A Share & Tell About Nothing with Mina Kimes, Dan Le Batard & Pablo

Summary

Pablo Torre Finds Out

Episode: "A Share & Tell About Nothing with Mina Kimes, Dan Le Batard & Pablo"
Date: May 3, 2024
Host: Pablo Torre
Guests: Mina Kimes, Dan Le Batard (Le Batard & Friends)

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Episode Overview

This episode is a classic "Share & Tell" hang-out between Pablo Torre, Mina Kimes, and Dan Le Batard. The trio riff on everyday habits (hoarding pens and snacks), the nostalgia and culture wars around comedy—specifically sparked by Jerry Seinfeld's recent comments—and take a data-driven detour into the modern book publishing industry. The show moves fluidly from cultural critiques and personal confessions to sports media legends, all anchored by their signature humor and chemistry.

Major themes:

• Hoarding/collecting habits as cultural traits
• The state and future of comedy (with focus on Jerry Seinfeld’s views)
• The economics and realities of book publishing
• Charles Barkley’s unique place in sports media
• The value of hobbies and pleasures done purely for oneself

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Share & Tell: Hoarding, Habits, and Cultural Stereotypes

[00:06–02:57]

• Snack/Beverage Hoarding:
  • Mina on flights: “...if you're coming at me with that snack basket, I'm taking at least three things and I'm putting in my backpack, like a squirrel storing their nuts for the winter...” (00:16, Mina Kimes)
  • Pablo compares this to his napkin-hoarding; Mina declares: “That’s Asian. That’s just our culture, you know.” (00:48)
  • Mina never throws away spare earbud tips—“even though the giant ones I have tiny ears, I'll never use. But what if I'm desperate...?” (00:51, Mina)
• Habits as cultural identity:
  • Pablo admits to “stealing” pens from restaurants.
  • Dan: “You just said the verb stealing...you confessed to kleptomania!” (01:24, Dan)
  • Dan is pressed about Cuban-specific household hoarding, with Pablo jokingly suggesting "machetes."
  • Dan pushes back, poking fun at cultural stereotypes and Pablo’s “blind spot” about racism. (02:27)

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2. Jerry Seinfeld, Comedy, and ‘PC Culture Wars’

[04:11–13:13]

• Trigger: Seinfeld’s comments blaming “PC crap” and “the extreme left” for the decline in TV comedy:
  • “This is the result of the extreme left and PC crap and people worrying so much about offending...” (04:11, Seinfeld via audio)
• Panel’s Reaction:
  • Pablo’s summary: “It's the thing that's so unsurprising... where like 70-year-old guy... who made one of the most successful TV shows in history... feels like actually he's not laughing anymore. It just feels convenient...” (06:12, Pablo)
  • Mina zeroes in on economics: “...the far bigger driver behind the absence of the kind of shows he's bemoaning...is the fact that we don't have 40-episode sitcoms anymore... for technological, business reasons, not because of cultural reasons.” (06:37, Mina)
  • Dan: “There has never been a time...where he's ever made any kind of joke that was so edgy... He's always been PG.” (11:38, Dan)
• Notables:
  • Mina attended Seinfeld’s recent live show and found it “a little dated,” more focused on familiar topics (“wives, am I right?”), and compared Seinfeld with newer comics she saw at the same event.
  • Pablo and Mina agree much of the debate is market-driven, not a product of “woke” censorship.

Quote Highlight

“...the sitcom thing, it's much more about economic forces and the industry than it is about the actual underlying nature of the comedy, which seems to be his point.”
—Mina Kimes (13:30)

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3. Edgy Comedy: Standards, Offense, and Market Reality

[13:13–19:54]

• The group discuss “edginess” in comedy.
  • Mina: “I watched the Shane Gillis special on Netflix, which is very edgy and very offensive, I imagine, to a lot of people and much funnier to me than anything I saw from Seinfeld.” (13:44)
  • Pablo admits Gillis is very funny despite past controversies involving offensive Asian caricatures, underscoring the difference between truly funny “edgy” material and merely offensive ones.
  • The panel compare Netflix's tolerance for controversial comics (Matt Rife), suggesting the streaming giant is driven more by profit and audience size than fear or “PC” influence.
• Content vs. Economics:
  • Mina: “...for me, it seems to be that these companies are just motivated by...the bottom line.” (17:47)
  • Dan: “Once you get into the corporation of funny, you're finding a lot of content makers are running scared. I believe that that is true...” (15:30)
• Corporate Fear & Creativity:
  • Dan notes how “fear” among executives shapes what gets made.
  • Mina: Netflix seems motivated by business—not by braveness or risk aversion.

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4. Mina’s Big Reveal: She’s Never Watched ‘Seinfeld’ (Except the Finale)

[20:27–22:56]

• After much teasing:
  • “I've only seen one episode of Seinfeld and it was the last one.” (20:27, Mina)
  • Laughter and disbelief ensue.
  • Mina confesses to “faking” references to Seinfeld over the years.
  • Fun segment: the group quizzes Mina on Seinfeld lore (e.g., "Soup Nazi" catchphrase, Kramer character traits).
  • Dan jokes: “I think she's got to know what she's saying there instead of just giving the double thumbs up. In agreement. There's some dangers here.” (21:29, Dan)

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5. Book Industry—Why (Almost) No One Buys Books

[23:21–36:49]

• Mina’s reading finds:
  • Cites a viral Substack/Slate piece about the book industry’s economics.
  • Key stats:
    • “Over 90% of books sell fewer than 1,000 copies. Half, according to this, sell fewer than 12.” (24:54, Mina)
    • The top 4% drive 60% profitability.
    • Even huge celebrity books often flop (e.g., Billie Eilish, Justin Timberlake).
  • “Most of these big houses spend most of their money on celebrity books…most of these books are not profitable.”
• Publishing realities:
  • “Books are a handful of very successful things funding seemingly a lot of failure, economically speaking.” (25:14, Pablo)
  • Pablo and Mina discuss how big advances and “platform” authors are now a risk-avoidant necessity for publishers.
  • Industry’s existential dread: subscription models, Amazon’s power as both distributor and publisher.
  • But: “reading doesn’t actually seem to be down. Like this isn’t happening because people aren’t reading.” (31:04, Mina)
• Dan’s perspective:
  • Reminisces how old career paths used to feed into book writing for journalists—and how that’s evaporated.
  • “The hardest and the most fulfilling of these arts… of course that would die too, at the altar of Kindle or just not reading...” (29:08, Dan)

Quote Highlight

“It's happening because of the technological aspects and the economics of it and, you know, but people still read books...”
—Mina Kimes (31:04)

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6. Books & Hobbies: What Do We Do ‘Just for Ourselves’?

[36:49–38:29]

• The crew admit to reading habits—or lack thereof:
  • Mina cherishes reading fiction “just for me and not for social capital.”
  • Pablo confesses he reads mostly for podcast prep.
  • Dan's wife gave him Stephen King’s On Writing to nudge him into writing a book, but he's daunted by the undertaking.
• Mina: “That is one of the very rare things in my life I do that has zero professional utility. It is not something that I do for even something like, I don't know, like, I run every day... there's nothing like that with reading for me...” (34:35)
• Pablo cares for houseplants: “...I live in this state of constantly gardening in my home and it gives me joy. It’s only for me and Liz and Violet...” (38:02)
• Dan ultimately admits his “just for me” pursuit is still... Royal Match, a mobile game.

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7. Charles Barkley—Unicorn of Sports Media

[38:59–48:22]

• Barkley’s unparalleled status:
  • Dan: "Outside of Howard Cosell, Charles Barkley has been the greatest broadcaster in the history of all of sports."
  • Barkley's contract complexities: will he stay with TNT/NBA if rights are lost?
  • Panel praises Barkley's unique charisma, likability, ability to thrive without encyclopedic knowledge, and how he escapes cancelation for statements that would destroy others.
• Barkley’s real-world warmth:
  • Dan: “He carries himself with a great deal of gratitude…He’s the best at being kind to people…” (45:30, Dan)
• **If Barkley leaves TNT: “If Barkley leaves, that show's over. ... there is one star, one person who is not like any person who's ever been before him.” (46:39, Dan)
• Mina on emulation:
  • “It’s debatable how much can be learned from [Inside the NBA]… the lesson is obvious ... but how much that can be copied is really, really difficult.” (43:09, Mina)
• Barkley anecdote:
  • Barkley missed Dan’s wedding due to an invitation mix-up; delivers classic “Marriage is a walk in the park… Jurassic Park” punchline.
  • Mina roasts: “Take that one from Jerry Seinfeld.” (47:54, Mina)

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8. Final Reflections: The Value of ‘Private’ Pleasures

[48:32–49:22]

• What did each person “find out today”?
  • Mina to Dan: “I found out that Dan doesn't have enough things that he does just for himself. Aside from Royal Match.” (48:34, Mina)
  • Dan nearly closes with a “master of my own domain” joke, referencing Seinfeld—but thinks better of it.
  • Pablo: “It does feel also appropriately masturbatory that you told us that. So thank you...” (49:13, Pablo)
  • Mina: “So is Jerry the master of his domain?” (49:22)
• Self-referential humor closes the show.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

Pen Theft as a Writer’s Instinct

"No, I confessed to being a writer at heart who just always wants to have the ability."
—Pablo Torre on hoarding pens, [01:38]

On Seinfeld’s Outdated Complaints

“It just feels convenient at this point. And lazy on that level.”
—Pablo Torre, [06:12]

On Book Publishing Economics

"Over 90% of books sell fewer than a thousand copies. Half ... fewer than 12. Again, that's pretty stunning."
—Mina Kimes, [24:54]

Mina’s Seinfeld Confession

"I've only seen one episode of Seinfeld and it was the last one."
—Mina Kimes, [20:27]

On Barkley’s Uniqueness

"There is one star, one person who is not like any person who's ever been before him."
—Dan Le Batard, [46:39]

Ultimate Life Lesson

"Most things that are most fulfilling, it's because they're the hardest."
—Dan Le Batard, [32:33]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Share & Tell (Hoarding habits): 00:06–02:57
• Seinfeld/comedy culture wars: 04:11–13:13
• Comedy, offense, Netflix: 13:13–19:54
• Mina’s Seinfeld confession: 20:27–22:56
• Book industry economics: 23:21–36:49
• Hobbies for personal pleasure: 36:49–38:29
• Charles Barkley as sports media legend: 38:59–48:22
• Final reflections: 48:32–49:22

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Tone & Style

Highly conversational, irreverent, candid, and intellectually playful. The hosts and guests puncture big ideas with personal anecdotes and sharp wit, shifting from cultural critique to self-roasting with ease.

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For Listeners Who Haven’t Tuned In

This episode is a quintessential example of why “Pablo Torre Finds Out" is a must-listen: funny, digressive, insight-rich, and more focused on how we live and think than “just sports.” Whether dissecting Jerry Seinfeld’s complaints, exposing book industry realities, or debating who’s the “Barkley of your field,” you’ll find yourself both thinking and laughing.

Skip the ads, and buckle up for a smart, thoroughly modern conversation about comedy, media, and the stuff that still brings us joy.

Transcript

[Pablo Torre]

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds Out. I am Pablo Torre. And today we're gonna find out what this sound is.

[Mina Kimes]

I've only seen one episode of Seinfeld, and it was the last one.

[Dan Le Batard]

Oh, no. No wonder you think it's terrible.

[Pablo Torre]

Right after this ad.

[Mina Kimes]

You're listening to Giraffe Kra. When I'm traveling, if you're coming at me with that snack basket, I'm taking at least three things and I'm putting in my backpack, like a squirrel storing their nuts for the winter, because you never know when you're going to need it on the road.

[Pablo Torre]

That's my philosophy of napkins.

[Mina Kimes]

Yeah, that's Asian. That's just bang.

[Pablo Torre]

Is that just an Asian thing?

[Mina Kimes]

Yeah, that's just Asian. That's our culture, you know? This is the big one. The bags of the earbuds you get with headphones. I'm like, I might need them. I might need them, even though the giant ones I have tiny ears, I'll never use. But what if I'm desperate and I need them at some point? I will never throw these away.

[Pablo Torre]

I like. I like stealing pens from restaurants that they give me to sign the check.

[Dan Le Batard]

What?

[Mina Kimes]

That's weird. What.

[Dan Le Batard]

What are you doing? What are you doing?

[Pablo Torre]

You might need a pen.

[Mina Kimes]

That's. That's just theft.

[Dan Le Batard]

But that. You just said the verb stealing should.

[Pablo Torre]

Accuse you a crime. I. I want to retract the verb choice now.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, you admitted to a crime is what just happened there. You confessed. I like to steal pens. In fact, you. You confessed to kleptomania is what you just did.

[Pablo Torre]

No, I confessed to being a. A writer at heart who just always wants to have the ability.

[Mina Kimes]

Yeah. Dan doesn't save pens because he doesn't. Has no reason to use them anymore. The Cuban American delegation here. What is the thing that you and your family and your culture hoard that you have in the doors of your house?

[Dan Le Batard]

Let me think if this is any Cuban specific hoarding.

[Pablo Torre]

I'm trying some machetes maybe. Got. Got any machetes?

[Dan Le Batard]

Whoa, whoa. Machetes? You think that a family heirloom. Just let me understand what you have as a depiction of Cubans here. Let me. Let me see if I've got this straight.

[Mina Kimes]

Problematic. Is this how it hands his end?

[Dan Le Batard]

Let me seize on that for a moment, as there are more racist weapons than a mach.

[Stu Gotz]

No, no, no, no, no.

[Dan Le Batard]

Let me. Let me. Let me seize on this for a moment. Just real quick. Yeah. All of my descendants, including the women, looked like Danny Trejo. That's Correct. They were all machete. They were all. Yeah, no, you said this. You said this with this undercurrent of blind spot that you have about racism toward my people where all of us just wander around putting machetes in the drawers.

[Mina Kimes]

Did you say machete and then switch back to machete? Did I catch that?

[Pablo Torre]

That was incredible. Code switching from little code switching.

[Dan Le Batard]

Ever since I put away the pen that used to allow me to write correctly, I was someone who used to be able to put words together.

[Mina Kimes]

I'm gonna ask Val, once you put.

[Pablo Torre]

Down the Dan's wife and picked up the blade.

[Mina Kimes]

I know what Dan's hoarding Royal Match coins.

[Dan Le Batard]

So many of them. Oh, I've got so many of them.

[Pablo Torre]

Oh, I forgot. We're starting with my topic because my topic is a topic that Mina has teased us about, that she has a thing that she wants to contribute to this conversation, Dan, that she would not disclose in our group chat. And the setup to this does not feel like it's something that would spark such immediate glee from Mina Kimes. But the setup is Jerry Seinfeld is in the news again. He has a movie coming out about Pop Tarts or some on Netflix. But he has gotten in trouble because he said this to David Remnick, editor of the New Yorker, on their New Yorker Radio hour.

[Jerry Seinfeld (quoted)]

Nothing really affects comedy. People always need it. They need it so badly. And they don't get used to be. You would go home at the end of the day, most people would go, oh, Cheers is on. Oh, MASH is on. Oh, Mary Tyler Moore is on. All in the Family's on. You just expected there'll be some funny stuff we can watch on TV tonight. Well, guess what? Where is it? This is the result of the extreme left and PC crap and people worrying so much about offending other people. When you write a script and it goes into four or five different hands, committees, groups, here's our thought about this joke. Well, that's the end of your comedy. They move the gates. Like in skiing culture, the gates are moving. Your job is to be agile and clever enough that wherever they put the gates, I'm gonna make the gate.

[Pablo Torre]

So as a general principle, watching David Remnick figure out how do I give listening face and how do I do some in. That is very funny to me, August journalist. But this is a very familiar conversation that just makes me again, I don't want to just do the thing of like, Jerry Seinfeld, you 70 year old man, which is literally true. You don't get it. Anymore. Yes.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah, he's 70. That's shocking. Every time anyone says that, it's shocking too. He look, he's. Whatever he's doing in life, he's figured out how to look like. He doesn't look 70.

[Mina Kimes]

Yes, he looks great.

[Pablo Torre]

Be extraordinarily rich would be one step, I suppose. Yeah, I'll do it. And then the second step is, I guess have blind spots towards the other people directly in your sort of circle of Hollywood friends who have figured out ways to make great even as time has marched on. I mean, curb your enthusiasm I guess just ended. Is he saying that Curb never got to do this because he wrote with Larry David on Seinfeld? I love Seinfeld, by the way, the show. I want to say that too. I love Seinfeld.

[Dan Le Batard]

I love Seinfeld the comedian.

[Pablo Torre]

I think Seinfeld the comedian is also incredibly sharp and funny. It just is the thing that's so unsurprising me, you know, where like seven year old guy who made one of the most successful TV shows in history, who has many friends, who made Veep. Julia Louis Dreyfus made Veep. Of course that's God now. But I don't think PC culture is the reason why like Jerry Seinfeld feels like actually he's not laughing anymore. It just feels convenient at this point. And lazy on that level.

[Mina Kimes]

Yeah, you know, I mean, I think the bigger, the far bigger driver behind the absence of the kind of shows he's bemoaning the loss of is the fact that we don't have 40 episode sitcoms anymore. I guess the one that is successful that people point to is Abbott elementary, which I haven't seen. I've heard it's very funny, but they just don't make those kinds of shows for technological business reasons, not because of cultural reasons. I think that, you know, people would point to curb your enthusiasm being on hbo. Veep was on hbo. Yeah. And. But the structure of those shows is different. And actually, you know, you don't really see many episodes, many seasons of television that are 10 plus episodes at all anymore. That's not because of woke culture, that's because of the economics of the industry. It is why the writers went on strike. Right. Because of that. Because it's harder to make a living doing that kind of thing. So I just saw Seinfeld last night. I went to. It was like the Netflix as a joke fest. It was a guy who, I can't remember his name, he was Mancalo Moncalo or something.

[Dan Le Batard]

Sebastian Maniscalco.

[Mina Kimes]

Yes. Yes. He was first.

[Pablo Torre]

How dare you.

[Mina Kimes]

Nate Bargazzi was second. Jim Gaffigan was third. Seinfeld.

[Dan Le Batard]

What a lineup. Good God.

[Pablo Torre]

Why is Mina pronouncing Sebastian Maniscalco's name like a 90 year old woman?

[Mina Kimes]

I don't. I don't know his name. I don't know.

[Dan Le Batard]

Mina. Don't feel. Don't feel ignorant there, incidentally, because I've found on our show that Maniscalco occupies a space where some of us just love him and know exactly who he is, and some of us can't believe that the others don't know who we're talking about.

[Mina Kimes]

Do you love is. Are you a fan, Dan?

[Dan Le Batard]

I like all of the comedians you just mentioned. That's a hell of a show. I don't think you had the right order in terms of how that lineup should have laid out, but perhaps. Well, I don't know. Gaffigan seemed a little high there with the company he was keeping.

[Mina Kimes]

Wow.

[Dan Le Batard]

No offense to Gaffigan. That's a. That's a murderer's row. That is a murderer's row of comedians you. You watched last night.

[Mina Kimes]

So Gaffigan is why we went. We were a guest of his. I had not seen any of these people except for Seinfeld, I had seen once, and the one time I'd seen Seinfeld, it was inadvertently. I went to Nick's Fr. Co Workers Improv show we went to in New York, which is the kind of thing you do when you're in New York, and it's not really. Anyways, I love improv in New York.

[Pablo Torre]

For the record, here, I'll disclose my priors here.

[Mina Kimes]

Yeah, I don't. So I went and Seinfeld did the thing where, like, you know, you're a comedian, you're like him just popping into the Comedy Store or whatever to work material. So people went nuts. And so this was the second time I saw him. Um, wasn't really my thing. I'll start by saying, you know, it was a lot of jokes about, like, wives. Am I right? Marriage is miserable. You know, Gulf. They should call it get out, Leave Family was one of the jokes. I'm sorry.

[Dan Le Batard]

Well, I will say, the last time that I saw Seinfeld, this is not a joke. I'm not making this up. I found it alarming, the number of canes I was stepping over in the audience to get to my seat. I'm not. I'm not even joking. Like, I wish I were joking with canes. And.

[Pablo Torre]

And.

[Dan Le Batard]

And in the way that Comedy doesn't tend to age well. It's very hard to be a 70 year old comedian who keeps up with things. The last few times I've seen him, the acts have been about nothing, as they always are, but they haven't been bad. Mina. So it might not be your thing, but as a, as, as a sculptor, he's a very good comedian.

[Pablo Torre]

Mina. I guess what we're saying is that Seinfeld has been a master of observational comedy specifically. And what he's observing, the sharpness of his observations are what you're now, of course, taking some issue with.

[Mina Kimes]

Yeah, just I would contrast it with, I mean, again, I'm not a great critic of comedy, but Bargazzi, who went second, who I had seen before, was much more my speed personally, and I think actually falls in the same category with Seinfeld. Very inoffensive humor. It's not edgy or politicized at all. It's jokes about his upbringing in Tennessee. He joked about his wife as well, and being married. But for some reason I found it a lot sharper. I'll just say that he's less of a performer. His humor is more dry. I think that seems to be more of the generational thing. But yeah, I guess I don't want to say Seinfeld isn't funny as a comedian because I feel like I don't have. I can't base that off of one set that I saw. And I don't want to be like a, you know, cast judgment about what that says about how he views the state of comedy as a whole. Now I'll just say it felt a little dated.

[Dan Le Batard]

Seinfeld. I do not believe that, as you're mentioning all the things you're mentioning, because I do think there's a number of funny things here, including the fact that he was putting up that as criticism. And then what came at the end was a TikTok thing that is about 50 years removed from the kind of age stuff that he's afflicted with here. That might make him look at young people and say, don't tell me how to do comedy. Look at my history in comedy. Do you have any idea what it is that I've done in this business? However, there has never been a time in the 25 years that Jerry Seinfeld has been making television or jokes where he's ever made any kind of joke that was so edgy that would get him canceled. He has never existed in that space. I don't know like that. He's never he's always been pg.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, well, look, the other part of it, too, just to put a button on, I guess, the culture war aspect of this, which is very familiar, I think, to all of us in various other contexts, is like, it's not like Hollywood is demanding, like, hey, can you give us smart things? Thoughtful, slow paced art films? You know, like that do satisfy the liberal elite. Like, that's not exactly happening either. I think this is. This is an industry thing in which criticism feels like the market speaking to you. And you can confuse the two. When the market is shrinking and people are criticizing you. They're not necessarily the same thing. Bad polling doesn't mean that the gears of Hollywood are suddenly aligned against you in a conspiratorial way because you're too edgy as a comedian.

[Mina Kimes]

Do any of us think he has a point? I just want to, before I move on to my revelation here, that it's.

[Dan Le Batard]

Getting harder to do comedy today because people are more sensitive. I don't know that anyone could disagree with that point, that it's getting harder to do comedy because the corporations are involved and people like, what's.

[Mina Kimes]

Can we just say, what do we mean by doing comedy? Are we talking about standup? Are we talking about sitcoms? Because I think we all agree that the sitcom thing, it's much more about economic forces and the industry than it is about the actual underlying nature of the comedy, which seems to be his point. As far as standup goes, I feel like there are comedians who are edgy and are more. Just more successful and contemporary. I mean, I watched the Shane Gillis special on Netflix, which is very edgy and very offensive, I imagine, to a lot of people and much funnier to me than anything I saw from Seinfeld. But, you know, that it felt much more finely tuned to the moment, perhaps much more modern. Pablo?

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, I have, and I found it funny, despite previous things that we've talked about on this show that I have, at least with Dan too, about, like how Shane Gillis was somebody that I think I was not trying to like and then realized he's funny enough, where I have to admit I think that this guy makes me laugh. And I want to acknowledge that despite his history of saying things that, again, have been characterized as, like, caricatures and, and insults towards Asian people, that, again, different episode, different topic. But Seinfeld does draw a distinction, and Dan's clarification is useful. Seinfeld draws a distinction in this interview between standup and sitcoms. And I think this is kind of what's the heart of the story is like, if you want to say things that make corporations uncomfortable in all sorts of ways, you do it independently. And there is so much reward there. And I think the question is about television, which is gatekept by TV companies. I do think there, of course, the appetite has changed because of economic forces. And of course I think there is a risk aversion. Although I would imagine that the risk aversion, Dan, towards like, can we get away with this joke? Feels like a pendulum that swings back and forth all of the time.

[Dan Le Batard]

Oh, but wait a minute. There can be. There can be so much truth in and in what Seinfeld is saying about corporate interference and fingers getting involved with a product that's being made right now at this time. I will tell you, as somebody who's involved in the business of this negotiating with an apple over things that are going to get made. The corporations are absolutely scared of offending people and then take a team of executives in so that what you're watching, perhaps you've noticed this on Apple Television, Mina. And is stuff that's not going to offend anybody, that the corporate creative choices. Once you get into the corporation of funny, you're finding a lot of content makers are running scared. I believe that that is true based on my experience, I guess.

[Mina Kimes]

I don't know. I just read an interview with Netflix, which is really the. Probably the biggest purveyor of comedy right now. Right. Like, that is a huge part of their business. This thing I went to last night, that was part of a Netflix. That Netflix is a joke festival.

[Dan Le Batard]

They're a little different, though, I would say, than some of these other. I would say they've been supporting comedy more ferociously for profit than any of these other entities.

[Mina Kimes]

Yeah, because it's cheap and they can make a ton of money off of it. And these comedy specials do really well. It's not out of some, you know, higher like, it's not that they're braver or whatever. It's cheaper. And this interview, anyways, they talked about. They didn't talk about Gillis, but the. They talked about this comedian, Matt Rife, who was. Made some really offensive jokes about domestic violence.

[Matt Rife (referenced)]

I've only been to Baltimore one time. I ate lunch there and the hostess who, like seats you at the restaurant.

[Pablo Torre]

Had a black eye, a full black.

[Matt Rife (referenced)]

And it wasn't like, what happened. It was pretty obvious what happened. And we couldn't get over the fact that we were like, this is the face of the company. Like, this is this is who you have greeting people. And my boy, who I was with was like, yeah, I feel bad for her, man. I feel like they should put her in the kitchen or something where nobody has to see her face, you know? And I was like, yeah, but I feel like if she could cook, she wouldn't have that black eye.

[Mina Kimes]

The Internet did not like it. And Netflix was supporting him in a big way and continuing to throw their weight behind him and give him a big audience. And let me tell you, that dude is not funny. I mean, I. Cause I was. I went down the rabbit hole and I had the exact opposite experience from watching Shane Gill, where I was like, okay, Shane Gillis, this happened. Let me watch him. I was like, ooh, this is pretty funny. He's pretty funny. Matt Wright, same experience went down. I was like, let me watch some of his clips. And literally, I could not have laughed any less than if I was at a funeral. It was so unfunny. He's so untalented. You can create this. I don't know if he has shooters. All the Italy people defending him. If they are, they have terrible taste because he is untalented and unfunny and does not clear the bar for. If you're going to be edgy, you gotta be really, really funny in the way that Gillis is up and Dan, this interview, Netflix was like, he's got an audience, man. He's got a fan base. He's huge on TikTok. So I don't think, at least just talking about Netflix, I don't know about all these other companies, for me, it seems to be that these companies are just motivated by the, you know, the bottom line.

[Dan Le Batard]

All of that can be true. And there can be a dollop of fear in it, too, because executives are going to executive and if they can fear something instead of leading so that they won't be blamed for why it is that money's not PA Being made. It can be said that there might be a dollop of fear in there as well, just because we have a lot of people in business who are in power to do things who shouldn't be, who. Who think they're the reason that they make hit television, when sometimes the way that hit television gets made isn't with an algorithm. Because you don't know formulaically how some of this stuff actually gets popular.

[Mina Kimes]

Yeah, which brave network comedy exec will give us the sitcom that's like Wives, Am I right? They spend so much money on vacation and your family just fights the whole time. I mean, we're out on these boats, on the water, just yapping at each other, screaming at each other, and I'm like, man, this feels like work.

[Dan Le Batard]

I just hate. I hate that the three of us are out here. The three of us. Three of us on sports, cable television saying one of the great comedians of all time isn't funny. Not saying you're wrong. I just hate having my face in the middle of it.

[Pablo Torre]

What I want to know is what Mina was gonna tell us. We've gone.

[Dan Le Batard]

I'm sorry. Do that. There was. We. There was a great tease. She's been teasing us. Mina, there was something you wanted to tell us that we're not gonna believe. What was it with the tease?

[Mina Kimes]

This is gonna come across so poorly after what I just did. The joke I just did. Okay, here it is. I've only seen one episode of Seinfeld and it was the last one.

[Dan Le Batard]

Oh, no. No wonder you think it's terrible.

[Mina Kimes]

I don't think the show is terrible. I think his. I'm talking about his stand up, which I believe is different.

[Dan Le Batard]

No, but. No, it's not. That's the worst representation of him.

[Mina Kimes]

And you guys don't even know how many times in my life. How did you avoid it? Pretended like I. Yeah. When people are like, classic Costanza, right? I'm like, totally. Or like, like just so many references to over the years that I have Festivus. What? Man hands. Don't know what the man hands are. A late man purse. I'm like, yeah, the Elaine, the dancing Kramer.

[Pablo Torre]

Kramer. As a concept, you're just like, yeah, definitely. Love, love, love a Kramer.

[Dan Le Batard]

She. She does need to be careful, I think, not knowing and giving double thumbs up to master of your own domain. I think she's got to know what she's saying there instead of just giving the double thumbs up. In agreement. There's some dangers here.

[Mina Kimes]

This. The Sub Nazi.

[Dan Le Batard]

That's less dangerous, I think, for you than masters of your own domain.

[Mina Kimes]

I think so. The Sub Nazi, as I understand it, again, never having seen it. Just a man who doesn't want people.

[Dan Le Batard]

To buy his soup aggressively. No, he has his own set of rules for where and how you can get his delicious soup. And he berates.

[Pablo Torre]

Wait, Mina, do you know. Wait, let's see. Mina, do you know the Soup Nazi's famous catchphrase?

[Mina Kimes]

No soup for you.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes.

[Pablo Torre]

Wow.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yes. Well done. She can fake her way through a Seinfeld conversation. Having only seen the worst of its.

[Mina Kimes]

Episodes, here's my understanding of the character of Kramer. He is Kind of a hobo. But he lives in their apartment, and his big. His move is just coming into rooms and, like, almost falling, sliding, and the door opens.

[Dan Le Batard]

He lives next door. He's not a roommate. He lives across the hall. And he just. There. There's an intimacy among these young people that allows him to just come in, slide into the room with a grand entrance and big hair and racism. Later in life. Later in the life.

[Mina Kimes]

Does he like, he. I don't know.

[Pablo Torre]

He has many jobs, none of which I think qualify as a job. I feel like Nina has a pretty good handle on this show.

[Dan Le Batard]

She really does know everything that there needs to be. You've seen one episode. You're an expert.

[Pablo Torre]

All right, Mina, should we go to your topic? The topic that segues off of this one?

[Mina Kimes]

It does, actually. I didn't think it would, but I think there's a lot of continuity because it sort of cuts to why is certain content made, what does. Well, what is funded. And it was this piece I read about the book industry, and it was like a viral substack piece in Elysian Press. No one buys books is the name of the substack. So there was a. I'm playing on my notes because I want to get this right. There was a big trial from 2022, and Penguin Random House, which is one of the five major publishers, tried to buy Simon Schuster, which is one of the other five major publishers, for $2.2 billion. And the Just DOJ blocked it because it would be monopolistic, or I might be misrepresenting the exact case. But point is, they're all. Because of this trial, all this data came out on the book industry. And a Slate piece pointed out that the publishers have an incentive to cry poor to justify the purchase. So I think that's important context. As you know, we talk about this, but some of the data was, like, shocking to me as someone who buys and reads books. Just top line. Over 90% of books sell fewer than a thousand copies. Half, according to this, sell fewer than 12. Again, that's pretty stunning. Most of these big houses spend almost most of their money on celebrity books or people like, you know, Stephen King and James Patterson and whatnot.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah.

[Mina Kimes]

Franchises, most of. Yeah. So 2% of all books earn advances over 250,000. That one's not super surprising. But most of these books are not profitable. The CEO of Random House said the top 4% of books drive 60% of the profitability for all of it.

[Pablo Torre]

That was the stat that jumped out to me. I was like, oh, this is. Books are a handful of very successful things. Funding seemingly a lot of failure, economically speaking.

[Mina Kimes]

Even these big celebrity books don't do particularly well. A lot of them don't do well. I mean, they mentioned, like, the Billie Eilish book didn't sell a lot. Justin Timberlake's book sold a thousand copies in three years. 85% of books with these major. Your advances don't earn back their advances, according to one of these CEOs. So the money's all made off of a few big books, children's books. And I say that now as someone who's buying children's books. It really is the same stuff we were reading, which is kind of crazy. Like the Very Hungry Caterpillar is just continuing to dominate sales and then stuff like encyclopedias, bibles, backlists, basically. But so for these book companies, they really are trying to target people. This is kind of what I was alluding to when I was talking about Matt Wright, Matt Rife, who already have big existing audiences because they don't want to market these books and they don't really want to take too many risks with a lot of money because so often it doesn't pan out. This was depressing. I was really depressed after reading this.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, it's one of those, Dan. It's one of those stories where I'm like, I wish I know this because it kind of ruins the illusion of what a book is, because books in. In. In sort of real life are physical objects that you see at bookstores. And when you see it in the wild, it's like, oh, I assume, therefore, lots of other people are doing this. And you just realize how unbelievably small the audiences for the overwhelming super, super majority of all books are. And it just makes. And look, I want to know what Dan thinks, because Dan has been making noises for years about how his. His pens actually do work and how he wants to write a book. And I wonder how this article actually landed on you, Dan, as somebody who still obviously cares about books.

[Dan Le Batard]

And it's interesting to talk to the two of you, right, Having seen what your careers have become and the choices that you two particularly have made when you would have graduated in previous incarnations of our business into writing books, because that's where the career track went for journalists on the stuff that we were doing before we chose some of the other stuff we did. And what's interesting to hear Mina's perspective on this is I have seen a couple of these things burn down in front of me with such pain and sadness that this one is less surprising than the previous ones that have made me feel this way. I felt this way in general and feel this way with newspapers. But I also remember being for the first time on the set of PTI and Matt Kelleher, who we love. I was showing him a long form piece that I had done with Edin James and ESPN the Magazine that at that time would have become something like a book if I had pursued that path. And Matt Kelleher, who's one of the producers at pti, just looks at me and says, yeah, nobody reads long stuff anymore. And so that was the second time that I felt what you're feeling now, which is like of course, the hardest and the most fulfilling of these arts. This lovely thing from a bygone time that you would hold in your hands and have a relationship with over months. Of course that would die too, at the altar of Kindle or just not reading because we're all doing what Pet Sajak says. You don't have to learn anything anymore. You just have to know how to find it. And so the discovery that would come with a book or anything else that some of the mysteries of the things that you love about books from your childhood, they die for this generation because the artifact dies.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, it's also sort of what I don't know from this article, in fairness, is like how it used to be, how much better it used to be. Right. So I imagine pre Internet, of course, the economic pressures again, which recur throughout this episode were not the same. That is very clear. The idea of like we need authors who have audience because that saves us on marketing budgets feels like a familiar desperation that wasn't available as sort of like a hack because people didn't have social media platforms and you couldn't have someone like, let's just pull it at random. Piers Morgan, who has 8 million Twitter followers and 2 million Instagram followers selling just 5,650 U.S. print copies since his book was published. So the point being that even when you try to hack the system, most often the recurring message here is it fails. And so Dan mentioned something with Kindle where like the Apocalypse for the bookseller Mina in In this seems to be subscriptions. Like they, they are living in fear that you will buy a service that will let you read all of the books you want. And in fact these publishing houses are fighting to never let their titles be in such a service.

[Mina Kimes]

Yeah, which is I, I mean I think they saw what happened to the music industry. Right. And, and which should not or should have been much more proactive about what would eventually become the streaming model. And the book industry is like, nope, we're, we're not doing this because it would kill us. To their. It seems like what they live in fear of actually is less that and more the idea of an Amazon publishing their own books. Kind of like the grocery store putting out the private brand cereal or whatever. The, the team, the company that runs the pipes. And a lot of success in the book industry is being able to successfully manipulate those pipe pipes. There's some pay for play type stuff getting on lists, marketing placement, all that stuff.

[Pablo Torre]

Marketing.

[Mina Kimes]

But Amazon was suddenly like, we're going to, to put out books. And because of their ability to put those books in front of everyone at the expense of others, that would be a much bigger antitrust issue than one of these mergers. So it would be interesting to me to see if the government or something would get involved in that. And that's the thing with Amazon generally, right? Because they control so much distribution in the economy right now, they have the ability to crush many industries. I do want to point out there was an article in Slate that actually questioned some of the findings in this substack. Said that they didn't account for E reading, which is a way a lot of people purchase books now, and that it was very focused on profitability and sales in a calendar year. Books take a while to earn back money. The other thing it said, Dan, that I thought was interesting was reading doesn't actually seem to be down. Like this isn't happening because people aren't reading. It's happening because of the technological aspects and the economics of it and you know, but people still read books, which that gave me a little bit of comfort. Problem is, like so many things we talk about all the time, just because people are still interested in something doesn't mean the industry can find ways to be profitable the way it used to.

[Pablo Torre]

Dan, how do you feel about this? Do you still want to write a book?

[Dan Le Batard]

It has been my biggest professional wrestling demon that the thing that would be the hardest that I would normally gravitate to, just because it's the hardest and the most things, you know, most things that are most fulfilling, it's because they're the hardest. I've always wanted to do it and never been able to conquer it because of how lonely and exhaustive it would be. The only times that I've been able to summon the spirit to do so is when I'm at the height of feeling inspired, which isn't a Plane that I can keep.

[Pablo Torre]

I do like the idea of, like, Dan naming his autobiography something like one word. One of those, like, dramatic one word things. I don't know what it would be. All of my.

[Dan Le Batard]

I'll filibuster here, as you can see the wheels turning in Mina's head as she's going to get the clever title to the book. I see the wheels Turn happen. I put too much pressure on you. I figure you're always looking for those openings. You cut me at the beginning of this by reminding me that I never use these pens to write anything anymore.

[Mina Kimes]

Gas bag with a giant, like, zoomed in like he does on Twitter with other people. But his own face, I feel like would be good. I would read a Dan book. I would read a. I would read your memoir.

[Pablo Torre]

I would read Still Sweaty Colon, the Dan Leitard Story. Yeah.

[Mina Kimes]

Do you guys read?

[Dan Le Batard]

I do.

[Pablo Torre]

I do read. Not as often as I would like to right now.

[Dan Le Batard]

Valerie has just given me Stephen King's book on writing because she believes that this is the. She's trying to nudge me in the places that need nudging. Wow, that sounds dirtier than I meant.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. I was gonna say. Wait a minute, hold on. I read for the show now. I interview authors and I read their books and I'm like, oh, I should actually just like lean into it.

[Mina Kimes]

It.

[Pablo Torre]

But Hanif Abdurraqib's book was excellent.

[Mina Kimes]

So you're being read for utility.

[Pablo Torre]

I read for work because I don't have time. I tell myself to read for pleasure anymore.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah.

[Mina Kimes]

So I almost entirely read for pleasure. I read literary fiction. I do not read much nonfiction. I read books that have absolutely nothing to do with sports, with my job, and books that don't really. I don't really. I don't talk about them anywhere. And it is one of the very rare things in my life I do that has zero professional utility. It is not something that I do for even something like, I don't know, like, I run every day. Right. And I like it. But there's, you know, I. I run in part to stay in shape because I am on television and I'm a vain human being. Right. There's nothing. But there's nothing like that with reading for me. And that's why it occupies such a special place in my life, because it is that rare hobby that is just for me and not for social capital. Yeah. I don't know. And that's why I think I treasure it so much because it's really unusual.

[Dan Le Batard]

For me that way that's intimate. And I'm surprised that you don't share with others because of how much you enjoy talking about the artistry of well made things. I'm surprised that you don't seek other people who have read something that you read to see if they have observations that you don't have.

[Mina Kimes]

I have some book friends who I talk to about books that I'm reading. My friend Greg Rosenthal at the NFL Network and I have shared books and I do try to like sometimes I promote books on my podcast mostly just because I want people to read them. Or if I have a friend who's written a book, I have a friend who wrote great book called Real Americans that's out now. You guys should check out. It's beautifully written.

[Dan Le Batard]

You should get it right now. Do the promotion correctly. If it's right behind you there somewhere, grab it and promote the book correctly so that this person can get the shout out. Maybe, maybe we should have Mina's listening or reading recommendations here. We should start a new segment at the end of this. What are you reading these days?

[Mina Kimes]

You're corrupting my, my, the thing I just said this just for me.

[Pablo Torre]

What I would like to promote is.

[Mina Kimes]

You just turn it into content.

[Dan Le Batard]

Profit off it. That's right. Take your greatest intimacies, these unshared things and sell them at our merch store. Lebar. AF.com is where you go to get all Levitard merch.

[Pablo Torre]

I'm gonna promote perpetual bestseller, the Bible keeping all authors working for 2,000 years.

[Dan Le Batard]

Stugotsbook.com Stotz's personal record book real. It is filled with.

[Pablo Torre]

Are there words in there?

[Dan Le Batard]

No, not until you guys write them. You guys better hurry up and write them.

[Mina Kimes]

There. I wrote mine. They're in there. I receiving $0 for that. That I'm surprised he hasn't asked me to promote it.

[Dan Le Batard]

What a scam. What a scam.

[Pablo Torre]

So now at the end I want to figure out what we do, Dan, you and me. Because I think my version of reading books for pleasure and not for content is my vast collection of house plants, which I tend to lovingly. They're all alive. They've been alive for now since pre pandemic. I water them, I unpot them, I tend to them. They're doing great. I almost never photograph them. But I live in this state of constantly gardening in my home and it gives me joy. It's only for me and Liz and Violet and yeah, there is no sponsored. No, I. I may have tried at one point to see if anyone would sponsor this habit, no one would. But that's what I do. And what do you do, Dan?

[Dan Le Batard]

What do I do? Just for you, solely for.

[Mina Kimes]

Just for you and you alone.

[Dan Le Batard]

I'm gonna have to think about that for a second because I don't know that I have something that's exactly like that.

[Mina Kimes]

We all know. We all know what it really is.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, we know what it is. It is absolutely 100 still royal match Game. You total freak.

[Dan Le Batard]

You got me. I hate. I've forgotten that I shared that intimacy with you. I can't believe you've resurrected it. I'd forgotten. I thought it was still a secret shame. I'd shaken it off.

[Pablo Torre]

Speaking of people with large followings, Dan, speaking of someone who has survived the changing climate of our media economy, what have you brought us today?

[Dan Le Batard]

It's a Charles Barkley story. Because I think we can reasonably argue that outside of Howard Cosell, Charles Barkley has been the greatest broadcaster in the history of all of sports. Most award winning, several decades of success doing what Draymond Green is trying to do in a way that will never be replicated. I was told again and again by him at every turn that he was retiring at 60, they made it impossible to retire at 60. And now he has a 10 year contract clause in which there are outs that allow him an extension that allows him to get out if it, and it looks like this might happen if he's no longer working for the group of people that he presently works for at, at tnt, the executives, if all of the streaming rights end up changing so that your broadcast experience with the NBA has Charles Barkley working for people other than the people that he presently works for. And I just wanted to talk to you guys in general about him becoming a free agent or the idea that Charles Barkley makes everything so good by being Charles Barkley that he will never be replicated again as a broadcaster. I've never seen anyone exist in the space that he does where he's both controversial and likable and perpetually trending. And I will say again and likable. It's a charisma unlike any I've ever seen in the history of sports media. India.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. I want to get to Mina. Dan's personal relationship with Barkley because it is intimate.

[Stu Gotz]

Fat Dan Levitar and your fat Daddy. Sweet Ms. Lourdes. I'll see you Saturday.

[Pablo Torre]

Barkley getting away with stuff all of the time is fascinating to me because everybody, no one has been more influential on, I think athletes trying to be broadcasters and it's funny because Barkley's whole sort of shtick, you could argue, is that he never won a ring. And so he's perpetually sort of beset by this criticism that he failed. And yet nobody has won more in an arena that every athlete who has won wants to get into more. So Tom Brady wins all of the rings, and he wants to be Charles Barkley. All of these players. LeBron has a podcast now because on some level, Charles Barkley's coaching tree extends to every, every, every, every superstar who's ever done this. And the idea of, like, Mina, you thought about this, I'm sure. Like, what does charisma mean as an analyst on television? What do you have to do to have credibility? Barkley feels like a unicorn who everyone wants to try to emulate and no one probably should, because he does a thing where his lack of knowledge is endearing. His insults to others wind up being Chuck, being adorable. There's a segment on Inside the NBA, the greatest studio show, for my money, of all time in any sport in which who he play for is the premise. And spoiler alert, Charles does not know who that player plays for. He gets away with stuff. And he would be the biggest free agent, I believe in sports media bidding history because of what's happening potentially with TNT losing the NBA.

[Dan Le Batard]

I do wonder how all of our habits are going to be changing in the next 10 years of broadcasting changes. Because what they have there is a unique thing where all of the people who work on that show clearly love each other and have real chemistry. Not televised chuckle fest chemistry, the kind of chemistry that Mina has with her colleagues on NFL Live. Real chemistry, but also, and I don't know how much this has changed with management. He's always worked with people who he is grateful for to be around. And so I don't know how interested he would be to at this point, given that he's been talking for a long time about retiring at 60, working with different people. Like, I think that contract clause isn't there necessarily to give him freedom as much as it is to give him the freedom to not work with anybody he doesn't want to work with.

[Mina Kimes]

Yeah, I. I mean, I. That show gets brought up constantly, right in the context of. Of is it replicable? How can other shows emulate it? What can we learn from it? And I think it's debatable how much can be learned from it, because it is. I mean, the lesson is obvious is what Dan said, but how much that can be copied is really, really, really, really really difficult. I like watching it. It's funny, though, to Pablo, to kind of go back to your first point about Barclay, which is, you know, know he doesn't really follow the week.

[Pablo Torre]

No. It must be infuriating for lots of people who want to do what he does. Let me.

[Mina Kimes]

Let me. You know, I'm listening to that. I'm thinking, God, if I even on one day was like, yeah, I don't know about something, I would get obviously destroyed because of. But that's fine. That doesn't. I think I get it compared to someone like Barclay, like, yeah. It's not just like, oh, he played the game. It's like, no, no, no. What he's bringing to the table, it's not really even about credibility for me. It's the force of personality and the like. He is amazing on television, not because of his intimate knowledge of the league. I respect that. And it doesn't mean that it's unfair that I don't get the same benefit of the doubt because I don't have that talent that he has.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, likability, what that means is, is the secret to Charles Barkley. And it's. Dan, I'm curious if you foresaw this. Right, Because Barkley, to me, part of why he is this epic character in the history of sports is that he has now, decade after decade, been more at the forefront of a sport that he never won a title in than guys who did. And Charles Barkley, not just that, seems happier. Like, likability to me, feels like a question of, do you want to hang out with this guy? Do you want to keep hanging out with this guy? Do you want him around? And the answer with Charles Barkley seems like the most unanimous, bipartisan. Yes. Despite all of the ways he stuck his foot in his mouth that would have torpedoed other people, you just see that Michael Jordan won everything and is miserable. Charles Barkley won 0 rings and is the face of a sport because people just want to hang out with him. And that's an incredible, like, legacy in its own way.

[Dan Le Batard]

He carries himself with a great deal of gratitude. And even though he throws people through windows if they disrespect him, I've also seen him be better about kindness in public than anyone who has grabbed at, like, him I've ever seen. Like, bar none, he's the best. Being kind to people. You know, making sure to find, when he's at a roulette table in Vegas, the guy who's sweeping the floors nearby because he consistently tries to make everybody feel special. But he carries himself with a gratitude. And this part is kind of amazing when we talk about what they've done with that show, the greatest in the history of sports studio television. Television. I mean, this as no slight to Ernie Johnson, who's as good as anybody at what we do, Kenny Smith or Shaq. But if Barkley leaves, that show's over. And that's a crazy thing to say like that, because it is a great show, and all of those people are really important. But there is one star, one person who is not like any person who's ever been before him. And he sits at the center of that, or off to the side anyway, but symbolically at the center.

[Pablo Torre]

But I also think you could plug Barkley into a place like, I don't know, Dan's wedding, and he would thrive. Which is curious, because this happened.

[Stu Gotz]

And then. How's marriage going?

[Dan Le Batard]

It's been very nice, buddy. It's been very nice. Oh, Stu guts is going to get you mad again. With another question, Charles, where were you? Like, why? Why? We thought you would be at the wedding.

[Pablo Torre]

What happened to you, Charles?

[Stu Gotz]

Oh. Oh, Dan, why don't you tell Stu what happened?

[Dan Le Batard]

I. I'm not totally sure what happened, actually.

[Stu Gotz]

Oh, say, hey, Stu. Yeah, Dan calls me, like, the week of his wedding, and he says, yo, man, I just found out they forgot to send you an invitation. And I'm like, dan. And. And I said, damn, how did you. How could you forget me? You called me three times. They give me an address to send you the invitation.

[Dan Le Batard]

I did do that.

[Stu Gotz]

I did do that, that, and they didn't send me an invitation. And I was pissed.

[Dan Le Batard]

Yeah, you had every reason to be pissed. I mean, I can tell you Lefko was killing it at that wedding, cutting up the dance floor. Charles, good catching up with you. We'll see you soon, buddy.

[Stu Gotz]

Hey. Hey, Dan. Dan. You know what they say about marriage? It's like a walk in the park. Jurassic Park.

[Mina Kimes]

Take that one from Jerry Seinfeld.

[Dan Le Batard]

I. I think he's been making that move for weddings that he has hasn't gone to. I'm pretty sure that's just a giant lie. I'm pretty sure that he's just telling a giant, affable, warm, likable lie.

[Pablo Torre]

We're at the end here. We're at the end. Okay? We're going to say what we all found out today. And whomst wants to go first.

[Mina Kimes]

I'll go first.

[Pablo Torre]

Okay.

[Mina Kimes]

I found out that Dan doesn't have enough things that he does just for himself. Aside from Royal Match. And I'd like him to find some hobbies that are just for him. And you don't have to talk about it on the show. You don't have to grow a plant on your radio show just for you.

[Dan Le Batard]

I was trying to be clever and try to circle around and put a ribbon on the show by making some sort of master of my own domain joke there, but it didn't feel appropriate or that it would be funny enough. And so I just sort of got stuck and then slowly sank into the quicksand of just silence, which is the worst of all of the things you can do in an audio and visual medium.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah. It does feel also appropriately masturbatory that you told us that. So thank you for taking us.

[Dan Le Batard]

It's supposed to be my own secret. Yeah, it's supposed to be my private.

[Mina Kimes]

So is Jerry the master of his domain? Is that the.

[Pablo Torre]

There was a contest.

[Dan Le Batard]

It's also dad humor now. In retrospect, respect. I can't believe Flamed Seinfeld is unfunny.

[Mina Kimes]

Yeah. You really feel like it's subsumed by my flaming Matt Rife. That's the hive that I want to come after.

[Pablo Torre]

I did not foresee Mina Kimes having the sharpest machete on today's show, truly. But as for the people who hack through the underbrush of Pablo Torre finds the Out. We are produced by Michael Antonucci, Ryan Cortez, Sam Dawig, Juan Belindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Loman, Rachel Miller, Howard Ethan Schreier, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Chris To Manello and Juliet Warren. Our studio engineering by RD Systems our post production by NGW Post Our theme song as always, by John Bravo. Have a good weekend. I gotta go tend to about 25 different.