"Bill Simmons"

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Well.

Say five nice things about me. Um, tall, handsome, good voice, funny, charming, kind, selfless.
What else? That's it, I think. We went over five, but we couldn't get to ten.
I felt like I cut you off. I don't think I could possibly get to ten.
Oh, and an incredible boxer. Welcome to Spoilers.
Smart. Light us.
Smart. Light us.
Smart. Light us.
You know, the one thing I will miss about New York is the prepared meals at the grocery store. Because I just, just right before this, I just finished having sushi with, you know, the spicy tuna.
Hamburger. But I always go there and I get like the spaghetti.
Like, don't you guys love that? You know, we have those out here on the West Coast. No, but not to walk to.
You know, you just walk in, you get like a spaghetti and meatballs, and you just walk back home. It depends on where your house is.
Spaghetti and meatballs is not sushi. I mean, I'm going to check it out right now.
You check that out, Will, while I explain to Sean that if you live near a place that sells prepackaged food, you can walk to get it. Could you, Sean? You could walk to Larchmont if you wanted to.
I'm not divulging your... It's kind of far.
Kind of far. Well, I mean...
For a guy who doesn't like walking up a flight of stairs, yes. Yes.
No, that's not true. He does walk.
I will say this about Sean. Oftentimes when I call him, he's walking.
Yeah, I love to walk. He does.
By the way, Amanda says she saw you and Alessandra knocking down the big hill over here the other day.

That's so adorable.

Yeah, Will likes a good walk.

In the afternoon, I can just see you sort of pushing your laptop aside and saying,

reach for the intercom there in the mansion.

And you say, hon, what room are you in?

Are you up for a walk?

And then you guys...

You put your ankle weights on?

You zip into your bag, right? Your sweat bag? I put my sweat bag on and I put your ankle weights on you zip into your bag right your your sweat bag i get

my put my sweat bag on and i put my body weights on and and i start climbing that hill and you

know what the first time i really did that hill was with you jb during during the pandemic and um

jk jk and uh i remember the first time we did it and i was like oh my god and you were like

you were so good i was like fuck this is so hard and now i've done it you know every time i know

and we'll see, every time. I know, and well, you live on a hill.
Yeah, live on a hill. And so I do.
You tried biking. I biked up that once.
No, you did not. Yeah, that was a whole different thing.
That was amazing. That is brutal.
I've seen a couple guys do it and they're barely going forward as they go up. Yes, exactly.
God bless the but i've seen i've seen jb i've seen you over the years a few times on that hill and usually give me like a scornful look or whatever like it's sort of a shitty like but i just honk and swerve near you and try to scare you which is in the family because amanda yesterday all of a sudden this like tesla comes in and the swerving i'm like what the fuck and then it's amanda waving you know yeah brightly she's waving brightly with the drake just pouring out her window i just talked to her yesterday yeah end of story how are those three hours yeah how's your ears i love talking to amanda she said she's gonna throw me a party when i come home we goddamn right we are can i go i'm like you assholes to throw me a party when I come home. We're goddamn right we are.

Can I go? I'm like, you assholes better throw me a party.

Are you kidding?

It's soon, isn't it?

What is it?

Isn't it like a week now?

JB, you're looking real stripy today.

Are we, are you kidding?

I'm back on the golf course today.

You are?

Yeah, I like the shirt, Jay.

It's been a while.

I got the shirt while I was visiting with Will out there east.

Yeah.

I'm going out there to one of Burbank's finest courses today.

And I'm going to enjoy myself.

What a life.

What a life.

Thank you. out there east.
Yeah. I'm going out there to one of Burbank's finest courses today.
Oh. And I'm going to enjoy myself.
What a life. What a life.
I feel like I have something more to say, but maybe I'll think of it while we're talking to our really high-level guest here, guys. Oh, nice.
We've bored this person. Huh? We've bored this person now.
Yeah. Sorry.
Sorry, guest. It's our day-to-day, our D2D.
And, you know, it is not the first time he's been exposed to our pain. He's been here before, and I don't want to spoil anything.
But it was during a time very, very early on. We didn't really know what we were doing.
Things were very, very topical in our interview, so it didn't age well. And there's a few-week delay before we put these on.
And COVID was—so we ended up not even airing the episode not even airing the episode but he's back we've got a jack of all trades and a master of all his books have been new york times bestsellers his columns and newspapers and websites are instant must-reads his television appearances are appointment tv and his his overall opinions on all things culture whether it be entertainment politics sports are unapologetically honest and singular. He has a degree in political science and a master's in print journalism.
We three dummies admire him for his already massive success in something we're just trying to figure out, but we love him for his profound work on The Jimmy Kimmel Show. Please welcome Boston's own William John Simmons III.
Bill? Oh, we can't out of town. Please.
Bill Simmons. Wait a minute, what? Sean still doesn't know who I am.
No, I love Bill Simmons. Wait, what happened to the show? We never aired it because what we talked about was like what was happening that week.
Oh, really? Yeah, it was just, it didn't. Yeah, I did one of the first test shows.
It wasn't wasn't a test, but it was, you were one of our big shots right up front there, along with Dax Shepard. Wow.
Oh, so you just squashed it. Oh, I should feel much worse about this.
No. It's not even aired.
It didn't air, because it was too, Jason's right, it was too topical, it was too, like, exactly, it was like, what was going on? It was like May 2020. You're not alone.
There were a few. I think Tapper, same thing happened with Jake Tapper, right? Yeah.
I just thought you guys didn't like me,

and then maybe I said something about Ozark back in 2020. We tried to edit it and make it entertaining,

and we just couldn't make it work.

We love you and revere you in spite of your allegiance to certain teams.

Put it that way.

Certain teams.

You mean every Boston team?

No, not every Boston team.

Where's your beef?

What don't you like about his allegiance?

I don't want to get into a back and forth of Bill Simmons.

He'll crush me.

or You mean every Boston team? No, not every Boston team. Where's your beef? What don't you like about his agents? I don't want to get into a back and forth of Bill Simmons.
He'll crush me. Are you kidding? He doesn't like the Bruins.
I don't have the firepower. I do like the Bruins.
The only team you have a passion for are the Maple Leafs. Well, you didn't for a while, right? Well, I was mad.
We had a cheap owner and he cost us a Stanley Cup and I was in my 20s and spiteful and I got mad. Right, but now you're back.
Now a better spot you're back with the bears the bears the bruids yeah they do have the bear well i mean i thought you meant the hershey bears i thought you meant he became a hershey bears fan of the well we're taping this right now and mookie betts is going back to fenway park which um was the most traumatic red sox thing that's happened it's gonna be the. Yeah, he was our best guy.
You guys are both huge baseball fans. Yeah.
And did you guys, when Mookie Betts came to the Dodgers, did you guys fire some texts back and forth? No, I told them. I told all my Dodger fans.
I was like, you guys won the lottery. This guy's amazing.
This is the biggest mistake the Red Sox have made in my lifetime. I couldn't get too mad because we won four World Series.
And I had said before we won the first World Series that I would probably sell my soul to win one World Series. So we won four.
Wait, wait, wait. I thought it was only two.
When was there four? So you did sell your soul. I just want to confirm.
No, we won four. Yeah, I do think I might be going to hell.
I think I might have said that drunkenly one night that I would sell my soul. So it's hard to complain too much.
But, you know, we had this awesome guy who was great in the community. And, you know, he's so much fun to watch.
And they just trade him. How far were the Red Sox from making that deal? Did they have an opportunity to match what the Dodgers offered them? They got super smart and analytical about baseball players as they hit their 30s, how their production declines, and you're basically paying for past performance, which is true with, like, the Sluggers.
But, like, the Sean Hayes kind of wiry athletic types age pretty nicely into their 30s. Wiry.
I know Sean is still playing squash and doing whatever he's doing. Look, I got my things on.
He's got his compression wrap on his elbow.

It's not a good luck.

From hammering the piano every night.

Bill, I wanted to ask you,

I mean, you are sort of a jack of all trades,

as Jason said,

and you opine on lots of different things,

but sports is sort of the lead.

That was sort of the cutting edge that got you into this world.

What was it about you you like as a kid

were you like this is going to be my milieu like i'm just a sports guy i love sports so much and i just gotta it's got to be my life what what was the sort of the genesis of you know you as the ultimate sports guy well it also might have been not having a life you know i was an only child and I absolutely love sports.

I was all into it and all the Boston teams.

My dad had celtic season tickets just kind of threw myself into it and at some point in college i had a i had a column in college that really from the first week i was in college and i was like i wonder if i can get paid for this so it was one of those i just. I remember everything.
I have opinions. I have a sense of humor.
Can this be something? But it still took me the entire 90s to get there. But you early on decided that you were going to make your journalism come from the perspective of the fan as opposed to sort of trying to stay neutral and just kind of report the facts.
Was that shaped by your experience as a Boston fan in that the Celtics were just killing it there in the, what was it? The 80s when you were growing up. The late 70s, early 80s, right? We had a nice run.
Right, and then the Sox were giving you a lot of pain. Yes.
So did that kind of shape, well, that's more of like a a i'm a very passionate fan by virtue of the local teams and so let's let's do that angle it was two things the first one was that the way people wrote about sports back then was very you know reportery dry um like non-fan stuff right um and it just wasn't the way my friends and I talked. Right.
So I never really liked reading that coverage that much because I was like, do these people even like sports? They just seem like angry old white guys. Yeah.
So it was that. And then the other thing was because I couldn't get in the clubhouses, I was writing like a sports column on the internet.
I couldn't get press passes for anything. So I really tripled down on, all right, I'm going to write from the fan's perspective.
A couple of the writers that I really liked had done that. Like there was this book, the screenwriter William Goldman had written called Wait Till Next Year, where he wrote all of his parts were about New York sports from a fan's perspective.
There's Roger Angel and The New Yorker was another one. So I was like, I feel like that's a better lane for this.

So I kind of just threw myself into that, and it kind of worked.

What was your first sort of moment where you got not validated,

but got entree, like where somebody said,

okay, you can come in, you can get into the locker room,

you can get into the press box, you can have access?

What was that moment? Yeah, how do you get into the locker room? Yeah, that was, so ESPN got my calm in 2001, and I had a little more juice at that point to go to stuff. But at that point, I was like, you know what? Like, having some distance from this and writing from the fan side is actually better for me because I was weaving pop culture and all my stuff, and I was like, I think like this is a better lane so for really the all the 2000s i tried to stay away from being kind of too embedded with athletes and getting in there and just kind of being detached and then in the 2010s i realized because i had i had so much uh i don't know such a profile at that point.
I could talk to just about whoever I wanted.

And I was like, you know what, now that I'm hitting my 40s,

there's stuff to learn from some of these guys, from some of these coaches.

And I really kind of threw myself into just kind of learning more

from people who played and coached.

Yeah, there was that big transition.

You talk about becoming a high profile.

So listener, for those of you that aren't, you know, sports junkies like me and Sean Hayes, you know, Bill exploded onto ESPN. He started a podcast, Dynasty, with Grantland and then The Ringer.
Yeah, my podcast was 07, Sean. It's amazing.
How about that? It was like me and mark maron and like two other dudes yeah yeah i know i know i know who you are i know you've been around i know what you do so what so tell us about that that transition was not gradual it was it was it was pretty not overnight i don't know i don't mean to diminish it or belittle it at all i don't mean that that at all. It was very deserved what happened.
Maybe it was just overdue.

But were you comfortable in that transition,

not only what it did for you publicly

and being sort of famous and recognizable?

Yeah, that kind of maturing.

From ESPN to the next chapter, is that what you mean?

Well, being on air, like all of a sudden you were,

I remember seeing you on TV.

And I was like, who is this guy?

And I was like, oh, that's what Bill Simmons looks like?

And, and, oh, that's what Bill Simmons looks like? And listening to you talk, it was just this great new personality. I remember how disappointed you were at how handsome he was.
Jesus, he's handsome too? But there really was definitely an unapologetic, sorry to use the word again, you didn't really make much of an effort to be some like zippy on-air personality. Like you were just like, I'm just a guy and I got an opinion and it's backed with knowledge and facts.
And here we go. Yeah, you were fine with just being a plain regular guy, which we really admire.
Yeah, we're just small. Yeah, it was actually fun to do those shows because I would just kind of call it like it is yeah and i think people were surprised initially because it was very like now barkley's doing a good job shows were very yeah barkley could do because he was a hall of famer but like when the media guys usually came on they were way more careful i went going backwards like probably oh six i made a decision like every single year i want to try to add something and take a swing at something I don't want to be in the same spot at the end of the next year that I'm in right now so what can that be so like in 07 that was when uh when I started 30 for 30 I sent the memo we created it on our show um that was when I started writing my basketball book and that was when podcast.
And then the next year after that, it was like, all right, how can I keep going? How can I keep going? And that led to Grayland in 2011, and then just TV in 2012, and it was just each year. What can I do? I don't want to be in the same spot.
Well, what I love about it, sorry, and correct me if I'm wrong, Bill, is that you say you do all these things, and you're like, I'm going to do this, I'm going to do this. And it feels like you're at ESPN, then you're at HBO, I think for a minute.
And it's almost like those places just couldn't contain you. Like you ended up, you're like, well, fuck it.
I don't need them. I don't need them.
I'll just create my own network. I'll create my own vessel because then I don't have to answer to all that.
Is that kind of how it went? Yeah, I realized I got suspended in 2014. That's fun.
From ESPN for... That was for dealing all that heroin, right? I mean, you've got to fire you for that.
Yeah, it turned out the H was just not... Wait, what did you get suspended for? I said some stuff about the NFL commissioner, who was their biggest partner, and they got upset.
And when I got suspended, something weird happened. All these people reached out like, hey, when you branch off, I'd love to invest, or I'd love to, and I was like, wait, what's going on? And that really made me start thinking about it pretty seriously.
Like, okay, if I left, could I create something? I had some people at grantland that i really liked working with and just over the course of 2015 was like all right what if we could we recreate grantland as our own thing that we own we don't have to answer to anybody could we really triple down on podcasts because we were convinced you know espn didn't care about podcasts at all and we were convinced like we can probably pay for everything through the podcast revenue. And I never ended up taking money from investors because I kind of felt like we could pay for everything through my podcast, which is what happened.
And that's a risky proposition, a little bit nerve-wracking. I mean, not nerve-wracking, but it's a leap, right? Yeah, I remember explaining it to my wife.
And she's like and she's like i trust you but i could see like this glimmer in her eye like should i go on raya now or like wait for six months raya well before you you give us all a layman's uh lesson on on podcasting and and and where it's kind of going and and all that yeah talk a little bit about where this moxie came from to sort of double down triple down on yourself and and and to be uh really proactive in an entrepreneurial way because you know dudes that are super big sports fans that like write about it and stuff aren't aren't famous for being uh business titans uh to put it kindly So where does all that come from? I mean, you're very well educated. You come from, I think your dad was a teacher and your mom was a superintendent.
Yeah, so I mean, you were raised by adults and you are one. So is that simply it or do you just have an innate business acumen? You guys are probably going to like this answer.
The more I got embedded at ESPN, you start looking around and you're like, wait, I can do this. That guy's kind of terrible.
This guy's terrible. How did this guy get this job where he decides stuff? This lady's awful.
And you just start going, wait a second. I feel like I'm smarter than a lot of these people.
Yeah, yeah, it turns out nobody knows what they're doing. But even if it's not that, usually I find if you just get in the door in any sort of industry, sort of the mystery of it that you build up in your mind just kind of melts away, and that's half the battle.
Yeah, you think everybody is awesome and all knowing, and they're're just not. They're not.
Or that they've got this well of secret knowledge that you'll never have access to. You know what I mean? Yeah.
And most of the people just got, yeah, they got promoted a couple times and they kind of can't believe they got to where they got. Like when we did 30 for 30 and people loved it, the first volume.
Is that like 80 for Brady? No. It's a sports documentary series.
So we created it and we finished it. And the person who was in charge of ESPN Films, it changed hands a couple times.
And by the time we finished 30 for 30, people loved it. And they were like, all right, so 30 for 30 is done.
We're going to call documentaries now ESPN Films and do it that way.

And they didn't want to do a second volume.

And we were like, we just created a brand.

That's like the hardest thing you could possibly do. So they released like four more documentaries, not called 30 for 30.

They're called ESPN Films Presents.

And everybody was like, did you see the new 30 for 30?

And we're just sending emails to people.

And we're like, we did it. Like we did the impossible.
We created a brand. Just let's do another volume of 30 for 30 right and we're just sending emails to people and we're like we we did it like we did the impossible we created a brand just let's do another volume of 30 for 30 we had to convince them for like nine months and now the thing's still on 14 years later amazing that's so cool it was so stupid i can't i would go now i i don't get as mad as i did back in the day but like in the late i would just would just lose my mind.
I would send these 2,000 word

emails. And I thought it was normal

because I worked for Kimmel for 18 months.

And you guys know Kimmel.

Kimmel's a lunatic.

Kimmel's like, he will whip off a

700 word email in three

seconds as he's playing a video

game and doing nine other things.

So I thought, well, Jimmy's like that too.

That's normal. And then you realize, oh, Jimmy's

also a lunatic. So we're both lunatics.

Yeah, I'm very similar.

Yeah, you guys have, Sean is, by the way. Sean will answer an email before the person has hit send.
Right, he's telepathically answering it. And I, right, Sean, a couple of times I've been like, hey, I'm really sorry.
Like we're on some sort of like email chain or business thing. And I'll be like, I'm sorry that I'm not answering yet need a minute to think about it yeah sean's already answered but you know it's funny you say that it makes sense that and i know you and kimball are friends i know you worked for worked with him for a little bit it does totally make sense that you guys both have this kind of you're very confident and you you're both opinionated but confident in your opinion and confident about being right and generally generally, I bet you're both right most of the time.
They don't pop off on shit they're wrong about. No, no.
Wait, hold on. Let's be clear.
Kimmel is way worse than I am. He's not confident.
He is super stubborn. Yes.
And will just fight to the death until he just breaks you down and you admit he's right, even though you don't think he's right. But he's smart enough not to dig in on things that he's not smart about.

He'll just back off and it'll be like,

it never happened.

Yeah.

He's like one of the most frustrating people

to argue with because he's just,

it could be like,

we could argue with Celtics.

He's like, no, Larry Bird only won two MVPs.

And I'm like,

do I have to get like the basketball encyclopedia?

Like he definitely won three. No, it was two.
And then it was like, no, here it is. It's three.
It's like, I told you it was three. And we will be right back.
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That's betterhelp.com slash smartless. While Hilton is always expected to have top-notch service, you'd be surprised at the unexpected places they're offering it now.
They've partnered with AutoCamp, which offers insanely cool airstreams in iconic outdoor destinations. Hilton also has an exclusive partnership with small luxury hotels of the world, providing Hilton Honors members access to luxury boutique hotels to the show.
So how did podcasting hit your radar earlier than anybody else? Not just listeners, but podcast creators. And what was it? Who whispered in your ear? And you got ahead of it and carved away and made it possible for, you know, idiots like us and Dax and, you know.
Oh, I like that I made it possible for your podcast to succeed. This is good.
Well, it became a medium, you know. It wasn't a medium before you and Mark Merritt.
Jason, our lawyers just emailed me and said, take that back. We should cut that out later.
No, when when i started it it was just because i saw there was this interview link on espn.com with the interview with the celtics gm and i clicked on it was like podcast it's interview with danny age i'm like what the hell is this so i emailed them and i'm like can i have one of these and they were like okay and they mailed me this equipment so i did my first first one with an NBA writer named Mark Stein, and the second one was with Corolla, and Corolla came over because I only had one jack in the phone, so he came over, and we realized we couldn't do it in the same room, and he was wandering around my driveway on the phone doing the podcast with me. So it was like the early days were like crazy rocky, and I was like, these are really fun.
I used to have my friends on. And my whole goal was like to emulate Mike and the Mad Dog because I love Mike and the Mad Dog in New York.
And it was like these guys, I love Mike and the Mad Dog when they would be talking about like the Oscars, not like the Rangers and be like, all right, who do you have for best acted dog? And they would like be going, I'd be like, this is amazing. What is this um so i would have my friends on and just like people that i thought i would have good chemistry with and then around 09 that i'd had it for about two years and i remember seth meyer's text uh he emailed me about it and he was like uh yeah jacko was my buddy jacko was like yeah jacko was feeling it today like it was it was so funny and i'm like you listened like i had no idea people were listening because they didn't tell me the numbers and i was like you want to come on so in 09 i started just having these celebrities on and i i was like the first podcast for i would say like 50 celebrities and all of them thought it was amazing it was like like a first date with somebody.
We're like, that was amazing.

And now it's like all of these,

every celebrity has been on what?

50 podcasts.

There's nothing special about it anymore,

but it was really fun to grab people.

So by like 2009,

2010,

people were mentioning it to me on the street.

They weren't mentioning,

they were mentioning my column,

but then some people were like,

Hey man,

love the podcast.

I was like,

Oh,

and it just felt like it was building.

It's also a great way for celebrities to be,

um,

Thank you. mentioning they were mentioning my column but then some people are like hey man love the podcast i was like oh and it just felt like it was building it's also a great way for celebrities to be um to have a an extended conversation with a with an interviewer or journalist or whatever and and not run the risk of of having uh you know a a headline you know cherry picked out of there for some sort of sensational abuse you know like yeah it's all verbatim and well i remember talking to you about it jason because you were like we were talking about how frustrating the the talk show circuit is yeah especially when you come out and you do like well kimmel's but you do like you're on a talk show for 10 minutes right and you do the pre-interview and you come out and you hit your three things and you have a little back and forth and i think for the celebrities the podcast was just such a more fun format because it was like this is who i really am yeah you're hanging out for sure so that was a big win for everything bill tell me sorry to just go back again uh so your parents were teachers what did they think what did you see say to them when you graduated college you're like all right i'm just going to go into this sports thing were they like great were they expecting you to become a teacher did they want you to become a lawyer no they i think they it was like 50 50 for them i was going to be able to have a steady job i don't i don't think really you just got a master's degree in print well that was the thing so i got a mass my my dad was like, hey, what are you going to do next year?

I was like, I don't know. And he's like, you should maybe keep going on the sports run there.
You're right. And I just like the last minute applied to three journalism schools and got into a couple.
So he encouraged you. Yeah, it was more like a what are you doing next year? And just kind of staring vacantly back with no answer.
but then I went to journalism school and, and, you know, it wasn't, it didn't work out right away. Like I worked at the Boston Herald for three years and did grunt work and Chinese food orders and covered high school sports.
And, and, uh, by 96, I was out, I was bartending. So did you play sports as a kid? And then, and then did you not want to go into professional sports, like playing them?

I was like high school level best.

Yeah.

And what sport?

Yeah, what was your sport?

Basketball was my favorite.

Yeah.

Oh, my God.

I still played tennis.

I had to retire from basketball 10 years ago because we're all old people.

Oh, did you roll an ankle too many times?

Yeah.

I remember speaking to an orthopedic surgeon once in New York,

and she was just basically like, yeah, like nine out of 10 injuries of dudes over 30 are from basketball. Yeah.
And now it's like pickleball on basketball. Yeah, pickleball.
Yeah. I played basketball when I was a kid, and I was like, you know, we'd run down to one end of the court, and I'd be like, and then they'd get the ball, the rebound, and I'm like, wait.
We got to go all the way back? We got to go all the way back to the other side. I don't understand.
And why do I, can't we just play half the court? I didn't understand it. That was too much for me.
So basketball was your main sport. You played baseball too, I imagine, a little bit when you were a kid? I played everything until high school.
I just played basketball. I loved basketball the most, though, because we had the season tickets.
We were, like, front and center for the whole Larry Bird era. So I just understood it the most.
Did you grow up in Boston, Boston, or did you grow up? Yeah, I grew up in Brookline. Oh, you did, okay.
My parents got divorced, which is why I have a sense of humor. Right, true.
Exactly. My mom moved to Connecticut, and eventually I moved to live with my mom for high school.
Okay. And they got divorced, like, at a tough time for you, too.
13, I think it was? No, I was nine. Oh, Wikipedia.
Yeah, I had the Red Sox. Yeah, don't read Wikipedia.
The Red Sox lost to the Yankees in the 1978 playoff game, which was the most traumatic sports loss ever. Bruins lost to the Canadians and my parents got separated all in the span of six months.
So, and I had glasses. Wow.
It was tough. Wait, was that 78? Did you say 78? 78 in early 79.
Yeah, because the Leafs, the Leafs lost, they were swept by the Canadians before that. The Canadians, yeah, they just.
So you were both on the edge of a few buildings that year. I was.
It was tough. Well, he's had, I mean, the Leafs thing is.

It's so tough.

One of the most traumatic professional sports relationships that anyone has.

Oh, I.

Nothing good happens.

But Brendan Shanahan's going to bring it all back, right, Willie?

Shani is the man.

Shani is our man.

He's the best.

He's the best, dude.

I actually just played golf with Shani and Mike from Mike and the Mad Dog a couple weeks ago.

Yeah.

Will, did you ever get tempted by the Kings just like doing a full hockey divorce and just second wife with the Kings? I couldn't. I mean, I go to Kings games when I'm here and I'll, you know, sometimes with the kids and stuff just for fun, but, and I'm just such a huge hockey fan, but the Leafs are just my team.
They're just it for me and they always have been. Isn't that hilarious that people will divorce human beings but not their teams? Like if Will was like, I'm now a Kings fan, he'd be like, that's horrible.
You broke up with the Maple Leafs? That's the worst thing I ever heard. You know what? If it's a relationship, it's fine.
You know what's funny? So when I was with Shani a couple weeks ago, he goes, he's like, I think he heard on the podcast or somewhere, he goes, so I i heard you say because i've become like in the last 10 12 years like a massive uh soccer fan and i'm a big liverpool supporter yeah through my friend and i just bill loves tottenham get him uh do you are you tottenham fan it lasted three years until my kids started playing sports every saturday and right it's tough it's tough yeah it was too hard but it's yeah I'm up at 4.30 in the morning watching games and stuff. And I'll watch everything.
I'll watch Bundesliga. I'll watch La Liga.
I'll watch anything. Champions League, forget it.
You're getting me so hot. So I start watching it.
It's so erotic. 4.30, huh? I guess I had sort of said offhand that watching Liverpool and watching soccer has become almost, has almost taken over hockey.
And he looked at me with such disappointment. He's like, is that true? Is that true that you love? And I go, first of all, relax.
Yeah. Settle down.
Settle down. But I do, it has helped to, to kind of mitigate my frustration or disappointment by watching that because I'm, I, I'm so invested in the Leafs.
I live and die by, die by, you know. So I've gotten into, and football has been a really great, soccer has become a really great sort of antidote to that.
And so I can have some highs. Better attention span sport too.
It's two hours. There's a halftime.
It's perfect. It just flies through and you're done.
It's perfect. And once I got into it and understanding who the people were and what the stories were behind it, it's super interesting.
And Champions League is interesting. And I'll watch virtually any sport, which makes me, like I ended up watching, you know, the Ashes, the cricket.
I'll watch 2020 cricket, T20. Like I'll watch.
Cornhole? Is there anything? I won't watch that. It's not a sport.
Will you watch? Is there any sport you won't watch? Cornhole is not a sport? No. Okay.
It's a game. It's not.
It's a game. Great.
Is there anything? I won't watch that. It's not a sport.
Will you watch? Is there any sport you won't watch? Cornell's not a sport? No. Okay.
It's a game. It's not.
It's a game. But is there any...
So is golf a sport then? Game. Game.
Baseball's a game, not a sport. Yeah, I guess golf's a game.
But the top guys are athletes. True.
Have you seen the bodies on the Red Sox? No, no, no. I'm saying golf.
I'm saying golf. Is there a sport you won't watch? Sorry, that was my big long lead.
Is there a sport I won't watch? Yeah, that you don't enjoy watching. I don't get auto racing and like there's this F1 resurgence and I gave it a kick drive.
I don't get driving around in a circle. It's just cars just going in laps.
I don't either. Well, the road courses I get, but circles, no.

Bill, come to Formula One with me.

You'll get it.

Come with me to Formula One.

No, listen, you're the 100th person.

It's like, no, no, you'll get it.

You just, but it-

Jason got me into it.

It's starting to feel like Scientology a little bit.

We're like, you don't understand.

You've got to meet Miscavige.

You'll get it when you meet him.

Just have brunch with him.

It's like, I don't know.

It doesn't take.

I don't know if I love F1. That's hysterical.
So wait, so this is a perfect opportunity. And this is going to be a long question.
Just hang in there. Because I was like, should I ask it? Should I not ask it? I'm going to ask it to...
Guys, I'm going to go make a sandwich. Yeah, I'm going to pee.
I've heard your long question, Sean. I'm excited.
They're not... Okay, so it's to the three of you guys.
Uh-oh. So, and this is a perfect opportunity to ask this.
And I wasn't going to ask it, but here we go. It's already too long.
No, no, hang on. All the qualifiers.
No, so I... He's a big qualifier guy with his questions.
So, what is the psychology behind loving sports so much? Okay, so wait. So, like, you know, in movies, theater, TV, whatever it is, you're watching a story, you're emotionally invested, you're watching the beginning, middle, and end of something.
In sports, I get it. There is a beginning and end because who's going to win and then they win.
Okay, sure. But what is the psychology about loving it? So like, what are you rooting for other than a team that you don't have any personal connection to? Yeah, you go first for for me it's just simply and and it's and it's heightened by the olympics because it's it's it's only every four years it's the televised live moment of somebody putting everything they've got on the line and it's a binary result of success or failure and i get to see this person reach for excellence and let's see what the best they can do is going to yield.
And that's a really exciting thing to me. And it's unwritten.
Yeah. I get that.
I would say for me, it's not dissimilar. And as I explained, my appreciation of soccer came from understanding the stories and the people behind it.
Yeah, you told me that, Will. So once I can get into, like, this guy came over here, and for me, it's not necessarily binary because there is victory sometimes in people in failure when they don't actually get it, but they try really hard.
I like that part of it. Yeah, but the stories, like, you told me that a long time ago.
You're like, Sean, just try to watch the stories of the people. So I'm watching, I'm like, well, this is a Dateline episode.
Like I could just watch, you know, I could learn about these people without watching them kick a ball around for two hours. Sure.
You know what I'm saying? But then there is a moment, there is an actual venue for them to go and try to do that. You see the story behind it.
So like, for instance instance, if you watch, like, one of these great soccer documentaries, and you see the importance of the team to the town and to the fans, and then you see these players and these guys and their town and what it means, and then the players who come in and they're trying to do it, and they're trying to do it not just to win, but they understand the cultural impact that they have. They feel it.
They know it. And watching them go through that is super compelling to me.
Yeah, I get it. But on the other side, I went to a daughter's game with Jason a couple years ago, and we're sitting there, and I was like, I kind of get it.
I get like the atmosphere. It's like watching this old house on a Sunday.
You're like, oh, this is very relaxing. This has gone so well.
You know what I mean? I get it. He was almost there.
You know what I mean? Bill, get them back on track. But, Sean, in the same way that, like, for me, I can't go, I can't get into musicals.
Right. And I can't.
Because it's why people are singing. And I'm like, what? And I can't get it.
But if you learned about them, if you kind of understood kind of what goes into it all, then you, perhaps. Well, I do in the sense that it is sort of adjacent to what I do as a profession, and yet I still can't, it's just not for me.
It doesn't speak to me, and for whatever reason, sports does in that way, and Bill, you probably have a much more concise answer. I just think it's almost like a DNA thing.
It hits you, it's got to hit you before like age six. Yeah.
And I see it with a couple of my friend's kids. I had like my friend Nathan's kid just like, I could tell when he was six, I was like, oh, he's going to be one of those guys.
He's going to be really into it. And now he is.
He's like 14 and he's one of those guys. Yeah, like I was, obviously I'm from Chicago when the Cubs won finally, what, four, five, six years ago.
I don't remember when that was. Yeah.
I was crying because I was like, oh my God, they haven't won in 200 years. I'm from

Chicago. That was incredible.

Sean, that's it.

And I'm a huge football fan.

I just need a reason to watch.

I need to bet or something.

When I was growing up in Boston in the 70s,

but the cold weather cities,

it's pretty miserable for like four or five

months. And Canada has this too.

I know Will knows.

The sports teams take this

outsized importance of

Thank you. it's pretty miserable for like four or five months and canada has this too i know will knows but um you know the sports teams take this outsized importance of just like they the kind of what however the teams are doing kind of sets the mood of the city yeah and you know when bird showed up for the celtics in 1979 and we realized like pretty quickly like this is one of the most special athletes in any sport and we get to go on this ride with him for the next 10, 12 years.
Yeah. That's when it goes to a whole other level.
Like Cleveland had that with LeBron and the Lakers said that with Kobe and, you know, you just kind of hit the lottery when it happens. And that's, that's going to make everyone care more.
Bill, Bill, you know, I, I, I remember distinctly thinking this at the time and Sean, again, this kind of goes to the way it makes you feel. I remember when Tiger, starting in sort of 99 through 2008, really up to the 2008 U.S.
Open, in that time, he did something that was so spectacular. And I remember thinking, there were people who didn't like him.
I remember thinking, we have, I hope we all appreciate how incredible it is what this guy is doing. It was so...
And that we're alive during it. And we're alive, and we get to watch it in real time.
Yeah, that is cool. That is cool.
I thought that way about Jason with Ozark. It was the same thing.
I agree. Thank you for bringing the background.
I can't believe I'm a member of this species. I know we get to, with the slow blink, with McConaughey, with the slow blink that McConaughey pointed out.
Do you know how McConaughey pointed out that Jason's got the best slow blink of all? He's a slow blink hall of favor? To be honest, I'm not sure what that compliment was, but I took it. I loved it.
Dude, I have thought about it every moment since he said that. I looked at myself in the mirror yesterday and I was like, I tried to do a slow blink and I realized, wait, I can't see what I'm doing.
So I'm not sure what he's talking about. That was good.
Hey, Bill, I don't mean to back you into anything controversial, so feel free to pull the ripcord if it is. But online sports betting that is now sort of really all over the place on television and online and whatnot.
How do you feel about – are you worried about your average sports viewer, especially because like when you start talking about the six-year-old, you know, like pretty soon he's going to have a phone and he's going to have like a, you know, an allowance every week. And he's going to be able to make little bets prompted by the on-air announcers saying, hey, listen, if you're thinking this might be a field goal versus a touchdown, you can bet right now.
People are going to get hurt. And I'm wondering how you feel about that being in the space right now.
Well, the way the apps are set up, it's impossible for any non-adult to just start a gambling account. My son is a sophomore in high school.
He can't like gamble because he's not allowed so they have a lot of checks and balances with that i just think this is where it's been going yeah really for the last 20 years like i i remember when i my first couple years at esp.com gambling was like a big part of the way my friends and i talked about sports and they wouldn't even let me write a gambling column the first year in 2001 with the spreads. But the on-air announcers sort of encouraging that.
Do you feel like that's on the same side of the line or not? I don't know if they're encouraging it as much as it's part of the dialogue of sports now to put in perspective. Well, but they're promoting it.
And I think the network is a participant in that action. I could be wrong with that.
Well, ESPN just did a deal, ESPN Bet, they're calling it. I mean, I think they all kind of see where it's going.
Are they doing that with Penn? Yeah, they... But, Bill, again, correct me if I'm wrong.
You know, the NFL has, in all sports, but certainly the NFL always posted the odds in the newspaper for as long as it was always about that. Right.
Always. From day one.
It's just more overt than it used to be. Right.
I mean, like teams will get fined if they didn't report injuries. Why are they getting fined? Because it affected the spreads.
Then how does it, can you reconcile it with the position that baseball took against Pete Rose gambling on baseball? And now they're actually a partner of gambling with baseball? No, but you can't because the Pete Rose thing, he was betting on his own team. Right.
And he was managing that team. So he could affect the outcome potentially.
Yeah, and they've been cracking down on, they don't want the players to gamble on anything right and there's been especially in

football there's been a few guys that got nailed but if you go back to the history of the sports like there's been gambling scandals in every area there was a ref basketball that just did it right yeah oh yeah there's been college basketball in the 50s there was that huge scandal right point shaving way back when yeah it was and it almost killed college basketball yeah the uh What's weird is there's so much attention on it now.

It would be really hard to fix anything. Anytime something's out of whack, everybody, all the casinos, everybody kind of knows.
So they get caught like immediately. So, yeah, it's part of the dialogue.
I just think it's a generational thing. I think for like our kids' generation, they're just more used to hearing the announcers talk about it and the dialogue of these guys were favored by nine al michaels used to be on sunday night nbc great alman and he would always be he would always be discreetly kind of mentioning the line without mentioning it yeah yeah yeah he was like that was a big field goal for some people out there yeah exactly someone missed an extra point inside extra point inside the last two minutes.
They go, yeah. So now it's just kind of out in the open.
Yeah. Yeah, so I'm good with it.
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How are you as a sports gambler? Do you do it? Oh my God. Are you any, you must be good.
I go up and down. I know you're trying to jinx me right now but uh but yeah we we uh i have

a long history i started gambling in 1990 because the patriots went one in 15 and it were only two

games on and we were in college and you know the patriots were terrible and it was like this this

is the worst football season i've ever had you've made a million and we had a buddy on a yeah buddy

on my house like i have a book here like what and We're like, what? And we start betting on football. And all of a sudden, I had all these favorite teams.
It wasn't just the Patriots. Yeah.
So, yeah, it's been a long journey. I've written about it a lot.
And I've had a lot of fun with it. But now there's so much analytics and analysis that go with it.
Like Sal and I, Jimmy's cousin Sal, we do a Sunday night podcast on my pod and we did this over or under with win totals last year and we did great. I went on the win totals whether a team was going to go over or under.
I went 24-7-1. It was the best I've ever done.
And I was more excited about that than anything. Over or under a certain number of wins for the year? Yeah, so they'll say the Giants are 7-1 seven and a half.
You know, like, you're thinking to go over or under.

And we just, like,

and we were, like,

so proud of ourselves

that we did well.

But there's been other years

where we're like,

oh, my God,

we're getting annihilated.

Does God hate us?

Does that translate

to fantasy sports prowess?

Are you really good at that?

I was wanting to ask you

if you're into fantasy sports.

Oh, I was, like,

I was in the first wave. Sure.
I was in basketball leagues in the 80s, baseball leagues in 1982, football since 1990. What's the name of the, wasn't there a baseball group early on in ESPN? What was it called? Yeah, I wasn't in that, but yeah, it started in the early 80s.
There's a bunch of people that have tried to claim they started the first fantasy League. No, but these guys are like the best, supposedly.
I forget what it was called. Well, I'm in the Kimmel League where we vote everybody out.
And Sal has the hammer this year. And I think he's going to vote me out for comedy's sake.
What, because the trash talk's not good enough? Well, we show up and there's 11 owners and only 10 stay. And at the beginning of the draft, the guy who won the draft the year before votes out one of the 10, one of the other 10.
And you just have to get up and get the F out. We had, John Hamm was in it and he showed up late because he was filming Mad Men.
And we waited, waited, waited. He showed up like a half hour late, comes in.
Sorry, guys, sorry. Gets a beer, sits down down and then he got voted out and he just like drank the beer oh my god i i i'm the commissioner of my baseball league it's the worst league in the world because i don't think that there's not one trash talk at all through the entire season yeah the 90s were so much more fun yeah the 90s people mad.
The draft was like really vicious and everybody's nicer. I have a question about this stuff.
So what about... You want to focus on the fantasy part of it? Yeah, exactly.
No, why... And I think Jason and Will, I think I may have asked this on another episode of our podcast, so we can cut it if so.
But if all the... wherever you get podcasts yes that's smartless but you can get it early on wandry without asking if you realize that i read about all of these crazy unbelievably massive amounts of money thrown around all these players for all these teams right yeah contracts that these guys bring so if if if these teams and owners and all these people have literally billions of dollars, it seems like, why wouldn't they just go buy every single top player and create and have that one team if they have all this money? Bill, you'll be more concise.
No, I mean, but there's a national. The Dodgers kind of tried that.
It's working. Well, because there are rules.
There are rules as to how much you can actually spend. Well, there's rules.
Over a certain number, you'd have to start paying a punitive tax on that. But how would you explain what's going on with the Yankees and the Red Sox this year with all their payroll? Aren't they the last two in the American League East? The Yankees thing is great.
Aren's so much. Aren't the Red Sox cozied up next to them? The Red Sox aren't winning the title, but what's happened to the Yankees is kind of like my World Series this year.
Their fans are so upset. They have George Steinbrenner's loser, Sun Howell, runs the team, and it's like the classic, like the son who had the only reason he is in charge of anything is just because he was related to his dad, which is always the best and funniest scenario in sports.
By the way, it's the funniest thing in any arena. It's so good.
I love the idea. It's like Giuliani's son running his defense.
But think if Hollywood ran this where Bob Iger's retiring, his son is now the president of Disney. It would never happen.
But in sports, they just hand the teams off. I love kids who are born on third and score on a wild pitch.
I love that storyline. It's so great.
Like, they just have zero talent, and yet just because their dad had a ton of dough. Yeah, right.
Bill, you know, when we were talking about sport, I want to get back to Sean's question, Bill, and hear what you think about this, about why can't the owners just go, we were talking about the Red Sox and Yankees, and they do try to do that, and they've had, and you're jumping with glee at how much the Yankees have spent and to no success. Really what's happening, again, to bring, I don't want to bring everything back to soccer, but if you look what's happened in the last year in soccer, the Saudis, in fact, the Saudi Sovereign Wealth Fund, which took control of the top four or five clubs, has now provided enough funds for them to go and poach from all the major European leagues all these top stars and pay them these salaries, Sean.
Neymar just signed a $300 million deal for two years. I know, I read about all of that.
Plus they paid a release clause of 80 million euros to psg um they apparently offered uh mbappe 750 million euros to play for one year yeah ronaldo's getting 400 a year i mean this is they're doing that exact thing that that you're talking about and bill what do you think that something like that does to the balance of world sport well soccer it's just basically a free market and they're all maniacs i think the nba had a little bit of this issue where they had they had this luxury tax and it was punitive but then you had a team like the warriors that were saying well screw it you know we're we're in San Francisco. We make a shitload of money.

We want to win the title every year.

And they had like a three.

With the tax, they paid like $350 million for last year's team.

So in the new collective bargaining agreement,

they changed it so that, all right, if you go over this number,

not only is there a tax,

but now you're going to have issues with your draft picks,

issues with how you fill out your roster.

You're not going to be able to do trades as easily oh really and they really made it harder and now

but what's funny is there's always some new owner it's always a rich guy they come in like obviously

rich guy they own the team but like some newer wave rich guy so the guy about phoenix this guy

matt ishby who i actually kind of like he's a fun character yeah i kind of like him too but he came

in and he's just like they they all want to zag, right?

They're like, everybody's going this way.

I'm going to zag.

And he's like, we don't care about draft picks.

We're going to pay for Kevin Durant.

They traded for Bradley Beal.

We're going to have this crazy payroll.

And everybody else is afraid of the luxury tax.

I'm not afraid.

And those are always my favorite owners.

Like Brooklyn got bought by this Russian guy, Prokhorov, in the early 2010s. And he's like, I'm going to spend and just made all these crazy moves.
And then two years later, he's like, eh, I don't want to do this anymore. And then just stopped spending money.
And the Celtics had all their draft picks. So the whims of these guys that they, you know, they see these teams as like these toys and these things to play with.
But meanwhile, all these, you know, hundreds of thousands of fans are attached to the team. And these guys can just run roughshod, which is what's happened with the Yankees now.
It's owned by the owner, the dead owner's son, and he just won't fire anybody. And they're in chaos.
Well, it occurs to me that there's, you can almost a parallel between that and maybe any business, but certainly our business, that you have these big sort of rich guys who either rich themselves or control these big corporations. They're driven by, you know, whatever, stock price, et cetera.
And there's no actual reverence for the thing itself, right? So culturally, they don't really care about what impacts. So they come and they go, I'm going to buy this team.
Well, hey, look, it's really bad for basketball or it's really bad for soccer. And they're like, I don't give a shit.
I'm going to be dead in 15 years. I just want to win a couple of championships.
I don't give a shit. And that's happening in entertainment.
These guys came in, these people came in, they run it. And they're like potentially destroying it.
And they're like, I don't give a shit. I just want to strip it down and sell the pieces off.
And I don't give a fuck if it, you know, fucks culturally with this, you know, this thing. Is this why Dr.
Pimple Popper is on the lead cover of Max right now instead of Succession or Curb Enthusiasm? That's exactly why. Hey, Bill, do you think that the fan base, to your point about how all these hundreds of thousands of people are associated and attached to each team in the fan base, does the fan base really have any leverage? Like if an owner is just in a tailspin, can they strike effectively and say, well, we're not going to.
We just saw it with the Washington football fans. They had this owner who was Daniel Snyder, who was like the worst owner.
He was like the championship belt holder every year. and he sucked the life out of the franchise and the city to the point that, you know, they would have a home game and they'd have more fans of the other team.
And everybody was like, I'm out until this guy's gone. And it really had no impact on him.
It's the TV rights that really have the leverage. And financially, they still sold for how many billion? Right.
Well, what happened was the sponsors started fleeing and it became, and then he had a couple other things.

But that's because of his behavior personally as opposed to team performance.

But that's the thing.

These guys like the Phoenix Suns owner had this whole toxic environment

and they made him sell.

And then he sells and he sells for like a record price, you know.

Or Sterling made a bunch of money at the Clippers, right?

Right.

Sterling's the worst guy probably who's ever owned a team. And, you know, he cashed out and made more money than anybody ever made.
By the way, my feeling on that, I've thought about it since that sale and everything that went down, and then his family was trying to block him from selling it to Steve Ballmer back in the day, blah, blah, blah. And then they were claiming that he was sort of unfit to make the deal, Sterling himself, and all this stuff.
And I think it was all by design to drive the price up. Now, I'm a cynic, but I do think that that was all by design because the more that the family was fighting, they were saying the price just kept going up just to grab it.
Oh, no question. I've had Clippers season tickets for 20 years because I got them to go see the other teams.
But I got to know a lot of the people in my section. And Sterling would show up and he'd be dressed in all black and he'd sit courtside.
And he was like the fucking Grim Reaper. And he would go and this team had such a malaise and then you have the Lakers on the other side that are like one of the jewels of the league.
It was like a fascinating sociology experiment to watch this fan base. Basically, their hope was either he's going to sell or they're going to stumble into some draft pick that will get them LeBron.
But if neither of those things happen, I'm here to see the other teams. And that was kind of the vibe.
So, Bill, not to embarrass you, but you've done very, very well financially with all of your efforts.

Some of you guys.

Well, not like you.

Junior.

Junior.

And we're trying.

But you're crushing it.

My question is, because you mentioned courtside seats.

Yeah.

What's the thing that you could never afford that once you started really doing well, you treated yourself to?

It doesn't have to be sports-based.

I can guess one thing because you're living in Wayne Manor, it looks like.

Thank you. that once you started really doing well, you treated yourself too.
It doesn't have to be sports-based. I can guess one thing because you're living in Wayne Manor, it looks like.
Yeah, it looks like I'm in Wayne Manor. But because you seem like you've really kept very close contact with your sort of simpler self, you know, and I don't mean that as a pejorative, but you're a very normal guy, which is great.
Oh, thanks, Jason. How are you? Is it comfortable? to say, well, you know and i i don't mean that as a pejorative but you're a very normal guy which is great oh thanks jason is it how are you does it is it comfortable well you know you're not you're a very you're you're a mogul but you don't seem like one you're wearing a t-shirt and you're just talking with the us idiots and so uh how are you able to match uh all of your um uh dreams all of the yeah all your dreams with trying to stay grounded.
I've never, well, just on the courtside seats thing, it's like a pretty bad seat. But they're expensive.
If you're in a basketball game, I'm always amazed people spend that amount of money. I think it's really just to be kind of seen on the court.
Right. But you're too close.

Like, the seats I have for the Clipper games were like four or five rows up.

Same for my dad's Celtic tickets

that he's had for like 52 years.

And there's perspective,

and you can actually watch it.

The courtside thing...

Like sit in front row in a movie theater.

I always say that about hockey games.

People who are like,

I'm right down on the glass.

I'm like, great,

you got the worst seats in the house.

You can't see shit.

You want to be... Hockey, you want to be 10, 15 rows up.
See the space. Between the red lines.
Or right behind the goalie is cool because we had those king seats for a couple years. Oh, that's cool too.
That's where you're like, how is every goalie not just completely traumatized and in a mental hospital? When you see like what happens to them, their whole lives, it's just like, they're getting just things fired at them. There's all this commotion in front of them.
They're falling, they're jumping up, they're falling. And you're like, how is any of these guys? They are.
Not in a straitjacket. Bill, what do you do when you're not watching sports? What's your thing? This is sort of a Jason Bateman question.
What's the thing? What's your guilty pleasure that you watch or you do or you read or something that's outside of the realm of what you do professionally? Well, oh, outside? Because it's a lot of sports movies and TV. And I host this Rewatchables podcast where we do a podcast about a movie every week that people really like.
And it's fun to try to figure out, is that Rewatchables worthy or not? And then if it is, I'll watch it twice. But is there something else that you do that's outside of that or no? You mean just like my personal stuff? Yeah, your personal stuff.
Yeah, I have two kids. A lot of kids sports.
Both of my kids are athletes. What do they play? My son is football and lacrosse.
My daughter is playing soccer actually in college right now. Wow.

So I had a lot of,

there's a lot of sports parent stuff that kind of took over.

And then, you know,

still playing tennis

and still a lot of like stuff

with the friends.

You know, you find your little friend group

as you get older

and you do the dinners

and then somebody gets mad at somebody

and you talk about it the next day.

It's great.

Yeah.

Well, we can't believe we had you

longer than an hour.

We could talk to you forever. It's ridiculous.
You're the man. Yeah, you really are.
Thank you for doing this again. Thanks, guys.
I can't wait for you guys not to run this. Yeah, we promise to air this one.
Promise. And go Sox until the World Series.
And then we'll let the Dodgers go by. I agree.
Go Sox. We won't be in the World Series.
Don't worry. I'll give you the Red Sox.
Celtics you can have. Yeah.
And by the way, guys, it was cool to be on the test show and then watch how the podcast blossomed. I remember telling Bateman, I was like, do you guys want to do this at Spotify? I was like, no, I think we're going to hold on to this.
We kind of like just kind of being in control of it. And it turned out to be very smart.
Well, we'll see. But we're certainly having a lot of fun.
We're in the bed on ourselves club. I know, it's true.
Thank you for making the bed that we're enjoying resting in. Yeah.
All right, good to see everybody. Thank you.
You too. You too, pal.
Thanks, Bill. See you, man.
Bye, buddy. Well, that is a good man for coming back.
Yeah. It was so long ago, I didn't remember anything we talked about.
So I'm glad. It was well over three years ago that we first had him on.
It was one of our first shows. And we asked him about the podcast business because we now, if you can imagine, knew even less.
Dax was the first, though, right? Yes, Dax was the first. Dax was the first episode.

Dax was the first.

But,

and then we got very topical

at the time

and so, yeah,

it just didn't work

and Jason's,

kudos to you

for bringing him back

because he's such an

infinitely interesting guy.

I could talk to him forever

about everything.

I really admire

that he's been able

to just crush it

in multiple areas

and stay so grounded.

And how about you just bring

a topic up and he fucking knows about it. It's crazy.
Yeah, you don't want to get into an argument with him. He'll kill you with facts.
So who's thinking? How's the biwork coming, Sean? Yeah, Sean, how is the biwork coming? Well, I can't really do it because I've been working on it for probably 40 minutes. Oh, you're not wearing your regular glasses.
You're wearing your... Bye.
Bye. Oh, cool.
With the assist from our net. Bye.
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