Hour 1: Blowed Out (feat. Jeff Pearlman and Leon Cote)

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This is the Dan Labatar Show with the Stu Gats Podcast.

Jeff Perlman is always exhaustive when he does his book writing.

He talks to tons and tons of people, and I don't know if he's ever talked to more than you will find in his new book,

Only God Can Judge Me, The Many Lives of Tupac Shakur.

I also enjoy his work in and around all things sports.

Check out his YouTube offerings.

He's a great storyteller.

And I want to talk to him a little bit about sports before we get into his book.

So, how nostalgic were you last night on the basketball NBA on NBC?

And more specifically, were you expecting anything from Michael Jordan other than a stiff one-hour interview that they will cut up all season?

Because an hour of the goat's time is something that you will just sprinkle over this and many other seasons, I suppose.

How dare you?

How dare you speak of him that way?

Don't you?

Wait, Dan, don't you think we've learned through years and years and decades and decades that legends, it just doesn't work when they they sit before Mike?

Like, it just doesn't work.

Never, ever, ever, with almost with rare exception, works.

Wait, do you disagree?

Like, I actually thought from the beginning, Michael Jordan, this can't possibly work.

No, let me think for a second.

Who has been the greatest of the athletes that has actually transitioned into broadcasting who was excellent?

Athletes or coaches.

Nick Saban's doing a bang-up job without the gift of charisma.

Gretzky's fine with hot.

No, he's not.

He was bad at first.

He started a lot better.

Michael Jordan has been awesome so far.

This Jordan thing has been cool.

Insights into into excellence.

There were very few of them.

There was just a story about making a free throw.

And Bill Simmons was like, I don't care what you call it.

I don't care that he's not talking about the game.

This was clearly taped like months ago.

I'm good.

Just keep talking.

Okay, so he can be loving him that way, and I could love it slightly less as somebody who wants broadcasters to be good at broadcasting.

He is.

Excellent broadcasting.

What are the things I've talked about?

What are you doing there?

Like Toriki goes a broadcaster.

Talk to the ghosts.

He's there to be the ghost.

They live up to this image.

The ghosts.

People have built up the Bill Ryder and his whole family.

Exactly.

Such a dumb shit.

Damn.

I remember when I was a kid and they used to have Monday Night Football.

I used to always cycle in former athletes to be the people on Monday Night Football.

And do you guys remember when Emmett Smith had a season on Monday Night Football?

The rice of passage.

Who can forget?

Blowed out.

That blowed out.

That was not good.

Yeah.

What can you do?

It's just not meant to be.

Great athletes are so great they can't talk about what they're great about at.

It's almost like the disease of it all.

Did you get nostalgic last night at all?

No.

Honest to God, just being totally totally honest, I've mainly been focused on promoting this book as it came out yesterday.

So I wasn't as tuned in as I wanted to be.

I was just checking on my phone.

Jeff, you're a great writer.

I've read many of your sports books.

What led you to want to do a book about Tupac as far away from sports as possible?

You know,

it's going to sound weird.

When I was a kid, Garth Brooks wrote a, had a, had a rock album.

I'm not even a Garth Brooks fan, but he did a rock album called The Greatest Hits of Christopher Gaines.

And it was terrible and everyone killed it.

Or it wasn't terrible, but everyone killed him for it.

And I always admired the fact that he tried something way outside the box.

And I've always thought about that, just trying things.

I love Tupac.

I've always been fascinated by Tupac.

I feel like there hasn't been a great, great Tupac book.

And I just decided if no one else is going to write it, why not a sports writer?

So I just kind of gave it a shot.

The name of the book is only God Can Judge Me, the many lives of Tupac Shakur.

Before we get to that, let's just play the montage that Jeff Perlman is talking about when he remembers that Emmett Smith said that someone got blowed out.

Blown out.

Well, boom, when you talk about humble pie and you hear the Patriots promote humble pie, and they have promoted humble pie all year long, a slice of that humble pie is having the ability to have a short-term memory, which means don't worry about the game we just won or the team that we just blew out.

A blown, blown out.

Let's think about what we need to do going forward.

And they had blown out.

All he has done is led his team to nine road wins.

He has his team in a position right now.

If they win today, they can possibly go into the Super Bowl and make an appearance there.

Frank Gore had 13 carries, man.

13 carries for 72 yards.

Now, the reason why he didn't get any more is because you didn't get enough first down.

It is an L Cool JJ shot.

That's what you were saying about belt back.

That's a safety.

I tell you what,

they better get their minds right because they will be on the cover of Insane magazine.

That's kind of inconsistency playing going up against a team like New England will get you completely blown out.

The Rams are not very good.

Elon Manning has been given the rights of passage.

The Patriots defense was one of the weakest links of the team.

But what happened tonight, the strength of the Patriots team got debacled.

Blown out.

You never want to be on the cover of Insane Magazine.

You got debacled.

I love Insane Magazine.

Long time subscriber.

Jeff should write a book about El Cool JJ.

What do you, when you go into Tupac's life, what are you expecting, Jeff?

And how were you surprised in ways that, you know, the reader might be surprised by?

Wait, Dan, I just have to say, because you played that clip, around the time Emmett Smith was on Monday Night Football, I appeared with him on an ESPN segment because I had a book come out about the 90s Cowboys.

And he actually kind of lit into me about the book.

And this was in the middle of him doing Monday Night Football.

And I had so much ammunition that I could have pulled out that I actually was running through my head.

And I just said, okay, like I held back.

And I want to thank you guys, all of you, one and all, all for playing that i know you didn't do it on my behalf but that was a beautiful moment for me and my family so you walked away from the exchange from an angry emmett smith and you've been haunted all these years later that you weren't able to say the things you meant to as comebacks i'm just going to tell you that promoting a book is very stressful and that may have been the the salt bath that i needed right there so thank you for taking me to the spa and giving me why why is it stressful if you're you're you've poured so much work into this you're getting all the applause you're getting to talk with great facility about subject matter that you know better than just about anybody.

Why is it stressful?

Number one, you don't know if the book is going to sell.

Number two, to be honest with you, it is way outside my comfort zone as far as I know how to promote a sports book.

I know how to come on the different sports shows, but I don't have inroads in hip-hop.

I don't have inroads in rap.

There are a lot of hip-hop outlets, podcasts, et cetera, that you need to promote a book on.

And

it's just, it's a lot harder.

than promoting a sports book for me.

I'm just being honest.

It is a lot harder than promoting a book.

Well, I heard you the other day on a hip-hop station, and I don't know how much resistance you're being met with when you write a warts and all Tupac book and you're walking into a lot of black environments as somebody who's the white guy.

There's a lot of the term is a culture vulture.

That's what you get a lot of, oh, here comes a culture, a lot.

And then you just have to show your knowledge on the subject, which I've really been trying to do and show how much work you put in.

You know, why is a white guy writing this book?

I understand actually that question.

I think it's a fair question.

But I think you have to show your research and show, look, I wrote this book because I wanted someone to write a great, great, great deep dive, look into his life, go to Marin City, knock on his apartment door, go to Baltimore, knock on the door of his row house, meet all his neighbors, interview all his old classmates, that kind of book.

So I've been fighting and I think it's, I think it's been going okay.

I don't know.

Jeff, on that note, I saw a video you posted.

I don't know when you posted, I saw it last night, though, where you talked about getting death threats about this.

And, you know, Beyond kind of just talking about that side of it, you also talked about the role of journalism, actual journalism doing what you just described going to his childhood home in baltimore going to his childhood home in marin city and

i right now i've been working with pablo tour on this whole kwai leonard aspiration story and even my friends don't understand there's a difference between hey this is happening now we're all opining which is what sports journalism is now today for the most part for the consumer versus what you're doing, what Pablo is doing, which is, no, I'm finding out stuff that nobody would have found out for, if not for my work.

How do you get that message across to people without sounding egotistical, I guess?

It's not even a matter of, it's a great question.

It's not even a matter of ego.

I swear to God, it's a matter of everyone digests things now in 20 second clips.

So everything you say is cut down to 20 second clips, thrown on Instagram, TikTok, whatever your choice.

And there's no elaboration and nobody wants elaboration.

So they may see some little tiny clip of me saying something about Tupac.

Tupac wasn't very good at fighting.

Let's say that's a clip, right?

And whoa, how could you possibly say that about Tupac?

How can you say that about Pac?

But you don't hear the lead up who I talk to or the lead down who I know.

And that stuff is like, I've never promoted a book in this world, actually, where everything is digested in small quantities.

I think Pablo's going, oh, you guys are going through that too.

Who is this guy?

How could he be saying this?

Blah, blah, blah.

All you got is the 20 seconds.

You don't have the elaboration.

It makes it, it's incredibly frustrating.

Oh, but you say it's frustrating, but you're great at journalistic TikToks.

You have a huge following because on the news of the day, you are very good speaking in these sound bites.

True, but my videos are actually three, four, five minutes, a lot of them, six minutes, which sounds short, but today is an eternity.

So the thing I found on TikTok is actually telling stories kind of resonates the same way you tell stories.

But a lot of people, I'm just saying, we live in a culture where the attention span is eight seconds.

and they're on.

I know you guys see this.

It just can be very frustrating.

Jeff, for huge Tupac fans,

what will they be surprised, let's say, to learn from your book?

And what were you surprised by to get back to the original question that made you think of Emmett Smith and all the things you could have said to him back when he was on Monday Night Football?

You know, I sat down with his sister, Setua, in New Orleans, and she doesn't do many, almost any interviews.

And she told me something early on.

She's like, she said, I went to therapy years ago.

And the first thing I told my therapist, the first thing I told my therapist is we had rats running along our floorboards.

And she was talking about when they grew up in Baltimore and the poverty of Baltimore.

And And they had the poverty and the pain that Tupac went through.

I always knew thug life, Tupac.

I get around Tupac.

Growing up without a father, growing up in deep, deep, deep poverty, growing up with a mother who was a crack addict.

The pain that informed his music explains everything about him as

an artist is the pain.

And I just think people don't understand the trauma that he went through.

And I just dove deep into this trauma.

I hung out with the crack dealers in Marin City who taught him sort of about life, you know, beyond life.

It was just a real eye-opening experience for me.

I think you told us last time, but you can tell us again.

How many people did you talk to for this book?

A official total of 652.

Whoa.

So it's more than you've ever done for a book, even though all of your books are exhaustive in this regard, are they not?

I mean, I try.

I think one book I did talk to like 704 people.

So

it wasn't the personal record, but it's number two.

Was there anyone that you tried to get a hold of that you couldn't?

Yeah.

Well, one interesting was I was in um jada pinkett went to high school at tupac and he loved her right or she claims that he loved her i think she exaggerates that point a little bit but he definitely was he liked her and um i went to she was doing a book event at the miami book festival this is a true weird story and i thought all right i'm gonna go to this event and maybe i'll get her and i go to the event and this is after the will smith whole thing with the slap and it's me and about 500 women and jada pinkett on the stage speaking loud uh largely about how to have a good marriage.

And she literally has gone through all this stuff.

And all the women there are like, like you preach sister you say yeah yeah standing ovations and i'm looking around like what alternative reality have i entered where jada pinkett is telling everyone about how to have this great marriage and they're all eating it up it was a very weird sort of commentary on celebrity in america it was strange but you didn't get her I did not get her.

I mean, I read her book.

I talked to friends.

I read past interviews.

You do.

They went to Baltimore School of the Arts together.

She was not well liked at Baltimore School for the Arts actually.

I interviewed about 50, 60 students who went there with both of them.

It's called Preaching to the Choir, by the way, with that experience that you envisioned there.

Jeff, question for you about an urban legend that I've heard for years, but I hope you can confirm for us.

He did not get in a fight with Michael Jackson.

No,

I wanted it to be real.

Not true.

Did not get in a fight with Michael Jackson.

I am sorry.

He did.

I mean, he did.

I will say this, among other things.

He dated, okay.

He dated Madonna, wrote her kind of a breakup letter from prison, and she was basically like, he dated Lisa Lisa from Lisa Lisa and Colt Jam.

Madonna did in fact i mean not madonna janet jackson did in fact demand that she wouldn't do a kissing scene with him unless he got an hiv test in poetic justice they i talked to the production assistant who went in and had to tell him that jana insists you get a aids test and his response was f her f you and they wound up doing the scene anyway but he never got the aids test so um there's some other ones for you all right well let's do this uh off the cuff here only god can judge me the many lives of tupac shakur let's have you sell the book by giving us us what you believe to be, in order, the top five best facts you have in the book, because you just told a couple of very good stories there.

So let's go 5-4-3-2-1, and I'm putting you on the spot.

I know this is impossible.

You're a quick thinker, and you've got a ton to choose from.

So choose your five, and I am done filibustering now.

Number five, Jeff Perlman.

This is no order, though.

Okay, I found the...

That's not what Dan wanted.

I know.

He's going to have to adjust.

Number five.

He's telling him to give away the most important parts of the book.

And now he wants him to rank them two on the fly.

After doing that to Zaz,

I know the audience heard it.

I heard it.

Zaz asked a question, and he's like, f that question.

My question now.

That's right.

I may as well go f myself.

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Don Lebatard.

John, can you rate my Al Pacino from that billiard scene in Carlito's Way if I do it for you?

I think it's pretty good.

Yeah, okay.

Stugats.

You think you're big time?

But you're gonna die.

Big time.

That is

on my infamous scale of one to ten.

That's a 7.6.

Solid.

Good Top down.

Good job, Dad.

That's a Sue nominee right there.

Good.

This is the Don Lebatar show with his two guys.

All right, I'm going.

I'm going to do five.

I'm going to do it in order.

Damn it.

There you go.

Okay.

Number five, I found the EMT.

He'd never been interviewed before who got to Tupac when he was shot at Quad Studios.

There'd always been rumors that Tupac shot himself in the ball because one of his shots, he got, when he got three shots, one in the head, one in the hand, one in the testicles.

There are always rumors he shot shot himself in the testicles I found the EMT he lives in Maine he'd never been interviewed before he's was surprised no one had ever interviewed him before he confirmed to me there was no entrance wound through his pants or underwear when he shot himself meaning he had to have had the gun in his waistband and shot his own testicle

is number five faith had twins he'd i'd probably have two pucks holy

shit number four all right um number four is i found this isn't a fact this is a good reporting find i hope that counts.

Everyone told me he had a girlfriend in high school.

You need to talk to, Mary, but Mary doesn't talk to anyone, but you need to talk to Mary.

I tracked down Mary.

Mary was his high school girlfriend.

She was a ballerina.

She now lives in the middle of nowhere, Nebraska.

First, she's like, I don't really want to talk.

Then she said, you know what?

I'll talk to you.

I like what you're doing.

She said, if you come out to Nebraska, you might want to see this.

I don't know if this interests you, but my mom found about 150 love letters that Tupac wrote me under the bed in like a folder that I hadn't seen in 30 years.

If you come out to Nebraska, I would let you read all the letters.

Wow.

So I flew out to Center City, Nebraska the next year, next day, met her at a deli and read through 150 like love letters, breakup letters, pain letters, joy letters that she had, this woman had written Tupac when she was a 15-year-old in love with him.

And the letters were amazing, beautiful, heartbroken.

I hate my mom.

I love my mom.

Mary, I want to marry you.

Let's get married.

Let's have kids.

Let's have sex.

It was absolutely insane.

Is any part of you like, this is Nebraska though?

Can you just send me a PDF?

Just take me a photo.

I had a, I went to a deli in Nebraska.

I met her there.

They microwaved the bagels oh no.

Number three.

I thought number three could be they microwaved the bagels.

That was number three.

Number two.

No, I got one, I swear.

All right.

Tubac dies in Las Vegas.

The family is, Suge Knight is there at the hospital.

And they give Suge Knight one responsibility.

It is to get the ashes from Vegas to the family home in Las Vegas, in Los Angeles.

Two days later, a two-day FedEx man shows up, packet, shows up at the door in a cardboard box, like a FedEx cardboard box.

And inside the cardboard box are Tupac's ashes.

So

that was his big way, like classy way.

Oh, no.

Two-day FedEx opens the box.

The ashes are in the box.

To be fair to Sukkonite, have you guys seen what FedEx first overnight costs?

It's a lot of money.

It's a lot of money.

Is it a lot of money?

These guys are

especially in the 90s strong cardboard too number two all right number two i was in lumberton north carolina everyone knows that tupac's ashes are spread off at sea in uh malibu or most people do um i'm in lumberton north carolina tupac's mother fenny shakur had a home in lumberton north carolina um that she built years later after tupac died no one's there anymore it's been an abandoned lot for nine years i got a tour of the lot by the caretaker And he said to me, do you want to see where Tupac is buried?

And I said, what do you mean?

And he goes, do you want to see Tupac's grave?

And I'm like, what do you mean?

He's like, just come with me.

Before she died, Ephenny Shakur took her, the remaining Tupac ashes, buried them, has a tombstone up.

So if you go to an abandoned lot in Lumberton, North Carolina, you can see the grave of Tupac Shakur.

And I don't think anyone knows it's there.

There's one better than that.

So this is a good list he's put together.

Journalism.

Everything this guy does is good.

I tell you that Jeff Perlman, the book is Only God Can Judge Me, the Many Lives of Tupac Shakur.

Number one, the number one best fact that Pearlman unearthed in talking to more than 600 people.

All right.

I'm going to have to tell the very abridged version of this, but there's a song.

Do you guys know the song?

Some of you, Brenda's Got a Baby, but you're a bad boy.

Okay.

So Brenda's Got a Baby.

Tupac was filming the movie Juice, and he's reading the New York Daily News outside his trailer in New York City.

And there's an article called Cries in the Night about a 12-year-old girl who was raped by a cousin, delivered the baby on the bathroom floor, threw her baby down in a trash heap.

Tupac reads that article, goes into his trailer, writes the song, Brenda's Got a Baby that becomes Tupac's first really well-known song.

I thought it would be amazing to try and find the baby who was thrown down the trash heap.

I work with a genealogist who called me one day and said, I think I have a number.

I reach out to this guy crudely via text.

His name is Davon Hodge.

I go to Las Vegas, we sit down.

He, in fact, was the baby who was thrown down the trash heap and Brenda's Got a Baby.

After he was thrown down, he was adopted by a family in Las Vegas.

So I saw him in Vegas.

His parents had died recently.

So he did an ancestry.com search and they all came back to this housing, public housing unit in Brooklyn, New York.

He has this grand reunion with his family.

They show him the place where he was thrown down the trash heap.

They're like, oh, they say, do you know Tupac?

He's like, of course.

They're like, do you like Tupac?

I love Tupac.

We think you're the baby from Brenda's Got a Baby.

His family tells him this.

It's this amazing moment.

Wait, it gets crazier.

I say to my genealogist, it would be amazing.

My genealogist is named Michelle Sully.

She's amazing.

It'd be awesome if we could find the mother.

She's like, well, that might be hard, but blah, blah, blah.

She gets a number one day.

She calls this woman.

She says, by any chance, is is this Jeanette?

Who's this?

My name is Michelle.

I'm working with the writer Jeff Perlman about a book on Tupac Shakor.

By any chance, did you have a baby when you were 12 years old?

She starts screaming.

Oh my God, oh my God, do you know where my baby is?

Do you know where my baby is?

She's screaming and crying.

Michelle says, yeah, we do.

We found him.

She goes, oh, my God.

Oh, my God.

I need to get home.

I need to get home to Newark.

I live in Newark.

Well, where are you now?

I'm at a concert.

What concert?

I'm going to see the Red Hot Chili Peppers tonight.

Where are they playing?

They're playing in Las Vegas.

No.

she met her son that night

no way

oh holy

that is a holy look at him and then he drinks from the mug like kermit look at him because he knows he nailed that story he knows he nailed that one it is a good story uh do you have a best theory on uh how tupac died yeah but it's not it's not sexy um

you guys saw it it was a it was the mike tyson bruce seldom fight after fight after the fight tupac is in the mgm grand he's with a guy named trayvon lane a death row guy a mob Pyru guy.

They see Orlando Anderson there.

Orlando Anderson was a Compton Crip who had recently gotten in a fight with this guy, Trayvon Lane.

Trayvon Lane points it out and says, that's Orlando Anderson.

That's a guy who stole my chain.

Tupac says, which guy?

That guy right there.

Tupac walks up to him, punches him in the face.

All the death row guys pounce.

I interviewed Orlando Anderson's closest friend, the guy who was punched, and he said, there's no way Orlando Anderson could come back to Compton having gotten beat up publicly by a rapper, like by a rapper.

He just couldn't.

Later that night, Orlando Anderson is driving around looking, looking, looking for Tupac.

Tupac just randomly is driving down the street with Sugar Knight, hollering out at women along the strip in Vegas.

Orlando Anderson is like, that's him, that's him right there.

And they pull up on him and they shoot him.

And it's not even a sexy story because everyone wants a grand puffy or biggie conspiracy.

The truth of the matter is he punched the wrong person at the wrong time.

And that guy happened to be a member of the Compton Crips and got a revenge killing and killed him.

You're reporting that as fact, it feels like.

And I don't think that I don't, but that's not, that is not fact.

I've not heard that reported as fact anyway.

No, it's been reported a lot of places as fact.

And then it's surrounded by myth.

I've talked to investigators.

I've talked to people from death row.

I've talked to people from the Compton Crips.

I talked to Orlando Anderson's best friend.

I personally, obviously, when you have a young death and a lot of conspiracy and Vegas and everything, you have a lot of rumors.

But if it were not Tupac, you've heard a guy named John Smith.

and another guy named Bob Jones, this would have been reported as fact long ago.

Jeff, thank you for the work.

It's always excellent.

Only God can judge me now, the many lives of Tupac Shakur.

Thank you, sir.

Yeah, thanks for having me on.

I appreciate you guys.

Writing a book sounds like a lot of work.

Microwave bagels?

He said it is right before he hung up.

I mean, the way that Stugatz wrote a book is the way to write a book.

Get everyone else to do the work for you.

That's the way to do it.

Well, when I wrote The Pride of a Lion, I interviewed three people so that, you know, I can relate to what Perlman went through.

One of them was a lion.

That's correct.

Well, he said no comment, the lion.

So three people in the lion, in addition to the lion.

That's right.

Thank you, Billy.

Wait a second.

I should hit both of you with loser game show sounds.

It's okay.

I'm retiring.

Thank you, Billy, after today.

This is the

worldwide farewell.

I've got the Boost mobile hotline to get to, but before I do that, I thought, and it'll remain, I suppose, that Liam Cohen's most famous moment as a Jacksonville Jags coach was the following.

Dew ball.

But after losing 35-7 to the Rams, this is a close second.

Everything we said we didn't want to do did occur.

Well put.

Man,

a lot of those games.

Everything we said we didn't want to do did occur.

It did.

It really did.

I mean, he didn't account for the Rams getting that good sleep.

Yeah, that's it.

I love the pause.

Everything we we said we didn't want to do did occur.

I like this guy.

Almost like he considered it for a second.

Wait a second.

Was it everything?

Like, yeah, everything we said we didn't want to do did occur.

We wanted the Rams to get bad sleep on their flight over.

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Every who down in Who Newville liked their holidays a ton.

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Don Lebatard.

You are a fool.

You're nobody.

You are an infant.

You have nobody skinny.

I literally put together

a freaking stage for your toenail.

Nobody.

I am your career right now, pal.

Look at me.

I am your career.

No.

Stugats.

You have messed with me, David, and now you're messing with me.

And I'm more dangerous, pal.

This is the Don Lebatar Show with the Stugats.

The Boost Mobile hotline numbers 305-486 GOTS 305-486-4689.

That's right, Dan.

The Boost Mobile boldest take is presented by Boost Mobile, the newest 5G network in the country.

Three-pointers should not be described as from downtown.

Three-pointers should be described as from the suburbs.

When I was a kid, I thought that all dogs were boys and all cats were girls.

There is way too much time between the end of the late afternoon game and the beginning of Sunday night football.

The fan getting upset about the Panthers being shit on is one of the funniest things ever.

It's the Carolina Panthers.

Jeremy Tashay is the Chris Whittingham of Poblator's.

Last week, Dan said he had two outstanding bets from across the decades.

And I just want to remind Dan that he has a third outstanding bet that has never been paid.

Dan guaranteed that a certain team would not lose or he would eat poop.

That team lost and he never ate poop.

So Dan, eat poop.

I have a scorching Trevor Lawrence take.

Oh my God, he blows.

He happens to blow.

Trevor Lawrence, he happens to blow.

Put it on the poll, please, at Levitouch Show.

Is there way too much time between the 4 p.m., the end of the 4 p.m.

game and Sunday night football?

Because you're too addicted.

Also put on the poll, is Jeremy Tashay the Chris Whittingham of Pablo Torres?

It's a compliment to Jeremy, honestly.

Is it?

How can there be too much time between you need to, you need to shower, you need to get your life in order.

You shower then?

You talk to your wife.

You've spent six hours, seven hours in front of the television.

You need that time to regroup before the single game that is Sunday night.

Those 45 minutes are literally the get-my shit together time.

Or have a quick dinner.

Yeah, quick dinner.

Yep.

Guys, your ignorance is showing here.

That little window right there is what we call the NASCAR window.

That's right.

You can watch the end of many NASCAR races during that window and races like Talladega delivered.

Guys, we're on the precipice of an amazing championship four.

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It's the final chance for two drivers to punch their ticket.

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The punch their ticket reference is a train reference, correct?

When you say someone punches their tickets on a destination, so it is a largely 100-year-old saying when people were most traveling by train, right?

I'm just,

there are no other punch tickets.

You punch a clock when you're punching in for work, but that's not a ticket.

The only time a ticket is punched is when you're taking a train somewhere, correct?

It's not even a bus.

Jessica's got some disputes, Aslo, with your bus story.

Evidently, she doesn't believe some parts of your first-class bus story.

Oh.

When Anthony Peeler fought Kevin Garnett, he also punched a ticket.

A big ticket.

I I would love to hear where this doubt is coming in play.

Wow.

You're going to

in the next hour.

We will find out a little more about this accusation.

I've heard it whispered around the office.

Whenever a lie is told around here, it spreads quickly in terms of accusatory

people.

And you're not a known liar yet.

Really?

I always tell the truth, even when I lie.

That seat, though, it kind of comes with it.

You're not a known liar, huh?

Greg.

Greg.

You're not talking to me.

Greg.

We're just two weeks away from Denny Hamlin racing for his championship life while he is actively suing NASCAR as a team owner for Michael Jordan's game.

This is great.

I can't wait for the NASCAR commissioner if there is such a person.

Is it Silva Francis?

Francis, yeah, they're super powerful.

Yeah, and handing the trophy to the guy suing them.

That's going to be lovely.

How many of you had any criticisms of last night's debut of NBC basketball brought back to life?

This is really reaching across generations because the young players who were interviewed have no recollection whatsoever about the nostalgia being triggered for the over 40-year-olds.

Chris Cody mentioned that

the technical difficulties at the beginning gave him, felt like balm.

I am honestly surprised that more of these giant endeavors don't have more wrong in them.

Like I already saw that NBC last night was a little bit physically closer to the players, like like right on them than I'm used to seeing, even though plenty of people are trying to push the boundaries.

I assume that this is all, the streaming services are going to all push the boundaries on more access.

How do we make the game more futuristic?

What do we do in order to give you more inside the huddle?

Dan, I'm going to seize upon something you just said there about streaming networks because a lot of

been made about, oh, it costs $650 to watch every single NBA game.

This is ridiculous.

We had opening night on broadcast television.

We haven't had that in a gajillion years.

You are getting more NBA basketball if you are a basic cable subscriber and that's it.

You're getting more NBA basketball for free than ever before.

That $650 number, that's if you're getting league pass.

That's if you're getting Amazon Prime.

That's if you're getting PCOP.

That's if you want NBA every single night.

Every single night.

But if you're saying, hey, I can't afford it.

All I have is basic cable.

You're getting NBC, you're getting ESPN, and you're getting more than enough, and ABC games.

You're getting way more than enough.

The word streaming should not be in anyone's lexicon.

Right now, the NBA is back, and it's back on big time television.

Well, until football comes back.

I want to talk to you guys about how you're viewing some of this stuff, but just my wife just this last week decided I have to get control of this cable.

bill.

I want to know what you guys think or know you're paying monthly because I do believe that this is such a sprawling thing now.

My wife was alarmed when she realized what we're paying for as we're changing our cable package and more alarmed when I said and get raised baseball.

She didn't understand why I was doing that, but I'm like, make sure that we have Tampa Bay Ray's baseball.

Can you just get Ray's baseball?

What is the amount?

What is the number?

Do you guys know?

What is the highest number I can give you to shock you?

Because I was surprised about what I'm paying a month once I find out.

And there was some overlap.

She's trying to get rid of some of the overlap in the places where you get ripped off because you have multiple same subscriptions.

This is what we're going to do, right, Dan.

So, first of all, you have obviously regular cable, right?

Or whatever the equivalent of regular cable is, right?

So you get TBS, TNT, all those channels, right?

You get HBO.

I know you get HBO, right?

You got, do you have, I have all the movie channels?

You got Apple,

all the movie channels, all of them.

Even all of them.

The TV movie channels?

Everything.

You have all the movie channels?

Yes.

You have all those kind of movies?

You must pay two grand a month.

Tell me what the numbers are for

we get to my number.

No, it's not that high.

It's not that.

But

we're kind of like Netflix, right?

Four digits?

Is it four digits?

It is not.

No, it is not four digits.

$850.

No, it's $1.

We're playing the game poorly.

It's a little more than $500 a month.

I got a guy for you.

Talk to me.

I pay the lowest here out of everybody.

I I think I'm paying more than that.

$3.99.

You may need to get a second job.

Do you know how much you're paying?

Do you have any earthly idea how much you're paying?

No, but my chief of staff does.

Whatever my mom tells him, it's probably double.

I'll bet I'm paying what you're paying.

And it's making me a little nauseous.

Really?

Yeah.

Do you have all the movie channels?

No, no.

Wow, then you should really be nauseous.

Because I got like all the apps, you know, and God knows what I'm soccer fans have to pay like $300 more.

Guys, guys, it's not close.

I wasn't counting Red Zone and any of that stuff.

I'm not.

That's baked into your cave.

I think I have that baked into your caves.

I'm not like

Red Zone by itself is between like $400 and $800 a year, is it not?

Yeah, but you want to...

Do you have YouTube TV?

I do, yes.

Yeah, so you can watch the individual.

And I have to go non-commercials as well because now I'm in, I just, at this point, I wonder how the audience feels about this.

At this point, I simply can't do commercials.

No, don't say that.

We love commercials.

Commercials are awesome.

What Chaos, the hockey show, figured this out.

That's a good show.

It is a good show.

It's the guy with the guy in the hat.

Oh, white hat.

Yeah.

They figured out something.

I meant the hockey show.

If you like to bet on hockey, as I'm one to do, as a lot of us do, you want to watch games live.

ESPN's app decides they're going to run a uniform time for ads every game.

So they discovered why when I check the score online, is it so far ahead of where I am in the game?

You think you're watching a game live, you're not.

They're baking in the ad time to however they see fit and they'll catch you up when you get there.

Like the game runs on tape delay.

You're not watching live games anymore.

So streaming already is delayed from live TV via cable.

But what these guys discovered was that on top of that delay, ESPN Plus is delaying you even more because they don't care.

So if you hit go live after the ad is over, it's not right where you are.

It actually jumps ahead.

Really?

Yes, they are playing.

they're gaming the system to make sure their ads are watched at the expense of you being up to date on your watching thing that's why i don't like i don't i'm not a big fan of the streaming i am one of the last people who is a cord keeper i keep my cord because when i want to watch live sports i want it to be live for reals

i believe why'd you say that that way uh i don't know i i channeled great cody there for reals

well done thank you

really good thank you should be a new character it should what What would the character be called, though?

Leon Cody.

Okay, thank you.

I'm honored.

Writer Cup.

Nice.

Yeah, let's stay at the where the Writer Cup guy owns the house.

Remember when Dan did that?

Silly guy.

Not as bad as making Ray Bork Ron Borgeous.

That's true.

Ron's hat.

Trampling Zaz's question.

That was the highlight of the show.

That was the highlight of the show.

We had so much fun back here just laughing at the way you just said, yeah, Zaz, that question sucks.

He was just asking a form of the same question that I didn't get answered when he went on the Emmett Smith divergent path and so I was just following up again on the same

question than that would be yeah it's actually worse Dan carried resentment into doing that I feel like I'm gonna go back I'll listen on the podcast later and my part of the question is gonna be edited out

It was the same exact question.

Actually, not what we would find most surprising.

What you would find most surprising.

Because I asked you before, and yeah.

Is that where we got the top five?

He did really well with that top that number one answer was you asked him for a top five.

What a top five.

I'm serious.

All five of those facts are pretty interesting.

Wow,

that's it.

The way till it comes out on paperback is hanging out with crack dealers.

Yeah, he did some real journalism.

That's uh, that's a that's a little bit harder to do than it used to be.

Most of the things you're reading and consuming don't talk to 600 and some odd people before they get public, and it's dying.

And

very few people actually want that kind of thoroughness because he's getting frustrated by our attention span that lasts 20 TikTok seconds.

Did everyone get the Greg Cody joke there about when it comes out on paperback?

Because I don't think that exists anymore as far as, no, as far as like, it used to be a big thing in publishing.

It's a hardcover, and then you wait, the paperback comes out, and it's cheaper.

And I don't know if the listener now is aware of these.

20 CB.

20 CB.

Where's that segment, Tony?

Well, you're here.

We could do it.

You did do a promo tour real quick for for your paperback release, right?

This is the new Alun Improved Tan Levatar Show with the Stugats.

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