An Inside Look At The Epstein House Vote With Congressman Pat Ryan | Nov 20, 2025

Summary

Macrodosing Podcast Summary

Episode: An Inside Look At The Epstein House Vote With Congressman Pat Ryan

Date: November 20, 2025
Hosts: PFT Commenter, Arian Foster, Big T, Eric, MacKenzie
Guest: Congressman Pat Ryan (D-NY)

---

Overview

This episode dives deep into the surprising near-unanimous congressional vote to release all Epstein investigation files and features an in-depth interview with Rep. Pat Ryan, offering insider perspective on how and why the vote unfolded as it did. The first half explores reactions, theories, and broader political skepticism, while the second half is a wide-ranging interview on transparency, party messaging struggles, and youth political engagement. Between and after, the crew veers into education decline, personal stories, sports, and cultural banter—including a new dog for Arian Foster.

---

Key Highlights and Discussion Points

1. The Shock Epstein Files Vote: Reactions & Analysis

[04:30]–[12:35]

• Context: Congress passed a bill to release ALL Epstein/Maxwell investigation records (sex trafficking, deferred prosecution, finances) with only one dissent—Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA).
• Skepticism: Hosts express disbelief at the unanimous turnaround, suspecting a mix of political self-preservation and potential cover-ups.
• Quote—Eric:
  "I kind of respect this guy's [Higgins’] vote. Everybody else, up until like a week ago, they're like, half the House of Representatives was a no. And then they all changed their minds because they realized it was going to be a losing no vote." [06:51]
• Theory: Most members didn’t want to be seen, during re-election campaigns, as trying to “protect pedophiles” so flipped to “yes” for optics.
• Quote—Aryan:
  "Something don’t smell right. ... If you ever want to have a semblance of trust with the people, government’s gotta be transparent all the time. Cuz anytime you don’t, it just sows discord.” [10:53]
• Concerns: Hosts wonder if files will be actually released, or heavily redacted/withheld, and worry about digital manipulation (“don’t get got” by fake screenshots and memes).

---

2. Interview—Rep. Pat Ryan on the Epstein Vote and Political Reform

[92:39]–[146:36]

Why The Vote Happened, What Changed, and What’s Next

• Why the sudden nearly-unanimous support?
  • Trump switched positions, realizing he’d lose if he didn’t, giving cover for others (especially Dems) to publicly support.
  • Quote—Rep. Ryan: "Trump changed his opinion because he knew he was going to lose this vote and didn’t want to be on the side of a losing vote.” [93:19]
• Is the files’ release guaranteed?
  • Not yet: DOJ can slow-walk, over-redact, or even hide files under cover of “ongoing investigations.”
  • “There’s a world in which, again to protect powerful rich people…they would use this excuse of an investigation. So I’m concerned…they’re going to try to gaslight a bunch of people on this.” [95:12]
• Will names of victims be redacted?
  • Yes, but concern about “over-redaction” to shield others.
  • Release covers all files: financials, international contacts, everything.
  • "I think there's going to be some, across all lines of geography, political, even age, you’re going to see the worst of the worst and the most elite and corrupt in there." [100:35]
• Internal leak/rumor mill:
  • No bombshells heard directly, but “if there weren't explosive stuff in here, we wouldn't be fighting like hell to protect.”
  • Expect fallout among "powerful people around the world—business, media, politics," including U.S. allies.

Systemic Reform, Corruption, and Youth Outreach

• "The Democratic Party is a disaster right now as a party...the party is lost...It's more actually, are you for the status quo…or aggressively disrupt and change it?" [109:13], [110:29]

• Says young/bipartisan members push for:

  • Term limits, ban on congressional stock trading, total lifetime ban on lobbying, money-out-of-politics reforms.
  • Needs grassroots public pressure, like Epstein file activism.

Masculinity, Democrats, & Youth Men’s Vote

• "I think a huge part of [losing young men] is we literally just stopped…listening to young people in general, and especially young men." [121:40]
• Republicans are winning by offering anger and scapegoats—a void filled by “giving them something to be mad about,” not solutions.
• Suggests “credible, specific plans” on sports blackouts, job market anxieties, cost of housing—using actual policy to regain trust.

Mandatory National Service Pitch

• Floats idea: all Americans (18-26) must do one year of service—military, teaching, healthcare, trades, etc.
• Purpose: connect youth to country/community, workforce training, buffer impacts of AI/economic displacement.
• Panel Reaction: Hosts strongly skeptical, argue "mandatory" is wrong for current climate; incentives and benefits are more attractive.
  • "I love the idea from like a pragmatic point of view. I don't see it." – Aryan [131:05]

---

3. Declining College Math/Education & AI/Cultural Shifts

[17:36]–[30:44]

• News: UC San Diego has shocking rates of freshmen failing basic math. Harvard is cracking down on grade inflation—students rebel.
• Quote—Big T:
  "If that takes you longer than a second and a half, you should be expelled immediately…college is not for you..." (re: 7 + 2 = _ + 6) [18:17]
• AI, calculators, and pandemic-shattered learning blamed; fear U.S. education prioritizes "entertainment over excellence."
• Aryan: Lack of U.S. commitment to education funding is systemic. Host panel agrees math skills ≠ overall intelligence, but signals broader malaise.

---

4. Sports Sidebars

[14:45], [33:26], [41:54]

• College Football Playoff Bias:
  JMU v. Tulane debate—hosts argue committee snubs/bias and preview upcoming games and scenarios.
• US Soccer: Team crushes Uruguay 5-1, optimism for World Cup, jokes about FIFA Peace Prize and celebrity guests at the White House.
• Arian's Coaching Update:
  He’s prepping for a championship Little League game, dropping strategy insights and coach philosophy. [42:13]
• Congressional Baseball Game—Losing Streak:
  • Rep. Ryan admits Dems are outscored, underprepared ("Reps start much earlier"), searching for ringers, sees sports preps as metaphor for party discipline. [111:04–113:31]

---

5. Culture, Lifestyle, and Banter

[45:53]–[70:04]; [84:03]–[151:17]

• Dog News!
  Aryan is getting a Rhodesian Ridgeback puppy; panel brainstorms names (Kaius, Lox, Solo, Django), discusses pet care, and celebrates the new addition.
  • "I'm kind of hype, yo. Little Django's gonna have a good life." [151:08]
• Fashion Splurging:
  Aryan’s sudden obsession with top-tier golf attire—"13 pairs in one sitting, 40 shirts, 20 jackets"—leads to lively sock and clothing recommendations.
• Belichick’s Girlfriend, Adult Cheerleading & Sports Drama:
  Surprised by public's judgment of Belichick’s dating life, adult rec-league cheerleading, speculation on his coaching distractions.
• Political Media Scandal:
  Olivia Nuzzi’s wild DC power couple breakup saga, journalist love triangles, and Keith Olbermann’s Twitter meltdown over past connections. [70:21]
• Europe NFL Team Feasibility (Supersonic Jets!?):
  Jokes about how Georgia football players would cope playing for a hypothetical Paris franchise. [157:30]
• Notre Dame Game Plans:
  Aryan and MacKenzie scheme a trip to South Bend for the college football nostalgia.

---

Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• "Trump changed his opinion because he knew he was going to lose this vote and didn't want to be on the side of a losing vote.”
  — Rep. Pat Ryan [93:19]

• "If there weren't explosive stuff in here, we wouldn't be fighting like hell to protect [the files]."
  — Rep. Pat Ryan [105:00]

• "The Democratic Party is a disaster... It's more actually, are you for the status quo…or aggressively disrupt and change?"
  — Rep. Pat Ryan [110:29]

• "I think a huge part of it is we literally just stopped, not only talking, but more importantly, listening to young people in general, and especially young men."
  — Rep. Pat Ryan [121:40]

• "I'm kind of hype, yo. Little Django's gonna have a good life."
  — Arian [151:08]

• "A lot of the messaging, the Democrats are dog awful at. ... When you start to talk about, like, the reasons why we're at where we're at is because we allow the propaganda without any kind of deterrent, no real response."
  — Aryan [135:59]

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Epstein Files Vote Recap & Skepticism: 04:30–13:13
• Math/Education Decline: 17:36–30:44
• Arian’s Little League Coach Wisdom: 41:54–45:53
• Aryan Gets a Dog (Live!): 84:03–87:36, [151:08]
• Fashion, Socks, and Golf Obsession: 62:05–70:04
• Belichick, Culture, and Cheerleading Bits: 54:45–59:31
• Nuzzi/Olbermann DC Media Scandal: 70:21–80:02
• Interview—Rep. Pat Ryan: 92:39–146:38
• Congressional Baseball Banter: 110:40–113:31

---

Tone & Takeaways

The episode was irreverent, skeptical, and candid—hosts (and Rep. Ryan) spoke freely about systemic political and cultural failures, generational divides, and the performative nature of modern politics. Mixes deeply serious, uncomfortable topics (Epstein, corruption) with easy banter about sports, math, fashion, and pet ownership—embodying Macrodosing’s unique “tickle your brain” remit.

Big Picture:
The U.S. political swamp is all about optics and self-preservation—while calls for transparency and reform erupt from the new generation, both parties struggle to connect with a changing electorate. The Epstein files may be a “watershed” moment … if power brokers don’t choke the flow.

---

For more stories and details, listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube or visit barstool.link/macrodosing.

Transcript

[Eric]

Hey, macrodosing listeners. You can find us every Tuesday and Thursday on Apple podcasts, Spotify or YouTube Prime. Members can listen ad free on Amazon Music.

[Big T]

I'm not going back to college to be your friend. I'm going so I can get Uber One for students. It saves you on Uber and UberEats. I'm there for $0 delivery fee on cheeseburgers, up to 10% off smoothies and 6% Uber credits back on rides. Just to be clear, I'm there for savings, not whatever you think college is for.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Get Uber one for students a membership.

[Eric]

To save on Uber and U eats. With deals this good, everyone wants to be a student.

[MacKenzie]

Join for just $4.99 a month.

[Eric]

Savings may vary.

[MacKenzie]

Eligibility and member terms apply.

[Big T]

Golf season is in full swing and getting out there to work on your game is bound to make any day even better. And if you're looking to improve your drive, Chevy Equinox EV is the smartest choice you can make. Bold athletic styling, a commanding presence, award winning tech, and impressive range, all with an affordable msrp. Chevy Equinox EV will put a smile on your face no matter how your scorecard shakes out.

[Eric]

I think Big T might have an idea of of one step that the Democrats could take to start to win backs. You know, the, the image of being.

[Big T]

A masculine party, and I definitely know what that is.

[Eric]

It involves sports.

[Big T]

Maybe you're gonna have to enlighten me.

[Eric]

Maybe my position is maybe occasionally win a congressional baseball game.

[Big T]

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. So, Congressman.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

I knew. I knew.

[Eric]

All right, welcome back to Macrodosing. It is Thursday. It's November 20th, and today's episode is brought to you by our great friends over at Game Time. If you're looking to get to college football this weekend, Game Time has you covered. They got you if you're at the tailgate. If you don't have a ticket thinking about going to the game, look it up on game time. That's where you get the best prices. At the last minute, they give the advantage back to the fans. It's the hack for unlocking amazing deals and experiences in just a few taps. It's so easy to use. The game time guarantee means that you can trust that you'll get 100% authentic tickets on time and at the best price. I use game time when I go to games. When I buy tickets, I'm using game time. The fees are always included. What you see is what you pay. It's very, very easy. You open it up and shows you a graphic of the stadium you select what seats you're looking at. Sometimes it even gives you the view from that seat. It's pretty incredible. And you see the best deals. It can filter that for you. So you're looking at the best prices compared to what they usually go for. Or you can look for the closest seats or you can look for the cheapest seats. It's all there on game time. College football weekend coming up. Big T, what game are we thinking about right now?

[Big T]

I looked at USC, Oregon, what should be a Pack 12 game. That is a Big Ten game with major College Football Playoff implications. $124. I can get you into Austin Stadium. I was going to do I use game time tonight for the Alabama Illinois basketball game, but obviously when this show comes out tomorrow, that game will have already happened.

[Eric]

Who won?

[Big T]

Illinois, 9186.

[Eric]

Oh, update. And Rico.

[Aryan]

Are you going with Rico or no?

[Big T]

There have been talks about maybe a pregame situation, but he's sitting, he's, he's right behind like the, the commentators. He said, okay, I'm club level.

[Eric]

All right, well, that'll be, that'll be a fun game. Hope you have a great time. Game time will hook you guys up with tickets. If you use the app, you use promo code macro, 20 bucks off your first purchase. Terms apply, create account redeem code macro, 20 bucks off. Swipe, tap ticket. Go download the game time app today. All right. Welcome back to Macrodosing. It is Thursday, it's November 20th, and we are going to have a sitting United States Congressperson on the show today. Representative Pat Ryan from New York. He's gonna be joining us again. If you are another congressperson that listens to macrodosing or you work for a congressperson, we have an open door policy to sitting United States representatives. Come on the show, discuss. It should be an interesting day to talk to him too because things kind of, things kind of went sideways yesterday. I don't think anybody saw this coming. But in a shocking twist, the government agreed on something almost unanimously, almost unanimously, 527 to 1.

[Big T]

That's house and Senate.

[Eric]

That's House and Senate together. The Epstein files vote passed through to release all the documents relating to the investigations around Jeffrey Epstein, I believe also Jelaine Maxwell. And this includes the sex trafficking agreement, the sex trafficking documents. This includes the deferred prosecution agreements. This includes a lot of stuff, the financial investigations against Epstein. And it seemed like it was not going to pass or it was very, it was very much up in the air just a matter of a couple weeks ago. And then now everybody flipped over, except for Representative Clay Higgins of Louisiana, who was the one dissenting vote who said, I've been a principled no on this bill from the beginning. What was wrong with the bill three months ago is still wrong today. It abandons 250 years of criminal justice procedure in America. As written, the bill reveals and injures thousands of innocent people, witnesses, people who provide alibis, family members, etc. If enacted in its current form, this type of broad reveal of criminal investigative files released to a rabid media will absolutely result in innocent people being hurt. Not by my vote. The Oversight Committee is conducting a thorough investigation that has already released well over 60,000 pages of documents from the Epstein case. That effort will continue in a manner that provides all due protections for innocent Americans. If the Senate amends the bill to properly address privacy of victims and other Americans who are named but not criminally implicated, then I will vote for that bill when it comes back to the House. I don't want to judge Representative Clay Higgins too hard on this. I feel like I actually, I kind of understand and respect his no vote.

[Big T]

It sounds like he has a fairly reasonable reason for it.

[Eric]

Well, the bill does include redactions for victims and uninvolved individuals.

[Big T]

But if you're gonna vote no, you have to be certain there is at least one other person that's going to.

[Eric]

Not to be the only guy.

[Big T]

If it was 526 to 2, you know, at least you've got a brother in arms. You can't be the one.

[Eric]

Yeah, it does put you out on an island, so to speak.

[Big T]

Good one.

[Eric]

But I. I'll tell you why I kind of respect this guy's vote. Because everybody else, up until like a week ago, they're like, half the House of Representatives was a no. And then they all changed their minds because they realized it was going to be a losing no vote. And they didn't want people. When they were running for re election, they didn't want to have that brought up. Like, hey, you voted to not release the Epstein files if it was going to happen anyways. They're like, sure, I'm going to vote yes for it because we can't fight it anymore. So I'll be yes on it to protect myself. This guy Clay doesn't give a. He's like, no, I'm no. What change? I'm assuming that's how he sounds when he speaks.

[Big T]

He's from Louisiana. It's more. I think it's more Cajun.

[Eric]

Yeah, I'm. I'm gonna be knowing that bill. That bill ain't come across my desk. So it is. It is passed through both the House and the Senate with super majority. So it's going to be veto proof. And Trump is signing it today. He doesn't really have a choice. There's not anything that he can do about it. It passed through. He actually made a statement in the Oval Office with mbs, I think, saying, yeah, release, release everything. I'm okay with it now. So now you have some people on the left that are starting to freak out, like, whoa, that was easy. Now why are they all of a sudden saying, yeah, turn this over? I don't think that there's some people that are freaking out that there's going to be like, stuff that's doctored about it or deleted. Like some of the files will be deleted, I don't think. I'm not an expert in how these things happen, but I'm pretty sure it's not like on one guy's computer at the Department of Justice and then that guy just hits the delete button and then those files are gone. I'm pretty sure that there's multiple versions of the file and that would hope. Anytime something gets deleted, there's a digital footprint.

[Big T]

I think there's a lot going on in the government and large corporations everywhere that is far more rudimentary than you'd like to think.

[Eric]

Yeah, but it's not like it's the 1930s when this was, you know, printed on pieces of paper and kept in a filing cabinet. And so you could just, you know, like the Nixon administration shredded their way out of a lot of stuff, by.

[Big T]

The way, kind of related. Do you know the entire Internet basically runs through one company and if they get hacked, like, the whole Internet goes down?

[Eric]

That doesn't seem.

[Big T]

Because it happened the other day. Cloudflare?

[Eric]

Yeah, Cloudflare. Are they like an Internet services company?

[Big T]

I'm not entirely sure how it works. I just know that when they go down, everything goes down.

[Eric]

That's tough. What's the stocking cloud flare looking like?

[Big T]

Whole place.

[Eric]

Aaron, were you surprised? Okay, Is that up or down?

[Big T]

Year to date, that is up 74%.

[Eric]

It seems like a pretty, pretty good company to invest in. I'm not a financial advisor, but if they're that important, then yeah. Aaron, were you surprised that this thing got passed? Surprised?

[Aryan]

No, no, not really, but it seemed inevitable. But I think at the. I'm skeptical. You know, I'm skeptical. I'm neither positive nor negative about it. I just want to See what's in there and we'll see, man. Yeah, something don't smell right. I don't know. Some.

[Eric]

Some.

[Aryan]

It is something right with me.

[Eric]

It is kind of like, to use a football analogy, if all of a sudden the Eagles owner was like, I'd like to introduce a bill to ban the tush push. You guys were right.

[Aryan]

Yeah.

[Eric]

And then you would be like, wait, what's going. Are they. Are they about to trade Jalen Hurts? Like, that's where your mind would go, right?

[Aryan]

Because. Because they were so for it, then so against it, and then unanimously for it. It's like, I don't know, man. This is why I say government. If you ever want to have a semblance of trust with the people, you got to be transparent all the time. Because anytime you. You don't, it just sows discord. And that's. That's what's happening right now.

[Eric]

Yeah. But my guess is that everybody that's running for reelection ever will. Everyone will at some point run for reelection, but everybody was thinking to themselves, I don't want to be a no on this bill. If they knew that it was going to pass anyways, because it seemed like it was going to pass. They had the votes to pass before it went so hard to, like, almost a majority. So if they knew that it was like a losing battle, they would want to look back on that when they're running for reelection to say, hey, I also voted to release those files because all their voters are going to be like, hey, why did you try to protect pedophiles?

[Aryan]

Yeah. I mean, it was. I don't know. It was such a slam dunk in the beginning.

[Eric]

Yeah.

[Aryan]

Like, I did. Something just don't smell right. I don't know, man. Go see, though.

[Eric]

Yeah. So I. I guess that's something that we can ask Pat Ryan about, because I don't know how long the process is going to take to release all that stuff. Then people are going to have to go through it, and there's probably going to be a lot of people that just do, like, Photoshops and fake screenshots of things that are in there. So head on a swivel. Head on a swivel. Don't get got. A lot of people are about to get got. Don't be one of them.

[Big T]

When do they. Do we know when they come out, how long they have?

[Eric]

I don't know what the process is like.

[Aryan]

So.

[Eric]

No, I don't know. But that's. I'm sure that Pat Ryan would have a A better understanding that than I do. So, yeah, it was the Senate voted by unanimous consent, so every senator wrote their name on it, but they didn't actually take a roll call vote. So I guess it's 40, 427 to 1 in the house and then every Senate, every senator technically like wrote their name down, but they didn't do a one by one vote about it.

[Big T]

I didn't know you could do that.

[Eric]

Yeah, I guess if it's just like something easy, they can just say, yeah, what's the difference?

[Big T]

Just vote.

[Eric]

I don't know. I, I, it might save time if they know everyone's for it. What was the, what was the Patriot act vote when that passed? It was pretty close to unanimous. I think it's disappointing. It passed the House 357 to 66 and then it passed the Senate 98 to 1.

[Big T]

The, the recusals on some of these votes. I guess in certain circumstances, like if you have a business interest that's conflicting or something like that. But my understanding is they can just recuse themselves whenever they want. Right. Apparently they can be like, I'm not voting on this.

[Eric]

Yeah, you can do a. Yeah, then.

[Big T]

Why are you there?

[Eric]

Vote present. I don't know.

[Big T]

Let's get somebody in there that's going to vote on this.

[Eric]

Yeah, put your name on it. Put your name.

[Big T]

Unless you have a legitimate interest, conflicting interest, you should have to vote.

[Eric]

I agree, I agree. It has to be like a, like a judge. It's like, hey, I can't, yeah, I can't operate on this boy. This is my son. The judge was a woman. People forget that. But yeah, it's going to be, I guess just buckle up and head on a swivel. There's, there's some other stuff that Big T sent over in the news. I was pumped about this last night. Big T, U.S. soccer.

[Big T]

Footy.

[Eric]

U.S. soccer. What a turnaround for Poke.

[Big T]

Just beat the piss out of a, out of a good team.

[Eric]

Yeah. So I don't, I don't know that much about Uruguay in their current form. I know that historically they've been a very good soccer team. They've had a lot of success at the World Cup. They had some great players. Suarez, Diego, Forlan. In that one World cup with the Jablani ball that nobody knew how to kick except for him. 2010, that was a great World cup, but they've been a powerhouse recently and the US beat them 5 to 1.

[Big T]

Last night without our main team.

[Eric]

Yeah, well, we had, they called up Gio Reina. Right. And he played pretty good.

[Big T]

Did he play last night?

[Eric]

I thought he did, yeah. I thought he had an assist last night.

[Big T]

I only watched a little bit.

[Eric]

Me, too. I was jumping in and out of it because there were college football playoff implications on at the time.

[Big T]

Yeah, he did.

[Aryan]

Yeah.

[Big T]

But most of the starters didn't play.

[Eric]

Yeah, Geo had a nice assist. We had some nice set pieces. I think this is. This is great. This is our last home game before the World cup, right?

[Big T]

I don't know.

[Eric]

I think it is. I think this is one of our last two.

[Big T]

It would make sense until. Usually the couple weeks before they have, like, tune ups, but.

[Eric]

Yeah, now. Yeah, I would say if you did have any more matches scheduled, now would be a good time to just.

[Aryan]

Yeah, we're good.

[Big T]

Unbeaten in the last five, too.

[Eric]

I think our team's ready. So. Yeah, I'm excited about the World Cup. Can't wait for that draw coming in in early December. And then Donnie T. Had the president of FIFA at the White House the other day, and they're announcing a FIFA pass for the World Cup. So you get an expedited passport or visa review. So if you're coming into the States for the World cup, you can avoid the standard rigmarole. And I also heard that FIFA has created their version of the Nobel Peace Prize, the FIFA Peace Prize. Do you have any guess who might be getting that this year?

[Big T]

I mean, I've. I've got a. I've got a guess.

[Eric]

I do, too. I think. Yeah, I think we're probably both guessing.

[Big T]

The same guy for his tremendous work.

[Eric]

In growing the game and in establishing the FIFA pass.

[Big T]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Yeah. Okay. It could be anybody, though. We'll see who. Who that prestigious award goes to when they do.

[Big T]

Had Ronaldo at the White House last night.

[Eric]

He did. Penaldo was there, Penaldo's wife. They had a distinguished list of guests. Mohammed bin Salman from Saudi Arabia, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the owner of the Washington commanders and his wife were there and Elon Musk was there. So real who's who of high society at the White House last night. Big T, also on your sheet, you forwarded over a little math problem for us because apparently University of California, San Diego is having some issues with the people that are being admitted to their college and not being able to do math.

[Big T]

Yeah. So this is from last week and I just forgot to put it in. Have y' all read this report?

[Eric]

I saw the first question.

[Big T]

It's. It's bad, dude. And I've. I've been Telling y', all, like, just from everything I see anecdotally online and whatever. Like, every teacher I hear talk is like, y' all don't understand how bad education has gotten after Covid. Like, kids can't read. They can't do math. I think it's one out of every eight. So what, like 15, 16% of UC San Diego freshmen are now taking this class called Math two, which is, like, remedial, first through eighth grade math.

[Eric]

That's crazy. They called Math two. What's in Math one?

[Big T]

I'd hate to see what Math one is, but the. Here they. The school released a report detailing, you know, everything surrounding this class. Here's a. Here's a problem for you that 25% of the students in this class got wrong. Seven plus two equals blank plus six. Now, if that takes you longer than a second and a half, you should be expelled immediately. I think college is not for you. That's okay. There are plenty of other things that you can do with your life and make a lot of money and be a very successful, productive member of society. But if you get that question wrong, you're. You're out. And this is the. Supposedly the sixth best public institution in America, by the way.

[Aryan]

Hmm.

[Eric]

So the answer is three, right?

[Big T]

It is three.

[Eric]

Just want to make sure you nailed it. Good, good. So 25% of students got that wrong.

[Big T]

Here's one.

[Eric]

I mean, 75% got it right.

[Big T]

That's what you're taking away from this.

[Eric]

That's a good amount, by the way.

[Big T]

Good. I bet a lot of kids in math, too, couldn't figure that one out either.

[Eric]

Probably.

[Big T]

Here's. This is a real question on this. This worksheet. Find 13 -8, 99% got it correct. Someone got that wrong.

[Eric]

Okay, I could.

[Big T]

At UC San Diego.

[Eric]

Yeah.

[Big T]

If you.

[Eric]

If you have, like, a couple thousand students taking. I could see one of them rushing their way through that.

[Big T]

Three fourths minus one third. A third of students got that wrong. Up and down.

[Eric]

Wait, wait, wait. 3/4 minus 1/3 is 1 half, right?

[Big T]

Well, so it would be 9/12 -4/12. So it'd be 5/12. So it'd be just under a half.

[Eric]

Just. Oh, I was thinking 75%. And then you take. What was the second part of that?

[Big T]

A third.

[Eric]

So you take a third of that, which would be 25, 75 minus 25% equals 50%. Right.

[Big T]

You're not taking a. It's a third. One third, not one third of three fourths.

[Eric]

Oh, okay. All right.

[Big T]

So Three, four minus one third. You multiply them both to get to a common denominator. It would be 912 minus 4 twelfths.

[Eric]

I gotta be honest with you. It's a once a year. I will, I will think about a fraction.

[Big T]

It is actually insane that you got remarkably close to that answer with insane logic.

[Eric]

That's insane logic.

[Big T]

Well, yeah, because it was, it was wrong.

[Eric]

Okay, but. But it makes sense the way I was thinking about it. I was just thinking about it wrong actually.

[Big T]

If. What if will you. If you had done 75% minus 33%.

[Eric]

Yeah.

[Big T]

Which would be what? 42 then I think is 5/12. 42%. That sounds about right.

[Aryan]

Yeah.

[Big T]

So then you would have actually gotten to the correct answer. You just did one third of three fourths, not one third by itself.

[Eric]

Okay. Yeah, I did it the wrong way.

[Aryan]

Yeah.

[Big T]

But yeah. So nobody at UCSD can do third grade math.

[Eric]

The only time I think about fractions in my day to day life, I think it's like if I'm trying to figure out what somebody's shooting percentage was or a completion percentage, I think that's pretty much it. Now my job is definitely different than I'd say most other people's jobs. But I can't imagine that people are out there subtracting fractions all the time.

[Big T]

But it's something you should know how to do.

[Eric]

You probably should. I should know how to do that.

[MacKenzie]

Like baking sometimes. If you have to like double recipe or whatever. That's the only reason I know. Certain.

[Aryan]

Yeah.

[Eric]

But I, I can do that because it's just. That's multiplication.

[Big T]

And this comes on the heels of that report from Harvard saying that basically we've been handing out A's like candy on Halloween. We're going to try to stop doing that. And the students flipped out and had mental breakdowns.

[Eric]

Yeah. Do you think that, you think that this is because of the prevalence of like calculators on your phones?

[Big T]

I think AI is a lot of it.

[Eric]

AI Math. How good is AI at doing high school level math?

[Big T]

I'm sure exceptional.

[Eric]

I still don't know, man. I've got at least two classes I took in high school. I'd say probably three. Yeah. Probably three classes that I have not thought about since I stepped foot outside that door. I don't think I've thought about trigonometry. I don't think I've thought about algebra 2. And I have not thought about really anything I learned in chemistry. Chemistry is an insanely hard subject to be teaching high schoolers. Like juniors in high school. You think it's so hard. I also may have had just a bad chemistry teacher.

[Aryan]

I don't know.

[Big T]

I had the best chemistry teacher. Kim Kat Hayes. I think, I think that was her, her social media handle, Shout Out.

[Eric]

Kim Cat Gail Hayes.

[Big T]

I wonder if she's still active.

[Eric]

Yeah, I don't know. I think, I think that's one of those classes where your teacher makes a huge difference in chemistry because it's so abstract and so complicated that they need somebody that can explain it to even the dumbest amongst us.

[Big T]

Kim Cat Hayes is no longer on Twitter.

[Eric]

Aryan, what's your, what's your relationship with fractions like, these days?

[Aryan]

I mean, I could do basic fractions, but there's just no practical use in my life for them. I'm just reading some of the way, like the report and how it was conducted.

[Eric]

Does it seem, does it look legit?

[Aryan]

Well, I mean, yeah, it's, I mean, it's a good sample size, I guess, but I think it's just not, I guess I'm just not surprised. Like, if you, I've said this before on this podcast, but like my, My, my finance guy, we were talking and he says if you want to know who somebody is, you, you look at their receipts and see what they spend their money on. And this is clearly not a country that cares about education. And so this is not surprising. Like, it's going to continue, it's going to continue to decline. Like if y' all see some of the school, like some of my public schools I went to, it's so underfunded and it's so, like it's not prioritized. And so if something's not prioritized, you're not going to get any results out of it. And this is not.

[Big T]

But these are kids going to the sixth best public college in the country.

[Aryan]

That's not. But that's not what, but it's, it's, it's across the board, right? So if you're, if you're. So I gotta be careful about what I say here, but a lot of the rhetoric on right wing Twitter, right, would be, this is DEI at its finest. Right? It's when you let kids in that are, that are unprepared.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Right.

[Aryan]

But, but the issue is you're not, you're not, you're not even giving kids a chance. Like, if you look at how other countries prioritize education, it's night and day. It's night and day. We live in a country that prioritizes entertainment and so kids don't care. And so this is, it's not surprising.

[Big T]

I don't disagree with you there.

[Aryan]

Yep.

[Eric]

Yeah. I mean, I don't know, I don't know math at that. It's not also a true measure of how smart you are. Just asking like certain math problems. There are different types of intelligence too. But that's bad. That's, that's like basic, really basic count on your fingers type stuff.

[Aryan]

Yeah. But to your point, that's, that's absolutely correct too. So like I, like my father's a PhD, my father, my stepfather's a PhD geneticist. Like super smart.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Right.

[Aryan]

But cannot spell for. And we, we joke, joke about it all the time like in our family. But like when it comes to his specific field. Brilliant. Right? Like did MAD publish papers? He's a scientist. We can't spell for. So I, I think, I think the knee jerk reaction in this is like, oh, kids are stupid. I don't necessarily think that's the case, but I do think we should prioritize education in a much more stringent way. But we're not going to. We're on the heels of an administration that wants to get rid of the department of education.

[Eric]

I think that math is a funny one because it is being replaced more and more by computers. So like when we were growing up we had calculators that could do things that our parents calculators couldn't do and their calculators could do things that the old school like abacus thing couldn't do that their grandparents had. So it's getting more and more automated. But also if you want to keep innovating, you have to have an understanding of why those equations are important and why you're using these different inputs for certain numbers. If you're trying to like think outside the box or invent something new or do advanced physics, you have to have a deep understanding of like why you're using these equations to get your, your result. And I feel like that is something that, just using chat, GPT or AI for all these math issues, I feel like that's going to be harmed in the long term. But I'm also an idiot that sucks at math, so I could be wrong.

[Aryan]

I don't think you're an idiot because you suck at math is a, it's like a skill set that you harness. It's not some innate knowledge. You could get better at math, you just have to practice at it.

[Eric]

No, but I mean when I, when.

[Aryan]

I retired, when I retired I took, I wanted to get back into school and I wanted to do physics and I realized I hadn't taken a math class in years and I knew very little about math. And so I started taking math classes for like six months. And when I. On my entry level test, I didn't know anything. And then I gradually got better because it's this tool that you sharpen. Like if you don't use it every day and there's no like direct application in your life, you're not going to use it. But then towards the end of it, I got really, really good and I started progressing really fast, but I stopped because I was like, I'm not. I realized I wasn't that interested in it. Like, I didn't wake up thinking about doing physics. I was just interested in the conceptual things of physics. But I think just, I mean, to your point, because you're not good at math doesn't mean you're stupid. Like you could have another passion, you have an interest or other skill set. I always thought school was backwards anyways. Like instead of covering all the basics, figure out what kids are passionate about and push them into those. Because there are kids that are passionate about math and they're more inclined to like do better and be passionate about it because that's what they like. But again, we, we don't emphasize that in this culture, in this nation. We emphasize entertainment, which I'm a byproduct of. I can't totally complain, but that's. Yeah, I didn't have many options when I was little.

[Eric]

I wonder if there are going to be classes about like social media, like how to go.

[Big T]

There are in college.

[Eric]

How to go viral, how to get numbers.

[Big T]

I took a social media class in college.

[Aryan]

How to go viral would be disgusting.

[Eric]

It would be.

[Big T]

There's actually. UT has a social media class now that's like massive on Tik Tok. The professor does like these skits and videos that go like super viral on TikTok.

[Eric]

Was he teaching.

[Big T]

It's a social media class.

[Eric]

Just teaching about social media on social media?

[Big T]

I think so, yeah. Let me find the. But I, I see their tick tocks all the time. They have.

[Aryan]

I think that would be a good.

[Big T]

Crazy numbers.

[Aryan]

Like a mandatory class for kids like in elementary to start understanding social media. How do you. How you getting played, how to work the apps, how to, you know, look out for certain algorithmic traps, stuff like that.

[Big T]

Like look, they've got 23 million, 7,500,000.

[Eric]

It's pretty good. Yeah. You teach the kids about confirmation bias.

[Aryan]

Absolutely.

[Eric]

All that shit the only math I care about right now is the following metrics. The AP Top 25 poll, the College Football Coaches poll, the Massey computer ratings, the Sagarin ratings, the ESPN fpi, the ESPN strength of record.

[Big T]

That one's.

[Eric]

I think that's about identical. I think that's about it.

[Big T]

I did look at Sagarin this morning and he would have James Madison as a six point favorite over Tulane on a neutral field.

[Eric]

Interesting. Yeah, very interesting. So last night they did the, the College Football Playoff bracket show and they announced the top 25 teams. JMU was not ranked at all in their top 25, despite being ahead of Tulane and North Texas in both the coaches poll, the top 25 and all those other metrics that I mentioned. Right there they are left out on the outside looking in. And Tulane football, you may remember, if you watch football on tv, you might remember Tulane as a team that got beat by 22 points to buy UTSA a couple weeks ago. That's probably where you most recently saw them. And their own coach said, we're an average team. I watch this practice today, we're average. If We're a top 25 team, there must be a lot of bad football going on. So that's, that's from their coach. That's from Tulane's coach. Jmu, I understand our conference stinks this year. That's not our fault that the Sun Belt's bad. We are. We're not just beating our conference, we are crushing Las Vegas too. So if you look at Tulane and James Madison and their combined season record against the spread, when it comes to how many points above or below the spread on the season are they. JMU has beaten the spread by 92 and a half points this year. Tulane has lost against the spread by 37 points this year. Makes you think pretty significant difference. Tulane's defensive drive touchdown rate is way higher. It's almost double JMU's. And JMU's offensive touchdown rate is higher than two lanes too. So I don't know. I don't know. I guess my, my theory is that the College Football Playoff committee just looks at the American Conference and says that's the best group of five conference. So whoever is leading that, we're going to use them and they're going to be the representative. That's what I think, that they've, they've kind of pigeonholed themselves into going down that line and everyone that they keep putting up there keeps losing the week after. So who knows, maybe, maybe Temple pulls out a miracle and beats Tulane this weekend. I believe it's an eight point spread. So it's not crazy to think that Temple could win, but it's going to be tough.

[Big T]

The problem is you need to lane to lose to likely North Texas in the AAC championship game, in which case they might put North Texas ahead of you.

[Eric]

Yeah, I think, I think they would do that for sure. I think the only path is if Tulane loses to Temple.

[Aryan]

Would.

[Eric]

Then Tulane plays against North Texas?

[Big T]

Well, if they lose to Temple, they'd have two conference losses and they'd probably be out of the conference championship.

[Eric]

So in that case it would be who?

[Big T]

Navy, Navy, North Texas and ECU are the other three teams with one loss.

[Eric]

Okay. I'm just, I'm trying to figure out.

[Big T]

The path if Tulane loses another regular season game. You're in good shape.

[Eric]

Not necessarily because then if UNT beats.

[Big T]

But now that I'm looking at their schedule, they didn't play a power five team all year. They got killed. The one ranked team they played, which was South Florida, I think it'd be tight, but I think you, you could be in okay shape.

[Eric]

And we have to win our last two games, so we got to be. We got to take care of business. So that's not, it's not impossible to think that JMU could lose. They don't look like they could lose right now, but it's very much a possibility that Washington State beats them this weekend. It could happen. I think that if Navy and North Texas play in the American championship, I feel like if Navy wins, Navy's going to get in.

[Big T]

No.

[Eric]

You don't think so? You don't think they do that?

[Big T]

No.

[Eric]

Because they're not allowed to count the result of the Army Navy game. Correct.

[Big T]

That is true. They already have two losses though.

[Eric]

Yeah.

[Big T]

And they would have another game looming, which nobody knows how that would work.

[Eric]

Well, they're supposed to ignore it, the committee, which is insane. Yeah. Just not count that.

[Big T]

No, if Navy wins, I think JMU would get it.

[Eric]

Okay.

[Big T]

Just don't worry about it. Just. Just control what you can control.

[Eric]

That's right. I got, I got my opportunity is.

[Big T]

That'S what we can control now.

[Eric]

I do think that it's. It's a legitimate gripe to say that JMU is a different team right now than they were when they lost to Louisville. And it's not like Louisville smoked them either. It was a very, very close game. JMU had the lead at halftime. There were a couple plays they gave up in the second half, like big, explosive long plays. But they're a different team now. Like, our quarterback got his knee repaired in December of last year, and he wasn't able to run in that game. We had to sub him out and put Sluka in every time we needed to run, like an option play where the quarterback could run. Now, Barnett is super effective with his legs and his arm, and he's healthy. I feel like you have to. You have to take that into account, too. And when you make your schedule, you play your conference, you have no idea if the conference is going to be good or bad that year. The Sunbelts had years where it's been incredible. This is a very down year for the Sunbelt. We scheduled our out of conference games. Who knows when those got put on the schedule, but it feels like. Feels like it's a tough break for jmu.

[Big T]

Yeah, it's crazy, but all you can do is go out and beat the hell out of Washington State. I'm on the Dukes. Let's go Dukes minus 14.

[Eric]

Roll Dukes. Arian, are you on the Dukes?

[Aryan]

What is the Dukes?

[Big T]

James Madison.

[Aryan]

They're the Dukes.

[Eric]

Yeah, the Dukes of jmu.

[Aryan]

Didn't know. I'm not on the Dukes.

[Eric]

Come on.

[Aryan]

What do you mean, am I rooting for them? Yeah, I didn't even know what they were called. I don't root for them. You can just say, go, Dukes.

[Eric]

Yeah, that sounded good. Yeah.

[Big T]

Is that a question?

[Aryan]

Yeah, I rescind.

[Eric]

Duke up, Duke down. I disagree. And if you look at Tulane's best wins, they beat. They beat Duke. Duke lost to UConn. Duke's not a great football team.

[Big T]

They got lucky that Duke and Northwestern are actually mid, like, solid.

[Eric]

Well, Duke. Duke is technically in the run for the ACC championship, which is crazy, but what are they, 500?

[Big T]

They're six.

[Aryan]

And what's the name of the head coach there?

[Big T]

Cutcliffe. No, he's been gone. It's. It's Manny Diaz.

[Aryan]

That's a dope name.

[Big T]

You know what Cutcliffe would do? He had their. Their signal guys who would signal in the place. He had them in UT orange so that you could spot him on the sideline. But he chose that color on purpose.

[Aryan]

Damn. Hart was always with the balls. Yeah, I like that.

[Eric]

I like it. Yeah. Tulane, I guess. Yes, they did beat Northwestern. Northwestern's had a pretty decent year for Northwestern as far as Wildcats go.

[Big T]

David Braun. Good coach.

[Eric]

Good coach. Duke, I don't think that's a very. That's not. That's not a sexy win. People are talking about that like, oh.

[Big T]

They went out and scheduled three power 14s.

[Eric]

They did. They did do that. They also got their ass kicked by Ole Miss.

[Big T]

A lot of teams have gotten their ass kicked by Ole Miss.

[Eric]

Ass kicked. Built to ass for, for the Green Wave. Did you see the doomsday scenario that's looming with the acc?

[Big T]

So by doomsday you mean Georgia Tech loses to Pitt and then the conference championship game is pit and Virginia.

[Eric]

No. The potential six way tie for first place in the acc.

[Big T]

No, I have not.

[Eric]

Yeah, it's a possibility.

[Big T]

So that would be Virginia loses to Virginia Tech. Georgia Tech loses to Pitt.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Yep.

[Big T]

Duke wins out.

[Eric]

Yep.

[Big T]

Who else is up there? Smu. And Miami would win out.

[Eric]

Miami wins out. SMU can split.

[Big T]

Oh, they, they only have, do they only have one loss?

[Eric]

I believe so.

[Big T]

Yeah. The ACC is a, it's a mess.

[Eric]

And then if Pitt split between Georgia Tech and Miami, they would also be 6 and 2.

[Big T]

Yeah. The good news is we made all these conferences have 18 teams so nobody plays each other and then they can all end up six and two and nobody knows who wins.

[Eric]

College football is so funny. Where it's like we're going to, we're going to come up with this great playoff idea which everyone has always wanted and then our judgment on who gets in is just going to be locking a bunch of dudes in a room to talk about football and that's it.

[Big T]

There were a better way.

[Eric]

It kind of makes you miss the BCS computers.

[Big T]

He's been on this for years.

[Eric]

The BCS computers have JMU ahead. That's all I'm saying. Before we get back to macrodosing, it's brought to you by Sport Clips. A classy rookie mistake, classic rookie mistake is not going to Sport Clips Haircuts. Guys come in looking like they've just been sacked by a 250 pound linebacker. But they walk out looking like a first round pick. Sport Clip stylists have the playbook for a clean cut. They've mastered the X's and O's of men's hair. And with the MVP haircut experience, you get a hot steam towel massaging shampoo and you get the precision cut. It's the whole nine yards. When you step into Sport Clips, you're walking into a zone for guys. The games are on. The stylists just get it. This is a place designed for guys to win and walk out with a haircut. Ready for the highlight reel. Sport Clips. It's a game changer. Today's episode is also brought to you by Stella Blue Coffee and their new canned Lattes. I have a canned latte from Stella Blue every morning. It is delicious. I like the sweet cream. The espresso sweet cream is very tasty. They also have a mocha flavor. It's 100 Colombian coffee. Each can has 190 milligrams of natural caffeine. It's a great source of protein, and it comes in two smooth flavors. You get cafe mocha, you get espresso sweet cream. Whether you're braving the morning commute or you're chasing your pup, Stella Blue cans are for those always on the go and for those who care, Stella Blue is more than just great coffee. It's about giving back. Big cat named the brand after his rescue dog, Stella, who inspired our mission to help more dogs find their forever home. Every purchase supports animal rescue organizations. So when you drink Stella Blue, you're not just fueling your day. You're saving a dog's life. Try the new cans today. Taste the difference, make a difference. All new Stella Blue coffee canned lattes now [e-mail] now more macro dosing. Aaron, what. What. What you got going on right now? What's on your mind?

[Aryan]

I'm locked in, dog. I'll keep it a beam. We got a championship game this Sunday, and it's all hands on. It's all hands on deck, you know, so I've been. I've been grinding. I put in three new plays. I'm gonna put in another one.

[Big T]

I was just gonna ask if there were any new wrinkles.

[Aryan]

Gotta be new wrinkles. You have to show them something they haven't seen before. That's. Like I said, that's been my philosophy all year. You make them prepare for something and then show them something that they haven't seen. And then they have to adjust, right? And then you have variations off of that, and that's how you keep defense on their toes, especially at this level. So I'm locked in, dog. Like, that's all there is locked in. The golf swing's looking good. I feel like I finally got a hold of my driver in a way that's. I have a consistent miss now.

[Eric]

That's good.

[Aryan]

Yeah, I'm excited about that.

[Big T]

Do you think in the 96 hours you have remaining, you could install a triple option that'll give them something they've never seen before?

[Aryan]

I don't think at this age, the problem I have. So when I first started, like, scripting an offense for Little League, I was way more optimistic about how disciplined the defense was, so I would script plays in order to fool them, but they were so out of place that they were in position.

[Big T]

That they were in position.

[Aryan]

Yeah, yeah. And so it's really about keeping it simple. And it's like Madden almost. It's like you have to just. You have to trick them with motion. Not, not just like actual motion, but just like visual optics. Like, they're still kids, right? Like, so they're not disciplined. You can yell at them a thousand times and say you have the edge, set the edge, and they'll see a ball and go. Or they'll see a guy and they'll run after the guy. Right? It's just as children, right? And so I. I play to that now. And that's as. And the interesting part is we played this team earlier in the season. I could see my play call was extremely different and. And I could see what I was trying to do. Clearly wasn't able to do it. And then like my last game was beautifully orchestrated and executed by the squad. So. Yeah, man, it's really just knowing, Knowing your personnel, knowing their personnel, because in this, in this age group or in this league, you have to. There's like, they have these things that you have to call 12 play kids and kids that have to get 12 plays or else you lose the game. Like, if there's a kid on your team that doesn't get his 12 plays, like, you lose the game. And usually they're not the most athletic, you know what I'm saying? They try hard, whatever the case may be, but it is what it is. So if you see a 12 play kid in a position, you got to take advantage of that.

[Big T]

How do you call the plays? Do you just send a different kid into the huddle every time?

[Aryan]

No, I developed a system initially. Again, I overthought it, so I'm thinking they're on the sidelines looking at my signs. So initially I had three different color systems. And I have a wristband with three different colored sections.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

And I.

[Aryan]

And at any given time I could be like red. 3 and 3 means a different plan each color. And it's very, very, very intricate system. But then I realized ain't nobody looking at me call the number. And so I'm down to like two color system now.

[Eric]

Nice. Are you gonna get rings made if you guys win, like real ones?

[Aryan]

No.

[Eric]

Hell yeah.

[Big T]

Oh, I mean, you can get them. No, nobody's saying put diamonds in them.

[Aryan]

Yeah, I think they're gonna have like some kind of. Some kind of ring made, but yeah, I'm gonna be late to the banquet, though, because my homeboy is having his 40th in Panama City and it's the day I land, and so I land at 2:30. The banquet's at 4, so I'm have to hustle hungover to the bank.

[Big T]

Panama City. What a. What a call.

[Aryan]

It's. It's actually Panama. Not the.

[Big T]

Oh, Panama City, Panama.

[Aryan]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not the one in Florida.

[Big T]

Not Panama City Beach, Florida.

[Aryan]

No, no, no, no, no.

[Big T]

That's an even. That's an even. Wilder. Where's the. Where's the connection to Panama?

[Aryan]

I have no idea. I've never even been. I haven't even heard too much about it. But that's where he said we going, so we going.

[Eric]

I went there like three years ago. Four years ago.

[Aryan]

That's good.

[Eric]

You're gonna have a good time. Yes, Panama. Panama is a fun place.

[Aryan]

Can't wait. I'm bringing. Bringing the sticks too. I'm get a couple rounds out there.

[Eric]

No, Toosie.

[Aryan]

What is that?

[Eric]

This is Tuzi, capital of the world.

[Aryan]

What's Toosie?

[Big T]

Isn't that a drug?

[Eric]

Earmuffs. Tell her earmuffs area. His daughter's right there. Yeah, it's like the best drug ever.

[Aryan]

Wow.

[Eric]

I mean, don't do it.

[Aryan]

Tell me more.

[Eric]

Not even once. Not even once. I know. It's like the, like, pink cocaine stuff.

[Big T]

Oh, the. Maybe a football player.

[Eric]

Stefan Diggs maybe might have had that on a boat.

[Big T]

Allegedly.

[MacKenzie]

No, he is a father. Well, he's a father to multiple.

[Aryan]

But Cardi B and her baby, hey, we don't judge.

[Eric]

We don't judge. We don't.

[Aryan]

Ain't that right, baby? Ain't that right?

[MacKenzie]

She's like, no, I got a trust fund.

[Eric]

Facts, you know, she is. She. She puts up with a lot with. With old Diggsy.

[Big T]

Are they together?

[Eric]

Yeah.

[Aryan]

Yeah.

[MacKenzie]

Yes. But I believe there was a bit. I don't know if issue is the right word. I don't know Cardi B and Stefan Diggs's relationship intricacies, but I believe he has fathered several children with several other women since him and Cardi B. Have gotten together. Similar to a. Maybe a bit of a Tyreek Hill situation. But I think they follow different rules than you and I do.

[Eric]

I'll just say that Panama City is a very, very fun place. Very fun play. Very few rules in Panama. I could see it becoming like a top destination spot pretty quickly. So have fun. Food's pretty good.

[Aryan]

I'm not gonna do no pink cocaine, though. I have a fear of cocaine in general.

[MacKenzie]

So, yeah, good fear to have.

[Aryan]

Actually, I've actually never done cocaine.

[Eric]

It's a good fear to have.

[Big T]

Good.

[Aryan]

I don't know if you're surprised about that or not, but I'm not.

[Big T]

I'm.

[Eric]

Not a. I'm not a 2i. I actually might be addicted to 2c. I've only done it one time, but it was just so fun that I was like, it's good that this is not in the United States yet. And then now it's come to the United States. It is now it's here. And I, I haven't done it in the States.

[Aryan]

What was it like? Tell me, sell me on it.

[Eric]

Well, it's like a mix of. It's a mix of cocaine. I think sometimes ketamine is in there, but it's mostly like cocaine, mdma. And then there's something else that's usually put in, like maybe a little bit of ketamine or something that's more of like a chiller thing, which sounds really dangerous because when you're talking about like depressants and stimulants at the same time. Not a good idea to combine the two. I was completely ignorant to what was actually in Tusi before I tried it, but I had.

[Aryan]

You just were like, yo, what is that? Let me do it.

[Eric]

Yeah, it was like, I knew that it was like cocaine based and that it was a very popular drug in Panama.

[Aryan]

Yo, you are a brave soldier dog. That is insane to me. You just saw a stimming in. Somebody was like, it's kind of like cocaine. You're like, fuck it, let it ride.

[Eric]

Yeah, listen, I was on a bachelor party, I'd had a few beverages, inhibitions were down a little bit. So I was like, yeah, I'll give it a shot, whatever. And I was like, wow, I get it. Get me out of this country before I, before I get more of it.

[Aryan]

Before I get a wife.

[Eric]

So I just flew back. That is also a thing over there. Prostitution is legal in Panama.

[Aryan]

I will be passing on that.

[Eric]

Yeah, I passed on it as well. But it was very much a situation where that it's very, very out of the open. Like I would walk into a casino that they had there and there would be like four women that would just come up to me and be like, hey, how's it going? And that's what they did for a living. So you gotta head on again.

[Aryan]

Don't sell yourself short, man, you're a good looking guy.

[Eric]

No, it was. They were a hundred percent prostitutes, which that's fine. They're just. Listen, they're. They got to make a living. They're out there putting. They had a lot of lines in the water, seeing who gets a nibble. But I can see more and more like bachelor parties going to Panama over the next 10 years. But it's a fun city. I'm not Talking about the 2C, not talking about prostitution. It's a fun city. You'll have a good time.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

When cool creamy ranch meets tangy bold buffalo.

[Big T]

The whole is greater than the sum of its sauce. Say howdy, partner.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

To new buffalo ranch sauce only at McDonald's for a limited time at participating McDonald's.

[Aryan]

Another dog update. Okay, I'm in talks with a puppy breeder.

[Big T]

Wow.

[Eric]

All right.

[Aryan]

I am in talks with the puppy breeder, and I think I'm going to pull this trigger.

[MacKenzie]

May we ask what breed it is?

[Aryan]

A Rhodesian Labrador. Rhodesian Ridgeback.

[MacKenzie]

Okay. I was like, do they make those?

[Eric]

Yay.

[Aryan]

Sorry, it probably make. They make everything. But, yeah, I'm in talks and I have three names in the chamber.

[Big T]

Do you know male or female?

[Aryan]

Yeah, I'm gonna have a dude. I don't want to deal with, like, periods and stuff. That's okay. No disrespect, ladies.

[MacKenzie]

Look, neither do I.

[Aryan]

Imagine notes, I said. Yeah, I feel you. Oh, he's sending them in batches. Okay, so I have my. My assistant on it. So I'll have pictures soon of. Of the potential puppy.

[Big T]

When do. Do you know? So they've already been born.

[Aryan]

They have been born.

[Big T]

So this. This could be soon.

[Aryan]

Yes.

[Eric]

Ooh.

[Aryan]

So I have a pic of the older brother. That's a gorgeous looking right there.

[Eric]

So wait, it's down to two.

[Aryan]

Down to what?

[Big T]

Two what?

[Eric]

Oh, you said your pick of the older brother.

[MacKenzie]

No, there is no.

[Eric]

This is a picture of. Okay, gotcha.

[Aryan]

Yeah. So this. This is the. The bloodline. You know what I'm saying?

[Eric]

Okay. This is.

[Aryan]

Yeah, this is like.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Oh, yeah.

[Big T]

What are the names?

[Aryan]

Pick of his mom. Huh?

[Big T]

What are the names?

[Aryan]

Hold on. She had him. Hold on. What names did I have? I. I had him in a car when I was in a car.

[Big T]

You don't remember?

[Aryan]

No, I don't got a lot of bad. I don't got a bandwidth left. Yeah, a lot of bandwidth left. Big D. Can't save it for dog names, man.

[Big T]

I just figured for your dog you would have remembered. You're the one who brought it up. I figured that was the next logical step, was you were going to tell us the names.

[Aryan]

Hey, I took the Step in getting the dog. Don't ran me about the name.

[Big T]

I'm not. I just. That seemed like where you were going next.

[Aryan]

Guy doesn't even know what a name is. One was. I don't remember. They're coming to me. Hold on.

[MacKenzie]

Oh, they're pup. Them as puppies is so cute.

[Eric]

Yeah, we got to think of a great name.

[MacKenzie]

I liked Mackenzie's Brewer idea.

[Eric]

Brewer's a great name. Yeah, it is, but it's a little.

[Aryan]

I need a little bit more, like, unique. Not saying that's not, but okay. I don't know.

[Eric]

Here's.

[Aryan]

Here's a picture of his brother. Must send it to the group chat.

[Eric]

Are you going to go out and buy, like, you know, all the stuff? Get him a crate, a bed, a leash?

[Aryan]

He's going to be. He's going to live a good life. He has no idea how his life's about to change.

[MacKenzie]

Aryan, this is a very, very majestic dog.

[Aryan]

Isn't it, though? That's what I thought.

[Big T]

I'm gonna send you a Neyland Stadium dog bed.

[Eric]

Oh, the checkerboard.

[Big T]

I don't know if it. But I've seen that they have them. I don't know if it's checkered, so.

[Eric]

Like at the bottom it might be. Might be green.

[Big T]

Yeah, it's like the field.

[Eric]

That's incredible.

[Big T]

Yeah, look at that.

[Eric]

That's a fantastic dog bed.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Yeah.

[Eric]

This dog's about to get pampered as.

[Aryan]

Yeah, he's only gonna eat the finest of bits.

[Eric]

There's another news story that came out last night. I'd like to hear you guys take on it. Bill Belichick was spotted around town last night out on a date with his girlfriend, the beautiful Jordan Hudson. She was at her cheerleading competition cheer extreme All Stars. And he was being a supportive boyfriend. And then people have a problem with it for some reason.

[Big T]

This is the first thing that I've. You know. No, it's not. The whole situation's odd. This is the oddest thing that's happened in the whole thing is that she's on an adult cheerleading team. Like. Like rec. Cheerleading? Yep.

[MacKenzie]

Is she 24?

[Big T]

This is the first I've heard of such a thing. And like in the picture, there's a guy who can't be younger than 44 on her team. Like, what? I didn't know this was an industry.

[Eric]

I think some people just like activities. I think they like having an. A group of people that they socialize with, that they practice something with. They learn a routine and then they go out There and they execute said routine. Something to look forward to after work for a lot of them. Because I know in high school and in college there are cheerleading competitions where you travel for them, you learn your routine. But also those cheerleading teams are in fact leading cheers at sports games.

[Big T]

Yeah, they're on sometimes scholarships to do that.

[Eric]

Yeah.

[Big T]

And that's a college activity.

[Eric]

But in this, it just appears that they're cheerleading just to. They're cheering.

[Big T]

Well, this is like the dance gymnastics kind of cheerleading.

[Eric]

Yeah. You do tumbling and things like that. Yeah, but I think this was a non tumbling event, so I don't really understand.

[Big T]

Well, I mean, they're throwing them up in the air.

[Aryan]

Look, she got some on him.

[Eric]

Yeah, she sure does.

[Aryan]

There's no way, bro. Like, if my daughter decides to cheer, I'm reluctantly going to a cheer thing.

[Eric]

Sorry.

[Aryan]

This cheering does not excite me. But I'll go to support my baby.

[Eric]

I wonder if he's my 24 year.

[Aryan]

Old girlfriend, is a part of a chair. Ain't no fucking way you gonna get me to go watch that shit.

[Big T]

No, especially he's. They've got a. They have a game on Saturday. Most college football coaches don't see their family for five months. And this guy's a cheerleading competition. Not that that's a good thing. I'm just saying they're. They work 24, 7.

[Eric]

Maybe they're married. Maybe it's a secret marriage. And he is, he is seeing his family.

[Big T]

Who knows? She actually had a banger tweet this morning. Did you see it?

[MacKenzie]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Pablo Torres podcast was named as one of the. The best podcasts of the year. The episode that he did diving into the Jordan Hudson, Bill Belichick thing and then she just quote, tweeted it and said, you're welcome. Pretty good. It's queen. Yeah, it's a queen move. I think that Bill might be. He might be focusing his mind on the cheerleading competition and getting back to like the old Belichick ways like secretly filming her opponents.

[Aryan]

Figure out what they're going to do.

[Eric]

Ways to counter that.

[Big T]

This is actually, I was leaning Duke this week. I'm going to go bet Duke right now. Actually, after this revelation they're gonna have. They've got no film study going on over there.

[Eric]

Absolutely none. Now if UNC beats Duke, that would mean that Duke is just a complete fraud and that any team that beat Duke this season should not count that as a quality win. We can agree on that, right? Like if you can't beat UNC and their head coach Is studying adult cheerleading at times when he should be watching film. I don't think that you should deserve to call yourself a quality win if somebody beats you.

[Big T]

I'm not even kidding. The line has moved from 6 to 7. I'm curious if a bunch of people went and bet Duke.

[Eric]

Yeah, you're right.

[Big T]

66% of the bets placed are on Duke.

[Eric]

That is a. That's a pretty good indicator of where his head's at right now. I think that Bill is just straight up retired. I think this is what retirement looks like for a lot of, like, lifetime football coaches, especially in the NFL.

[Aryan]

This is his crossing guard gig. Were you just doing something for the community?

[Eric]

Yeah, exactly. He's like, you know what? I think I'm done with the NFL. I'll just retire and coach a college football team and just spend time with my girlfriend. Like, this is him on permanent vacation.

[Aryan]

Kind of lit. Not gonna lie.

[Eric]

Still happens to get paid for it. Keep his boys employed, I think. Yeah. Matt, Patricia dodged a big time bullet by not going to Uncle Big time.

[Aryan]

I got the name updates. There was four. Okay, y' all ready? Kaius.

[Big T]

Can you spell that?

[Aryan]

C, A, I, U, S. Okay. Kaius, Locks. L, O, X. Solo and Django. Me too.

[Big T]

Are there explanations for those first couple, or you just like the way they sound?

[Aryan]

Chaos sounds dope. Lox sounds dope. I mean, they all sound dope. That's why. Ooh, that one's kind of cool too.

[MacKenzie]

Lox is tough because you are comparing it to a thinly smoked salmon.

[Big T]

That's where my mind went as well.

[Eric]

Mm.

[Aryan]

I've never heard of this fish.

[MacKenzie]

Lox is what.

[Big T]

It's on bagels.

[MacKenzie]

It's on bagels. It's a really thinly sliced raw salmon.

[Eric]

What's. I think it's smoke or smoked salmon.

[Aryan]

Yeah.

[MacKenzie]

And it's locks like lox. I don't know if that.

[Aryan]

Well, I was. I was talking about the. The rap group with Jada Kiss in it.

[Eric]

Yep.

[Aryan]

I've never heard of. I. I thought that was just called salmon. I didn't know it was news to me.

[MacKenzie]

But anywho, maybe that's America's thing, but.

[Eric]

Yeah, I think locks is a Jewish thing, Right? Yeah, Like, Jewish people have put locks on bagels for a very long time. Yeah, it's like a morning fish.

[MacKenzie]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Yeah.

[Aryan]

No, I've had it plenty of times. I just didn't know it was called.

[Eric]

It's very good. I like salmon.

[Big T]

Speaking of, To America's Aryan. I don't want to speak out of turn. But have you seen the trend of young black males getting into quarter zips recently?

[Aryan]

Yeah, they just bring in the early 2000s back.

[Big T]

Yeah. But that seems to be a thing online is the African American community is extolling the virtues of quarter zips, which I can appreciate. It's the most versatile piece of clothing that you can have.

[Aryan]

Love that. Love that young brothers is finding. Business casual.

[Big T]

Love to see it as kind of you have in the last several years with golf.

[Aryan]

Oh, no. Okay. So it got worse. Did I tell you? I did tell y', all, didn't I?

[Big T]

I don't know what. I don't know.

[Aryan]

Increasingly ridiculous with my. With my golf clothes expenditures. I haven't told you guys this.

[Big T]

I don't think so.

[Aryan]

So I played with this dude. Older cat. And so when I first started golfing, it was like, you know, I was like, let me get a good pair of golf shoes. And then like, maybe another pair just to switch them in and out and to get a couple shirts. I just didn't think much of it. Right. And so I was working on my game and stuff. I started playing with buddy and this motherfucker be clean. When I say he be clean. I'm like, the hat matched the shirt with the belt and the pants and the shoes is a fit, and all go together. Splendid. Splendidly. Splendid. Splendorful. It was amazing. It's amazing. And he'd be whooping my. He's a scratch golfer, right? He'd be whooping my ass. And I just told myself, all right, you gonna whoop me in golf? You can't get me in looking fly as well. I refuse. Right. That's gonna at least be a competition. So I've been going kind of crazy with golf fits lately. I have recently put in the order of 13 pairs of golf shoes.

[Eric]

13.

[Aryan]

13 in one sitting. And I'm getting shirts, I'm getting bottoms, I'm getting hats. We putting the fits together because I can't. I can't lose in both ways. And not only that, I enjoy it. I don't never splurge on clothes. I've never been a clothes guy. Never been my thing, but I do.

[Big T]

You've never had 13 pairs of shoes in your life?

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Nah.

[Aryan]

I usually get Chuck Taylor's flip flops, and that's my bag. But I am. I am, I am. I am going in with the golf. With the golf attire. It is. And it's been fun. Last couple outings, I've been cleaning them up.

[Eric]

Been.

[Aryan]

Been balling too. So I don't know. Maybe there's a correlation.

[Big T]

That could be a good tick tock series is Aryan's golf outfit of the day?

[Aryan]

Yeah. I don't have a tick tock, though. Well, I do, but I don't. I only get on it when my kids send me TikToks.

[MacKenzie]

Macrodosing does, though. I could post.

[Aryan]

Okay. Okay. Golf fit of the day.

[Big T]

Okay.

[Aryan]

I'll see if I could put.

[Big T]

With 13 pairs of shoes, you got to have 500 different combinations.

[Aryan]

Oh, it's the last. The last two times I came out, they. I, you know, most of the time, dudes ain't going to be like, hey, you kind of clean. You know, dudes will probably just keep that to themselves. Last two times I came out there, like, hey, yo, y' all ain't gonna lie. You fresh.

[Big T]

If you had to estimate shirts, pants, and jackets, how many of each?

[Aryan]

Oh, total shirts were pushing around 40. Like, jackets, like cold weather stuff. Pushing around 20 pants. That's where I need up my game. But I have a lot of. I'll probably say, like, 12 to 15 different pairs of golfing pants and bottoms.

[Big T]

And then now 13 pairs of shoes.

[Aryan]

Well, that was the new order. So before that, I had a little bit. So I would say I'm on about, like, 25 pairs of golf shoes.

[Big T]

Oh, wow. I only did 13 pairs of shoes. If those numbers you just gave me are accurate. 40 shirts, 20 jackets, 15 pairs of pants, and 13 shoes. That's 156,000 combinations.

[Aryan]

I like that.

[Big T]

So we could do one a day for I don't even know how many years.

[Aryan]

That is till I die. Until I perish way after that.

[Eric]

That's pretty good.

[Big T]

That's a.

[Eric]

That's a strong wardrobe.

[Aryan]

Yeah, no, I. It's the only thing I've ever really, like, obnoxiously done. It's obnoxious. It's obnoxious, But I'll. Hey, it'd be clean, too. And because I did this, I found. I don't know if y' all are sock, like, Nazis, like I am, but socks, Nazis, they got to be right. You know what I mean?

[Big T]

I agree.

[Aryan]

Mm. They gotta be right.

[Big T]

I only wear one kind of sock.

[Aryan]

Yeah. And so. And so I've kind of been experimenting with different kind of socks, and I think I finally got it. I hope Nike don't discontinue these, but they have a sock now that I'm like, yo, this is the one. And I just ordered mad pairs of black and white of these specific kinds of socks. They're like, middle. They're not. Because I don't mind tube socks.

[Eric]

Like, long socks.

[Aryan]

They're fine, but, like, they're not short. They're like the perfect height. They fit form, fit very well. The material is amazing.

[Eric]

It.

[Aryan]

You can tell they're gonna last long. So I. I went. I went kind of. Aaron, the.

[Big T]

The quarter. No, those are. Those are crew. He's talking about quarter length. Because I know I have the same ones. I know exactly what you're talking about.

[Eric]

I am a little shorter than these.

[Big T]

Like. Yeah, like, right above the shoe.

[Aryan]

Okay.

[Big T]

I have, like, probably 10 pairs of those and 10 pairs of long ones. And those are the only socks I have.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Yes.

[Aryan]

These socks, I'm gonna send them to the group. These socks are the best socks on the market in my opinion. And I'm kind of. I'm a. I'm a soccer. I am.

[Eric]

I have a new favorite sock too. I. I don't even know if I want to say the name of it because I don't want to blow up. But they are. They're legit socks.

[Aryan]

Why don't you want to blow up, bro?

[Eric]

Don't be a. I don't want him to sell out.

[Aryan]

Oh, that's true. Well, I just did, so.

[Eric]

No, I'm saying I don't want these socks to sell out.

[Aryan]

I'm with you. I feel you.

[Eric]

But there is a sock. You know what, Aaron? I care about you enough that I want to tell you. I want to tell you the name of the sock. And I think that this might give these Nike crew socks run for their money. You ready?

[Aryan]

Run them.

[Eric]

Del Campos.

[Aryan]

Del Campo.

[Eric]

D E L Campo. C A M P O. They sent some stuff to the office like six months ago. Didn't. Was not familiar with their game, tried them on. And every morning when I wake up and I have a fresh pair of Del Campos.

[Big T]

Ooh.

[Eric]

That day is off to an amazing start.

[Aryan]

These little color jones. I do like the.

[Eric]

Yeah, you know you love them.

[Aryan]

Since you love me so much, send me a couple pairs and I'll test them out.

[Eric]

You want some of my socks?

[Aryan]

No, I want you to buy me some socks.

[Eric]

You want me to buy you some socks for Christmas?

[Aryan]

Yeah.

[Big T]

Yeah.

[Eric]

So you. You know what? When I was growing up, sometimes we get my dad's socks for Christmas, right? And like, it was a joke. Like, oh, dads get socks for Christmas. Great job.

[Aryan]

Hahaha.

[Eric]

Now that I'm 40, I would love it if people bought me socks for Christmas.

[Aryan]

Especially the socks that you like, right?

[Eric]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Aryan]

Psa. It's all my loved ones. This Nike crew sock. If you love me, flood the inbox. I love these socks. Okay, okay. Last little. Last little plug. Okay.

[Eric]

Okay.

[Aryan]

No free ads. But this is a free ad. Okay. They. I'm not getting paid to say this. Red Vanley. Have you heard of Red Vanley?

[Eric]

No.

[Aryan]

R E D V A N L E Y. The most comfortable golfing bottoms. It is not. No, no, not. Not underwear. Like actual. Like shorts and like joggers and like pants. Dog. The material is fantastic. It is unreal. Dog. I love them. And I. I. Like I said I'm not. I promise you, I'm not getting paid to that. Paid to say that. But these. Dog, I just want people to enjoy their golfing. Like I go. Because a lot of times I got thick thighs, right? You probably can't relate, Eric, but I got thick thighs.

[Eric]

I got. I got quads. What are you talking about?

[Aryan]

You got some thick thighs.

[Eric]

Yeah.

[Aryan]

And so. And so these are good for. For. It's like athleisure. Athleisure wear or whatever they call it.

[Eric]

Yep.

[Aryan]

Just. Just very good, high quality material.

[Eric]

It's.

[Aryan]

It's like stretches, but still looks very, like, formal. Unreal.

[Eric]

Unreal.

[Aryan]

Shout out to them, man. I love them. They got me for life.

[Eric]

All right, I like this. The no free ads, but free ads segment of the podcast segment.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Yeah.

[Aryan]

Facts. We.

[Eric]

We do have.

[Aryan]

We got a.

[Eric]

A big story to talk about. This got sent the group chat earlier this week. If you're into political news or political media news. This was everywhere. Oh, there's some. It's some messiness going on.

[Big T]

Someone tell me who this is.

[Eric]

Okay, so Olivia Nuzzy. She was a journalist. She, I think, still is a journalist.

[MacKenzie]

She's the west coast editor of Vanity Fair right now.

[Big T]

So you knew who this woman was prior to this?

[Eric]

Yep.

[MacKenzie]

Yeah.

[Eric]

She wrote for the New Yorker, right? She was. Yeah. A pretty high profile political journalist. And she got divorced from her husband, who's also a journalist, Ryan Lizza. They were like a DC political power couple in the media. They got divorced, what, about a year ago, Year and a half ago.

[MacKenzie]

Yes. I didn't know that they were officially married. I just thought they were together.

[Eric]

Oh, I think.

[MacKenzie]

But I could be wrong. I could be wrong.

[Eric]

I could be wrong too. But the reason why their marriage broke up was because. Because it was revealed that she was engaging in an extramarital affair or extracurricular affair with RFK Jr also.

[MacKenzie]

Sorry. They were engaged and broke off the engagement.

[Eric]

Got it.

[MacKenzie]

After all that.

[Eric]

Okay. So she was getting it on with RFK Jr and there were some public details of that that I don't really want to think about or talk about that came out. But it was like a torrid love affair, including nudes, discussions of how much you find his brain worm sexy. She did say, I loved his brain, but I would not like to think about the worm in his brain that other people found so funny. That would make her sad.

[MacKenzie]

That was intruding it.

[Eric]

Yeah, that was intruding.

[Aryan]

Yeah.

[MacKenzie]

And he said, baby, don't worry, it's not a real worm.

[Eric]

I got it checked out. The worm's dead. It's just a dead worm that's in my brain, baby, you can still love it. So that came out. That came out a while ago. I want to say like a year and a half ago. That sounds right. That exact date doesn't matter. But then Ryan Lizza, her ex fiance, wrote a blog about how he found out. And he walks us through this scene where he's living in a house with her. He uses the bamboo that's invading his background as a nice metaphor.

[MacKenzie]

I love journalism.

[Eric]

He's such a writer. Like, he's like, yeah, I got cucked. Here's. Let me talk flowingly about bamboo.

[MacKenzie]

Her Herschel backpack splayed on the ground. Like it's. You're there.

[Eric]

Yeah, yeah. He puts you right in the scene and talks about how she throws her bag across the. The bedroom and he sees some stationary from hotel. And then he looks at the hotel, the hotel stationary, and sees a love letter that was written to this man that she was having an extra fiance affair with. And then at the end, she revealed, or he reveals that this man was not RFK Jr. As we all thought it was going to be, but it was Mark Sanford from South Carolina. He's the guy that that, like, quit. He was a governor, right. He, like, quit to go hiking on the Appalachian Trail after he got involved in a scandal.

[MacKenzie]

I don't even know what he did. But yes, he was a governor.

[Eric]

So apparently this is. She's like.

[MacKenzie]

She's done this multiple times now, reading the last sentence. And they had a book deal that. Two book deals that didn't go through, the two of them, because in both presidential elections that they were supposed to write these books about Olivia Nuzzy slept with a different separate member or a different candidate. Yeah, they had two book deals fall through because she had two separate affairs. Like, it is so juicy. And then to keep all of that. So the whole time you're Thinking this is about how he found out about the RFK scandal. Then to throw in Mark Sanford at the last sentence, it was mind bogglingly. Mind bogglingly. Whoa.

[Aryan]

Bogglingly.

[Big T]

Yes.

[MacKenzie]

And then have you seen her old tweets about him?

[Aryan]

Yep.

[MacKenzie]

Oh, so now she has old tweets that are resurfacing about Mark Sanford because she wrote a profile on him, like, spent some time with Mark Sanford, posted the pictures, posted the link to the profile. Obviously she was also sleeping with this man. Then someone replied to the tweet saying, like, oh my gosh, he looks so happy. Like, you must like, bring out such a happy side of him. And she goes, I tend to have that effect. Oh, my God, you're sleeping with him. Oh, it's so good. It is so good. And then can we talk about the Keith Olbermann part?

[Eric]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I would just wanted to reiterate the way that Ryan Lizzo wrote this blog post was so well crafted in order to afflict. Inflict the most amount of embarrassment on his ex fiance as possible. The fact that he waited until the last sentence of the entire blog to be like, I called my, I called my agent on the phone, by the way.

[Big T]

That's.

[Eric]

It's such a weird move when you find out that your fiance is having an affair and you have to call. Your first call you make is like, to your agent. So he calls his agent, he goes, the book deals in trouble. She's having an affair with Mark Sanford.

[Big T]

So good.

[Eric]

So he's like, he's putting it all out there now.

[MacKenzie]

Also, she has a book coming out in like two weeks. So I think also that's good timing on his part too.

[Eric]

Yeah, well, there she has a very good PR team, whoever it is, because now she's getting these like, rehabilitation articles written about her being like, she's back, she's ready, she's fierce as ever. And so it's, it's trying to talk her up again after all this stuff broke. And it does, it sucks that we have political correspondence that are sleeping with the subjects that they cover, because that's how we get our news about politicians through the media. And so if there's other stuff going on, it's actually misinforming. It's. It's a very bad thing to do. But yes, you're right. There was also thrown in there the fact that she was still, when she met her, her fiance, Ryan Lizza, she was emotionally recovering from the relationship that she had had with one Keith Olbermann. Well, Keith. Keithy boy from Sports center back in.

[MacKenzie]

The day who was funding her whole life.

[Eric]

Yeah, sugar daddy.

[MacKenzie]

And then he was on Twitter yesterday tweeting about it. Tweeting about this whole article 10 to 15 times. As if he is not a crucial player in that article.

[Eric]

I think he said he dodged a bullet. He. He did like the Matrix gif.

[MacKenzie]

And he was defending himself. People were like, keith, why are you talking about this? Like you are also a part of this? And he was like, can't. Trying to defend himself, brother, you're a part of this.

[Big T]

I've been seeing that blue sky is really turning on Olbermann and potentially calling him like a pedophile.

[Eric]

Oh, really? Well, Keith Olman's always been a weirdo.

[Big T]

Olbermann dated television reporter Katie Tur from 2006 to 09 when he was in his 50s and she was in her early 20s. He dated Nuzzy roughly five years later. He says he had three dates with conservative Fox News host Laura Ingram in 1997 and dated Arizona Senator Kristen Sinema in 2010. 11 when she was a state representative. Olbermann is 17 years older than cinema.

[Eric]

I'll give him a pass on that one. The 17. So he's how old?

[Big T]

I don't know. Now it says he was in his 50s. And Katie Tur was in her early 20s when they dated, and that was 06 to 09. So is he in his 70s now?

[MacKenzie]

Keith Olbermann is 66.

[Eric]

That's very creepy.

[MacKenzie]

Olivia Nuzzy is 32. So 34 years her senior. And if they dated 10 years ago, 22 and 56.

[Eric]

So this mark Sanford guy, he. When he was governor of South Carolina, he went missing. They didn't know where their governor was. He was not responding to phone calls from his advisors, his chief of staff. He just wasn't at the governor's mansion, wasn't doing any business. No one heard from him. He left a note saying that he would be hiking the Appalachian Trail. And then he just stopped picking up phone calls. He's like, I'm getting out of town for a little bit.

[MacKenzie]

Wait, seriously?

[Eric]

Yeah. But he was not hiking the trail. He actually flew to Argentina. So.

[MacKenzie]

To do what?

[Eric]

So I think that that might be where his. His boo might have been. Her name was Maria Belen Chapur. She was a divorced mother of two with a university degree in international relations who lived in Buenos Aires. And Sanford met her at a dance in Uruguay. And then they started having a intimate relationship in 2008. And so he just. He just flew to South America to hang out in Argentina with his girlfriend. That must have been a very peaceful week for him, though. Like, he's the governor. He's under a spotlight, and he just gets out of town, and he's in Argentina with his girl. Not picking up phone calls. Unreachable. He probably just. The conversations they had were probably incredible. Like, what if I just live down here, baby? I don't think that a leader, a disgraced leader of government could ever flee to Argentina and just hide out for the rest of their lives. That seems like that would be too tough to pull off.

[Big T]

Do you believe in that?

[Eric]

No. Because all the Nazis did it.

[Big T]

But you. So you believe that? That's what I'm saying.

[Eric]

Oh, and that no Nazis did flee to South America?

[Big T]

No. But Hitler. Do you believe Hitler got there?

[Eric]

No, I don't think that Hitler did, but I think a lot of. I think a lot of other people did, some of whom were caught, some of whom were just able to chill for the rest of their lives. Anything else we got? Burning us up.

[Big T]

Yeah. You skipped the most important thing on the sheet.

[Eric]

Oh, yeah. Lo Bean.

[Big T]

What?

[Eric]

That I won.

[Big T]

What are we talking about?

[Eric]

I won.

[MacKenzie]

Seriously, I won.

[Eric]

Lob and said. And by the way.

[Big T]

Oh, the dollar.

[Eric]

They tried to charge me interest on that, too. So it was up to, like, 550 now.

[Big T]

You got it tossed?

[Eric]

I got a toss. They're. They're covering.

[Big T]

They're.

[Eric]

Yep.

[Big T]

Good.

[Eric]

They're writing it off.

[Big T]

Congrats.

[Eric]

Some companies still know how business is done. Let this be a lesson for everybody. If you owe somebody money and it's an insultingly small amount of money, just ignore them. And they'll eventually come around and say, sir, this is more trouble than it's worth. We've already spent more than the $5 you owe us on postage. Let's just call this a day. And I fought the law, and I won. This is the biggest corporate victory I've ever had.

[Aryan]

Congratulations, man.

[Eric]

Thank you.

[Big T]

I don't know if I've ever had a corporate victory.

[Eric]

It's quite a rush. Stuck it to the man.

[Aryan]

You know what?

[Eric]

I'm. I might go and treat myself to a nice little L.L. bean overcoat now.

[Big T]

You're going to give them more money? Yeah.

[Eric]

Just show them I appreciate. I appreciate that it was never about the money. This is about the principle of the thing.

[Big T]

Right.

[Eric]

I just got an exchange. They did not make me aware that I was going to have to pay for the. The postage of getting the new one sent out after I sent the Old one back to them. So this is, this is good. This is, this is how you do business. Good. But, yeah. What were you going to say?

[Big T]

The most important thing on the sheet was that hurricanes don't mess with the Gulf of America.

[Eric]

That's true.

[Big T]

First time in over a decade, zero hurricanes have made landfall in the US and zero hurricanes in the Gulf.

[Eric]

So where are they going now?

[Big T]

I guess all east of us. I don't know.

[Eric]

They're just going back to, back to sea.

[Big T]

But it seems like they might be scared of the Gulf of America.

[Eric]

Well, there was a major hurricane that hit Jamaica, but then it did not enter. I guess that's the Caribbean. It did not encroach into the Gulf.

[Big T]

Yeah, it's, it's, it said stop.

[Eric]

It's steered away.

[Big T]

Yeah, we don't mess with.

[Eric]

I wonder what's going on there. Are we also jinxing this?

[Big T]

I can only give you the information.

[Eric]

That I have because we have two weeks left in hurricane season.

[Big T]

I can only present the information as I've seen it.

[Eric]

Yeah, this might be like looking at that College Football playoff bracket and being like, we're in. And then you have to play against usc. By the way, if Oregon loses to usc. Done.

[Big T]

Probably.

[Aryan]

Yeah, done.

[Eric]

They're out. That's a playoff game.

[Big T]

Yeah.

[Aryan]

Are you guys ready?

[Eric]

For what?

[Aryan]

The trigger has been pulled.

[Eric]

The dog.

[Big T]

You, you bought the dog in the last 10 minutes.

[Eric]

When you say trigger has been pulled, I'm thinking, oh, Chrissy. Gnome.

[Aryan]

Oh, no. Who's that?

[Big T]

The woman who shot her dog who.

[MacKenzie]

Is the Department of Homeland Security.

[Aryan]

You know what that was? Former, Former Arian Foster Cricket. That would be an accurate summation.

[MacKenzie]

Did you just buy a dog?

[Aryan]

I, I, I'm getting this, this here mutt.

[Eric]

Now. Do you have a picture of the dog? How do you know which dog you just got?

[MacKenzie]

Oh, my God.

[Aryan]

To the group. We're getting all the medical records and all that stuff.

[MacKenzie]

Oh, wow.

[Eric]

Aaron, this is a great dog.

[Aryan]

We don't know that yet. He could be an.

[Eric]

This is an awesome dog. How excited are the kids?

[Aryan]

They don't know yet, y'. All. This is breaking news. This just happened.

[Eric]

They didn't know that you're even thinking about getting a dog.

[Aryan]

They know I was kicking the idea around. They all are like, shut up. You shut up. They're all. They all have the same sentiment.

[Eric]

So, so how old is he right now?

[Aryan]

Right now he is. Let me see. This is all secondhand information. I got my assistant working on it.

[Big T]

If ever there was a dog that Looked like a scout. It's this one.

[Eric]

That's a good scout.

[Aryan]

Yeah, like a school. It's a scout.

[Big T]

It's just like. It's a. It's a common dog name. But this dog looks like a scout.

[Aryan]

Oh, yeah. Don't know enough about that. But yeah, I'm excited, man. We did it.

[Big T]

He's so cute. Are you leaning one name over the other now that you've seen him?

[Aryan]

Now that I've seen him and now that I got a chance to spend a few minutes with his pictures, Solo and Django are standing out to me. I feel like when I see him, I'm be like, bam, that's you, dog.

[Eric]

I. I think that this is a great decision.

[Aryan]

I do too. You know, I have a little homie. I'm hoping so I'm get to training him immediately. As soon as he. As soon as he pees in the house, I'm gonna beat the shit out of him. I'm just joking.

[Eric]

Don't. Don't say that. Don't say that.

[Aryan]

All the dog owners is like, you should not have a dog. I don't beat things. It's just jokes. People do not.

[Eric]

Do not lay a hand on that dog in anger.

[Big T]

You don't have to say how much it costs, but like, how, how. How much did it cost?

[Aryan]

That I didn't even know because it.

[Big T]

Looks like a not cheap dog.

[Aryan]

How much. How much was. Was it?

[Big T]

You have to ask?

[Aryan]

Yeah, I told her, just make it happen. Yeah, make it. Make it happen. You got a guy spare no expense.

[Big T]

I like.

[Eric]

Yeah.

[MacKenzie]

Is the dog in Houston or do you have to have it chipped in?

[Aryan]

I think the breeder's in Texas, so I think it's gonna ship it.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Yeah.

[MacKenzie]

Lord knows Arian's not gonna drive to get that dog.

[Aryan]

It depends on where it is. Like, I could make a trip out of it. Make a little golf trip out of it. It depends when it is, where it is.

[Big T]

And you could drive for two days and still be in Texas.

[Aryan]

Texas, big. You're right. Texas is big.

[Big T]

Known for that.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Yeah.

[Aryan]

11 weeks old.

[Big T]

Oh, so you can get him, like now? Yes.

[Eric]

Yeah, that dog's ready. That dog's ready to roll.

[Aryan]

Yeah. So, okay, give me, give me, give me a new dog because I had a dog before, but it's been a while, so I gotta get all the shots. I'm assuming he will get all those records, so I gotta. I'm pretty sure he'll get all. He'll have all the shots, but if not, I gotta get shots, his records. I got to get a collar, right? Yes, Collar, leash, one of those little doggy bags so I can start training him. Toys, bags. What's the best cleaner stuff? Because we. He is gonna piss on my carpet. I just got. God damn it.

[MacKenzie]

There are like. Like name brand, like Oxiclean or whatever that have specific pet cleaners.

[Aryan]

All right, we on.

[Eric]

Yeah. Get some. Maybe get some pee pads.

[Aryan]

P pads. P pads. What about those shop collars? I would.

[Eric]

How do we feel about those? I would say no.

[MacKenzie]

Unless you have, like an electric fence, but.

[Eric]

Or a live stream.

[MacKenzie]

Is your. I'm assuming your backyard is.

[Eric]

It could be good. It could be good for the numbers, I think. I think what you should do.

[Aryan]

So are those frowned upon? Why are they so readily available?

[Big T]

Because you don't want to hurt your dog.

[Aryan]

Yeah, that doesn't hurt them, though.

[Eric]

It startles them and it can. It can, like, stress them out and freak them out. Sometimes I think what you want to do is. Yeah. What I told you when we were talking about potty training is just like you. You have to take that dog out all the time. Take it out like every 15 minutes that it's out of the crate and put it in its crate after it goes outside. And just don't let it unsupervise. Just always be taking it outside. And then when it does go pee or poop outside, then you give it, like, all the treats, all the scratches. You make it a huge deal whenever it does the right thing and it learns what the right thing to do is, and eventually it won't do the wrong thing anymore. Okay, so if it does pee in the house, like, I always looked at it. Like, if Blake peed in the house, that was actually my fault, not Blake's, because I didn't take him out enough and I didn't watch that. He was drinking water, and I neglected in taking him out as frequently as I should.

[Aryan]

Well, be better.

[Eric]

Yeah, then you have to be better. Then we make improvements and we move forward. But congratulations.

[Aryan]

Cuban link. Cuban link dog collar. I'm about to go in dog.

[Eric]

I'm very excited to. To be updated on this dog. And we'll get Chaps involved too.

[Aryan]

He's the one that recommended the breeder.

[Eric]

Oh, really?

[Aryan]

Yeah. Yeah. When I asked for Chaps number the other day, that's what it was. I was asking him, do you think that's a good one to get? Yada yada. He's like, yeah. I was, okay. Do you know any breeders? He's like, yep, very Cool. Yep.

[Eric]

Before we get to Representative Pat Ryan, he's brought to you by Shady Rays, the best sunglasses in the world. Let's talk about gifts, not the kind that get tossed in a drawer. We're talking about the kind that actually get used and appreciated. The holidays are coming fast. Shady Ray sunglasses are an easy win. Every pair is polarized, durable, and lightweight. They've got a ton of great looking, high performance styles that hold up no matter what you throw at them. And the price, it's way less than you'd expect for the quality. And what sets them apart. If you lose or break your shades, Shady Rays has your back with their lost and broken protection. No hassle, just a solid guarantee. So if you're picking up a pair for someone on your list or grabbing one for yourself, Shady Rays makes gifting simple. It's quality built, it looks great. It's actually worth it. And just going back to their, their replacement guarantee, it does set them apart. I lose a lot of sunglasses. I really do. I'm probably in the top 1% of sunglass losers in the United States. And when I lose them, I have no fears, no cares, no worries because Shady Rays has that lost and protection, lost and broken protection. It's a solid guarantee. So if you lose them, if you leave them on a plane like I've done, guess what? Shady Rays will get you a new pair. It's a great deal and they're great sunglasses. I wear them all the time. You can start your holiday gifting early. When you go to shadyrays.com and use code macro, you get 35% off polarized sunglasses, 35% off. I think that's the best deal of the year for them so far. So go to shadyrays.com, use code macro, M A C R O. Get 35% off the polarized sunglasses. Try for yourself the shades rated five stars by over 300,000 people. All right, we now welcome on a congressperson, it's Congressman Pat Ryan. Congressman, thank you for joining us. Our standing rule on this podcast is we'll talk to any congressman just across the board. So if you want to whisper Anything to Ms. Boebert, that'd be fine if she wanted to come on the show as well. We're not going to discriminate across, across parties, but it's a very interesting time that you're coming on the show. So some crazy stuff's been happening in Congress. I know that, you know, last week you were kind of focused on and want to talk about the, the YouTube, TV, Disney dispute that they had. And we have all these, you know, carriage disputes throughout, like the history of whether it's cable TV or now it's just streaming services. So we can get into that in a little bit. They seem to have resolved that one. But the last two days have been crazy in Congress. So with, with the near unanimous vote. And it was unanimous or it was what, 427 to 1 in the house, that vote in favor of releasing the Epstein files. That seems like it was a sharp contrast to what we thought it was going to be as recently as last week. So do you have any insight, like why did. Why did all the votes change seemingly at the last minute to. To pass this bill that I think most Americans want to see passed?

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Yeah. And I really appreciate you guys having me on. And there should be healthy skepticism about all people in politics right now. So I come with that. With that mindset.

[Aryan]

Yeah.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

I mean, first of all, we've been out not working. I mean, I've been home in the district and a lot of us were, but like, it's pathetic that we weren't working for the last six, seven weeks because of the shutdown. So I'm glad we got that resolved and let me know if I'm not coming through. Okay.

[Eric]

No, Big T. Just hit the big. He hit you with the six, seven.

[Big T]

You did six seven. I don't know.

[Eric]

Are you familiar with six seven?

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Because of my six year old. Yeah.

[Aryan]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Okay.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

He's teaching me six seven. That makes me sound old and lame. But so the re. The thing that changed, to answer your direct question, is like Trump changed his opinion because he knew he was going to lose this vote and he didn't want to be on the side of a losing vote is I think, really what. What happened. And yeah, I mean, in my district, it was 99 plus percent of people said, yeah, of course, like we stand with the people that were sexually assaulted and victims of domestic violence and young women and not with protecting rich, corrupt assholes, regardless of whatever party you're part of. Like that that's, you know, that should be the thing, but that was not the thing. For I was the first, actually was the second Democrat to sign on to this thing after Ro Khanna, to actually get this going and get the momentum going to release these files. But even in the Democratic Party, we were too slow to drive accountability on this.

[Eric]

Yeah, it did seem like a sharp contrast to what we expected would happen with this, this particular bill. My theory was that. That a lot of people in Congress saw the writing on the wall that it's going to pass. And so they didn't want to go back to their constituents and say, hey, yeah, I'm sorry for voting no on the bill that would, you know, it seems like I was trying to protect pedophiles. And so once it's going to pass, it's like, yeah, now that we know it's going to proceed, I might as well put my name on it and say that I was in favor the entire time. That's kind of the vibe that I got. And then we were just talking about what's going to happen now. I don't know how much insight you have to that, but how long is it going to take for these files to be released, and in what format is it, are they going to be released?

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

So this is what a lot of us are worried about. And Tom Massie, who's the one who led this whole thing in the first place and was the first Republican willing to stand up and say this shouldn't be a partisan thing, he even himself has raised these concerns, which is.

[Big T]

The.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Trump administration always could have released these files. They didn't need Congress to force them to do this. So now, even though we've forced them to do this, there's a lot of ways you could wiggle, wriggle, sneak your way out of this. Basically, for example, the contingency I'm most concerned about, and others have said this, too, the admin has now opened an investigation into some of the powerful folks named in this and that in theory, with that investigation open, they could say, well, we have an open investigation, so we can't release all the files because it could mess with our investigation. So there's a world in which, again, to protect powerful rich people, a lot of whom donate to politicians in both parties, by the way, that they would use this excuse of an investigation. So I'm concerned about that. And I think we have to keep. I don't think this is over. I think it could really get delayed and they're going to try to gaslight a bunch of people on this.

[Aryan]

All right.

[Eric]

Yeah, I mean, I wasn't super optimistic that it would. That would come out immediately, but I just assumed that there would be ways that, like, if people are concerned that the files are going to be altered or deleted or something like that, there have to be. It's got to be stored in more than one location. I assume that our government has redundancies in place where you have important information and it is protected from one like rogue actor that could go in there.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Rogue actor for sure. But if there's a group, a coordinated effort of the people, you know, it's the Department of Justice, the Federal Department of Justice that runs this investigation. They're the ones who buried it under the rug in the first place back in the day. They could definitely have the power to do that, and Congress can push them and compel them, but it's kind of the checks and balances of our system. It kind of assumes everybody ultimately does the right thing. And if, whether it's the Congress or the president or the Supreme Court stops doing that, then the whole system starts to break down. And I am worried on a lot of fronts that that's where we're starting to get, get to including on this issue.

[Eric]

Okay. And coming into this week, did you know that this was going to happen, that the, the vote was going to take place and that you had a lot of people that were going to now change their votes? Like, how much, how much of that did you have insight into beforehand? And do you, do you talk with these people? Are you friends with people across the aisle that you, you know, have a pretty good understanding of which way they're going to go on any given vote?

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Yeah, actually, my close buddy from West Point, my West Point classmate is a Republican from Michigan. We talk all the time. I got mostly fellow veterans are my closest friends across the aisle in the House, which is part of why I still have optimism about, you know, where we're at politically right now. So we knew the second that Congress came back, they had to swear in this new member. There was a, an election in Arizona. They've been dragging out bringing her in because she was going to be the 218 signature to force this vote. Basically. I know that's in the weeds, but we knew once we got back that was going to happen. So they swore her in and then this vote was called. So we knew it was coming. The last minute switch by the President, which is what I think gave everybody cover. All the others who then made that swap that I don't think we all saw coming, but I do agree with your take that that was everybody kind of realizing, shit, this is going to go the way way it's going to go. I don't want to be on the losing side of it. So not exactly profiles and courage moment, but unfortunately there's a lot of that going around here right now.

[Eric]

At least, at least it happened. At least we got the vote that. I think it's crazy.

[Big T]

It was.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Oh, I'm sorry. Go ahead.

[Eric]

I was just going to say it's crazy that the American voting populace agrees on a single issue. But it felt like this was one where everybody was like, yeah, release the investigation, all the investigations into Epstein. So does my understanding is this covers the financial investigations as well?

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Yeah, it's everything. And again, that's what's required. And now by the law, there's no doubt. I mean, it's passed. We'll see if the President signs. He still hasn't signed it yet. He said he'll sign it. I hope he signs it. I think he'll sign it. And then I did want to add it was pretty powerful being on the House floor for this vote because the, the gallery which is sort of above the House floor, was filled with victims and their, their families. And this would not have happened without them ultimately being willing to, you know, go through that, which I can't imagine re. Re going through that and then having to share your story again. Again. And yeah, it was, it was an emotional moment for sure to see that they were like, you know, rightfully crying and very emotional when it finally passed and near unanimous, which was important.

[Eric]

Yeah. Well, glad it got done it.

[Big T]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Aaron.

[Aryan]

Yeah. I'm curious as to like the rumblings on, you know, in D.C. about what may or may not be in there. I mean, you have people who were close, they claimed to see him, like Elon Musk, who said Trump is in there, that's why he won't release him.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Yeah.

[Aryan]

I mean, what are the rumblings in D.C. about like what we may or may not see? And also how much can we respect? I would assume we would expect to see victims names redacted, right? Yes. But how much are we expecting to see redaction of a lot of documents and things of that nature.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

If the full files come out, which again is what we're all pushing for. I think there's going to be some, across all lines of geography, political, even age, you're going to see the worst of the worst and the most elite and corrupt in there. I think that's obvious why this has been so buried so deep. And I think people understand, people understand that. They're willing to be honest about it. They will certainly redact the victims names. But the worry too is then they like over redact in an effort to cover up for whoever or whatever the deal is. And I mean the amount of money that gets donated by these people is more than any of us will make or certainly, you know, I'll make in my lifetime. So there's real power still battling here. And I don't think that battle's over yet. So I think it's important people stay tuned into this and like drive accountability on it.

[Aryan]

So who makes that call over what is and isn't redacted?

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Ultimately, it's the, it's Pam Bondi, who's the Attorney General who runs the Department of Justice. She reports obviously to the President. So it's going to be a combination of, of the two of them. I mean, there will be individuals obviously who work for her, but like, she will have bless off on this. And if you remember, like in, throughout the campaign leading up to last election and even after the election, there were those photos of them holding her, holding that kind of binder of we're going to release these trials and then they were the ones fighting to hold it back. So I think it's pretty reasonable to have a lot of healthy skepticism that all of a sudden now they're just going to totally change their tune on this.

[Aryan]

So is there, is there any, like, I know, I know, you know, anecdotal or, or, you know, any kind of rumors you can't lean too heavy into, especially as a representative. But I mean, is there, is there, is there something, is there some kind of rumblings amongst, you know, Congress that are like, we got to get this shit out because we know or we've heard or at least we want to investigate this.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

I mean, a lot of this has also been out there too, by the way, just not really reported on. I have not heard anything specific that's so, so important, so juicy or whatever, so horrific that, that, that's the thing. I think it's a classic, man. We don't know what we're going to get when we open this can of worms, but it's going to be fricking ugly and bad. And I just think it's a super important moment of accountability and we got to get this right.

[Eric]

Yeah, I, I agree. Like, it's going to go across political parties, it's going to have leadership from both. And I, I feel like a lot of business moguls that have donated across party lines depending on what benefits them at the time. And I think they should all be out there. I think that all Americans want the names out there because we want to know how deep this ran and like, it could also get ugly. Have you considered that with the international side of things? Because Epstein, obviously in what's been reported already has some undeniable ties to foreign governments. Russia, Israel were two of the ones that I saw I mean the guy, the guy knew every England obviously. The guy knew the most important powerful people in the world. Have you thought about what the fallout from that might look like when it comes to exposing some secrets of our allies or adversaries?

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Yeah, I think powerful people around the world are going to fall because of this and they, they fucking should fall. Like. And I think it's going to take, I think there's a generational element here too, honestly. Like I think there's kind of an old guard across business, politics, media that are just like, hey, this is the world we're used to. If we just throw enough money at a person we can kind of protect ourselves, protect our buddies. And I think that's hopefully gets blown wide open here. But yeah, it'll, it'll shake probably a lot of allies, honestly more than adversaries I think is my, is my sense. I mean, yeah, we already saw it in the uk rightfully so.

[Big T]

So based on what you're saying, you think we're getting like the real stuff. Like if and when this comes out, it's going to be the real thing. Like there's actually stuff in it.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

I have no inside info. My sense is like if there weren't explosive stuff in here, we wouldn't be fighting like hell to protect. Right. Like, I think that's, that's kind of where everybody's at. So yeah, that's my sense. I am still very worried though, as I said, that they're going to try to. That some individual who has, you know, to your question, Arian, like that somebody who's maybe the third tier down from Pam Bondi who's in the room could, could try to sway this. Which is why I think we got to, in a normal world Congress who just passed this law would have oversight over that and could come in and say hey we want to basically audit your process and make sure you're not bearing anything here. So my hope is that that gets driven here too and their efforts starting to bipartisan efforts to talk about that.

[Aryan]

One thing that blows my mind. In a self proclaimed democracy, we have an oligarchy running so openly. Have you talked with your colleagues or expressed interest legislatively to curve not to get rid of the lobbying force in this country?

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Yeah, there's a group of again mostly younger and it's bipartisan folks who haven't been here for. I've been here three years, haven't become part of the whole mess and the whole. Trump called the swamp. I think he's right. There's a whole Reform agenda a lot of us are pushing that includes term limits. So I lead a bill for term limits for all elected officials, which I think we need to have. That is a ban on stock trading by all members, which is just straight up corruption that we allow that requires you to not be able to go be a lobbyist, like a lifetime ban on lobbying. So when I leave Congress, I could go kind of do that now, which I have no desire to do, but this would make that illegal. So there's a whole reform agenda around that. And then there's also a big push on getting money out of politics, which we've been trying and trying for a long time. And it's the same powerful forces that are trying to cover up Epstein stuff that are also trying to keep the money in the politics so that they can have the influence that they have to cover all this stuff up or affect whatever they want to affect. So I think this is because the world we live in and the information environment we're in now, the old guard can't keep burying this stuff. And we're getting critical momentum on this legislative effort and we now are building good support. But we need people behind us the same way there was noise behind the Epstein stuff in the public. We need huge public groundswell on the anti corruption agenda stuff.

[Aryan]

Yeah, one of the biggest, last name one thing that I noticed that the. The right wing is extremely successful at is kind of building. So they went after and they. And I think this was on their lobbying side as well. They went after like young males and like, you know, young, young kids who feel like, you know, it's what they ran with the whole WOKE narrative and you know, that whole complex that they orchestrated a plan to reach out to the younger base. And I don't necessarily see that from the Democratic side. And I think there's a split in the party. Right. You have your traditional Democrats and you have your leftist wing of the party who are trying to push for more progressive policies. So is there any kind of. From the leadership stuff like you mentioned, you know, stock trading things like the old guard of the Democratic Party, the Nancy Pelosi's, those kind of cats need to be done with. But as far as like the younger or even the old guard part of the Democrat part, is there any kind of concerted effort to reach out to the younger base in a way? Because it kind of is like that meme, how do you do fellow kids whenever the Democrats try to play that game?

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Yeah, I mean, we are so behind on this and there's Not a. I mean, the Democratic Party is a disaster right now as a party. Like, there are individual good members that are doing lots of great things and fighting the good fight and really give a shit and. But the party is lost. And so they're, They're. I'm involved in two different kind of groups within the party trying to work on this problem. Trying to work on not just being against stuff, but actually being for things and be clear. Yeah, we're, of course, against when people are hurt and bad things, but we're also. We have an actual positive direction. We want to take the country into the future. So it's happening, but it's kind of fighting against a lot of the establishment status quo forces. And I think a lot of the divide right now is less ideological, frankly. Like, are you far left or moderate? Are you progressive or conservative? It's more actually. Are you for the status quo and kind of keeping things as they are, which is pretty up, or are you willing to aggressively disrupt and change? I think that's certainly where I'm trying to be, where more newer members are, and that's where the American people are, understandably.

[Eric]

I think Big T might have an idea of one step that the Democrats could take to start to win backs. You know, the, the image of being a masculine party.

[Big T]

And I definitely know what that is.

[Eric]

It involves sports.

[Big T]

Maybe you're going to have to enlighten me.

[Eric]

Maybe my position is maybe occasionally win a congressional baseball game.

[Big T]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

So, Congressman, I knew.

[Eric]

I knew like, once in a while.

[Big T]

So you only played this past year, right?

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

I played two years. I'm a terrible baseball player, by the way.

[Big T]

Okay.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Not a good base. I've never been a good baseball player. And I'm so. The team is so bad that they even had me on the team because, like, I'm under, you know, 70 years old and can run around.

[Big T]

So I'm in what has to be the 99.9 percentile of Americans in terms of fans of the Congressional baseball game. I watch it. I couldn't. I couldn't find individual statistics. But in the last five years, y' all are oh and five and have been outscored 83 to 31. So I'm just curious what the preparation for that looks like. Are y' all practicing, like, what's. And is there a plan to maybe bring in some ringers at some point and try to win one?

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

For sure there is. I'm trying not to be. Well, I'll just be. I'll be super blunt. I Wouldn't be mean to my colleagues. But like the Democrat, the Republicans start their practices earlier in the season. They start their practices earlier in the morning. They run a much more tight operation on, on, you know, just what they do to prepare. And we, we need to step up our game on that. Like just, you know, preparation matters, especially as, you know, I'm 43 and I'm one of the youngest people on the team. So, like a lot of it's just starting earlier and doing that. We struggled on pitching. We had an amazing player, pitcher. His name was Cedric Richmond from Louisiana. And when he left, that's when we got on this losing streak, this five season losing streak. So in a game like this, the pitching really, really matters. And the Republicans have had two good pitchers for a while, so that's made it tough for us to compete. But a lot of us are pushing to just practice earlier. And then we are, we've been trying to recruit people to run who are, who are good. Like there's a minor league pitcher out in Iowa who at one point was going to run for the House. We're trying to get him on the team. So I think we just gotta take it more seriously. But I actually do think it's like, it's a lighthearted thing. We raise money for charity. We raise almost $3 million for charity, which is awesome. But it's an example of. Yeah, winning matters. On whatever the thing is. And we got to get back to being focused and disciplined and, and having a real team that's about winning. So not trying to knock any of my colleagues. A lot of us are, you know, trash.

[Big T]

Yeah. Keep it close. You can't get some of the scores. I had them in front of me.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Like I was a pinch runner on the team. So every player on the team is better than me. I'm, I'm not trying to criticize my individual teammates, but we, we're going to, we're going to keep, we're going to work on it next year.

[Aryan]

That's my, that's lock in. Lock in. Congressman.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

We need, yeah, we need, we need you guys to come whip us.

[Aryan]

If y', all, if y' all do. If y' all do a, a flag football game, I'll consider running. That's cool.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

There is, there is actually.

[Aryan]

There is a really.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

It's flag. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Aryan]

And which I'm not get you over that.

[Eric]

What's the record in that? Are, are we, are the Democrats any better at flag football than they are at baseball?

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

So the football one's interesting. Football is a bipartisan, where it's actually the, the member, the House members of both parties play together and then they play Capitol Police, actually. And then each team is allowed to have some pros or former pros play. So that's like, it's a more interesting game. And I actually kind of wish, I think it'd be better, frankly, if it was two bipartisan teams playing each other because a lot of what I've gotten out of this is actually just building friendships with colleagues that I wouldn't otherwise have time to hang out with because our schedules are kind of crazy. So I think it'd be nice if we actually had two teams that were bipartisan and then you get to build those relationships because so much of what's not working in Congress is like, it's just become like a blood sport on the partisan level and then it's hard to overcome that when it comes to actually doing stuff together.

[Eric]

Yeah. Has. Yeah, Aaron, go ahead.

[Aryan]

I was gonna say right for that line. So we've kind of seen. I want to know your. I know you're gonna give me a politically correct answer, but do your best. I want to know your, I want to know your thoughts on Marjorie Taylor Greene's evolution in, in her diplomacy in these last couple months or so.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

I, I don't, I, I hope you don't consider this politically correct. I think it's fully self serving. It's because she wanted to run for something in her state and Trump didn't support her, so she's pissed at him about that and she has a grudge about that. I think that's primarily what's, what's driving it. And, and now she's getting a lot of nice press coverage about it. So that sort of strokes the ego for me. Like, I always welcome if people are serious to actually change their mind and apologize for stuff. I think that's important. But to me, like, and folks might not agree with me, but what she did around January 6th, in my opinion, was traitorous. And I think that that's like a red line for me. Until she owns that, it's hard for me to kind of like, I personally think trying to overthrow or cancel the people's votes in a national election transcends partisan, should transcend partisanship. And she was a big part of that. So I would like to see some accountability for her from that. Then I'd be like, okay, that's real.

[Eric]

And kind of along those same lines, we're talking about getting the feedback and the recognition from the media. I Almost feel like social media is also one of those things that have people doing things in Congress for not the right reasons where, you know, just like anybody else, you get, you, you log on to social media and you get the dopamine hits when people like whatever it is you post or whatever in your opinion on the inside. Do you see a lot of Congress people that are like clout chasing, that are, that are trying to just repeat whatever they see on social media that they know will get traction as opposed to thinking about actually leading and, and learning about issues instead of just reading like a copied and paste headline and that informs their political view. Because I've noticed a big shift in like the last six, seven years. I just did it big T. But I've noticed, I've noticed a big shift where I'm almost like, politicians shouldn't be on social media. And I understand why you are because you have to communicate. But I think it's a very toxic thing for current members of our government to be trying to chase whatever Internet cool points are out there. If it's the left wing and you're, you're going the most woke or if it's the, the right wing and you're just like repeating what you've seen from a bunch of anonymous accounts that have bubbled their way up to the top of the eco, like it doesn't matter which side it is. I think that chasing Internet fun points are actually serving as an extremely large detriment to public service right now. And I'm curious what you've seen on the inside.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Yeah, could not agree more. It's, it's like it was already bad, but this is like fuel on the fire of all the bad incentives being rewarded. So. And then it also leads on a slightly later note to like some of the most cringy shit you, you've ever seen of trying to emulate something that was authentic, someone else that then is not to that person. And yeah, but I think even, just, even the last two years it's gotten so much more extreme on this front. But as traditional and legacy media are dying and you guys know this better than anybody, this is the best way to communicate with constituents. The problem is the algorithms obviously reward the bad divisive stuff. So there are like on a more serious note, real, there's real work to do for Congress and to put some guardrails around, just a running wild of kind of bringing out the worst of everybody basically to get more clicks and drive more revenue to companies that are trillion dollar companies ready while we Descend into like borderline fricking civil war here so they can make a little bit more money and grow their companies bigger. So that's something we gotta take on. I don't, yeah, there's no easy. Like that's kind of the big answer. And otherwise I think it's actually unfortunately going to get a little bit worse here before it gets better in the next few years. Because TikTok just is about to get handed to a bunch of kind of people very close to the president and that's just going to get rewarded. You know, this is going to get, the division is going to get further rewarded around that, that deal. So it's, it's. I got six and four year old boys and I'm like this, is this like we got to fix this immediately, obviously, but just on a personal level, I'm like, before these guys have smartphones, I gotta, we gotta put some boundaries here.

[Eric]

Yeah, I mean, Chuck Schumer's post about the car tax the other, the other month was an all timer. Get the hell out of here with the car tax. He ripped the cheat up. I, that's it made me laugh so hard when I was watching. I was like, great job, Chuck. You're, you're connecting with the youths. Well done. What you talked about how like the Democrats have a real problem right now in terms of connecting to young people. I agree with that. The party as a whole seems rudderless at times and obviously I think one of those big issues was connecting with, with young men. And there's a lot of issues for why Democrats seem to have lost young men going into the last election. I know that there's always going to be talk of like, oh, we got to find the, the Joe Rogan on the right that. I think that's a, that's a losing way of thinking about it. I, I think that it's, it's bigger than that even. It's about finding ways to offer solutions to a group of individuals that are coming of age in this country that seemed like they are completely disaffected. And the things that were promised to them or told to them as the American dream when they were kids, those no longer exist. And some of the things that make them young men are actually things to be ashamed about in the Democrat party. And I don't know what conversations you've had, but what would be the way that you would plan on winning back the young male vote in terms of offering them a vision that they can latch on to and emotionally get behind?

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Yeah, I mean, I Think a huge part of it is like we literally just stopped, not only talking, but more importantly, listening to young people in general, and especially young men. I mean, just I can't fully put myself in the shoes. I'm, you know, getting older and older each day. Like, I don't. It's very different. Right. And so the way you start as a good leader and representative is to actually go out of your way to show I give a. I'm gonna figure out where you are, whether that's online, whether that's at high school sports games, whether that's like finding ways to get around the friction to connect and actually listen of, like, what is going on in your life, what are the big things you worry about, what are the little things you worry about? And so I think that that sounds cliche, but, like, that's where it all starts. And if we just failed to do that. Whereas Republicans and President Trump specifically was smart and good about figuring out how to at least have smart people around him who could channel what folks cared about there, including, I think, like his son. Right. So that's number one. Number two, I do think you're absolutely right. Like, the distrust, rightfully so, of politicians is the maximum it's been in my lifetime. And so it's got to be about tangible, specific things that are credible and believable, that we can help everybody, but especially young people, young men in their lives around. So, like, I've been very focused on actually the sports blackout issue that you talked about at the beginning, because it's something I hear about from, you know, a lot of people, but especially men and young men. That's like a real thing, that's a pain in the ass. Maybe it's not existential, but it's infuriating that that's the situation. And can we do something about that? Can we talk about it? Can we engage and build some trust on an issue like that and then open it up? I specifically think, like, the big issue we have to deal with is a lot of young people I'm talking to right now just graduating high school, graduating college, graduating whatever training they're doing. The job market is really bleak and brutal, combined with the cost of housing and rent and affordability. Like, we need a credible, specific plan there, especially as AI starts really displacing jobs for 18 to 25 year olds. And neither party has that right now. And that's, I think, like the big piece that whoever figures that out both helps people, but also politically wins probably the next 10, 20 years to have a Real solution or set of. Set of solutions.

[Eric]

On that I agree because I think that young men are gravitating more to the right because they are frustrated with what's in front of them. And I think Republicans do a much better job than Democrats of giving them something to be mad about that then they. I did.

[Big T]

And it's.

[Eric]

It's easy to get mad and then it's easy to, you know, have something to blame for why these things are happening. And you mentioned AI, and I know that you have some experience with doing Universal Basic Income, right?

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

I did a. When I was in local government before this, I did. We did a pilot program during COVID for Universal Basic income. It was 100 families. We gave $500 each month for a year as like a test proof of concepts. It was wildly successful, especially during COVID when families were just like absolutely getting crushed and a lot without jobs and without income. So I think at small scale it works. I still don't know if it fully works. I don't think that's the solution to the AI job displacement. The more I've thought about it and seen it, I think it kind of works in a crisis moment to help people and give them, trust them that if you give them some relief and some help, they know what to do with it to take care of themselves and their family. I don't think it works in perpetuity because it just basically it just makes what's already the most unequal economy we've ever had, where the rich are just insanely rich and everybody else is kind of fucked. It just actually perpetuates that which cannot be America. Like, that's just not. That's not America, you know?

[Eric]

Yeah. So what, what solutions have you thought about for the, the pending AI job crisis? Which, I mean, we, we think that it's going to be a really big thing. We still don't know because it's still like, you know, the technology is. It's coming and we're told that it's going to be the most disruptive thing ever. But we haven't gotten there yet. And we have some obviously, like, financial hurdles to clear before then. The way these companies are set up and the revenue that they're owing while also simultaneously not bringing in enough revenue to justify the loans are taking out all that stuff could be a hurdle. But if it's as bad as we think that it could be, what are some of the ways that you see that we can fight our way through it?

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

With great humility, because I am not an Expert at this stuff yet. I'm trying to get smarter on it. One like at a broad level, every time we've gone it's education is like, that's a broad thing. But like when the industrial age was starting and a bunch of farmers that knew this was coming, like the thing we did is we started public schools basically across the country. And that ultimately helped. I mean it wasn't pretty and it wasn't perfect, but that is like why we have the system we have now. Now we haven't changed that system basically in 100 plus years. So we need a real reimagining of what the education system that creates opportunity for people with AI jobs and around AI jobs building the factories around it and then the other industries that won't be disrupted. Healthcare, education, more of those kind of human to human industries. So that's a big piece of it. I think on a. I don't have all the answers, but that's like, I think at the heart of it an idea I'm working on which I would. I'm actually really curious how this lands with you guys. This isn't the silver bullet, but I'm working on a mandatory national service legislation where every American would have to serve, say a year. We're still figuring out the details. Not military per se, but military. Teach, nurse or healthcare worker. Maybe you're part of a housing corps to build. We need a lot more housing across the country to bring down housing costs, but essentially a real option for young people to both have a thing to do, to come together after graduating high school, to contribute to their community and feel like they're part of something bigger, to learn and get exposed to jobs, skills that they might not otherwise get exposed to. And it kind of helps buffer a little bit of the immediate impacts as the economy shifts. So that's another thing I've been starting to work on. Probably will be very controversial, but I think it's an important conversation to have.

[Aryan]

So like, could you unpack that a little bit? You said a mandatory program in which you said all, all Americans or kids.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Coming out of 18, say 18 to 26. Between 1826 you got to do one year of service. There's 40 countries around the world that already have some form of this. So you could, you know, you could go, you go to the military, which is what I did. You could go teach, which is what my mom did. You could go be a healthcare worker in a place where we're desperately in need of healthcare workers. You could, you know, become an apprentice in the Building trades and go build housing, so those kinds of things. And then in doing so you'd get training and education benefits and kind of like, you know, I kind of think when you're 18 in this country, we've invested a lot in you already in your education and the community and the country. And this is a way to both kind of somewhat pay that back, but also be a down payment on kind of all that you're going to do for the, the remainder of, of your lifetime.

[Aryan]

So what would be the consequence of somebody not fulfilling their mandatory one year service?

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

I mean you'd have to put real consequences in place. I mean, I don't think it's like certainly not going to jail, but other, other countries that do this, the way they tend to do it is then you, you are not eligible for all the benefits of being a participant in that country. Whether that's healthcare, education, that assuming we provide healthcare. Yeah, yeah. And I think this is also a way like I, this is my personal belief, the whole idea of like I'm a citizen in this country, I get great benefits, but I also have some obligation to that country because of all the great things we have, the rights and freedoms that come with a country and that kind of contract basically between the people and the government has broken down. Like the people don't feel like they're getting their kind of value from it. And that's a lot of why we have the distrust in the system. And this is partly a way to reignite that conversation of kind of like this is a two way street here and done. Right. There's great benefits to being a citizen, but there's also responsibility to it.

[Aryan]

Okay, so this is like the, the, I guess it's like a litmus test to seeing how we perceive it.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Yeah, yeah, please, yeah.

[Aryan]

I'll just get. As a parent of a 16 year old about to enter college and you know, be a high school graduate, I. What I like the premise of it.

[Eric]

Right.

[Aryan]

I think it's a bit like utopian and I'm as far left as you can get. Right. And so a lot of my, a lot of my ideas are as well, very utopian. I don't think they're pragmatic. My ideas I'm talking about. And so when I, when I listen to yours and just like as a parent, right. I immediately think that's why I asked what were the consequences. Right. Okay. The, it's an incentive based program. Okay. You don't get a lot of the benefits. So as a parent I don't I wouldn't, I wouldn't see the benefits of. Because I agree with your premise. Your premise is I believe every general has to be a good soldier first. Right. I believe every, every leader needs to serve. I think you need to serve. I tell my kids all the time, service, you have to serve. You have to understand how to treat people, where people are coming from. I believe that. But I think right now, I think that's the frustration with the youth is they don't feel like they're getting those benefits from their country. And so in order to incentivize them to serve their community, I think you would have to give them real benefits, which is why, you know, as, as, as a far left advocate, I advocate for health care, you know, child more sickly, wage increase, daycare for, for mothers. So stuff like that, which is constantly getting batted down in Congress, I would say if those things are in place and you can see a real benefit, like you do in some of those countries that are more socialized, then I would say that's amazing. Yes. Give to your community so that you can see the benefits, reward everybody. But I think as it is now, it is a, we're extremely capitalist in nature where it's like dog eat dog, you got to go get it how you want to get it. Yeah. And so the, I don't think the incentive is there to serve because they're not getting the benefits that were promising them or even like, like the American dream. They're prom. You go to school, you do what you're supposed to do, you get a college education, you come get a good job. That's not happening anymore. So that's just my take as a parent. I love the idea from like a pragmatic point of view. I don't, I don't see it.

[Eric]

I, I, I was gonna say something pretty similar to what Aryan said that I, if we're just talking about messaging, going with the approach of like, America's giving you so much to them, I don't think that's the time and the place for, for mandatory. It's going to be spun and thought of in a negative light. I agree with the premise that serving your country in one way, serving your community important, if you want to teach, if you want to build houses, if it's not the military, I think those are good things that, that young people should endeavor to do that would benefit everybody and we would be a better country if that happened more frequently than it did at the current. But I feel like at this point saying, here's A mandatory thing that you have to do that is going to be a very unpopular way to present it to young people. I think that doing the other way, which is like, if you choose to almost like, you know, FDR back in the Great Depression. I'm not saying we're in a Great Depression now, but the premise was we will provide these jobs that will benefit the community. And there's a benefit because we're going to pay you for it. And it's, it's. You're going to get something additional if you choose to take a teaching job out in Colorado somewhere instead of starting your own business or whatever. If you want to do something that gives back, we are going to make sure that you are extremely well taken care of with all these benefits that go on top of what we're already providing to you. But I think that the moment is wrong to say we're mandating that you go and do these things because we think that you should want to owe it to your country. And I understand that. I understand the idea behind the service, but I think the messaging would be. I think it's a complete.

[Aryan]

I think it's.

[Eric]

I think the messaging would be. Would be very, very poorly received, if you put it that way.

[Aryan]

Yeah.

[Big T]

Yeah. I mean, I'm, I'm the wrong guy to ask. I'm opposed to all government compulsion telling.

[Eric]

You what to do. Yeah.

[Big T]

Yeah. So I'm, I'm the wrong guy. I do see where it comes from, for sure.

[Eric]

Yeah.

[Big T]

But I think what you said about time and place, I don't think this is either.

[Eric]

Yeah.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Part of the challenge, and we don't need to go down this rabbit hole. I really appreciate your feedback. Part of the challenge, I feel, is like, a lot of our programs, to your point, Arian, that help people are like, means tested, meaning they generally go to people who are, you know, making, Making less money, which is a noble idea. But there's a lot of people in the middle who are working their asses off who don't get really any help. And I think that's a lot of the resentment we have. So it's, it's also trying to get at that problem of kind of like getting back to rewarding hard work rather than. I think that's something at a macro level that I, you know, I try to teach my, my kids as well, and a lot of us do, and it's kind of core to who we are as a country. So I'm, I'm. I really, you know, I'm like, probably shouldn't have even shared it with you.

[Aryan]

Guys, but I'd love to hear what my representatives are thinking about doing. That's, this is amazing. Another thing that, I mean since we're on the topic, I think that the Democrats are dog awful at is the, the way Republicans propagandize a lot of things is almost masterful. And I think so when you, when you like the knee jerk reaction from the program that you. I could already see the backlash, right? It's, you know, common overreach. Yeah, they love the government overreach when they want the government to overreach, but they don't like it if they don't like it. And I think that's where you, I think that's where a lot of you have to disarm a lot of their arguments. And I don't see a lot of our congress people or senators do it in any kind of real way, right? So when they'll be like, you're, I hear shit like he's a, he's a communist socialist. Like those are two different economic worldviews. Like, and so when people are like you're a communist and a socialist, you can't be both, right? You either one or you're the other. And I think when you start to talk about like the reasons, like why we're at where we're at is because we allow the propaganda without any kind of, any kind of deterrent, no real response. And like we have professors in an econ that can, you know, educate our congress people about these things. But like, I don't, I don't know what it's like. And it's almost like they buy into it too to protect the corporate interests that, that I feel like they do. So like when Mandami gets elected, right, he's a communist socialist and all this other shit, it's like this is easily debunkable shit. But we let them get away with it. And I think that it's the messaging. So like one time I want one reporter when somebody says he's a communist, I'm like, please define communism. What is a communist? And they will trip over themselves because it's buzzwords I don't believe. And this I could be wrong. You know your colleagues better than me. But I don't believe they actually know what these terms and an economic theory actually mean. You know what I mean?

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

And I think no, it's a lot of fear. It's fear tactics and over exaggeration slash straight up lying in a lot of cases. And it's done by a lot of people. I think right now certainly tends to be more. A lot of the politics of fear is how we are where we are and how Trump's gotten where he is. But not to say others in the Democratic Party haven't done that at times. I think a lot of it too, that we're kind of hitting on is this idea of, like, if you ask people what they think of, for Democrats are like, well, kind of weak, squishy, soft. I think a lot of this is us. It's just a sense of, no, this is actually the fucking right thing. This is who we are as a country. Like, we are not a country where Elon Musk just announced he's going to be the first trillionaire in the history of the world. And I'm in my district at food pantry lines while people don't have food. And the Trump administration is in the Supreme Court suing to keep food from 42 million Americans with the SNAP food stamp program. Like, that's not American. Just I, I, I, I. And we need to be say that with, like, strength and conviction. And I often, you know, for, for, I think for. Right. But people could, could disagree. Like, I talk about, I, I served 27 months in combat because I love this country and I love those principles of this country. And when we're not living up to those principles, it infuriates me. And we have to be righteous in, in saying those things, in my opinion. And when people sense that weakness or the ambivalence, they're like, well, they don't even believe the stuff they're saying. So why should I support them? Why should I, why should I believe them?

[Eric]

Well, Congressman, I appreciate the time. Congressman, I will let you off with an easy train of questioning. Are you a Bills fan?

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

No, I'm, I'm a sad Giants fan right now.

[Eric]

Okay. Well, I mean, hey, future could be bright. Jackson dart looks good. Camp Scatter Boo. We need to just make sure that he doesn't attend any more wrestling. That was very funny when he's just, like, shoving. Who is that? Roman Reigns. I, I forget that's how he's recovering from an injury. Yeah, I love that guy. I'm a fan of the Commanders, but I, I can't help but root for Scatter Boo because he's so much fun. So wait, you don't get to complain though, because you got two Super Bowls. You, you enjoyed two Super Bowls? Was one of those the one that you watched overseas?

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Yeah, yeah. I, I, yeah, the last one was, I was on my Second deployment in Iraq at the beginning of what was a 15 month, really tough, really tough deployment in Mosul at that time. And we had actually had probably the worst day of my deployment. And a week later was that super bowl was like the 08 end of the 0708 season. And the David Tyree on the helmet catch like literally got me through, got me through the rest or a lot of that deployment. Just that boost from that, from that win. So still, still I was drinking a. That year was non alcoholic beer. Watching that the next year they let us. Actually I was there for the next Super Bowl. I was still on my, that deployment they gave us. They let us have one beer. They lifted what's called general order number one, which is a prohibition on anybody drinking when you're deployed. And they gave us their system to enforce this was they put like a, a black permanent marker like swipe on your hand after you got your one beer. And everybody figured out how to, with hand sanitizer, how to, how to wipe off the black mark. So it got, it got pretty, pretty wild at that, at that super bowl. You had a few hundred people who hadn't drank for a year having, having more than one beer.

[Eric]

So that's got to be the best beer of all time.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

I mean, yeah, if I had been able to drink the beer that first year when the Giants won and beat Brady, which just always warms my heart, that would have been the ultimate. But yeah, that was the end of a 15 month and that beer tasted incredible. When I cracked that beer, I was just like, thank you to whatever general decided to let us have that beer. We were all very, very appreciative.

[Eric]

I like that. Yeah, that's a, that's a great story. Maybe that's for, you know, the youth that have to go out there and serve their country. Across the nation, they, they get one free government beer a year. Toss that maybe that sweetens the pot enough where they're like, yeah, you know what? I will. I'm going to go build that house.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Yeah, I don't know that that'll get it done, but it's the least, it's the least we can do. Yeah, I know you guys have to go. We didn't even get to talk about the sports blackout stuff, but would love to follow up on that because this is the kind of issue, by the way, where like when we introduced legislation on this, we were getting calls from around the country, from a lot of young men frankly, and online too, of like, thank you for fighting on this. We didn't even know Congress could play a role in this. So anybody want to follow up on that? Would love to get people looped in on that.

[Eric]

Yeah, I mean, if you just want to give. Give your pitch real quick on, like, how. How can the government get involved in what seems to be just a dispute between two private companies that's affecting everyone?

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

So there's a bill that I'm leading called the Stop Sports Blackout act, and it's specifically focused on this. This is all the whole problem. And I've heard you guys talk about this before, like, that there's basically seven companies that control all this, and while they battle each other to get more trillions, we all get screwed on the blackouts and other, you know, these carriage disputes. That is all in place because the government decided about 50, 60 years ago now to give an exception to these networks for sports to what's called antitrust. So we decided as a government to let it get to this situation. We have a few companies that have all the power and control. So all we need to do is actually go back to the way things were leading up to the 60s and just allow free competition again in this market. That would be a big part of the solution. My bill specifically says if you get blacked out, whether, you know, watching my Knicks in the home stretch get blacked out because of the MSG battle or what just happened with, you know, YouTube TV and Disney and ESPN, you get paid back. And the companies have to fully pay back every viewer. And it's mandatory. Not what YouTube TV just tried to do, where they sneak it by you and hope you don't claim the $20 credit. That's what the bill does. We're trying to get bipartisan support behind it. I think this is actually like, again, a 99% kind of issue where we should be able to drive something like this through.

[Eric]

Yeah, I'm interested in seeing what comes to that. I would very much like to see that, because I feel like at this point, we're paying so many different streaming providers for so many different, you know, different sports, and sometimes even within the same sport, we've got, like, four different football apps and it. And when you get one service that you think covers most of that and it gets taken away, then everyone's just like, I don't know what else I can do. I don't know what I can do. I just want to watch the game. I want to chill out. And I'm not able to do that. So I'm interested to see what happens with that. That sounds like it could be promising.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Yeah, please. You know, you guys have a lot of people that care about this issue, that listen and trust you guys, so if you're willing to even get people's interest in, and we're trying to build support the, this year, we just did the math to watch every Knicks game, just as, you know, it's $548 across four different services just to watch every Knicks game of the season. And that's, you know, replicated across pretty much every sport now and multiple networks. So we gotta, I mean, it's, it's just insane.

[Eric]

Yeah, I agree. Something's gotta be done. I, I, I want to see how that bill goes. But it sounds interesting. Sounds like something that I think most people, regardless of party, should be in favor of.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Aryan]

All right.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Well, thank you for joining us, for taking the time.

[Aryan]

Yeah, yeah.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Thanks for having me on. Thanks for the feedback on the national service stuff. I'm going to think on it and refine it. Yeah.

[Eric]

I mean, I think, again, I think your heart is in the right place where it's like, this is something that should be encouraged. But, you know, we, we got to figure out the messaging a little bit.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Yeah. Well, I appreciate you guys giving the kind of feedback.

[Eric]

All right, well, take care and thank you for coming on the show.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

Thank you guys. Really appreciate it.

[Eric]

That was Pat Ryan. We thank him for his time. I thought he was a pretty straightforward, seemed to be pretty straightforward guy. The, the idea of a mandatory year of, of service, it's, it's not, that's not going to be received.

[Big T]

Well, I see where it comes from.

[Eric]

Yeah.

[Big T]

I also see how it could be very poorly implemented.

[Eric]

Poorly implemented. There's a lot of stuff that you'd have to make sure was like, I, I actually think if you'd done this in 1950, 1960 or whatever, I, I feel like people would be like, yeah.

[Aryan]

Let'S do it right. When houses were $20,000.

[Eric]

Yeah. But right now it's like, hey, I don't really feel that I'm, I'm 18, I just graduated high school. Don't really know what I'm gonna do to make money or where I'm gonna live or if I'm going to have a bank account with funds in it. But, yeah, I do kind of owe the country back. Thanks for the school.

[Big T]

Also, if it's, if it's like he said, it doesn't have to be military, so if you're, if you go do, he said, teach some other, build how whatever it is. Is that now subsidized? Is the government paying you? Like, who's paying?

[Eric]

Yeah, I think that's what the idea would be, that it probably would be a stipend or something like that for, For a year or two, whenever you're doing it.

[Big T]

But so then what if you're a 17 year old who has a YouTube channel with a million subscribers and you're making 700 grand a year and now you have to go, like, be a teacher and make, you know, whatever the government dictates your salary is.

[Eric]

I guess you could probably still do the YouTube thing maybe.

[Big T]

But what if you, you know, you have to go get you now two jobs.

[Eric]

Yeah. There's like. Or, I mean, let's, let's just consider. For argument's sake, Cooper Flag graduates from Duke. He's got to do his year.

[Big T]

Yeah.

[Eric]

And the maverick's name comes up and he's like, do I want to do my year now? Or. You were pulling Eli Manning.

[Big T]

And I liked him a lot. I don't want to on his idea because I know he.

[Eric]

Yeah.

[Big T]

Loves the country. And I, I, I really enjoy talking to him. I just, I am against government compulsion of.

[Eric]

Yeah. I think, I think any kind. Again, the spirit. His heart's in the right place, and he's right that the country would be better if people, like, felt a connection to their community and all that stuff. I think that's a legitimate thing. I don't know that being like, hey.

[Aryan]

Putting the cart before the horse.

[Eric]

Yeah. Yeah, a little bit right now. Like, it give people these reasons to. To want to serve their country. That's. That's again, going back to the Democratic issue with young men. Men. It's like, give. Give them a reason to want to do it. An articulate, clear, powerful reason. Don't just be like, oh, we need to go on the same podcasts as Republicans. Go on. And then everything will be fine. You have to have a reason. You have to have a vision, and you have to earn them. But, yeah, we appreciate him coming on. Interesting. Thoughtful dude. See, Is there anything else that we wanted to get to today? Any big, big weekend plans that we should know of?

[Aryan]

Yeah, it's the Super Bowl.

[Eric]

Yeah. What's the spread?

[Aryan]

I hope nobody's betting on this little league championship.

[Eric]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, me too.

[Aryan]

Let me find out. Y' all take a bet against your boy.

[Eric]

Man, that's fucking.

[Big T]

Get somebody to.

[Eric]

You're betting against the Dukes. You said Duke down.

[Aryan]

Know who the. The Dukes are, fam.

[Big T]

Get somebody to set up a Tripod and go live on your Instagram.

[Aryan]

See, listen, when it comes to logistics, like, that means I would have to go set up the tripod. I would have to go do it. I would have to end big T.

[Big T]

I'm text whoever just bought your dog. Text them.

[Aryan]

Is a tri just with a phone.

[Big T]

Yeah.

[Aryan]

That means somebody would have to like, follow it.

[Big T]

And you could just set it. I'm sure you could set it far enough back that it just gets most of the field in it. Or put it up high, like on the bleachers.

[Aryan]

Probably.

[Eric]

Yeah.

[Aryan]

Yeah. It's at 7pm on Sunday though, so it might. I mean, all of them could. But, you know, I don't know. They're not. When I tell you my kids don't care about football, it's. It's heartwarming.

[Big T]

Yeah.

[Aryan]

They're just in, you know, I live. They live a luxurious life just because they, you know, Stork got lucky on the directions, that's all.

[Eric]

I've never heard it put that way.

[Big T]

That's.

[Eric]

That's great. I love that. Well, little Django is going to have a great life because of the dog story.

[Aryan]

Yo. I'm kind of hype. I ain't gonna lie. I'm kind of hyped, dog. Little Django.

[Eric]

Yeah. You gotta send pictures once you get them.

[Aryan]

I got you. I will do that. I think we're gonna pick them up right after Thanksgiving.

[Eric]

Let's go.

[Big T]

Wow.

[Eric]

I love that. There's. There's two other. Just real quick things I want to talk about. Number one, this just happened while we're taping the show. A clip of the. I think it was the Amon Ross St. Brown podcast came out with Darnell Washington on it.

[Big T]

I just saw this 30 seconds ago.

[Eric]

This is awesome. Darnell Washington, tight end from the Steelers, says he weighs 311 pounds right now.

[Big T]

Unit.

[Eric]

He is awesome. And he. He's. He's quick too. Like, he moves. It's this guy. He's the. I think he might be the most impressive athlete in the NFL right now.

[Big T]

He's a monster.

[Eric]

He's the biggest dude on the field usually. If not, you know, he's like tackle sized and he catches, he runs, he's physical, he's got. He doesn't fumble from what I've seen. At least they just need to give him the ball every single play. I love Darnell Washington. I'm not ashamed to admit it.

[Aryan]

Three, ten. Yeah, he gotta cut some of that shit down, dog. That's.

[Eric]

But he's a good blocker.

[Aryan]

Too.

[Eric]

Like, he uses his weight. It's not like he's. He's laboring out there.

[Aryan]

To move like that at that weight is impressive, but I just think, okay, if you're moving like that at 310, you can move better at 380, but.

[Eric]

He'S a great blocker. At 310, he will be the heaviest.

[Aryan]

Tight end in the NFL, maybe in NFL history at 280. Tight ends don't weigh that. So you're. You're. I think he's just hindering himself.

[Eric]

I. I saw him drop some weight.

[Aryan]

Doggy.

[Eric]

When I was watching at Georgia, everybody was talking about what a great tight end Brock Bowers was. But when they'd stand next to each other, I was like, wait, which one of these two is going to be the next elite tight end? And it was like, I. I don't. I guess I don't see it with Brock Bowers, but that was only because I was looking at him when he was standing next to Darnell Washington and he moves.

[Aryan]

Unreal. I've never even watched him before. This is.

[Eric]

It's impressive. Very impressive. And then Big T. I. I just want to check in one last time with you on how you feel about Lane as an SEC man yourself. Lane Kiffin, if you were.

[Big T]

When you say how I feel about.

[Eric]

What do you think he's going to go? What do you think? What do you think Lane's up to? Do you think that this is a big A work like Brandon Walker thinks, where he's.

[Big T]

No. I am actually the exact opposite of Brandon. I thought he was staying for a while, and now I think he's leaving.

[Eric]

Okay. He has.

[Big T]

He's a great coach. I think he's probably the second best coach in the sec.

[Eric]

He's made it known that he has been taking trips to Baton Rouge, Florida.

[Big T]

Yeah. I don't know if he was on them. His family was his family.

[Eric]

Yeah.

[Aryan]

But he.

[Eric]

It's it.

[Big T]

But yeah, he sent him. He sent him scouting.

[Eric]

I do agree with Brandon that it seems like they've been pretty. Pretty out in the open about making these trips.

[Big T]

Yeah, I, I'm. Nothing would shock me with Lane Kiffin.

[Eric]

Yeah.

[Big T]

But I think he's going to take another job and I think it will happen by next Monday.

[Aryan]

Okay. And what job. And what job is this. You think he's going to take?

[Eric]

He's.

[Big T]

It's either going to be Florida or lsu. I think he wants Florida.

[Aryan]

I think I would like that. Not because I have any affinity for. Or Lane Kiffin or I think college football is better when there's a few teams that are good at football. Florida State, Miami, Florida.

[Big T]

So the state of Florida.

[Aryan]

You mean usc, Georgia, of course. Tennessee. Right.

[Big T]

Thank you.

[Aryan]

I like when. But I like when certain powerhouses are really good. Like, it makes. It makes it really interesting. I like watching football. Like when Florida and Tennessee face off and both teams are good. Like, that's a fun game to watch. When Florida and Florida State play each other, when Florida State and Miami play each other and they. Nice. That's a fun game to watch. You know what I mean?

[Eric]

Yeah.

[Aryan]

It's not so fun when, like, I'm not a big fan of, you know, Arizona versus usc, you know, or whatever. Whoever happens to be good at the time. I like good teams playing good teams. Notre Dame, usc. Fun game to watch.

[Big T]

You like knowing who's going to be good.

[Congressman Pat Ryan]

I do.

[Aryan]

Yeah. I do.

[Eric]

You root for the helmet.

[Aryan]

I'm not a Cinderella guy. I'm not a Cinderella guy.

[Eric]

You root for the helmets. That.

[Aryan]

You know, I told you. I think I hate the new uniforms. I like traditional uniforms. I like, you know, having a staple. I like aesthetically pleasing games. You know what I'm saying? Michigan, Ohio State. That looks good together when they. On the field. You know what I'm saying? And when they both nice. Hell of a game.

[Eric]

Fun.

[Big T]

Do you see what UT wore last week?

[Aryan]

Was it the black johns?

[Big T]

No, it was the smoky grays. But this year's were. I love the smoky gray uniforms. This year's weren't. Weren't the best. But if you're. But if you're a fan of traditional, then those. They would not be the ones for you.

[Aryan]

I am, you know, I'm a progressive guy, but when it comes to my college sports teams, I do like a little conservatism. I like a little. Hey, let's just.

[Big T]

I can appreciate.

[Aryan]

I. I don't know if I told y' all this, but I want to go to. Maybe I did CT kicking in, but I want to go to a Notre Dame game.

[MacKenzie]

MacKenzie and I are down.

[Eric]

Okay.

[Aryan]

Yeah, yeah. I'm dead ass serious about that, though. Okay? I want. I want to. I want to do a Notre Dame game and I want to do the whole tailgating thing. I want to go sit next to Jesus or. Let's go have a high five or something.

[MacKenzie]

The Grotto. The Grotto. You could.

[Big T]

Why Notre Dame, specifically?

[Aryan]

Because I remember it was 2005, fall. 2005. Walk with me. I'm driving to the stadium and the fall turning into Winter, the trees of that place. It felt so good we went there. It was gloomy. I love a gloomy day. Light rain. And it was just. That experience to me was so, so. And I was outside the other day, I was like that. I want to feel that again. And so I want to go there and just experience that feeling of a college football fall day in Notre Dame.

[Big T]

They play Miami at home next year.

[Aryan]

That'd be dope. That'd be dope. I like to. I. I would like to go to a game. Let's do it.

[MacKenzie]

I'd love to. It's a quick jaunt from Chicago.

[Aryan]

Let's do it. Let's jaunt over to Notre Dame there.

[Eric]

There's one other thing that just came out. PFT's playing corner as it pertains to the NFL. The NFL is monitoring the situation in regards to the return of supersonic transatlantic flights. So.

[Big T]

So we can play every game.

[Eric]

So the Concord was a plane that famously flew back and forth between. I think it was. I forget which CITIES in the U.S. i want to say New York and D.C. i could be wrong about those. And then over to London and Paris and it flew way faster than any other plane. It was over the speed of sound. They stopped the Concorde back in like the mid-90s, I think. Occasionally I know it flew out of D.C. actually because it would fly over my house from Dulles Airport. Sometimes I would see it up in the sky. Crazy looking plane, Very, very fast. Cool plane. They're thinking about bringing back the, the Concord and it could be here as soon as 2029. And the NFL is monitoring that situation, not just in regards to playing more overseas games, but in regards to establishing a team, a full time team over in Europe and how that would affect things.

[Big T]

Yeah, I mean, dude, just that. Whatever.

[Eric]

Yeah, whatever.

[Big T]

It's going to happen.

[Eric]

They're going to have to pay a premium to get a team to like get, get free agents.

[Aryan]

Yeah.

[Big T]

I mean, who's signing up for that?

[Eric]

Yeah, I don't think so.

[Big T]

Imagine like being born in Dalton, Georgia, and you play your whole life in the state of Georgia. You play in the SEC and then you get drafted to the Paris Marauders and you have to go live in Europe.

[Aryan]

Yeah.

[Eric]

Hi, welcome to, welcome to Perry.

[Big T]

It's a terrible idea.

[Eric]

On this football team, we eat snail. It is your customary snail. They start the dinner. That guy would just quit football. Yeah, immediately. What, what European country do you think is most similar to Georgia?

[Big T]

To the state of Georgia?

[Eric]

Yeah.

[Big T]

I mean, it's named for a British king.

[Eric]

Yeah. I always thought of Georgia's being like, being like a Scotland almost.

[Big T]

I was going to. I was thinking Ireland maybe.

[Eric]

Yeah, Ireland. Georgia was a penal colony, right?

[Big T]

Yes.

[Eric]

Interesting fun fact. All right, well, that does it for macro dosing. And we will see you guys next Tues. Next Tuesday. We will. It'll be the only episode next week. Very excited about it. And then it's Thanksgiving, and Aryan will then be getting a dog afterwards. All right, well, we will see you guys next week. Love you guys.