Hour 2: Enough With These Good Murderers (feat. Ronan Farrow)

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This is the Dan Levator Show with the Stugatz Podcast. Always made happier when I see this radiant face.
This guy zigs when others are zagging. You don't care about journalism.
You hate journalism. He's great at journalism.
Better than just about anybody. And if you're a murder podcast person, he's not interested in the good murderers.
He's interested in very bad murderers. Wow.
Not enough with these good murderers, man. I'm sick and tired.
Enough with these good murder podcast content. I'm tired of them.
They wanted to go another way. Ronan Farrow with us.
He's a Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist, obviously, contributing writer at The New Yorker. He's got a new Audible original podcast, Not a Very Good Murderer.
And he explores the fact checking process with a volatile source by accident we didn't actually do this on purpose we were talking about journalism and the fast fact-checking process and i'm wondering ronan when you don't have a credible source or you have a volatile source what goes into the reporting of this particular story i'm always interested in the subjects that you choose. And thank you, as always, for joining us.
Yeah, it's always a pleasure. It's always such a good conversation with you guys.
I try to capture over the course of the four and a half hours of this series the answer to that question. I feel like this series doesn't neatly fall into one category.

It's not one thing. And one of the layers of it is at a time when the press is under attack, right, there's dwindling trust in the press.
I wanted to show the mechanics of how a journalist goes about vetting, in this case, a really politically explosive allegation. And, you know, I headed off into this wealthy gated community in the desert, Paradise Valley, Arizona, to try to assess the question you raised.
It was the source at the center of this credible. And then you have these other layers that flow from this.
You have you mentioned volatility, a relationship that is the backbone of this series that is really wild. I mean, this is about a former pageant queen.
Her name is Cece Doan. And as I'm vetting her, I start to realize that she's been connected to this improbable series of unsolved crimes.
There's an arson allegation. There's a a period of time where the fbi investigated her for allegedly sending death threats to her own family uh there's a police investigation into whether she tried to hire a hitman to kill one of her husbands and then another investigation into whether she tried to kill another husband with viagra um overdosing him deliberately was the claim.
As I looked into that, to your point about volatility, the relationship with her became really complex because she wouldn't stop calling, and she kept coming back for more interviews. So there was clearly an attraction there, but also she was furious.
And at one point, she, she threatens to punch me actually now as of our latest conversations multiple points So you get to really see this this kind of rise and fall of a very intense complicated relationship And and then finally, you know, I thought that this series was consequential because she represents someone who's at a lot of our dinner tables and a lot of our like thanksgiving meals in a lot of our communities she is very very steeped in the kind of fox news breitbart spectrum of at times i'll just say it as a as a reporter where i'm very committed to the facts um it's disinformation at times you know i'm not saying everything on those platforms falls into that category but some of the things that she embraces like the idea that donald trump won the 2020 election uh you know the idea that barack obama is a muslim there there are certain things that come up in our conversations where um it's clear that she represents a really significant part of this country's population in terms of disinformation culture. And that's something I'm very interested in.
So the show kind of becomes a blueprint for not only can I solve these crimes and can I use this person as a source credibility wise, but also how do we deal with this phenomenon in our culture of people who live in denial, maybe as in this case, about themselves and and also about the world around them?

So did she trust you and did you now confirm her already held belief that the media can't be trusted? I think that any treatment of this subject, no matter how delicate and sensitive and meticulous in the fact checking, was going to trigger a firestorm and in her eyes a confirmation of, you know, the untrustworthy leftist qualities of the media. I will say that over the course of this series, one of the leitmotifs that emerges is blackouts, that she claims to have blacked out her memories of many of these alleged crimes.
You know, her response in a lot of cases isn't a firm denial. It's a, well, I don't remember.
And she attributes that to a combination of

struggles with alcoholism which you know I think is is a part of the series that a lot of people and a lot of families will relate to there's a very forthright discussion of the substance abuse part of this

and also I think to

Just not wanting to confront some of this stuff. I think it's a mix of both

and so the the silver lining here in answer to your question, is there are parts of this show where she actually starts to confront some of these things she's done in her past and to acknowledge, well, maybe it's possible I did do this. Maybe it's possible I did say this.
And members of her family, for for instance, have reached out to me. It's a very complicated portrait of a family as well.
And she's, you know, been accused of being abusive by her kids and so on. People have reached out and said, this is a really cathartic series for them to watch within that family.
And I've been also heartened to hear from people not connected to this family who have just listened to it out in the world and said, this reminds me of my mother. This reminds me of someone I know.
And it's helped me process. Ronan, I'm sorry to do this to you in a public fashion, but Billy's quite the anarchist today.
And he's pointed out to me, how can we trust anyone in journalism when this person, who was a Pulitzer Prize winner, clearly has fake books behind him and uh thermostat growing out of one of your books there we can't trust this person either billy's saying to me and i can't even hear what you're saying because he's saying you're not trustworthy because everything behind you is almost literally fake news that a real guitar i don't even know anymore you would would, the guitars are not wallpaper. The keyboard is not wallpaper.
The books are wallpaper. And you'd be shocked how much conversation I wind up in about the wallpaper.
Like people see the wallpaper. They love the wallpaper.
They feel betrayed by the wallpaper when they learn that the wallpaper is a stylized rendering of a library. It's I promise you in person, it's not pretending to be real books like it's it's painterly.
The texture of it is not, you know, photographic. It's supposed to be impressionistic.
I didn't want real books in here. I wanted I wanted a painting.
But yeah, I apologize. Those books are fake news.
What's your favorite fake book that you've read from your wallpaper? You know, I think I did at one point like lean in really close and try to ascertain whether there's a title you can see. I don't think they're designed to have like full titles on them.
Can you find one? Do you think, can we find one? Can we have you waste your time by scurrying around and trying to see if you can find a single real thing? That's going to require a separate booking, guys. You know, what we should do really is you should just report that there's some deeply cancellation worthy book on this fake shelf.
You know, there's a fake Mein Kampf on this fake shelf. We were all, all four of us jumped up.
I was about to say that, but he took it. We were all going to, at the same time, we were all going to yell Mein Kampf, but I didn't want the consequences of that.
Of course you were. I knew you were.
I just figured I'd do it for you. I was going to go to Dr.
Seuss right up. You also released earlier this week for The New Yorker, and I'm telling you, I am a deep admirer of this person's work because he's so meticulous about what he chooses and how he reports it.
But your report on why the police refused to investigate a serial rapist, Sean Williams, and the prosecutor who blew the whistle on that, can you tell us how you came to report all of that? In 2021, I got an encrypted email from a person claiming to be a federal prosecutor and saying that they were chasing the case of a, they thought maybe historically prolific predator and being obstructed by the local police. This person thought that the cops might be protecting the alleged perpetrator.
And it was such an incredible claim. And as I dug in from there, the specifics were so wild that I wound up spending four years just looking at every facet of this case and immersing myself in hundreds of pages of legal documents and interviewing dozens of people on the ground in Appalachia where this takes place.
Wound up being about this prosecutor, Kat Dahl. She really was a federal prosecutor and she had been assigned to Johnson City, East Tennessee.
And she started to track strange events around the local businessman, a guy named Sean Williams. There was a woman who fell out of his fifth story window.
There was another woman who left his apartment, you know, super out of it, seemingly drugged and was panicked and went off the road. She realized there had been years of police reports from women claiming that he had drugged and raped them.
And various pieces of evidence recovered around him started to lead her to believe that he might also be preying upon children. And as she worked on this case, actually a bunch of people allegedly were assaulted while she failed to get the case across.
So it became this kind of passionate obsession for her. And the local cops seemed really uninterested in pursuing it.
And you can read in this piece in this week's New Yorker all of the details of the ways in which they behaved strangely and through some combination of neglect, lack of interest, you know, just incompetence. And this is one of the things that emerges as the piece goes on, potentially corruption.
They let him get away over and over again. I'm talking about

she finally struggles and struggles and struggles to get an indictment against him. And then he goes on the run successfully for more than two years in total.
He at one point gets caught by officers on a college campus by complete coincidence and is taken into custody and and then escapes from a moving police van.

I mean, it's stuff you don't expect in the present day. And over my years of reporting on this, the alleged perp, this guy, Sean Williams, when he finally was in custody, started to tell me, well, I threw an associate of mine was paying off the cops.
They deny this.

But I present all of the evidence and people can come to their conclusions. That's led to a new request for the reopening of Discovery, right? Yeah, there's now motion in some of the cases around this.
There's a bunch of both civil and criminal proceedings that have flowed from this. And in at least one of the civil cases, there's been new filings based on some of this reporting.
So maybe we haven't heard the last of this and maybe there'll be more answers. I do think that one of the reasons that made me want to put this out now is that it's a story about state and federal oversight systems failing.

And as I was reporting on it and saying like, hey, why didn't the FBI look at this more? Why didn't the Department of Justice writ large look at this more? Why doesn't this community have answers to these answerable questions about whether the cops were being paid off? what I started getting back in response to those questions was people saying hey buddy the offices

that you're asking for more and better accountability from are getting destroyed right now. So the Trump administration is dismantling a lot of these corruption oversight apparatuses, a lot of the systems for whistleblowers, like the one in this story, to come forward.
They fired the head of the Office of Special Counsel, which is the office responsible for enforcing the Whistleblower Protection Act. They've done various other things to try to erode the space for whistleblowers to come forward.
They have downsized the public integrity section at the Department of Justice, which is the office that should be looking at corruption claims with respect to police around the country, to just a skeleton crew. So I think it's important as people read this to also have them know, like, this is why we need federal systems of oversight to protect people around the country.
And what I'm being told by people around this case and other experts is with the absence or diminishment of those systems, we're a lot more likely to see more cases like this go unchecked. He is the face of horrifying news.
Listen to his new Audible original podcast. Not a very good murderer.
It is available now. Honestly, like meticulously gathered.
His face when you said that was just mortified. It's just horrendous.
I mean, just horrendous. Like you hear him talking.
It's like, oh, that's scary. That's terrible.
Okay, good. Talking to you, Rodan.
Thank you. Always a pleasure.
Not really. Folks, listen up.
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Don Lebertard. We're going to win.
Stugatz. We're going to win.
What an old reference. This is the Dan Lebertard Show with the Stugatz.
I'm going to wait until a home run is hit, preferably on the very first pitch the Marlins throw this season, to talk about the Marlins' new home run sculpture. Because they moved out a multi-million dollar colorful fiasco that David Sampson loves, but very few other people did.
And now have a new home run thing that spews water. And so we'll all get to see that together and then talk about it.
David Sampson, incidentally, in the postgame with Juju Gotti, we're finally going to do that germaphobe off to see which of them is a little bit crazier. So that's coming up in a little bit.
But before we do that, because I'm unsatisfied with our tournament, I want to create another tournament and I just want to play a bunch of iconic sounds here

and get from you guys what the seedings on this are and should be.

So the 16 seed in a different tournament,

the one I'd prefer to do than the one Billy and others

are trying to passive-aggressively bother me with,

but is a great celebration of our fans who are in general population.

That you love so much, yeah, more than anyone. By the way, the prize for that one was supposed to be going to the championship game with you.
That would have been a prize, huh? You would have liked that. And then they told me, no, we're not doing this.
You put me in a position where I have to sound like I'm against watching a game with one of our most loyal fans because of how you've done this tournament. And because you don't like gen pop, apparently.
Atop your ivory tower. Yup.
Shangri-La. While wearing a silk robe of some sort behind a velvet rope.
Touch the hem of my garment. Number 16.
That's AOL Instant Messenger? I asked for some of the most iconic sounds in the history of sounds game bro it's iconic for like what eight year generation of people number 15. is that a sound or is that like your curb your enthusiasm that's a song I mean, if you cut it at da-da-da-da-da-da, and right there, that's a sound or is that like Curb Your Enthusiasm? That's a song.

It's iconic.

If you cut it at da-da-da-da-da-da, and right there, that's a sound.

Number 14.

You've got mail.

Two AOLs?

Again.

You know all about that, Dan.

Again, it's a specific generation.

Number 13.

That's a song.

This is a full-ass song. That's a a song you should let the whole two minutes play out that's a song though that's not a sound get it out of here number 12 sometimes you want to go where everybody knows your name this is not the correct way to do this this is the show this is? This is not the right way to do this.
This is what you wanted, Dan? No! Number 11! In the criminal justice system, sexually based offenses are considered especially heinous. In New York City, the dedicated detectives who investigate these vicious felonies are members of an elite squad known as the Special Victims Unit.
This is not a sound. These are their stories.
That would have been a good sounder. These are their stories.
This is what you blew off our fans for? Those are the things. Number 10.
You guys aren't doing this right. I don't know what song that is.
I know it's baseball tonight. Number nine.

That's a sound.

That's a sound.

That's a sound.

That's a sound.

Yeah, go ahead.

What else we got?

Number eight.

Dove and I.

Just cartoon music?

Oh, it's X-Men.

Number seven. This is...
Come on, I mean. It's a great sound, though.
But it's a song. It's not a sound.
Didn't we have another Back to the Future? Yeah, the one you guys played the other. That's a sound.
That is a sound. Two AOLs and two Back to the Futures in the most iconic sounds in the history of sound.
Moody. Number six.
Yo quiero taco, man. Oh, yeah.
Terrific. Dude, Jeremy, were you old enough for that? I know that.
That's like one of the first things I remember in my whole life, honestly. Iconic Super Bowl commercial.
That's such a lie. It's one of the first pop culture things that I remember.
You're too young, Tony. That was.
No, no. He's saying it's sad that I'm saying it's one of the first things I remember in my life.

I didn't say sad.

I said it's bullshit.

There's no way.

Am I a liar or am I lying?

Lying.

Number five.

You guys are bad at this.

You guys don't know when to cut things off.

They need to be sounds, not songs. You know what would have been a good sound? Or just going, Nazis.
I hate Nazis. Man, we all almost yelled Mein Kampf earlier in the hour.
Number four. Oh, Daily Double.
Yeah, that's a sound. That's great.
Number three. Oh, you know me, man.
That's a sound. For this to work comedically, they need to be short.
That was short. I know.
That was two seconds. I know.
No, I'm saying that that's the correct way to do it. That's not the incorrect way to do it.
Number two. That's a song.
A great song. But a song nonetheless.
right. But a song nonetheless.
How can we, how, how do our tournaments keep getting worse? Life finds a way, Dan. Worse.
Life finds a way. Number one.
Number one. It's a song, but it's not number one.
Get me a new 16. Yeah, just let it play out.
Get me a new 16. I want to do something different with all of this.
Let's talk

about March Madness in a different way.

We're going to get to Jessica and Taylor.

Somehow Taylor has invaded the show again.

Les Taylor is a life

principal for me. He's a good producer.

And he was on Pitchcock yesterday too. I've got so much proof

of that in the last

16 sounds. To be fair, he wasn't part of that.

Are you sure? Maybe evidence he's a bad

producer because he didn't want to help Mike Malley. I'm throwing Mike Malley under the bus.
Malley is a good producer. Malley's great.
Check out Tony Brackets, by the way. I love those guys.
Ethan's on that one though, so maybe don't check it out. Me, Ethan, Malley and Taylor breaking down the March Madness.
Are you trying to sell it or not? It's electric. This is happening.
Just two hands out. Everyone's blaming everyone else.
I know how to say that other sound tournament if you want. Go ahead, Billy.
So that sound tournament, what you do is like, play the lightsaber one, Roy. Say again? Nothing, never mind.
Louis was talking in my ear. You guys do the rest of it.
All right. No, no, no.
Dan, no. Dan, no.
We're going to miss you. No, Dan.
No, Dan. No, please don't go.
No, please don't. We're going to miss you so much.
How about we do a top five? He's got thought he'd never leave. Yeah.
I got a good top five for Sweet 16. Guys, wait, before we get to the top five.
Riley stole those cookies, right? Of course. Okay.
I mean, I feel like we were being gaslit the entire time. You guys think the nutritionist has the power to tell lebron what he can't he can't have on the plane lebron has his own nutritionist look you think the nutritionist has the balls the balls to make a decision the unmitigated goal like to say hey i'm not going to take with pat i'm the i'm the boss here do you think that there's a chance that they did it once and then as soon as they found out it was an immediate like what are you doing?

We have to bring the cookies back because apparently the cookies were back.

So maybe the nutritionist will slap on the wrist and then.

Where's the nutritionist now?

Do we know?

Did the fixer take care?

We don't know if the person's still working for the organization.

I'm still confused about the whole ice cream thing.

That part was just a joke.

It was a red herring, which is a terrible flavor of ice cream.

I never tried it.

Yeah, I did.

All right, let's do that.

But I am not sure what I am going to do. confused about the whole ice cream thing.
That part was just a joke. It was a red herring which is a terrible flavor of ice cream.

I never tried it.

Yeah, I did. Alright, let's do that.

But you have to whisper it. No.
I gotta whisper it?

This is an exciting top five. I can't whisper it.

We don't want Dan to hear. Teddy's top five, by the way,

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All right. So this is an exciting list of exciting whites.
These are the top five secret sauce players still left in March Madness. Okay.
Number five, the duo of Danny Wolf and Vladislav Golden for the Michigan Wolverines. Oh, yeah.
They're scrappy players and they're bulldogs. Danny Wolfe is an Instagram legend, man.
Number four, Richie Saunders forward for your BYU Cougars. Wow.
He's cerebral, deceptive speed, and he's sneaky athletic. Shout out to the Cougs.
Number three, Sean Padula. Guard for Ole Miss.
Gritty, tons of heart, out hustles everyone. By the way, gained 15 pounds of muscle on the offseason.
Allowed him to play big. Padula.
Guard though. Italian? Maybe.
Jess? Don't do it again. What are you doing? Is he Italian? I don't know.
Do you know? I don't know his personal history. Grant Nelson.

No.

Alabama.

What?

Alabama.

I was waiting for you to say the team, dude.

Alabama.

Yeah.

Final four, 6-11, but he's a student of the game.

He's got all the intangibles.

I mean.

Roy, I was going to ask for it. No school for him?

Real high motor.

Just hanging out.

True gamer.

Number one, Braden Smith from Purdue.

He's a real lunch pail and hard hat kind of guy. Absolute gym rat.
First guy in, last guy out. Every single time.
That's every player who's ever played at Purdue. This top five is sponsored by Jimmy John's.
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Order one today. You know my favorite Purdue guy? Who's that? That reminds me of Jimmy John's.
Zach Eadie?

Eat one more.

Ooh.

And Zach Eadie.

I want to, and Zach Eadie.

That's great.

Thank you.

Yeah, well done.

Those are both.

Look at you guys with puns.

Huh?

We try, man.

Wow.

We try out here.

We're one big family.

So, special sauce, is that what you call them?

The secret sauce.

Secret sauce.

Secret sauce of March Madness. The white guys.
Who do you think of? I've got a name in my head. Follow me if you will.
Ali Farouk Manesh, who I guess is Persian with that name, but he looks white. To me, when you said secret sauce white guy in March Madness, that's who I think of, right? Was it Northern Iowa? Yeah, I think so, right?

Northern Iowa?

Yes.

That was amazing.

That run was remarkable because what it was about him, it was the receding hairline.

It wasn't just that he was a short guy.

It was the receding hairline as if he looked like he was already the 35-year-old accountant

that he was destined to be.

I was just informed that he just got the Colorado State job yesterday.

What?

Congratulations.

How do you like that? That's amazing. Well, congratulations.
I mean, he knew that. That's why he brought him up.
Yeah, of course. You were paying attention to the news.
Of course, yeah. I'm always tapped in on the Colorado State job.
Dievendorf? Not special sauce. Right? It's Snoggle.
Special sauce. It's Snoggle.
Special sauce. Special sauce.
Marshall Henderson? Not special sauce. You're right about Iranian, by the way.
His father was a member of the Iranian men's national volleyball team. There you go.
Bloodlines. Speaking of white guys in basketball, I mean, you and I were talking about this a little bit yesterday.
But a friend of the show, Zach Harper, has been launching a campaign to really push a nickname for Nikola Jokic that is already out there, but isn't really his number one nickname. The number one nickname for Nikola Jokic is obviously the Joker.
Everybody playing off the back of his last name. But the nickname that Zach wants to push, and I want to support him on this, Big Honey.
I love Big Honey as a nickname for Nikola Jokic. This giant polar bear of a man.
Polar bears don't like honey. All right.
Well, this giant bear of a man who is so smooth with everything he does. Did you guys see the pass that he made yesterday? I mean, he is so ridiculous out there.
And I just think Big Honey is one of those throwback nicknames to the 1970s when we had these crazy nicknames in basketball. I mean, look at this pass that you'll see.
I mean, he's ridiculous. And I love the idea of giving him a name Nikola Big Honey Jokic.
Does anyone here agree with me? I think it's a dumb nickname. Why? You got it from Zach Harper makes it even dumber.
That guy's a hack and that nickname's a hack. And the guy's name is Joker.
It's a great nickname. Why are you guys feuding? I'm not privy to the lore.
Why am I feuding with Zach? Yes. Because I have to do a podcast with him every single week.

It's not a feud.

It's like a longstanding, eternal beef. Do the Hatfields and McCoys have a feud?

I don't have a feud with anyone that I have to record with here.

Bullshit.

I don't.

Who would my feud be with?

You threw Mally under the bus.

No, we're friends.

Two hands.

It's a jest.

Arms locked.

Love Taylor. I love all those guys.
The Amina's acting it's like a classic will they won't they you know they won't oh or unless they do billy on the other hand he has feuds i do yeah he does with who tony no it's i have feuds it's not a long-standing feud i think i'm very easy to along. Earlier we were out in the commissary and Billy walked up to Tony and Taylor and looks at both of them and goes, he goes, I gotta change something that I said to you guys a while ago.
I had told Taylor that he was in better shape than Tony, but Taylor, you're losing it. Tony's in better shape than you are, which prompted about 10 seconds later, both of them dropping to the ground and doing pushups.
I did more, by the way. And of course Tony did more to prove his manliness.
But no, it doesn't just stop there though. I have gotten them to agree to compete against each other in taking the middle school presidential fitness exam.
I'm going to crush them. I'm going to crush him.
I heard you guys yelling about that. I was like, what are you talking about? It just takes you going up and telling one of them they're in better shape than the other one.
Then five seconds later, they're doing push-ups on the floor and they're doing the presidential exam. Just to clarify, Billy not only has a feud with Tony, he has a feud with Taylor.
If you listen to Mystery Crate this week, we will be rehashing the fashion show that we are going to have. Where Taylor doesn't want to dress Billy, he wants to dress Chris Cody.
Because the two of them have a bit of a feud going on. Me and Taylor also, if I'm going to be honest with you, the one feud that we do have going on is Taylor was all in on this whole NASCAR thing that we were going to be doing.
Going to these races, going driving the cars around, doing all this NASCAR stuff. And then Homestead Miami comes around.
We go and we drive a car around the track. We have the big race coming up.
He's like, can't go. Got to watch hoops.
Real hoopers know? Someone's got to watch hoops around here, Billy. Exactly right.
Me and Taylor are the only two people watching March Madness. I'm watching the women.
He's watching the men's. Tony Brackets, by the way.
Other than Tony Brackets. You guys should do a segment together or something.
Well, I have good news for you. What's that? We do have a segment together.
What? It's called God Bless College Basketball slash God Bless March Madness. Wow.
And you're going to listen to it. When? Right now.
Wow. Right now.
Go pee-pee. Right now.
Right now. Hey there, travelers and dreamers.
We all have that dream trip that we've been wishing we could go on. But too often, life just gets in the way.
Whether it's work, family responsibilities, or, in my case, and I'm sure many of yours, price. But your dream trip doesn't have to stay a dream any longer.
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5G speeds not available in all areas. Don Lebertard.
Sub 500 seasons, it's been lonely. Now the best players on our side.
Been losing, and losing for much too long. But now we're back with new york pride stugats jaylen you've got us on our feet jaylen we're gonna win the east jaylen without randall we're still doing fine.
This is the Dan Levatore show with the Stu Gads.

God bless college basketball, Taylor. God bless college basketball, Jess.
Welcome back to God Bless March Madness presented by Priceline. Dreaming about that trip? Book it and go to your happy price with Priceline.
So, you know, we work for a show, Taylor, that just takes a lot of big dumps on things that they don't like or understand. And one of those things this past week has been March Madness.
And I would like to be here to say, as someone who sat on the couch pretty much from Thursday morning until Monday night without moving, watching every March Madness game in the women's and the men's tournament, it was pretty fun. It was pretty exciting.
And people that are upset with the lack of upsets, well, there were some bangers of games. Is that accurate? That is accurate.
We are in this office, the two most ball watchers, ball knowers, ball lovers. It doesn't take much to be one of the most ball knowers.
I will raise my hand up. The fact that I'm a ball knower in basketball.
The bar is, did you watch an NCAA basketball game before the tournament? Yes. If you could check that box, you're in the one percentile here.
Exactly. The Houston-Gonzaga game was great.
Houston blocked their game-tying three-pointer. The Daraqueen buzzer beater in the Maryland game was excellent.
These are all just from the men's tournament. Florida and UConn, down to the wire.
Oregon-Arizona was just a nail-biter. Oregon-Duke in the women's tournament, too, was also a nail-biter.
We'll get to that in a little bit. But this has been the most-watched NCAA tournament for the men in 32 years.
So despite what people on the show may say, everyone's very interested in the NCAA tournament. They're watching, and we're going to talk about it a little bit here.
First things first, we miss Dugatz. We miss his presence.
We miss most of all his weekend observations. Taylor misses someone having someone to text his errant thoughts to.
He's just been texting a few of, his weekend observations, and we're like, Taylor, this is great. Like, why are you writing, like, this over a text message? So he's going to get them out of his system right now.
So these are his round of 32 men's NCAA tournament observations. Taylor, take it away.
Death. Taxes.
And Tom Izzo having his team playing their best basketball in March Sparty Amir Khan McNeese State's manager Sister Jean just called Even she thinks you're doing too much So mean, but Alabama Do it against the school with a football team Coach Cal in the Sweet 16 Kentucky. Kentucky in the Sweet 16.
The rare win-win. Gonzaga versus Houston.
The two longest active streaks of Sweet 16 appearances. You know what that means, Jess.
Something's got to give. Something had to give.
You're on it today. I'm so on it.
If you looked up senior guard play in the dictionary, you'd see a picture of Florida's Walter Clayton Jr.

Garrett Queen hitting a buzzer beater against Colorado State.

You know what he did, Jess?

What did he do?

He called game.

Ooh, that's a good one.

You call him Dusty May.

I call him Dusty March.

No one likes a dusty anything.

That is a good take. I mean, especially March.
Do some spring cleaning. Like, we got to get the dust out of here.
The guy at work who says I had that in my other bracket. Respectfully.
Go to hell. Speaking of hell.
Barbara Isles. Jess, those are the round of 32 observations.
Well done. Great job with the beeps.
Next time we need to insert a top five in there to really get you juggling the fanfare and the beeps, but excellent, excellent work. So we've got even more basketball this upcoming weekend because the men's tournament was so chalky and the women's tournament.
That means the next round is going to be highly competitive. The ratings are expected to go up even higher as we see some of these huge juggernaut teams compete against each other this weekend.
One game that I'm super duper looking forward to, well actually there's a couple games, but I'll start with this one. Notre Dame and TCU in the women's Sweet 16 round is going to be, in my opinion, I think prediction, I think it's going to be a really good game.
This is a rematch of a game that was in November that TCU won. Notre Dame had a lead through three quarters.
TCU overcame the lead, came back, won the game. Haley Van Liff, we talked about it on the show this week.
She has a really interesting story. This is her third school.
We probably remember her from the LSU-Iowa game last year. She also was on the USA Basketball 3x3 team this summer.
But she is having a really great season with TCU. And this is her first Sweet 16 in, I mean, I can't even remember how long, over a decade, I want to say.
And Sedona Prince, who is their big, is also playing really well. She's averaging 17.5 points per game, 9.5 rebounds per game.
And Notre Dame's going to have to do a lot to match up with a big of her size. But on the flip side of that, Notre Dame has Hannah Hidalgo, who is a finalist for National Player of the Year.
She's a phenomenal player. If you like college hoops and you like seeing a guard who is averaging four steals per game, 24 points per game, who is just getting after it on both sides of the ball, defense and offense.
Hannah Hidalgo is your gal. She is having a great season.
So are Sonia Citron and Olivia Miles, the other two guards on that team that are probably going to be WNBA lottery picks later this year. So I'm excited for that game.
I'm also looking forward to the North Carolina Duke rematch. This is like the rubber match, I guess.
Third time they're're playing against each other series is split right now duke was a sneaky sneakily won the acc tournament in women's basketball uh we we figured they'd do it in on the men's side the women's team their emphasis is defense defense defense defense so they have the ability to really like draw out these rock fight type games and so this will be a huge game for them against, obviously, their rival, Taylor's alma mater, North Carolina.

The last 2-3 game I want to talk about in the women's Sweet 16 round is NC State and LSU.

Again, LSU is a team I think a lot of people are familiar with. Kim Mulkey, obviously the Hall of Fame head coach for LSU.

And Flauja Johnson, who's in all of the commercials this year.

She's in all the Powerade

commercials she's a rapper she's also a great basketball player and Anissa Morrow her teammate is averaging I think it's 14 14 rebounds per game like she's just crazy on the board so LSU even though they're a three seed they had some health stuff at the end of the season that I think impacted their seeding a little bit, but not the best guard play on LSU's team, which is the complete opposite of NC State, which is great guard play. So NC State was a Final Four team last year.
Those two are now playing again in another rematch. There's a lot of rematches in the Sweet 16 round in the women's NCAA tournament, but that game is going to be, I think, really good as well.
So tune in to all of the women's NCAA tournament Sweet 16 games this weekend. They're also the one seeds.
I think they're all probably pretty easily going to go through, except maybe USC now that Juju Watkins is out. They're playing against Kansas State, the five seed.
So I will be watching all of those. Taylor, you're going to tell us now what men's games to look out for this weekend.
You mentioned a lot of rematches on the women's side. The storyline I'm looking forward to watching on the Sweet 16 is a rematch of a game from November where Duke won at Arizona, and now they're playing against each other in the Sweet 16.
I hate to say this. This is Duke's most complete team in decades.
God, I hate that. You have to say that.
And I have this as a if-not-now-when season for John Shire because when you look at this Duke team, they really don't have any weaknesses. They have guards, Konkanepo, Tyrese Proctor, Sion James.
They all shoot better than 39% from three. And then in their front court, they have Malawach.

And then, of course, they have Cooper Flagg. And if you're watching this Arizona team, if they are to pull off the upset, it's going to be because of one player, Caleb Love.
And that name might sound familiar. He was the first team all Big 12 player this season for the Wildcats.
And the narrative for this Wildcat team has been they're going to go as far as Caleb Love will take them. in 24 wins this season,

he's shooting 46.7% from the field. In their 12 losses, he's shooting 31.8%.
So he's a guy who's either going to win you a game or shoot you completely out of it. But there's also drama, Jess.
People love the drama. Caleb Love grew up a Duke fan.
Oh, no. And he wanted to play for Duke.
Duke took another point guard in their class, Jeremy Roach, and was like, hey, you two are going to come here. We'll figure it out.
Caleb Love was like, no, we're kind of rivals from USA basketball. This is not going to work.
So Caleb Love went to Carolina just because he wanted to play Duke. And then in 2022 in the final four, Caleb Love was the one who hit the dagger three to put the final nail in Coach K's coffin.
What? Oh, I didn't know any of this. This is great lore.
And if you know how sometimes you say like, I believe something, but you don't really believe it. Like, I think Caleb Love would rather beat Duke and Duke season than win a national championship a national championship.
I mean, based on the limited things I know about him, I would believe that. And I also think that a lot of college basketball fans are like, I'd rather see anyone else win than Duke this year and every year.
Yeah. And Caleb Love is a, I say this as a Carolina guy, but he's a very easy guy to root for in terms of a March guy that can get hot, kind of like Kemba Walker.
The problem for Arizona, it's hard to see him staying consistent for six games. But against a team like Duke, it only takes one game.
And I will say, if Caleb Love pulls this upset off in the Dean Dome, I want his Arizona his arizona jersey weather is starting to warm up regular season starting to wind down games of consequence in sports starting to ramp up i know what you're gonna need by your side it's by my side already miller light yeah that's right i'm making my springtime a miller time i'm making my sports time Miller time. Going to a car race Miller time.
Going to see some tennis Miller time. Going to chill in the backyard with some friends and make some memories Miller time.
I love Miller Lite because it's got taste that I know I can depend on. No games, no gimmicks.
It's that simple, folks. It's just a great beer for people who like beer.
Miller Lite is brewed for taste. It hits different than the other Lite beers.
It's got simple ingredients, and at just 96 calories and 3.2 carbs per 12 ounces, Miller time is always a good time. The original Lite beer since 1975 and still the very best one.
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96 calories. Go to MillerLite.com slash Dan to find delivery options near you, or you can pick up some Miller Lite pretty much anywhere they sell beer.
Tastes like Miller time. Celebrate responsibly.
Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 96 calories.
3.2 carbs per 12 ounces. Hey, audience.
You know, it's that time of year where everyone is debating who the number one pick is going to be. Well, let me tell you something that is undebatable.
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And as fun as it is to debate whether or not the team with the number one pick goes pass rusher, wide receiver, quarterback, one thing that we all know is we're going with Smirnoff as our number one vodka pick. Isn't that right, Dano? Smirnoff rules! Smirnoff rules! So while you're over there hosting your draft parties, you know one thing in particular you need.
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But number two, what is it, Dano? Smirnoff! Do you like Dano? Support the people who support us. Smirnoff supports us.
I like Smirnoff. I don't like Dano.
And thanks to Smirnoff, God Bless Football is doing their first ever watch-along live stream in front of a live audience in Nashville, Tennessee. Join God Bless Football during round one of the draft on the Levitard Show YouTube channel on April 24th.
More details to come. Please drink responsibly.
Smirnoff. Number 21 vodka.
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