good for a long amount of time.

Speaker 6 You're like, no, but Aaron Rodgers can make throws. Drew Brees can't.
Right. And that's your trump card for all of them.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 so

Speaker 1 our best quarterbacks, our worst fun quarterbacks is our list. Okay.

Speaker 6 I'm going to just get it started with a good friend by the name of Ryan Mallet.

Speaker 1 Ryan Mallet's a good one.

Speaker 1 Although, is he fun? He's kind of a dick. Yeah,

Speaker 6 he was fun that he got cut from multiple teams because he didn't know how to set a clock. Yeah.
That's kind of cool.

Speaker 1 Nathan Peterman should be on there. Matt Schaub.
Matt Schaub.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah,

Speaker 1 the pick six streak he had is, yeah, he was all-time fun then.

Speaker 6 Mike Lennon, just because the neck, it really makes him pop.

Speaker 1 If I was going to go a Bears quarter, I think Rex is probably it because he was, I mean, he was fun.

Speaker 6 But Rex was bad. Rex was occasionally very good, too.
He was, but he was also bad.

Speaker 1 But he was fun.

Speaker 6 Because he just fucking chucked it. He was like a watered-down Winston.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Do you consider, is it sacrilegious to say Ryan Fitzpatrick's bad? No.

Speaker 6 So he's fun.

Speaker 6 You could say that. But he's fun.
I don't think that he's bad, bad.

Speaker 1 He's not good.

Speaker 6 He has, but he's streaky bad. This is weird.
Jake Delome. Yeah.
Jake Delome, especially at the tail end of his career when he was throwing interceptions left-handed.

Speaker 1 Just say Jake Delome, parentheses, non-steroid Panthers. Yep.
Because that team, like when they went to the Super Bowl, just everyone took steroids at the same time. It was awesome.

Speaker 6 David Carr.

Speaker 1 Yep. And Derek.
And Derek.

Speaker 6 The Carr brothers. The Carr family.
The Carr brothers. The Carr DNA.

Speaker 1 Brock Osweiler. Yes.
Just from height perspective. Very fun.
John Kittna? Yep.

Speaker 6 That's another one. John Kittna Caboodle.
Tarvares Jackson. Oh, yeah.
Tarvares was, he was going to take that next step.

Speaker 1 Are we doing a list or you guys just naming it? We're just naming it. We're naming it back.

Speaker 6 He was the Ryan Tannehill before Ryan Tannehill.

Speaker 1 Well, and also the story where he

Speaker 1 pulled a gun on his wife, which isn't funny. No.
But she said, shoot, you'll miss.

Speaker 6 Yeah, that is very funny. That is funny.
It's very

Speaker 6 funny.

Speaker 1 That is objectively hilarious. I got down this rabbit hole earlier today because I am the OC at Florida State now.

Speaker 1 Do you remember the story of Ricky Aguayo, Roberto Aguayo's younger brother, who tore a turtle in his half?

Speaker 6 Yes, he ripped the turtle in half.

Speaker 1 Do you know what the turtle's name is? Was

Speaker 1 incredible.

Speaker 6 Lonesome George.

Speaker 1 Turntle.

Speaker 1 Fuck. That makes it even worse.
Turntle. It was a fucking turtle in a frat house named Turntle.
They turnt it up. How do you even rip a turtle in half? I don't know.

Speaker 1 Again, this is where we're at in life. I read the police report today, and it was, it bummed me out so hard.
Do you get it?

Speaker 6 Turntle. Is it like a wishbone where if you tear it and

Speaker 6 you get the head, then you get a wish that you get to?

Speaker 1 Turntle. All right, so it's someone's.

Speaker 6 I wish my brother could make an extra point.

Speaker 1 Put those top five quarterbacks on there, but put all of them.

Speaker 1 So, like, put like the 11 that we named. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Including Ricky Aquire. J.P.

Speaker 6 Loseman.

Speaker 1 We need to just put that. Yeah.

Speaker 6 Can you believe that somebody actually wasted a high draft pick on a guy whose last name

Speaker 6 was Lost Man?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Arm Strength.
You had it.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we should just start putting out graphics of lists every day just to get the people going.

Speaker 6 It's just our list. Okay, here's what we should do.
We have 32 teams in the NFL.

Speaker 6 We should say who the best quarterback of all time for that team was in franchise franchise history, but have it be somebody who's hilariously good/slash bad.

Speaker 6 So best Ravens quarterback of all time, Kyle Baller.

Speaker 1 I like that.

Speaker 1 I like that.

Speaker 6 Trentilfer, he won a Super Bowl.

Speaker 1 Jets quarterback, Chad Pennington. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Hmm. Jay Fiedler for the Dolphins.
Mm-hmm.

Speaker 6 Yeah, we could get people big mad about that. Saints.

Speaker 1 Every Bears quarterback. Saints,

Speaker 6 Aaron Brooks.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Dude, he was nasty.

Speaker 6 Well, yeah, so we'll pick somebody who is like very clearly not the best.

Speaker 1 I will do that on Monday. And we'll make little graphics for him.

Speaker 6 Yeah.

Speaker 1 I want us to, yeah, pardon my take Twitter account, we need to be creating lists at an all-time quantum.

Speaker 6 We're just basically going full troll right now.

Speaker 1 Just churning out lists, lists and lists and lists, get the people discussing things.

Speaker 1 All right, before we get to LeVar Ball, we got to do our Fire Fest.

Speaker 1 And are we going to do our Mount Flushmore after LeVar Ball or before?

Speaker 1 What is our Mount Flushmore this week?

Speaker 6 We're doing a Mount Flushmore of the worst numbers, worst phone calls that you can get when you see it pop up on your color ID, numbers that you do not want to answer.

Speaker 1 Worst phone calls. Okay, yeah, yeah.
All right, so let's do our Fire Fest first, and we'll do LeVar Ball. Then, after LeVar Ball, we'll do Mount Flushmore and a lot of Tiger King.
Fire Fest, Hank.

Speaker 1 My Fire Fest is that I've just been crushing sweets, probably had a box of Oreos a day, and I think I have a cavity.

Speaker 1 And I don't think I can deal with that for like

Speaker 6 not a great time to go to the dentist.

Speaker 1 You can't eat your way through it.

Speaker 1 Because cavities definitely, as someone who's had a cavity that went into a root canal, if you can get your tooth into that middle zone between cavity and root canal, you can buy yourself a couple months with no pain.

Speaker 1 Like the because you get normalized to the cavity pain,

Speaker 1 and then you're good. And then when the root canal pain happens, it's emergency room.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I mean, that's why the good Lord gave you two sides of your mouth you can chew on. So just you start avoiding that one.

Speaker 1 Listen, I've done it. I actually once went in, I had to get cavities on both sides filled, and I got one filled, and I was like, this sucks.
I'll come back later.

Speaker 1 Left, got a root canal because I didn't come back for six months.

Speaker 6 If you chew on one side of your mouth, too, just one of your jaw muscles gets huge. It looks like you have mumps.
You look like Sidney Crosby.

Speaker 1 Maybe, have you thought about washing your Oreos?

Speaker 1 Soften them into milk.

Speaker 1 Milk and Oreos. Okay.

Speaker 6 Like an old dog. You just have to.
Big-time throwback.

Speaker 1 Deep cut for anyone who's been listening to PNC. Sushi foods only.

Speaker 6 Smoothies only for Hank.

Speaker 1 All right. That's a good Fire Fest.
We have coloring books on sale, by the way. Oh, yeah.
Coloring books. Buy them.

Speaker 1 I was going to actually think about giving it to friends who have children, and then the first page is ass eaten. Yeah, it's just me with my pants down and it's an R-rated coloring book.

Speaker 6 Getting ready to go to town.

Speaker 1 Or if you want,

Speaker 1 buy the coloring book and then just rip out the three or four or five or six pages that are maybe not age appropriate. What else is an age appropriate? Philadelphia Beagles.
That's a cool one, kids.

Speaker 1 There's somewhere we're just not wearing clothes.

Speaker 6 Yeah, there's one where me and Big Cat are spit roasting a football.

Speaker 1 Yeah, we're fucking a football. Boner dogs, probably.

Speaker 6 No, boner dogs are okay. You just take out the boner part.
Just color over the boner part.

Speaker 1 There's one where there's a casket with a football. You got to explain death to your kid.
So, yeah,

Speaker 1 you can work your way around it.

Speaker 1 All right, PFT, what's your Fire Fest?

Speaker 6 My Fire Fest of the Week. I have two.
Is that okay? Yeah.

Speaker 6 All right, so my first one is that we did not include in our Mount Flushmore of Worst Waters the guy that was going to suck Dick for water in Firefest.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 Although maybe that water was... That water was probably really good if he was going to suck dick for it.
Yes. Okay, so I disavow that Firefest.

Speaker 6 My other Firefest is something that we actually have to come together and disavow as a podcast.

Speaker 6 It's going to be tough, but we have found ourselves on the wrong side of history with the airport chilies in Orlando.

Speaker 1 So

Speaker 6 the Orlando Airport Chilies, the one at the top of the escalator, it's it's a great way to have a great way to have a meal. It's a great place to have a meal.

Speaker 1 The woman who told Hank and I,

Speaker 1 it was after the Stanley Cup. Yeah.
And she said, we said, how are you doing?

Speaker 6 She said, just living the dream. It was a great place to have a meal

Speaker 6 until last week when they brought all their workers in to clean out the entire restaurant to like disinfect it, wipe everything down, and then fired them all on the spot after they disinfected it.

Speaker 6 So I personally am disavowing the airport chilies in Orlando, Florida. I'm sorry.

Speaker 6 I feel pain actually saying those words.

Speaker 1 I'm not ready there.

Speaker 1 I'm going to say that. I am moving along.
I am right now.

Speaker 6 I am full steam ahead behind the ante-anch.

Speaker 1 I'm with you, PFT, like in theory, but now I'm thinking about if we're in the Orlando airport, I'm going.

Speaker 1 Listen, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to do it.
If someone can show me proof about working there and being fired, I will happily send you $100.

Speaker 1 And then I will not disavow.

Speaker 6 I am not setting foot in there. I might do a PETA protest where I stand outside and I throw fake blood on everyone that walks out.

Speaker 1 Yeah, some things are bigger than just being like a scumbag organization and firing your employees. Yeah, I'm taking a moment.
I'm taking a mortal stand. It's literally bigger.

Speaker 6 You go up to it. You go up to it.
Yep.

Speaker 1 All right, my fire fest is, I got my weighted vest. It's way too heavy.

Speaker 6 80 pounds is a shitbook.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 I was wondering if you were going to realize that.

Speaker 1 Well, it's 50 with, and then I bought the engine. It's still really heavy.
Very heavy.

Speaker 6 So 50 pounds is an extreme weighted vest.

Speaker 6 I'm doing it, though. I would actually say that wearing a weighted vest that weighs 50 pounds is bad for your exercise habits because you just never want to stand up in it.

Speaker 1 No, I'm going to get stronger.

Speaker 6 I would just pee myself instead of having to get up and go to the bathroom.

Speaker 1 I'm also big time back on my.

Speaker 1 Again, like this is, we're all going back in time, but I used to just buy just needless shit on Amazon, like all the time. That's how I got a hand claw back in the day.
Weird shit. I'm back on that.

Speaker 1 I bought a trumpet this week. Nice.
I bought a

Speaker 6 suggestion.

Speaker 1 John Basedow DVD.

Speaker 6 Oh, John Basedow, the legend. You remember the legend that he died of AIDS?

Speaker 1 No, and he also died in the Thailand,

Speaker 1 whatever it was. Tsunami.
Tsunami. There it was.
Yeah. He's died a bunch of times.
He's a Danny Boy Kane of fitness.

Speaker 6 He's a cat. He's got nine lives.
Yeah. He actually looks like he's part cat.

Speaker 1 So I'm going to get in good shape because of that. I bought

Speaker 1 this helmet

Speaker 1 massager. You put it on and it massages your brain.

Speaker 6 Get stronger or get smarter? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Both. Both.
Both. I bought a high-altitude oxygen mask so I can start training my lungs in case I get the Rona.

Speaker 6 That's pretty good too.

Speaker 1 Yeah, a lot of needless shit.

Speaker 6 Yeah. No, that sounds pretty strong.
I just think that the weighted vest, you could probably get more bang for your buck if you got some of those jump shoes. I might just wear my jump shoes.

Speaker 1 Give me your Achilles.

Speaker 6 That's fine.

Speaker 6 If there's ever any time to tear your Achilles, it's right now.

Speaker 1 I'm so afraid of tearing my Achilles.

Speaker 6 Well, it's not going to tear mine. It's just going to make my calves swole as fuck.

Speaker 1 That's like the one. I feel like anyone who still tries to play pickup basketball into their their like mid to late 30s, it tears their Achilles.

Speaker 6 Probably.

Speaker 1 So I'm scared of that. Okay, let's get to our interview with LeVar Ball.
Speaking of basketball, speaking of great shoes that won't tear your Achilles.

Speaker 1 LeVar Ball, before we do that, a quick word from our friends at...

Speaker 6 Hey, it's PFT here, reminding you that Boarshead makes game day entertaining elevated and effortless.

Speaker 6 Whether you order catering platters ahead from your local Boarshead retailer, or you create your own spread at home with Boarshead premium deli meats and cheeses, you are sure to impress your guests.

Speaker 6 My favorites like oven gold turkey or blazing buffalo style chicken paired with their classic Vermont cheddar or creamy Munster cheese are sure to score big and help me elevate my entertainment every time whether it's for a tailgate or a home gating celebration.

Speaker 6 Seriously guys, it's a game-changing flavor for every gathering. Boarshead, committed to craft since 1905.

Speaker 8 The Pro Football Football Show is presented by the Chevy Silverado. Built for the hustle, ready for the game, Chevy Silverado is America's most dependable full-size truck.

Speaker 8 Whether you're you're grinding through the week or gearing up for kickoff, the Silverado is one ride that's always game ready. Just like football, it's about grit, grind, and getting it done.

Speaker 8 Head to Chevy.com to learn more and build your own Chevy Silverado.

Speaker 1 Okay, here he is, LeVar Ball.

Speaker 3 Okay, we now welcome on a very special guest. It is LeVar Ball, owner, founder, creator of Big Baller brand.
He also is the father of Lonzo, L'Angelo, Lamello. You know them.

Speaker 3 LeVar, thank you for joining us. No problem, man.
My first question for you. I saw the relaunch of Big Baller Brand.

Speaker 3 I noticed that the price of the shoes went from $495 to $189.

Speaker 3 Are you now a small baller? I'm always going to be a big baller, man. Been there, done that.
Like I said, I did my thing. When the shoes first came out, it was symbolic.

Speaker 3 So you can't put a price on it. I put my own price on it.
Now I did what I wanted to do. The boys can do whatever they want with the shoe now.
Oh, okay. Well, wait,

Speaker 3 but you're still like head of big baller brand, right? Of course.

Speaker 3 Okay.

Speaker 3 Okay. The price change makes me think maybe you guys are small ballers now.
Oh, no. That's what my sons is.
They want the price to be lower for folks. That's good.

Speaker 3 But like I said, when I'm first coming out, I'm coming out with my price.

Speaker 3 And that's how I did it. Who's the biggest baller in your family?

Speaker 3 Stop it, man. You know it's me.
Still? But

Speaker 3 always.

Speaker 3 Well, Lonzo's probably the richest

Speaker 3 and also the best basketball player.

Speaker 3 Richest. Hey, if I tell him to give me all the money, he got to give it to me.
I'm the is that how it works?

Speaker 3 Oh, that's how it works.

Speaker 3 That's pretty cool. In the ball clan, yes.
Okay.

Speaker 3 It sounds like you're claiming that you're still the biggest baller in your own family, but you're letting your sons tell you how much to charge for your shoes.

Speaker 3 I'm not claiming it. I'm saying I am.
I'm always going to be the big ball. Okay, I got it.
Here's my next question, Levar.

Speaker 3 I was doing some research and I read on Google under the people also ask questions, someone asked, what is Big Baller brand worth?

Speaker 3 And it says the net worth of Big Baller brand is estimated to be over $1 billion.

Speaker 3 So who do you know at Google? How did you get them to change that answer to make it be $1 billion?

Speaker 3 What's it worth? Well, everybody knows it's worth a billion. No chance.

Speaker 3 Why do you think they're coming at me so hard? No chance. It's worth a billion.

Speaker 3 Come on. This take off.
this is a wrap why not why it's not worth it

Speaker 3 you tell me why it's not worth a billion

Speaker 3 finally received big baller brand shoes number one because i know it took like 12 months to get them hey man it's just like a fine wine you can't rush that

Speaker 3 i like that i like that

Speaker 3 Well, how many pairs of Big Baller ones did you sell? Like I told Colin Hurst, 495.

Speaker 3 495 okay i'm just doing the math on that because i'm trying to get to 495 times 500 yeah you're right that equals a billion hey you're right we all man let's go

Speaker 3 yeah

Speaker 3 did you say colin heard that was a great i like that you just made his name a little bit shorter there we don't have to say the cow part yeah

Speaker 3 colin colin heard heard what you heard uh levar is getting coronavirus a big baller move or a small baller move getting the coronavirus

Speaker 3 man that's it.

Speaker 3 I don't think getting sick is a big baller move. Yeah, I agree.
You know, some of you get it, some of them you don't, man. Just my resistance level is very high.

Speaker 3 I ain't going to get no coronavirus, man. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Shit, last time. When I got sick, what was the last time I was in kindergarten? Oh, when was the last time you were in kindergarten? Yeah.
Shit,

Speaker 3 50-something years ago. Okay.

Speaker 3 Thanks.

Speaker 3 So

Speaker 3 you've been on all the ESP and morning shows, all the Fox Sports Morning Shows. Who's the biggest baller that you've run to? Is it Stephen A.
Smith, Skip Bayless, Shin Sharp? Man, it's you guys, man.

Speaker 3 They small ballers, man. That's why I go over there and be big baller style on them.
Y'all the big ballers, sure.

Speaker 3 We actually,

Speaker 3 a bunch of people in our office bought the big baller shoes the first time they came out. I actually remember

Speaker 3 because one of the guys.

Speaker 3 Yeah, one of the guys got a size 13 left shoe and a size 11 right shoe.

Speaker 3 Does he have a dextrus? No, you guys just said different pairs. I kind of like that though.
If he epidextrous, we had to get in one small foot and one big foot because you never know these days.

Speaker 3 I'm going to give you some credit, LeVar, because what you've done is marketing genius.

Speaker 3 Because essentially, any complaint or anyone who's like, hey, I didn't get my shoes, or the shoes are different sizes, or this is bad, or this is, you can just respond and be like, sounds like you're not a big baller.

Speaker 3 No, I wouldn't respond like that, man. I'm going to take care of that.
Okay. Whatever they need to get it right, we get it done.
I actually like the new shoes. I looked on the site.
They look good.

Speaker 3 They do look good they got style they got flavor you know hey like i said in this business man especially with shoes you get better and better at it you know you get some more inputs from different folks and the shoe turns out to be better and better usually the first and second shoe it's all right remember the shoe cob he had on when he was with adidas that thing looked like a moon

Speaker 3 i mean come on

Speaker 3 i knew i could make a shoe better now because of what happened

Speaker 3 well yeah i'm just saying that. Well, we could break.
That's a different, that's a different lane. Let's leave that one along.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Mama Mentality is like almost the originator of being a big baller. It was being a big baller before you knew what it was.

Speaker 3 I'm the original big baller on the fact that I've always been big, my last name, ball. Why do you think they start calling him big ball?

Speaker 3 Did you originate it?

Speaker 3 Did your father? That's the father do that on purpose? I had thought about that. Name you LeVar Ball.

Speaker 3 Well, his last name is Ball.

Speaker 3 We got the last name of Ball. You know, we've been around for a while.

Speaker 3 got it i didn't change my name for this

Speaker 3 now when uh when you first met lebron james how did you let him know that there's a new alpha in town to let him know that like this is okay

Speaker 3 i've never met lebron now you need to fall back what i never met lebron james he never kissed your ring and said is it first of all i don't do that

Speaker 3 you know i was a boss i ain't let nobody kiss my hand especially no boy

Speaker 3 i don't do that that's that's something y'all created man kissing rings and all that i ain't kissing no ring we nobody kiss my ring yeah did you ever have a conversation with him did it did you ever have a conversation with lebron or did uh any of his people reach out no no

Speaker 3 never

Speaker 3 what at what point do you think you will publicly try to get alvin gentry fired at what point do i think i would get alvin gentry fired

Speaker 3 that ain't up to me to get him fired that's that's on himself to get fired right but like

Speaker 3 if you're not doing the job that's when they fire you Got it. Don't try to blame it on me.
A lot of folks try to blame when they get fired or something by me. They'd be like, oh, Lamar got me fired.

Speaker 3 No, man, that's on you.

Speaker 3 You established that a long time ago. Right.
Fair point. Do you think that Zion Williamson is a big baller? Do I think he's a big baller? Yeah, you're a big baller.
You know, Zion's a big baller.

Speaker 6 Who's the alpha on that team?

Speaker 3 Stop it. On New Orleans.
It's only one big baller on that team.

Speaker 3 And I'm the guy with the last name ball, and that's the one who's running the team the majority of the time. Okay.
Okay. Let's go back in time.

Speaker 3 Let's say a prime LeVar ball, prime LeVar ball versus Ian Williamson. One on one.

Speaker 3 I'll murder that boy. He too small.
He too slow. He too slow.
I was way too fast for that boy. He's a youngster, man.

Speaker 3 My prime time, I would kill him. I was just too strong and too fast.
Okay, how about this? What if you grew up playing golf? Do you think that you could beat Tiger Williams? If I grew up playing golf?

Speaker 3 Yeah. nah man golf ain't my game man okay i get tired i get tired of trying to chase that little white ball okay

Speaker 3 what about so you think that if zion williamson went back in time and played in the pac-12 is playing against washington state he would struggle against you um and and what you're putting out there well definitely if if i had a different coach he'd be struggling against me but with the with calvin sampson Oh man, he would kill us.

Speaker 3 Wait, are you trying to get your former coach fired? Former coach fired he should have been fired

Speaker 3 you don't let the big baller play for the season that's when they had their worst season

Speaker 3 2.2 points i only played 2.2 seconds if i played longer they would have been winners but that's the fact that he wants to show how tough he is and not play a stallion you got to let a stallion loose and that's why his record was so terrible that's true yeah you know

Speaker 3 i don't like that at the worst season i read you grew up wanting to be a law enforcement officer like you wanted to be a

Speaker 3 There's something when you're younger. See, my pops was in the law enforcement, and that's what they kind of want to breed you into because they want you to have security.

Speaker 3 You know, that's that's usually how a parent does, usually, especially coming from the hood.

Speaker 3 They say, Man, if you can do something good, you know, you got a good pension, you got this, and that's what they're kind of trying to lead you into the workforce.

Speaker 3 But being the big baller that I am, and I got to be said, no, you know what, I got to go do my own thing.

Speaker 3 So I'm like basically one of the only family members that's that's basically in my family that said, you know what, I'm going to go on my own lane. I ain't going to be in this workforce.

Speaker 3 And I do things my way and I'm where I'm at now. It is a testament.

Speaker 3 You've done something right to have a son in the NBA, to have another son that's going to be possibly the number one pick in the draft coming up.

Speaker 3 I have a nine-month-old son. I actually wanted to ask a real question.
How do I get him to be awesome at basketball? How do you get him? Well,

Speaker 3 here it is. Let me give it to you like this.
Here's parenting advice from LeVar Ball. Let's go.
Okay, listen to me now. Let's just keep it real.
He's going to be okay at basketball if you want to.

Speaker 3 Don't come out the blues saying, yo, you're going to be a good basketball player.

Speaker 3 He's going to be a better comedian or anything dealing with the media on the fact that you like to talk and you're a funny guy. So those are the genes that you're going to give him, man.

Speaker 3 He's going to have the gift to gap. So either he's going to sell something or he's going to be real funny on that radio show, something like that.
Okay. That's the real deal.

Speaker 3 So don't go down that lane where you're trying to get him to be six, eight, handle the ball, and do all this basketball stuff.

Speaker 3 because i i'll tell you what it's being being a son when he gets younger probably when you want to hang out with him it's better for him to go to your job to hang out and talk so he's gonna say anytime i get to hang with my pops i'm gonna be talking so he's gonna see how you deal with people and meet all these people and say you know what i want to do the same thing because i have a lot of fun with my pops doing that okay i like that It actually sounds like you have a lot in common, big cat, with LeVar.

Speaker 3 You guys are both kind of big dudes, like to talk, very good at promoting yourself. So maybe naturally, your son is just going to be a little bit more.

Speaker 3 You're becoming a big baller already just because you're a big baller. Come on now.
Right. Right.
Here's the thing. It ain't about the money and all that.
The big baller is a state of mind.

Speaker 3 If you feel good about yourself and you're positive, man, you're a big baller. If you're not like,

Speaker 3 say, for instance, if you want something

Speaker 3 and it's hard to get and you end up getting it, you're a big baller.

Speaker 3 Now, if you want something and you don't want to work for it or do nothing, you ain't no big baller.

Speaker 3 That's why I say a lot of big ballers out here, you're a big baller at whatever you do and you feel good about it. That's on you.
That's what makes you a big baller.

Speaker 3 Sometimes, in my deepest, darkest fears, I picture myself as a medium to slightly above-average-sized baller. Are there any tips that you can give me on how to? Oh, man, you already had a start.

Speaker 3 Like you said, you're above average. There you go.
When you're above average, you just keep running, man. You go from there.
He's not, but he's close. Well, it's like I said, this is his mindset.

Speaker 3 It could be close to him and far from others. No, I'm definitely above average.
Like, yeah height-wise i don't know but even even like i said even even even

Speaker 3 you can you can get a guy that's six nine three hundred fifty pounds i don't make him a big baller he's just big lavar where is lamello gonna get picked

Speaker 3 what what number is lamello uh three he wears number three no that's l'angelo l'angelo wears number three others

Speaker 3 wears number one oh he wears one so you think he's gonna be picked number one come on why wouldn't he be picked number one anthony edwards james Wiseman? Who are they?

Speaker 3 Oh, well, they're pretty good players, too. Hey, they can be great players, but you take them overseas and ask if anybody knows them, they'll walk right past them.
That's true. Okay, listen to this.

Speaker 3 Now, listen to me. I'm going to preach to you.
Usually,

Speaker 3 in the draft, when you want your number one pick, you want to take a guy who's most popular. That's one of the things you want to have.
Like, Zion was most popular last year.

Speaker 3 And then the second thing is you want to probably take the best guard because that's how the game is changing. Mellow is both of those.

Speaker 3 So if you're going to start your franchise and you want to put people in them seats,

Speaker 3 you got to get Mellow. Okay.
Is there a place that you wouldn't want him to go? Yeah, the only place I wouldn't want him to go is where a coach is going to try to restrict him and put him in the box.

Speaker 3 Anywhere else, a coach that believes in him, let him run loose and let him do what he does and win. Oh, that's where I want him to go, wherever that's at.

Speaker 3 I just need a coach to believe in him and let him loose. Because here's the thing: it doesn't matter where you go.

Speaker 3 You just have to have a coach that believes in your talent and has confidence in your game

Speaker 3 okay so what about the sacramento kings sacramento kings

Speaker 3 sacramento kings

Speaker 3 if they have another coach they might be able to do that i tell that was a chat that was a big baller chess move i just played on you that was a chess move but i tell you what and see i don't want to throw that away because you never know luke might say man i done messed up one time but i won't do it again yeah you never It's true.

Speaker 3 But my past experience, his mindset is not good enough. So you got to change that coach over there.
So that'd be hard to do that.

Speaker 3 Now, what about a team like the New York Knicks that doesn't even have a coach right now? Fresh start. Would you coach?

Speaker 3 If the New York Knicks asked you, if James Dolan called you up and said, hey, LeVar, we need a coach. Would you do it? Man, I coached that team, but I had to have all three of my boys over there.

Speaker 3 If I have all three of them, I'll go to the championship one year. That's all it take me, one time.
And then after that, I shut it down. I'm gone.
You'd like buy a ticket to the NBA Finals?

Speaker 3 What are you saying? You'd go to a championship? Buy a ticket? Shoot, man. I put my style in the NBA.
We often running and gunning. It's a wrap.

Speaker 3 My boys play at a whole different level when I'm at the head. What's the plan for L'Angelo? Because I feel like he gets lost in the shuffle.

Speaker 3 And, you know, that's not fair for him because he's talented as well. Man, that boy's super talented, man.
He's got that pro-size body. Here's the thing.
He's 6'7, 240

Speaker 3 at the two-guard spot. That boy is a monster.
He just needs his opportunity. And like I said, he took the wrong path.
So now you got to take a different direction.

Speaker 3 If we go the same way, it's just like I tell him, no, which is one of the things. Sometimes you got to take one for the team.
And if he wouldn't have never did what he did,

Speaker 3 I don't think we'd be talking right now. Because I would have just been like, you know what? All my boys' lottery picks, get picked.
Let's get our money. Let's go.

Speaker 3 I wouldn't be like, oh, I'm going to create my own league. I'm going to go get my own water.
I'm going to snatch my boys out of school. I'm going to take take them overseas.

Speaker 3 We wouldn't even be in this route.

Speaker 3 So I give him props for that. But like I said, he just got to take a different route and he did something different.
Elsewhere, he would have did his thing at UCLA.

Speaker 3 I'd have left Mello over there at Chino Hills. He would have went to UCLA.
But all this stuff has changed, and it is what it is. But like I said, Jell-O's going to get to the league.

Speaker 3 There's no fault in that where people keep thinking, Well, he's probably not that talented. Nah, he just went a different route.
He cut from the same cloth.

Speaker 3 So it's not like they're going to grow up in the same

Speaker 3 household and be like, nah, I'm not going to work out that hard. I'm not going to be that good.
That's the key piece. You let him get with one of his brothers.
It's a wrap.

Speaker 3 He's a ball. He's a ball.
Exactly. So, you know.

Speaker 3 I know. I want to flash back real quick to one of my favorite interviews you've ever done.
It was with Cromo, Chris Cromo. Remember that one?

Speaker 3 Yeah, my man Cromo. Yeah, Cromo.

Speaker 3 You were talking to him about butting heads with Donald Trump, where I think Donald Trump called you ungrateful, et cetera, etc., etc.

Speaker 3 I think he called you an ungrateful fool and a poor man's version of Don King. Which, I mean, that's Don King is not a rich man, so that's a must be very poor to say right now.

Speaker 3 But I wanted to know if you had ever made up with the president or if you had ever reached out to anybody to

Speaker 3 reach out with them to Trump or nothing, nobody like that. I ain't got time for that.
I'm learning a big ball of bread. I ain't got time for no Rudy Coots.
For some what? What did you call them?

Speaker 3 I ain't got time for no Rudy Coots, man. Rudy Coots, I'll push you to the side and keep on rolling.

Speaker 3 Can you still dunk?

Speaker 3 Can I still dunk? No, man. I had my last dunk at 50.

Speaker 3 Oh, not very big baller of you, Peter.

Speaker 3 And it's,

Speaker 3 yeah, my last dunk was at 50. At 51, I tried it again with a small ball and no work.
Oh.

Speaker 3 I said, man, so what's telling me is like, hey, LeVar, you didn't use the bottom part of your body for the first 50 years. Let's use the top part.
Yeah. Okay.

Speaker 3 There you go. I like that.

Speaker 3 Your brain and your heart there you go do you think when teams are are thinking about the draft and they're looking at lamello and you get people saying well there's baggage because lavar comes with him do you think that's fair do you think you're baggage right no it couldn't be baggage but here's the thing if if you don't pick my son on how you feel about me he ain't supposed to be there anyway

Speaker 3 Okay, I'm not on the court. You know, people like to make that narrative and be like, oh, he put pressure on me.

Speaker 3 No, no, no. My sons wouldn't be where they're at without me.
And, like I said, if you look at the constant, which is people like to say, you know, oh, Lonzo's not under the bright lights no more.

Speaker 3 He's away from his dad and he's doing much better. No, he has a coach that believes in him because you're always going to be under the bright lights.
You're a professional.

Speaker 3 If you're scared of playing in front of the bright lights, you can't play anyway.

Speaker 3 So the only thing that's changed in this way Lonzo's doing so good now, like everybody's, oh, he's what LeVaris thought he was the first time.

Speaker 3 Only thing that's changed is the coaching because he's still under the bright lights and I'm still his father. Nothing ain't gonna change.
The only thing changed is a coach.

Speaker 3 Now, when he was in LA playing with LeBron, do you think that the two of them got along?

Speaker 3 Them dudes are always gonna get along. They got the same game.
It's like their IQ is high. They get rid of the ball.
They pass. The only person that messed that up was Luke.

Speaker 3 Luke didn't play them a lot together. At one time he did, but both of them, what's the time? Him and Lonzo both got a triple-double.
They should have left them in the game for longer periods of time.

Speaker 3 If you want to play them, play them together the first three quarters and don't take them out and then after the fourth quarter you can take them out for the whole quarter because neither one of them sit on the ball for a long time so their iq and running would have been great and like i said that was lonzo's favorite player who the

Speaker 3 if you got a chance to play with your favorite person whatever you do man you would do good

Speaker 3 like like say you like in the broadcasting and you got to do with the best let's say you get howard co sale let's probably go on a little further back but you've got to be like him you'd be like super with that guy it's i mean it's like right now you know being on a broadcast with you is like, you know, we're, we're basically, you're LeBron and we're each half of Lonzo and we're running it right now.

Speaker 3 And I mean, it's, it's magic. Man, you already know this, man.
See, we mean you're in the same way, man. That's why, that's why this conversation or this interview is so long.

Speaker 3 That was a way to say that you were done with us. That was nice.
I like that.

Speaker 3 You guys is good.

Speaker 3 All right. Last question.
We're with LeVar Ball. The new baller brand is out.

Speaker 3 Use

Speaker 3 the SeatGeek question, promo code take. Use Seekeek, promo code take, you get $10 off.
Do you think it's a little ironic that the Big Baller brand, BBB,

Speaker 3 is also stand for the Better Business Bureau and you guys had some run-ins with them? Do you think that was kind of funny, at least from an outsider's perspective?

Speaker 3 From an outsider's perspective, I don't think it's funny. Oh, I think it's crazy for them, you know, to try to get with the Triple B's.
The real Triple B's is the Big Baller brand.

Speaker 3 Got it. Well, some people say, like, we gave out a nickname of Triple B, had nothing to do with the Big Baller brand, but we called certain people a baby back bitch.

Speaker 3 Did that affect the value?

Speaker 3 There's a lot of

Speaker 3 things you can come up with with Triple B's. I mean, it stands for a lot of things.
Ooh. Pick which one is great for you.
LeVar, we should sell baby back bitch shoes at the big baller brand.

Speaker 3 No, no, no, no, no, no. Stop that big baller brand and baby back bitch don't mix.
Wait, which one's the real?

Speaker 3 Hold on, hold on. I'm confused.
I got to put my hand up. Is it when we say triple B, is it babyback bitch? Is that what we're referring to? Oh, Triple B's.
It always stands for Big Ball of Brand.

Speaker 3 But there's like a, I think they're, I think the market's getting confused right now because I'm saying big baby back bitch.

Speaker 3 I tell you this: if you go out to anybody in the world and you say triple B's, and the first thing they're going to think of is big ball of brand, guaranteed. Hank, Hank, are you there?

Speaker 3 Can you unmute yourself? Hank, what do you think of when you think of baby back or triple B? Kevin Durant, babyback bitch.

Speaker 3 Oh,

Speaker 3 you think of Kevin Durant?

Speaker 3 Well, you need to get out more if you think about Triple B's. The first thing you think about is Kevin Durant.
Why?

Speaker 3 Well, you just said earlier in this interview that getting coronavirus is not a big baller brand move. So what else could it be if it's Triple B? Right.

Speaker 3 Looks like you've talked yourself into

Speaker 3 baby back bitch. Yeah, that actually, you're right.
You know what? That rolls off the tongue. Baby back bitch.

Speaker 3 See, you guys are never getting done doing that.

Speaker 3 All right. Well, LeVar, this has been awesome.
We appreciate you having fun with us. Yes, sir.
And good luck with Big Baller Brand. And we would love to collaborate maybe on a shoe at some point.

Speaker 3 Hey, man, we might have to do something. You never know.
You never know.

Speaker 3 You never know. Maybe just send us a yes.

Speaker 3 I mean, we might do something different. You never know, man.
Listen. But hey, man, I appreciate y'all, man.
I'm glad y'all having fun doing what you do.

Speaker 3 Y'all big ballers in this talk game, so you're all good, man.

Speaker 3 All right, thank you, man. God bless you.

Speaker 3 Thanks for listening to this. Oh, I like that.
What did you say? You all stay up, money. I like that.
Yes, you like it. Yes.
All right, man. I'm out of here, player.
Y'all be good. All right.

Speaker 3 Take care of your chickens. Take care of your mentals.

Speaker 6 This is awesome. So I just got a call from my dad.

Speaker 6 And he left a message. And the message was just like, hey, just calling because

Speaker 6 I saw it should be opening day today and wanted to apologize again for the April Fool's Day trick that I played on you.

Speaker 1 That's awesome.

Speaker 6 Hope you're doing well.

Speaker 6 Hope we get some baseball this year. That's awesome.
Shout out, Dad.

Speaker 9 I'm not going back to college to be your friend. I'm going so I can get Uber One for students.
It saves you on Uber and Uber Eats.

Speaker 9 I'm there for $0 delivery fee on cheeseburgers, up to 10% off smoothies, and 6% Uber credits back on rides. Just to be clear, I'm there for savings, not whatever you think college is for.

Speaker 10 Get Uber one for students. A membership to save on Uber and Uber Eats.
With deals this good, everyone wants to be a student. Join for just $4.99 a month.
Savings may vary.

Speaker 10 Eligibility and member terms apply.

Speaker 1 Okay, let's do our Mount Flushmore. Then we're going to get deep into Tiger King.
So our Mount Flushmore is worst calls to get.

Speaker 1 Okay, so I start.

Speaker 1 Friday's me. Worst calls to get or worse people to get calls from?

Speaker 6 We'll do either way. Wait, are you thinking like,

Speaker 6 oh, your dog ran away?

Speaker 1 I was thinking like your boss is calling.

Speaker 6 Oh, yeah, that works. Yeah, not like a specific conversation.
Right, right, right.

Speaker 1 But yeah. Not like your John Bones Jones agent and the cops called you.
Exactly. Right.

Speaker 1 But my first pick will be the cops. Getting a call from the cops sucks.
That would be. You just don't pick up.
Yeah, it's a bad, bad call to get.

Speaker 1 I would imagine if you had to rank the law enforcement, it'd probably be the

Speaker 1 worst one would be FBI.

Speaker 1 Yeah, DA,

Speaker 6 I would say ATF, probably. ATF.

Speaker 1 Regular cops would suck too. ICE.
Yeah,

Speaker 1 ICE would be bad. Yeah.
So, yeah, cops in general, law enforcement in general, that's not a good call to get.

Speaker 1 No, because either you're getting arrested or someone robbed you or something bad happened or someone died.

Speaker 6 Not a good call. So just send me an email, cops.
Yeah. It's way more convenient.

Speaker 6 Is it me now? Yeah. Okay.
And then it's Hank, and then we come back. Yes.
Okay. My first one is going to be

Speaker 6 a principal.

Speaker 6 Principal in high school or middle school. When that phone rings and you see that on your call RD at your house,

Speaker 6 you either have to intercept it real quick and say your parents aren't home, and then your parents hear you say that they're not home and they're like, who is that? You're like, no one, wrong number.

Speaker 6 There's really no good way around that because when the principal's calling, you're in deep shit.

Speaker 1 Mm-hmm. Agreed.
Your boss. Your boss.
Usually they'll send an email or whatever. If it's like, if they're calling you, there's something going on.

Speaker 1 Even if it's like nothing serious, it's still just never a good feeling to be like, Oh, my phone's going off. Who is it? Oh, shit, it's my boss.

Speaker 1 Is it worse to get the call from your boss or to get the text from your boss saying, Call me real quick?

Speaker 6 That is the worst. Actually, the worst text you can get from your boss is:

Speaker 6 hey, can you come in real quick to the office? Just need to talk to you for a couple minutes.

Speaker 1 Bring your playbook.

Speaker 6 I've had that call before. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, and I have to.

Speaker 1 Marlin's man.

Speaker 1 Good. That's a good one.

Speaker 6 Very relatable. Yeah.

Speaker 1 I mean, that's, yeah, there's a reason why you hold Marlin's, the contact to all Marlinsmans. Can I actually, let's go through some of it.
You go. I'll pull up this text message.

Speaker 1 I'll get it on the way back. It's funny that

Speaker 1 the text he's been sending me, Eric. It's funny that you mentioned the bring your older.

Speaker 1 He sent me flights. He goes round trip New York to Fort Lauderdale, $35.

Speaker 1 No shit, Marlin's man. Yo, he wants to fuck.

Speaker 6 He's booty calling you, Hank?

Speaker 1 Yeah. Yeah, pretty much.
Come play with the pussy. Well, he's also, no, but he just tweets me links.
He sends me links. Well, he's keeping you abreast.
Yeah.

Speaker 6 That's actually really nice. He's looking out for great deals for you.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Rex Chapman videos like, oh, look at this.

Speaker 1 He stole. Oh, yeah.
Dogs, bro.

Speaker 6 Block or charge. Watch this person get electrocuted.
Yeah, it's a mom pushing her daughter out of the way of a train.

Speaker 1 Yeah, this guy in China.

Speaker 6 Block or charge.

Speaker 1 This guy in China fell off of a 40-foot ladder. Block or charge.

Speaker 1 Dogs, bro. We don't deserve them.

Speaker 6 My next one is going to be

Speaker 6 a number that's very similar to yours because my brain still hasn't caught up to the fact that the scammers have figured out that they can mirror your phone number and have it be one that's like two or three digits off.

Speaker 6 And you get it, and you're like, oh, maybe I know this person since it's so similar to mine, forgetting the fact

Speaker 6 you don't have any friends that have a number that is exactly

Speaker 6 similar to yours anyways. But it always tricks me.
I'm like, oh, it's someone I know. And I pick up and then it's like, the warranty on your car has expired.
We are the fake auto registration company.

Speaker 6 The worst. Yes, I'll put that one on there.

Speaker 1 I have two.

Speaker 1 Yes, I have two. Okay, my next one will be a call from the bank.
That's also never good because either you owe money or you probably had someone steal your identity.

Speaker 1 The bank doesn't call to be like, hey, dude, good job on your savings. Keep it up.
True. They never do that.

Speaker 1 You guys can tell me if this one's out of bounds for this, but I think actually the worst call in the world is a holding after a really long run.

Speaker 6 Oh, and it gets brought back.

Speaker 1 It's the worst.

Speaker 6 That's bad.

Speaker 1 When your team breaks a huge run and then it's like you don't see anyone moving, you're like, God damn it.

Speaker 6 It's the distant cousin of roughing the passer that comes in six seconds after, like, a long completion down the street.

Speaker 1 Yes, yes. That is the worst.
Or long incompletion. Yeah, like a run back, like a kickoff.
Yeah. And you're like, fuck.

Speaker 6 Actually, when it's a turnover on downs, and it's fourth down,

Speaker 6 you see the ball land way downfield. It's like, okay, our defense did its job.
And And then the flag comes in.

Speaker 6 It's like, oh, Clay Matthews forgot to apologize to the quarterback after he sacked.

Speaker 1 Yeah, so I guess the late flag is the worst call.

Speaker 6 That's pretty good.

Speaker 6 I'm going to say anyone you owe money to. Yep.
So in a past life, when I used a bookmaker, getting a call from your bookmaker would be something that would annoy me.

Speaker 1 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 6 That I would not want to take.

Speaker 1 Correct. Hank.

Speaker 1 You guys took all my last ones, but I will say. Oh, you had all those? I had the police.
I had. Oh, that was my first one.

Speaker 1 I like that Mount Flushmore season. Liquor before.
Hank is really sticking to it by not being locked in whatsoever. I kind of appreciate that.
Liquor before beer.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 Oh, no. Can I be clear? Beer before liquor, I mean.
That's a bad call. Beer before liquor.
Okay.

Speaker 6 And then Joe Buck saying Rainy Moss is looking thicker.

Speaker 1 That was a bad call. Yeah.

Speaker 1 That was a bad call. That was a bad call.
I'm going to go with... Good job, Hank.
Thanks.

Speaker 6 Good job, Hank. Good job, Hank.
Thanks.

Speaker 1 Good job. Oh, thanks.

Speaker 6 Three missed calls in a row from your mom.

Speaker 6 When that's on your screen, never good.

Speaker 1 Bonus to that is any call from your parents at a weird hour. Like

Speaker 1 a 12.30 or like a 6 in the morning call from your parents is instant heart attack.

Speaker 6 I would say any call before noon on a weekend from your parents.

Speaker 1 Yeah, and then it would usually be my dad being like, hey, turn it to ESPN Classic. Like dude, don't do that.

Speaker 6 There's a thunderstorm coming in.

Speaker 1 Don't do that. Please don't do not do that.

Speaker 1 All right, my last one. I'll do, how about an airline? Also another place.
Airlines don't call you to be like, hey, man, free flight.

Speaker 1 They call you to be like, hey, your flight was canceled or, you know, everything's getting changed or we lost your bags and they're gone forever. Right.

Speaker 6 It's a, we fucked up. Now you have to deal with a call.
Yes.

Speaker 6 Just like if you get a call from a restaurant 15 minutes after you place an order, they're calling you to tell you that everything that you you ordered is now out of stock, right?

Speaker 6 And that you're going to have to wait an additional 45 minutes to get your food.

Speaker 1 All right, so embrace debate, give us the ones we missed.

Speaker 6 Worst calls. How about just a friend, like your friend, calling you? Like, just text me.
Yes. This can be solved via text.
Yes. And everybody has one friend that just likes to make that phone call.

Speaker 1 Now, let me ask a question to the group here because we are going to start doing, we're going to churn out some lists. Maybe we actually start doing Mount Flushmore lists, honestly.

Speaker 1 Like we did it a couple times. Let's now put out like, here is the worst.
Actually, this is a Mount Rushmore.

Speaker 1 We just did a Mount Rushmore of worst calls.

Speaker 1 No, Mount Flushmore of calls to get.

Speaker 6 Wait. We'll rephrase it.

Speaker 1 Mount Flushmore of phone calls. Mount Rushmore, Mount Flushmore of best calls to get.

Speaker 6 Mount Flushmore of phone calls. It should be just Mount Flushmore of phone calls.

Speaker 1 We just did the Mount Flushmore of best calls to get. We just crushed that Mount Rushmore of worst calls.
Yeah, you were tripping me. I was like, wait a second.
Yeah, I just realized that. Yeah.
Fuck.

Speaker 1 Okay. Well, so Mount Flushmore of best calls to get.
What even is a good call to get? No one wants to get called for anything.

Speaker 1 Ever. You won the lottery.

Speaker 1 You won McDonald's millions.

Speaker 1 Yeah. When was the last time you got you a piece?

Speaker 1 Hotel bonus points. I went cruises all the time.
Who picks up that call? You win cruises? Yeah. Congratulations.
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 1 Congratulations. You are qualified for a rebate on your tax.

Speaker 6 I'm trying to remember the last time I got a phone call that I was like, fuck fuck yes.

Speaker 1 All right, let's just put out Mount Rushmore's worst phone calls. That's fine.

Speaker 1 We'll just go back and forth.

Speaker 1 Switch back and forth between Mount Rushmore and Mount Rushmore. And now people on Twitter are going to think, they're going to be like, wait,

Speaker 1 these are good. Yes, yes.
All right. Let's do some Tiger King.
The weirdest. Would you say it's the weirdest documentary?

Speaker 6 Yeah, I would say so.

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 6 overall, given the characters, the subject matter, it's tough to get more interesting than that.

Speaker 1 We have Robert Moore coming up, who interviewed all of the characters, who

Speaker 1 has a podcast out about Joe Exotic and Carol Baskin. So we actually asked some more, like, in detail, what's it like to be with these people, which you should definitely listen to.

Speaker 1 Let's just recap it from our perspective.

Speaker 1 The craziest, weirdest

Speaker 1 documentary you've ever watched?

Speaker 6 I think definitely the weirdest documentary. The weirdest group of people.

Speaker 1 The weirdest group of people, and I said this at the top, and take out the side characters who some of them like have drug addiction, and it's kind of sad watching them get swept up in this.

Speaker 1 In terms of main characters, I don't think I like any of them. I hate them all.

Speaker 6 The most normal main character in this whole thing, in my opinion, was Rick Kirkham. He was the producer of the reality show for Joe Exotic.
And he was actually addicted to crack for like 25 years.

Speaker 6 Yes. And he went to Oklahoma to kind of get away from that.
And then he found this guy.

Speaker 6 And then then now he spends the rest of his days chain smoking in Norway as he's being interviewed for this documentary.

Speaker 6 So he fled Oklahoma and then he fled wherever he fled to in the United States because he thought he was going to get killed. Now

Speaker 6 he found the one restaurant in Norway that you can smoke in. And that's all he does.

Speaker 1 It's also like

Speaker 1 it's a perfect

Speaker 1 point because

Speaker 1 every like when you look through the whole of the documentary, there are all these little things that they bring up and you're like, wait, that's weird.

Speaker 1 Like, you just had the guy who Scarface was modeled after, and that was only 20 minutes, right? Like, what?

Speaker 6 Every single side character in this could have their own documentary about them. It's this is actually like exponential growth in a reality show or in a documentary.

Speaker 6 Like, they introduce you to Doc, and I wanted to see like six more episodes only about Doc. What's his name? Doc Bob?

Speaker 1 Doc Nantal. Yeah, yeah, Nantal.
Not even Doc. Like, forget even Doc.

Speaker 1 I'm talking about side-side characters too, where the guy who you start the entire documentary, there's a woman with a nub, with missing an arm. You're like, well, that's probably a tiger.

Speaker 1 And there's a guy with two legs missing. She identifies as a guy, by the way.
Oh, my bad. Fuck.
Kelsey. Okay, Kelsey, sorry.

Speaker 1 And then there's a guy with two legs missing, and he's like, you probably think this was a tiger. Nope, it was ziplining.
Like, what? Yep. And

Speaker 6 let's not forget what his prosthetic legs look like. So he's got like juggalo insane clown posse legs that he walks around.
So pretty badass, also very intimidating.

Speaker 1 So what were you going to say, Hank?

Speaker 1 I was just going to say one of the things that I was like keeping an eye on or what interesting me the most as like a production guy is like how much time and effort Joe Exotic was putting into filming the behind the scenes and like when the producer was like, oh, he wanted everyone to film everything at all times.

Speaker 1 And I was like,

Speaker 6 it was like, it's like the same mindset.

Speaker 1 I'm like, all right, let's go see what these views are. It's like his video views are like 1,000 views.

Speaker 1 He was doing nightly shows every single night for years and years and years for no one looking for the breakthrough. But he was still like, he was just still adamant.

Speaker 1 Like you got to film everything, you got to get everything. And the one part when the guy said that

Speaker 1 the

Speaker 1 like,

Speaker 1 whatever, the barn burned down with all the footage. Yep.
And he was like, I cried, I cried. That was the saddest.
That was the saddest. Was that alligators dies?

Speaker 6 There's so much good stuff.

Speaker 1 And the footage.

Speaker 1 You didn't hear about the alligators? No, the footage. I died.

Speaker 6 The hard drives. I also have my suspicions that there were even alligators in that room.

Speaker 1 So, oh, okay.

Speaker 6 I just trust, do not trust anything that anyone ever tells you.

Speaker 1 So, let's run through the character because I think that's the best way. Because

Speaker 1 it was one of those documentaries that was so interesting and weird and wild, but it also probably could have been five episodes. It did stretch out a little bit.

Speaker 1 But the characters, so Joe Exotic, number one. Not getting to the fucking

Speaker 1 husband killing until the third episode was crazy. Crazy.
So, Joe Exotic number one.

Speaker 1 I mean, he's insane, but you also, like, can't take your eyes off of him because he's not really a real person he's a cartoon character you also say you there's no one to like i liked him up until like kind of the end uh i mean like the death threats were a little over the line right up until that part he clearly mistreating animals right like he got everybody addicted to mess

Speaker 1 yeah like he made them marry him yeah the the guy who should the 19 year old who showed up to his zoo and he was like hey do you when you watch porn do you like the small dicks or the big dicks when they're fucking the girl and he's like the big dicks like oh you're gay yeah like that maybe like the the the trucks filled with expired meat that he was feeding his animals yeah a hundred dollars a week

Speaker 1 to his employees he basically had he had a plantation he had a plantation in the middle of oklahoma but it's weird because i was not anti-joe exotic i'm just saying that i was not watching it being like fuck this guy i was as a character this guy is electric as a character you could not take your eyes off him and his employees seem to like him His employees are all loyal.

Speaker 1 He says something. I think he's not a good person.
I also will get to it when we get to Jeff Lowe, but I don't think that he did.

Speaker 1 I think he got set up, but I don't think he's a good person, but there is something about him that you really can't take your eyes off.

Speaker 1 It's actually kind of pretty much everyone in this documentary, and it's probably because they are the kings of their own little world. But

Speaker 1 the way he treated animals, I was like, I don't know if I really like this guy.

Speaker 1 He also just, the one thing that seemed pretty cool about hanging with Joe Exotic, it felt like every day they'd just be like, all right, three o'clock, let's go blow some shit up.

Speaker 6 Yeah, they had Tannerite everywhere. They're like tannerite in the gift shop.
That was cool. And also, just every second of his life was like, hey, you want to go play with a fucking tiger? Yeah.

Speaker 6 And that's awesome, too. So, when there are all these different characters stretched out all across the country, they all have one thing in common, and that's that they love exotic animals.

Speaker 1 Love them.

Speaker 6 They love tigers. I think there was one point where Doc said, every person on planet Earth loves tigers.
And if they don't, then they're lying to themselves.

Speaker 6 and it's just their own insecurity showing through. At first, I was like, that's a bold claim to make that like everyone loves tigers.

Speaker 6 But the the more i thought about it everyone the more i was like yes he is a hundred percent right and so they're all spread out across the country and they all are the strangest human beings possible and then i thought about i was like why do all these tiger people why do so many strange people gravitate towards large cats and it occurred to me i actually think that being around these animals is a drug.

Speaker 6 Yes. And it's no different from a drug.
You get addicted to the rush of these awesome animals that kill you.

Speaker 6 But you don't think that they can kill you because they grow up around you and you think that they're your friends and you do start feeling like God. Yes.

Speaker 6 Having a tiger, in my opinion, is no different than smoking crack for the first time. Like, it's cool.
I'm sure it feels great. Drug guy.

Speaker 6 I've never done it, and I've never played with a tiger, but I'm sure it would be awesome. And I'm sure I'd want to do it again and again and again

Speaker 6 until I tried to kill a competitor of mine and went insane.

Speaker 1 Smoking crack and tigers. Imagine that.
Yeah. Well, that was Joe Exodus Zeus.
So you brought Doc Antel, Bogdevond, or whatever his name is.

Speaker 6 Yeah, his name means God. Yeah, Lord.

Speaker 1 Oh, yeah. Well, according to him, it's like, no,

Speaker 6 it's not that I'm God. It's just that I own a galaxy.

Speaker 1 So this guy,

Speaker 1 there has never been a more clear, this guy's an orgy guy, than Doc Antle. That guy is always fucking, or petting a tiger, or riding an elephant.
And at first, you're like, this is pretty sweet.

Speaker 1 He's got a zoo.

Speaker 1 He's kind of like the upper class Joe Exotic. He, you know, things look a little cleaner.
Like just everything looks a little bit more on the up and up.

Speaker 6 The ponytail displays a tremendous amount of confidence.

Speaker 1 Dude, he is, he, he just orgies and candles and wax and weird robes and everything going on there. But the, so you're like, oh, this kind of is nice.
Like someone has these tigers and they're not.

Speaker 1 crazy like Joe Exotic. Oh, whoops.

Speaker 1 Turns out he's kind of running a cult, but he doesn't say it's a cult, but he also has multiple wives, and coincidentally, all those wives started as like 17-year-old interns.

Speaker 6 No, but pick that, they're free to leave whenever they want. They're not

Speaker 1 held there against their will. Yeah.
Like, oh, that's what's going on.

Speaker 6 It's just if they leave, they happen to give up everything that they have in the entire world. Yeah.
Because they have to work from, what, 8 a.m. until midnight every day on Tigers? Yeah.

Speaker 6 And it seems like it's a pretty cool job to just be like swimming with Tigers all day, but then you have to fuck Antl at the end of the day.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Carol Baskin did the same shit, though, and she didn't even marry any of them. Well, he also had that couch.
At least he knew his girls' names. Yes.

Speaker 1 Carol Baskin being like, I don't know anyone's name until they're like

Speaker 1 25.

Speaker 6 He took their old names away and said, no, the master of the universe tells you that your name is

Speaker 1 Gypsy Nower.

Speaker 6 I didn't know he changed the names. You just thought they all had extremely exotic tiger-like names?

Speaker 1 I guess I wasn't paying attention. He also, do you notice that couch that he had when he was like, here, you want me to pet the tigers on the couch? That was the biggest orgy couch ever.

Speaker 1 It wasn't, there wasn't even a couch, it was just a couch, but a huge bed for like 15 people.

Speaker 6 Yeah, one other cool part about owning some sort of tiger facility is that you, I think you get all the ATVs that you could ever want because everyone was just driving around on like sick 4x4 golf carts and ATVs.

Speaker 1 Um, so Carol Baskin, uh, the other main part of this documentary,

Speaker 1 wow, well, let's just start with uh, she loves cats, she loves all sizes of cats, she loves tigers, she loves lions, she loves house cats, and then she's like, But I'm allergic to cats.

Speaker 1 Like, okay, well, so you are crazy, just out of the bat. Like, don't I don't need to know anything else.
You're crazy.

Speaker 6 What's up, cool cats and kittens? Cool cats and kittens. So she, I think, was designed to come off as the most sympathetic character, at least in the first couple episodes.

Speaker 6 But there was something wrong with her about her, like just from the get-go. Yep.
And you knew that, you know, what she's really good at? She's really good at weaponizing sympathy for herself.

Speaker 6 Oh, yeah. So she is almost as messed up as Joe, but she plays it always using the I'm holier than thou card.

Speaker 1 She could teach a class on how to get maximum money out of a GoFundMe that was started yesterday. Yes.
Like she could just hop on Twitter and be like, hey, here's this cause.

Speaker 1 And then you look into it, you're like, wait, where's this money going?

Speaker 6 She's actually pretty dirty, but she's great at pretending that she's the cleanest one.

Speaker 1 Right. And Hank mentioned, but they waited till episode three to just do the story about how she probably, I think they are litigious, so we'll say probably, maybe, allegedly, she's

Speaker 1 thought of to have possibly they set it up to make it look like she killed her husband.

Speaker 6 Yes, because she did.

Speaker 1 Wow,

Speaker 6 Hank, maybe, maybe, allegedly, by some.

Speaker 1 I did love that moment when they're talking about Joe Exotic getting attacked by a tiger, and like there must have been sardine, like sardines in his

Speaker 1 perfume, perfume, and she said she slipped up she goes uh if i were gonna well if if you were if you know if somebody wanted to kill someone she like literally was about to say if i were gonna kill someone with a tiger which that's what they think happened to her husband and she just says like yeah i'd cover him in sardine oil she did the oj simpson if i did it live but she

Speaker 6 caught herself in the middle of the forward for her own book about murder and then they asked her about the meat grinder situation whether her husband had been ground up in a meat grinder grinder.

Speaker 6 And her response was, no, my husband's body wouldn't even fit, like his wrist wouldn't even fit in that meat grinder that we had. Like, like she had done the calculations.

Speaker 1 Dude, how about when she said her brother was part of the police department and everyone was like, well, that's why they never looked into it. And she goes, my brother,

Speaker 1 when I was 15, he was like, he was nine, so we didn't have a relationship. And I was like, wait, what?

Speaker 1 How is that just, how does that just like clear you of your brother not helping you? They were were six years apart.

Speaker 6 That was like Jessica saying, Mark's only 24.

Speaker 1 Did you know that?

Speaker 6 She's like, my brother's nine. There's no chance that he would have investigated me.

Speaker 1 And then the Simp King,

Speaker 1 Carol Baskin's husband.

Speaker 6 Legend. Legend of the Simp game.

Speaker 1 What a wild...

Speaker 1 to knowingly marry a woman who might have murdered her previous husband. That's a crazy move.
To have that picture where he's on a leash. At their wedding.
At their wedding. To basically be like,

Speaker 1 she just basically walks around being like, sue them, sue them, sue them. And he's like, yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.

Speaker 1 He looks like Prince Charles. I don't know what to think of.
I'm scared of that guy. Because I'm more scared of that guy than I would be of Joe Exotic, even though Joe Exotic's

Speaker 1 does meth and has guns. Exactly.

Speaker 1 Joe Exotic's a friend.

Speaker 1 No, Prince Charles would just sue you to Bolivian.

Speaker 6 Well, also, like Joe Exotic, you look at him and he wears his emotions on his sleeve. You know what's coming.
You know when he's matched.

Speaker 6 He'll say, before he ever shoots you, he'll probably say publicly on on a live like Periscope stream at least nine times. I'm gonna I'm gonna shoot this guy in his head.

Speaker 1 You see this? You see this dog?

Speaker 6 Here's a gun I'm gonna use. I'm gonna shoot you just like that.
Watch this.

Speaker 6 But with with the Simp King, he has no emotion.

Speaker 6 He makes Jason Witten look like Eddie Murphy. So this guy just has like

Speaker 6 totally straight face all the time, and you never know what he's thinking.

Speaker 6 That's why he scares me.

Speaker 1 And so then we get to, which is, this is where I was like, okay, I hate everyone because they introduced Jeff Lowe, and

Speaker 1 jeff low is the worst subscribe to the light

Speaker 1 needed a middle initial yeah needed a middle initial but he is the worst he jeff low like you knew that just like you know the the bogdan is an orgy guy because he's got a ponytail a soul patch and a way oversized couch jeff low having ripped jeans being like 50 years old uh a bandana and a and a hat I think it was like a fox racing hat or something.

Speaker 6 He alternated between like fox racing, affliction, probably some monster energy.

Speaker 1 You knew he was a scumbag.

Speaker 6 Yeah, it was a standard meth cheek look that he had going on.

Speaker 1 And he had the quote,

Speaker 1 a little pussy gets you a lot of pussy, talking about bringing little tiger cubs to Vegas to basically seduce women into having sex with him and his girlfriend.

Speaker 6 Uh-huh.

Speaker 6 So he was a swinger and he would just take the cubs through hotel lobbies in his suitcase, which doesn't seem very sanitary to me, and then just have a tiger hanging out in his hotel room all weekend.

Speaker 6 And I guess that's...

Speaker 6 I want to know what that transition moment was like when he'd meet a girl that was walking through the hotel maybe in Vegas and be like, hey, do you want to come play with this tiger?

Speaker 6 She'd be like, okay. And then she gets in the room.
How does he make the move to turn it from like, you're petting this tiger to my wife is going to watch me fuck you now.

Speaker 1 I don't know. But he's...
He's got some game. Yeah, he's a detestable human being.
And he also, at the end of the show, was like, they're going to get Jeff Lowe. And he was like, where are they?

Speaker 1 They're not going to get me. He's like, yeah, they probably will.
He takes over Joe Exotic Zoo. He also, I took a screenshot.
I actually screenshotted each frame. He didn't take it over.

Speaker 1 That was the part. So there was a lot of like when I was watching, like, a lot of similarities to Dave, Dave Portnoy, our boss, with Joe Exotic.

Speaker 1 And one of the things that I was dying laughing at was the part when they were like, to deal with the lawsuits, Joe Exotic just started giving the zoo to other people.

Speaker 1 Like, when Dave, when we had the Black Outdoor, Dave was like, oh, like, Paul, like, we're going to start Purple Starfish. So, like, for all the lawsuits, like, right, that's going to you.

Speaker 1 Like, right, it's Shout out. It was the exact same maneuver.
maneuver. But his giving the company to Jeff Lowe.
But Jeff Lowe, his, he set him up. He set him up with this.
I believe it.

Speaker 1 He, he admitted it. He, that was the part that was actually the most shocking at the end of the documentary.

Speaker 1 I took a screenshot of what Jeff Lowe said because I couldn't believe that he like basically admitted on camera. He said, This, ready for this? These are exact quotes.
I'm reading the subtitles.

Speaker 1 He said, What is setting up a person?

Speaker 1 Turning them in or allowing them to talk while you're recording them is that setting them up you know they call it setup i'd call it investigate and did i encourage him from time to time probably

Speaker 1 because i wanted that sound bite to give to the authorities to convict him and get him out of this business so yes he gave motive for it too he's like i literally wanted him out of this business so i made sure that i recorded him and pushed him towards saying things on camera yeah chef low world-class scumbag And the behind-the-scenes recordings that he had with the hitman.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 6 So he even told the hitman, he's like, we need to get Joe Exotic on the hook for this, or else we could both be on the hook for it.

Speaker 6 So it was very, it was a well-documented setup, and they recorded everything that they said, because these are not the world's brightest criminals to begin with. But yeah, Jeff D.

Speaker 6 Lowe is not a great guy.

Speaker 1 No, and then we ended the pregnant.

Speaker 6 And then he gets to.

Speaker 1 Jeff D. Lowe is a nice guy.
Jeff D. Lowe, yeah.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I'm just calling this guy Jeff D.

Speaker 1 Lowe. That was, by the way, that saved me from.
Because when I first started this

Speaker 1 documentary, the first episode, I was like, I'm going to get so many big cat memes from this.

Speaker 1 But Jeff Lowe, being just a terrible human being and being a central part, I think saved me because he got all the memes.

Speaker 6 Jeff Ren interference with the family.

Speaker 1 That was the craziest part of the documentary for me was that tigers were really not featured at all.

Speaker 6 No, no.

Speaker 1 They were a few. Yeah, they're animals memes.
They're all small, small, small, small part of the story. Correct.

Speaker 6 What were you going to say, I was going to say, so then Jeff Lowe takes over the zoo at the end. Yes.
But then he just bulldozes the zoo and he tries to start a new zoo.

Speaker 6 What is up with these people's obsession? They just always have to own a zoo? Yeah.

Speaker 1 Always? Yeah.

Speaker 1 They bought a zoo.

Speaker 6 There's no other way for them to make money. He's like, I got to get rid of this zoo.
This zoo's been nothing but trouble on my books. I'm out of this zoo business.

Speaker 6 Now I'm going to make a new and better zoo.

Speaker 1 Well, yeah, because they just charge people for it's, I mean, the business model is smart. It's just like, everyone wants to come see a tiger.
Oh, you want You want to pick $100 a day?

Speaker 1 Yeah, you want a picture of a Tiger? Oh, here, we'll take the picture, but it's going to be like $100.

Speaker 6 Yeah, so Jeff Lowe, I think, is probably going to end up going down for something with all this.

Speaker 1 Right.

Speaker 1 And then, lastly, before we get to Robert Moore, who actually gives us, like, instead of making jokes about it, he actually gave us like actual analysis of all these figures and who he talked to.

Speaker 1 We got to talk about the Jetski. Yes.
We got to talk about James Gerritson.

Speaker 6 James Gerritson.

Speaker 1 Addicted to snitching. He also, does James Gerritson think that we bought his

Speaker 1 I Got Arrested for Having a Lemur?

Speaker 6 That's what I was going to get into.

Speaker 6 He turned FBI informant for a while.

Speaker 1 For a lemur.

Speaker 6 He was wearing a wire going into Joe Exotic's zoo where everyone was strapped with an AR-15. There was meth flying around left and right.

Speaker 6 Probably an average of seven and a half felonies being committed every single day on the premises.

Speaker 6 And he goes in there wearing a wire where everyone else is shirtless. So, first of all, you're the guy in the shirt.
Everyone else does not have one.

Speaker 6 They're going to eventually ask you, hey, man, why are you always wearing all shirts?

Speaker 1 Also, everyone else is like skinny and strung out, and you're fat as fuck. Exactly.

Speaker 6 So,

Speaker 6 what could the feds possibly have had on him to make him want to do this? And his explanation was, well, they got you on that lemur charge.

Speaker 6 Yeah, I talked to my lawyer and he said, Buddy, they're going to string you up by your toenails for buying that lemur.

Speaker 1 Lemur without paperwork.

Speaker 1 And then he has the classic scene, the jet ski scene, which is the one that's going to be a little bit more. That one he had to have asked for.
He had had to have asked for.

Speaker 1 And after the jet ski scene, he's like, I might not be done. Like, I might just keep snitching.
He really just said that. He was like, yeah, this story's not over.

Speaker 1 I'm just going to start snitching on everything.

Speaker 6 The jet ski scene was this documentary's Hard Knox Baker Mayfield spiral moment. Where it was like just a slow-mo six shot of this alpha dude coming at you

Speaker 1 on a C-Doo.

Speaker 6 God damn. It made me want to go buy a C-dew, actually.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he was Kenny Powers in real life.

Speaker 1 it was just

Speaker 1 credit to the

Speaker 1 directors because that was such I was just laughed out loud when that happened.

Speaker 1 It's a documentary about tigers, and we got a fucking guy on his wave runner whipping around in probably some shitty-ass lake in Oklahoma.

Speaker 6 Yeah, strapped with the world's tightest life vest.

Speaker 1 Yeah, he wasn't. Wouldn't be able to save it.

Speaker 6 Yeah, listen, buddy, the shit that it's probably bulletproof because he snitches on everyone. Yeah.
That guy's got to be looking around every corner.

Speaker 6 I mean, everyone in the town knows that this guy's a snitch. Yeah.
And but he's not moving. He's like, yeah, I'm a snitch, and I'm owning it.
That's my job. Is I snitch on people.

Speaker 1 What a wild, wild doctor.

Speaker 6 Do you know what he does for a living? That was the other question that I had.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I think he had, like, it seemed like he had some type of appliance store.

Speaker 6 I don't know.

Speaker 1 Which makes sense because they were saying that he had credit card fraud, like he was stealing people's credit card numbers, which that would make sense, not the lemur.

Speaker 1 But yeah, it looked when they did a shot of his store, I think I saw a TV and a fan.

Speaker 6 But he had, like, he also had the lemur, too. So it was like an exotic pet/slash radio

Speaker 6 appliance brace.

Speaker 1 He did a dog. What happened to just getting a dog?

Speaker 6 When they showed his name on camera, it said, was it James? What's his name? James Gerritson. James Gerritson, businessman.
And like, just open-ended businessman.

Speaker 6 To me, all that says is this guy is a tax library.

Speaker 1 Yeah, professional snitch.

Speaker 6 This guy hasn't paid his taxes in seven years.

Speaker 1 He will turn himself in in a second, just so he can be an informant.

Speaker 1 Okay, let's get to Robert Moore. Really fascinating because he actually tells us what all these people are like in real life because he talked to them.
You have an ad real quick before we get to that.

Speaker 6 Before I do, I've got an either-or for you. Yeah.

Speaker 6 So they're making a movie out of it, right? They're making like a full-length narrative movie. How? Kate McKinnon's going to play Carol.

Speaker 1 I'm not in love with that. Is this true? Yeah.
Whoa. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Why?

Speaker 1 You can't beat

Speaker 1 the real life. Yes.

Speaker 6 It's not going to be as over-the-top as real life is.

Speaker 1 Like, it's not believable as a movie.

Speaker 6 If he was still alive, would you rather have Philip Seymour Hoffman or Steven Seagal playing Doc Antle?

Speaker 1 Steven Seagal in his prime playing Doc Antel would be pretty, pretty good.

Speaker 1 Yeah,

Speaker 1 pretty, pretty good.

Speaker 6 Maybe Jim Gaffigan? I don't know.

Speaker 1 I'm still going to go see the movie, but it's actually, you know who would be great for Doc Antle?

Speaker 1 In

Speaker 1 high fidelity,

Speaker 1 Tim Robbins playing the new boyfriend. Okay.
He had a ponytail and they had crazy tantric sex. Yep.

Speaker 1 I could see it in my, like, I can close my eyes and see him in high fidelity just make him Doc Anto.

Speaker 6 Or Kelly's dad from

Speaker 6 Love is Blind. Yeah.
He could actually play Doc Anto, too.

Speaker 1 Absolutely.

Speaker 6 All right, before we get to this interview.

Speaker 11 This season, transform your space into an entertainer's dream with Wayfair. Everything ships fast, right to your door.
Shop everything home today at Wayfair.com. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R.com.

Speaker 11 Wayfair, every style, every home.

Speaker 6 And now for something completely different.

Speaker 1 Okay, we now welcome on Robert Moore, and he is an author of the New York Times best-selling book on trails.

Speaker 1 And he spent four years reporting a podcast mini-series about the life of Joe Exotic, which is available now from Wondery called Joe Exotic Tiger King.

Speaker 1 It is obviously the documentary that everyone has watched.

Speaker 1 I would assume that your podcast is supplementary to that where you get to talk to more of these crazy characters. So let's start just like in a big picture.

Speaker 1 Is this the weirdest, craziest story that you've ever encountered?

Speaker 5 Oh, no question. Yeah, there's no doubt this is the weirdest story I've ever reported.

Speaker 5 You know, the type of writing I do tends to be a little bit more subdued and philosophical, but I just kind of stumbled into this one. And yeah, it really got its claws into me, so to speak.

Speaker 1 Yes. Now, did you talk to everyone that we saw in the documentary, or what was your like main focus for your podcast?

Speaker 5 I spoke to almost everyone you see in the documentary, although our focus. for the podcast was much more on the rivalry and the feud between Joe and Carol.

Speaker 5 I don't know if you guys have ever listened to a Wondery podcast before. They did Dirty John.
They did Dr. Death.
They did Gladiator, the Aaron Hernandez story.

Speaker 5 They tend to make these very narratively driven stories. It's almost like a movie for your ears, although it's all true, it's all journalism.
So that was their focus.

Speaker 5 They really wanted me to focus on the characters of Joe and Carol. We go into a lot more detail about their life history and their motivations, their psychology.

Speaker 5 And then we just sort of march through time showing how this thing developed.

Speaker 5 Eric and Rebecca, who made the Netflix documentary, were focused on the whole world of Big Cat. So they have all these quirky side characters like Mario Tobrow, the guy who is

Speaker 5 the model for Scarface or Doc Antle. Those guys, I mean, I spoke to Doc Antel.
I never spoke to Mario Tobrow.

Speaker 5 I never talked to a lot of those more ancillary people, but almost everyone you see relating to Joe and Carol, whether it's relating to Joe's life at the U or Carol's life and the disappearance of Don Lewis, I have spoken with at one time or another.

Speaker 6 So

Speaker 6 with your focus on Joe and Carol, I noticed that in the series itself, they did a deep dive into the disappearance of Carol's husband.

Speaker 6 Now, I don't know, I haven't listened to your podcast yet, but I have heard somebody tell me that that wasn't as much a focus in what you chose to cover. Is that accurate to say?

Speaker 3 It is accurate to say. I mean,

Speaker 5 we do focus on it. They gave it basically a whole episode.
We give it like maybe a half of an episode. in one of ours.
So we did go pretty, as deep as we could and as deep as we felt was fair.

Speaker 5 You know, we tried to, we also spoke with Don's kids. I spoke with a lot of people who wouldn't go on the record.

Speaker 5 I mean, one of the interesting things about this is that people are really afraid of Carol. Some people are afraid of her in terms of

Speaker 5 literally afraid for their lives. I had more than one person tell me that, but most people are afraid of a lawsuit.
So they won't talk because she's very litigious.

Speaker 5 And, you know, as a journalist, you're kind of bound by what material you get and what you can substantiate. And at this point, that case is still an open case.

Speaker 5 You know, there just is not quite enough evidence to draw a fair conclusion about it. I know a lot of people are jumping to the conclusion that she did it, and

Speaker 5 that's their right to do so. But really, most people who are close to this case just want one or two more pieces of evidence or one solid eyewitness to step forward.

Speaker 5 Because the cops never felt that they had enough to make a solid case. But then again, they kind of, I mean, they bungled the investigation.
According to most people close with it.

Speaker 5 They just didn't handle the evidence well enough. They didn't interview everyone enough.
It just didn't go deep enough. So people want to see that come to a resolution.

Speaker 6 I thought one of the funnier parts of the documentary is when they were talking to the detective from the Florida Police Department, and he seemed to be, you know, somewhat

Speaker 6 coppish with his mannerisms and the way that he spoke.

Speaker 6 But then you noticed that he was also doing the interview in a room that had like clown masks on the wall and like a monkey dressed up as a butler next to him holding a tray and then a tiger holding up a glass coffee table on the other side of him.

Speaker 6 So it was like, yeah, there's really nobody involved in this entire documentary that isn't a little bit weird.

Speaker 5 I mean, that's true of pretty much everyone in this, yeah, in this world.

Speaker 5 Like exotic animal people are strange, but also just the people in the orbit of Joe and Carol, and especially Joe, are just strange people.

Speaker 5 And I think that's one of the great, one of the great strengths of the documentary is they tempted to pull that out. I mean, they have a great eye for weird details.

Speaker 5 I don't know how they got Alan Glover to sit in a bathtub, for example, during this interview. There's a lot of just odd stuff like that, you know, interviewing John Finley with no shirt on.

Speaker 5 They just sort of have an eye for drawing out the strangeness in that, in the story, which there's, you know, there's a lot of it to go around.

Speaker 1 So I'm fascinated by the Carol Joe dynamic. And the

Speaker 1 part that I can't get over is like, at the end of the day, in a weird way, they sort of needed each other and they both kind of helped each other.

Speaker 1 Was there any feeling from either of them, like, deep down?

Speaker 1 Like, I know I hate this person, but Carol, it's good for business that Joe Exotic is out there, and it's good for business for Joe Exotic that Carol Baskins is out there.

Speaker 1 Was there any acknowledgement by either party that, like, hey, this kind of helps us at the end of the day make some money?

Speaker 5 Joe would often say that. He would often say, you know, look, we profit off each other.

Speaker 5 And as much as he hated her, and he truly did hate her, I mean, he told me he wanted to shoot her in the head. He told me he dreamed of seeing her brains on a wall.

Speaker 5 I mean, told me all, to describe how he was going to mutilate her body, you know, sitting, he deeply, deeply hated her. But at the same time, he would admit, yeah, I get attention.

Speaker 5 I raise money for my followers off of demonizing her. And he believed she felt the same way.
Now, Carol won't admit to that. She would say, look, if I can make Joe go away, I would.

Speaker 5 And in fact, she made many offers to him.

Speaker 5 She tried to get him, you know, know, she would alleviate his debt if he would just go away, stop breeding cubs, stop letting people pet them, and just disappear.

Speaker 5 Because she said, look, there's enough of these other guys to go around. I mean, she's going after Doc Antoll and Mario Tabrow and a bunch of other people simultaneously.
She didn't need Joe Exotic.

Speaker 5 But Joe kind of did need Carol. He needed a foil to make himself look like the hero in the story.

Speaker 1 Yeah, Joker needs Batman.

Speaker 6 Yeah, that kind of thing.

Speaker 6 With Carol and her husband that she has now, is he just like

Speaker 6 Charles? Yeah, is he bankrolling her entire thing that she's got going on?

Speaker 6 Or like, how much money is Carol bringing in from her, I guess it's ostensibly a rescue that she runs down there, but is that what's funding all her lawsuits and things like that?

Speaker 6 Or does she have her husband that's kind of backing her up?

Speaker 5 No, it's interesting you say that. Howard's a really, he's an interesting guy.
He, you know, he went to Harvard business school. He has a law degree.
He's a very smart guy.

Speaker 5 I don't get the sense he was overwhelmingly wealthy before he met Carol. I think he was successful, but not rich.

Speaker 5 But the thing that you got to keep in mind is she inherited her late husband's real estate empire.

Speaker 5 And it's sort of an empire of, as far as I understand, low-cost, you know, just maybe a step above trailers, but it's low-cost housing. She's almost some, I've heard people call her a slumlord.

Speaker 5 I don't know if that's fair, but

Speaker 5 She makes a lot of money off of that real estate business to this day.

Speaker 5 So I think that's where a lot of the money goes in.

Speaker 5 Also, you know, they fundraise like crazy big cat rescue pulls in you know millions of dollars every year in donations and it just keeps growing and growing So she doesn't really need Howard's money now the I assume you you went to both properties multiple times, right?

Speaker 1 I did yeah, so I would love to get a little bit of a more of an inside look on Carol's operation because there were there was that piece in the documentary where they kind of accused her of like look she only has like 10 big cats.

Speaker 1 They're not treated that well.

Speaker 1 she uses essentially just a system of unpaid labor to keep this thing going what was that operation what did it look like because it did strike me as odd at the end of the day this is a person supposed to be saving them did she have her own tigers and lions in a good situation or was it more the big cat rescue is more like a brand that isn't really the actual physical zoo uh yeah i think it's more of the latter like people do attack exotic animal people do tend to attack her for that.

Speaker 5 And I'm not that much of an expert on it. I walked through there a couple of times.
I thought it looked okay. You know, the cages are a little bit rusty looking.

Speaker 5 They paint them with brown rustoleum paint. So you can't really tell what's rust and what's paint.
And there is a lot of like, a lot of weeds and things growing.

Speaker 5 You know, some of those shots were a little bit misleading.

Speaker 5 It would make it look like there was a tiger in like a tiny cage, but actually that was like a little area where they stick their head in to feed.

Speaker 5 It's all right. It's not great.
It could be a lot nicer. And they'll admit that.
But what they will say, and especially Howard, what he'll tell you is that's not our focus.

Speaker 5 In fact, they could have spent a lot more money expanding the sanctuary. But what you do when you expand the sanctuary is that you send a signal out to people who are breeding these cats, like Joe.

Speaker 5 Okay, once they grow up, once they get too big to pet, now there's somewhere to send them. So you're actually kind of perpetuating the problem.

Speaker 5 What you want to do is keep your sanctuary small, but put all the money into the advocacy side where you're trying to pass laws to shut down people like Joe because he really was.

Speaker 5 He is breeding dozens of these tigers and lions and ligers and lie ligers and tie ligers in this weird hybrid every year. He's pumping them out.

Speaker 5 According to some people, he's the number one breeder in the country. That just creates this problem.
It's like whirlpool effect where you have more and more tigers that people have to take care of.

Speaker 5 So where do they end up?

Speaker 5 Either they end up going to a sanctuary like Carol's, or they get sold into a backyard zoo, or worse yet, they just get shot in the head and thrown in a field somewhere, which Joe would do.

Speaker 6 Damn. Yeah.

Speaker 6 So with Joe and the cast of characters he has around him in Oklahoma, one of the first things I noticed in this documentary was just like looking at the tattoos and some of the lack of teeth on some of the guys.

Speaker 6 I was like, there has got to be some meth going around this place. Meth is playing a big part in this type of decision-making and just his entire world.

Speaker 6 And they touched on it briefly in like episode five or six. Did you get that vibe from hanging out around Joe that there was just like a lot of drug use going on?

Speaker 5 Oh, I mean, 100%. It's, it's a, the moment you walk in the door, there's a meth vibe about the whole place.
The employees and Joe, you know, the employees all lived in these trailers and on

Speaker 5 natural property. And Joe kind of locked them in at night.
They weren't really even allowed to leave. A lot of them were very down on their luck.

Speaker 5 A lot of them were former meth users or current meth users just out of prison. You know, they had really hit the bottom of their lives.

Speaker 5 And then there's Joe and his husband, and they were all, I later learned, doing meth as well. You know, Joe publicly was very anti-drug.

Speaker 5 He would actually go around giving anti-drug awareness speeches.

Speaker 5 And I had someone in the podcast who says that he would actually would go on stage, like having just snorted a line of cocaine or just done a bump of meth, and then give these like very hyperactive speeches about how you shouldn't do drugs.

Speaker 5 But he was clearly, I mean, you can look at his manners and he twitches his nose constantly. He's very fidgety.

Speaker 5 You know, he's clearly on some kind of uppers. And I've had many people who told me that that was his sort of recreation of choice.

Speaker 5 You know, when he would have a little bit of time off, he and John Finley, his husband, would go rent this room in this like notorious gay cruising motel called the Havana Inn in Oklahoma City.

Speaker 5 And they would hole up there for a couple of days and just, you know, do meth and have orgies.

Speaker 5 So that was, and John confirmed that to me. John Finley confirmed that.
Yeah, there was quite a bit of meth going on.

Speaker 5 But at the same time, Joe claimed and did, in fact, he would fire any employee on site if he saw them high or even drunk because it was a legitimate danger to have people working around tigers and not being mentally sharp.

Speaker 5 So he's kind of a, I mean, he was a full-on hypocrite when it came to that.

Speaker 1 The other fascinating part about this documentary, when you look at it from like, you take a step back, and all the people that they interviewed, and like when you look at Doc,

Speaker 1 Carol Baskins, Joe Exotic, even Mario, they all are kind of the same, where they've built this like world around them where they can be the king of that world or the queen of that world.

Speaker 1 And it's like an ego draw for them much more than it is about the animals. Was there, when you were talking to them, could you sense that that it was, it really wasn't about the animals anymore?

Speaker 1 Like the animals were apart, but it really was, I want to be the king of this little world, this fiefdom that I have, and I have this insatiable ego that I need to like always be quenching it.

Speaker 1 Did you sense that when talking to them?

Speaker 5 Yeah, that's very astute. I think that's

Speaker 5 right. And that's something that even Carol has said to me is that big cat ownership is about power.
It's about people's obsession with power and dominance.

Speaker 5 And they think if they can have this big cat and they can... get into the cage with it and play around with it, that shows how powerful they are.

Speaker 5 Look at me, I can survive getting into a cage with a tiger. And, you know, Joe told me that many times.

Speaker 5 I'm a man who walks with tigers, you know, he, and I think that they all definitely did construct worlds around themselves in which they were in total control.

Speaker 5 And that's, that's true of Carol as well, you know, but especially Joe, I mean, that was his kingdom within the bounds of that park. He had total control.
He had total control over his employees.

Speaker 5 He had total control to a disturbing degree over his boyfriends. And, you know, he had total control over the animals as well.

Speaker 5 And so things went on in that park park where he was almost like above the law because he was locked up at night. No one could get in there.

Speaker 5 I don't know if you guys got this from the documentary, but he lived inside the zoo. He actually lived like inside a kind of a cage.

Speaker 5 His house was surrounded on all sides by cages that were filled with dogs and lions. Wow.
So like no one could touch him in there. He could do whatever he wanted.

Speaker 6 That's crazy. Yeah.
I mean, that's how I feel every time I get done with a podcast with Dan. He's our big cat.
If I can alpha him, I walk out of this podcasting room feeling invincible.

Speaker 6 feeling great about that. And so he had, so he had his husbands around him.

Speaker 6 They worked with him. He kept them very controlled, kind of on lockdown, like you mentioned.

Speaker 6 Did you get any vibes from them that they were straight men that were somehow like tricked into becoming gay and marrying a man?

Speaker 6 Or was this all, like, was it just something about Joe where these guys are straight, but they will marry this guy, Joe, because he's such a powerful personality?

Speaker 5 I think it was was more of the former. They were all the ones that I talked to.
John Finley says he's straight.

Speaker 5 You know, he also says he loved Joe. He says, like, I really did love him.
I love that guy. You know, he had a real love for him.

Speaker 5 But at the same time, he was 18 years old when he got, you know, when he started working there. And he wasn't a real, you know, he wasn't a very, I don't get the sense he was very worldly guy.

Speaker 5 He was, he was pretty, you know, so yeah, Joe lured him in. He did the same to Travis.
Travis was 19 years old. He showed up there just because he wanted to work on this television crew.

Speaker 5 And Joe would, what he would do, my impression is he would sort of say, well, come, come and just stay in my house, you know, and we don't have to be a couple.

Speaker 5 We'll just, with Travis, he said, we'll just pretend to be a couple. It's just for the reality show.
It won't be real.

Speaker 5 And then slowly over time, he would wear them down and wear them down and wear them down until they were finally sleeping in his bed with him.

Speaker 5 And then he'd give them drugs and then he would convince them to, you know, actually sleep with him.

Speaker 5 And then suddenly years would go by and they were like married to him, you know, and it was this, it was a very strange thing thing to watch happen. And it happened over and over again.

Speaker 5 And not just with these guys, there were other guys that aren't in the documentary. There's a guy named JC Hartpence who came before all this, who was a real,

Speaker 5 you know, just a real piece of work. He ended up, he's now in prison for life for first-degree murder.

Speaker 5 And before that, was in prison for molesting a young girl. You know, he'd pick up these guys.
In the gay world, they call them rough trade. You know,

Speaker 5 it's a thing. These young, straight guys sometimes will do it because, hey, they don't have to work.
They get to play with baby tigers. They get all the drugs they want.
He'd buy them cars.

Speaker 5 He'd buy them four-wheelers. He'd buy them guns.
It was kind of a sweet deal, provided they could put up with being Joe's husband.

Speaker 1 Yeah.

Speaker 1 All right. So my last question, and it's kind of a weird one coming off that answer, but there was a moment at the end of the documentary.

Speaker 1 And I really do find almost everyone in the documentary, and I'm going to listen to your podcast again. Everyone should go check it out.
It's on Wondery,

Speaker 1 and it probably will give you a lot more context on everything that was maybe missed on the documentary. But there was a moment that I was like, is Joe Exotic a tragic figure?

Speaker 1 Like, I had a moment where I was like, this guy is, you know, a gay guy who knew he was gay when he was very young in a

Speaker 1 community that didn't welcome him in Oklahoma. You know, the story about his dad basically being like, don't come to my funeral,

Speaker 1 you know, the accident that he went through.

Speaker 1 Was there ever a sense where you're like, this guy is just like, there's the tinge of tragedy here in his life that has led him to being kind of a terrible person?

Speaker 5 Yes, I think that's completely right. And there's more to the story even than the documentary goes into.

Speaker 5 Joe told me he was sexually abused repeatedly when he was five years old.

Speaker 5 And then, like you said, he grew up this gay kid, you know, kind of shy, effeminate gay kid growing up in Kansas and Wyoming, these tiny towns and Texas.

Speaker 5 And he was bullied, you know, and he turned to animals. That was his love.
He really did genuinely care about animals.

Speaker 5 He would take in, you know, raccoons and snakes and deer and things when he was a kid that had been injured. He would nurse them back to health.

Speaker 5 And then the piece of the puzzle that's also missing from the documentary that we go into in greater detail in the podcast is he, you know, so he finally comes out and finds this guy named Brian Ryan.

Speaker 5 They find themselves together in Dallas. They're living in a trailer and they're raising poodles.
They have a pet store that they own.

Speaker 5 And then Joe decides to open this zoo in honor of his brother who died. And not a zoo, rather, a sanctuary.
Really what Carol runs today is what Joe wanted to run back then.

Speaker 5 He didn't want to breed or buy or sell animals. He just wanted to rescue animals.
And so he opens this place, his husband Brian helps him build it.

Speaker 5 And then Brian dies of complications related to HIV, you know, essentially dies of AIDS.

Speaker 5 And it breaks Joe's heart. From what everyone told me, Joe changed.
You know, this guy, his, he had the love of his life, died basically in his arms in the parking lot of a hospital. And

Speaker 5 afterwards, his character changed. He started to be attracted to these young, straight guys, you know, who are very rough around the edges.

Speaker 5 And he started being obsessed with his own ego and his own. sense of power.

Speaker 5 And there's a way to construe it is like, but he was a really sensitive, vulnerable guy who built this armor around himself, this armor of ego and this armor of glamour and the zoo.

Speaker 5 All of it was there to sort of protect himself from ever getting hurt again.

Speaker 5 And yet it ultimately consumed him because it just kept growing and growing out of his control. And he could never get enough money to feed the tigers.
So he'd do these increasingly outlandish things.

Speaker 5 And he could never get enough attention, you know, and all if you look at what he did, being a magician, being a country music star, being a reality show star, being a politician it was all about feeding his ego and building this sense of being larger than life so a lot of people when i talk to about joey zottik and when i describe him when i'm you know telling the story to friends they say that doesn't sound like a real person you know they take a photo of him like that doesn't look like a real person that looks like a character and this is a big piece of the puzzle is that That's how someone turns out like that is that he's got a lot of emotional scar tissue.

Speaker 6 And ultimately, he turned into the thing that he hated most when he first started out he turned into an animal abuser he turned into a killer of animals and now irony of ironies he's gonna spend the rest of his life in a cage yeah right i mean it's it's incredibly tragic so it sounds like he he created an image to distract from his own personality so nobody would ever get too close to joe they would just know joe exotic and everything that joe exotic projected it was like he created a new person uh so he never had to deal with some of those feelings Exactly.

Speaker 5 I mean, someone told me, basically, in those words, said, you know, after Brian died, Joe Exotic started to disappear. I'm sorry, Joe Schreibogel started to disappear, and Joe Exotic was born.

Speaker 5 And she said, by 2015, there was no Joe Schreibogel left. It was all Joe Exotic.
That the mask that he was wearing had eaten into his face until there was nothing left. It was all a mask.

Speaker 5 And when you talk to Joe, that's the impression you get.

Speaker 5 It's all masks on top of mask. It's like layers upon layers of lies.
You know, he's lying about the country music. He's lying about having cancer.
He's lying about his past.

Speaker 5 He made up all sorts of stories to me about his past and things that had happened to him. He just, there was no like interiority anymore.
It was all exterior.

Speaker 5 It's a really creepy thing when you spend as many hours as I have talking to him to experience someone like that.

Speaker 6 So even though the country music stuff, as I've heard recently, was not actually Joe's singing, and I'm very upset about that. Can we at least admit that those songs were pretty good?

Speaker 6 Like, I enjoyed hearing.

Speaker 5 yeah i love that there's finally this appreciation for for his music it's really it's or not for his music for the music of the the clinton johnson band who who wrote and recorded those songs uh yeah i i you know it's funny he uh played those songs incessantly he played them when you walked into the gift shop they're playing on a on a tv there uh on a like a continuous loop And then when he recorded his nightly web show, he played the music videos multiple times.

Speaker 5 Whenever you were in the car with him, he played the songs.

Speaker 5 so after a week with him and then having uh having to listen to those interviews over and over again those songs are like seared in my brain i i cannot even hear them anymore it makes me like my skin crawl but uh i love that the world is now discovering you know the the amazing i ironic joys of i saw a tiger and uh you ever seen pretty woman lover that's that's a particularly strange one that's how joe describes his love of of pretty women so did he uh did he actually have any part in writing those songs or did he just like contract out a band and say, hey, here's what I want the song to be about.

Speaker 6 I'll let you take it from here.

Speaker 5 Yeah, it was the second. He would tell the band what the song should be about and then they would write and record it.

Speaker 5 And they're quite an accomplished little country music band based out of Washington. The reason I found out about it was because Joe Stiff filmed, he didn't pay them for one of the songs.

Speaker 5 He basically stole one of their songs. And they, you know, asked him about it and told him to, you know,

Speaker 5 fuck off. And then they got so mad that Vince Johnson, the songwriter, called me up and told me everything that had happened.

Speaker 1 Unreal.

Speaker 1 Well, Robert, thank you so much. Everyone, go listen to his podcast on Wound Wondery.
He also has a book.

Speaker 1 We got to get you back on, man, because you told us a little bit about your book before we started on Trails. You can buy it.
New York Times bestseller.

Speaker 1 We're going to have to maybe do a podcast where we get in deep about this book because it sounds fascinating.

Speaker 5 Yeah, I'd love that.

Speaker 1 Thanks so much for having me on, guys.

Speaker 6 One last thing, because I just saw this here. Joe's asking for a presidential pardon right now from Trump.

Speaker 6 Can you give me a percentage? Just like, I know that you're not intimately involved in the details of the case, but what percentage do you think Donald Trump pardons Joe Exotic?

Speaker 5 I was saying somewhere between 0 and 2%.

Speaker 1 Okay. So there's a chance.

Speaker 5 That's Joe's Eagle. But look, Joe loves Trump, man.
That was what inspired him to run for president and governor.

Speaker 5 He looked at Trump and he said, well, if he can do it, so can I.

Speaker 1 so i could keep holding that out as his last hope incredible all right well robert thank you so much everyone go follow him robert more uh underscore no e on the end so m-o-o-r underscore and uh we really appreciate it man thank you yes thanks so much love you guys talking away

Speaker 1 oh i don't know what i'm just saying i'm saying anyway

Speaker 1 today is i'm not the day to find you shy away

Speaker 1 oh i'll be coming for your love okay

Speaker 1 take

Speaker 1 on

Speaker 1 Take me on

Speaker 1 She was a rich woman, she had rich tastes. She felt the blood running through her veins.

Speaker 1 She liked the life she had, she loved her big cats, and the beauty of being undained.

Speaker 1 Needless to say,

Speaker 1 I won't say

Speaker 1 Everything was fine, just as sweet as wine, but her husband went and disappeared

Speaker 1 Tell them a little bit,

Speaker 1 tell them about his own.

Speaker 1 It got a little crazy, it got a little hazy, and the cops said there's something wrong. Don't say I'm to me,

Speaker 1 it's no better to be safe than someone here.

Speaker 1 Mama got

Speaker 1 me all

Speaker 1 You can't have this taste in the zoo.

Speaker 1 Mama can

Speaker 1 go.

Speaker 6 It's Pardon My Take presented by Bar Stool Sports.