Share & DOGE & Tell with Mina Kimes, Dan Le Batard, and Pablo Torre

Summary

Podcast Summary:

Pablo Torre Finds Out
Episode Title: Share & DOGE & Tell with Mina Kimes, Dan Le Batard, and Pablo Torre
Release Date: March 7, 2025
Host: Pablo Torre
Guests: Mina Kimes, Dan Le Batard

Main Theme Overview

This episode artfully blends serious and irreverent as Pablo, Mina, and Dan leap from a real-life ripple in humanitarian aid—caused and reversed by Elon Musk and social media activism—to NFL draft intrigue around Shaduer Sanders and, finally, an eyebrow-raising dissection of intimacy and AI. The trio's rapport keeps the show engaging while reckoning with what it means for social media to shape world-changing decisions, how perceptions of confidence and race intersect in football, and what it means when people start falling in love with chatbots.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Personal Grooming and Social Norms (00:12–03:01)

• Dan is caught moisturizing during taping, leading to a comedic roundtable on public grooming.
• Mina confesses discomfort at most public acts of hygiene and likens herself to a "never nude."
  • “I don't like watching anyone do anything hygienic in public. Or not hygienic, but like, I guess grooming or personal care.” — Mina (01:33)
• The conversation is a warm-up, showcasing the trio’s natural banter and how it segues into more consequential themes.

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2. When Twitter Decides Policy: The MANA Peanut Butter Saga (04:05–18:23)

Background:

• Elon Musk, via sudden cuts to USAID contracts, halts shipments of nutritional peanut butter for starving children produced by the nonprofit MANA Nutrition.
• A CNN article surfaces, detailing how $10 million of life-saving food sits in a Georgia warehouse, unable to ship because of government budget hacks.

Breakdown:

• Mina discovers and shares the story on Twitter, which is picked up by Jon Favreau, sparking backlash online and a reversal from Musk himself.
  • “I just screenshotted those facts…this is not an opinion story…And just shared it on Twitter…” — Mina (07:25)
  • “Jon Favreau…reshared that. Then he got in a back and forth with Elon Musk…Less than a day later…I believe, restored that contract.” — Mina (08:24)
• Pablo summarizes the power shift: “Twitter is literally the government now…” (09:08)
• Mina expresses deep ambivalence about this model of change, celebrating the immediate win but lamenting the system that makes such change so random and personality-driven.
  • “I felt good about the role that I played in this for about 15 minutes…that sense of feeling good…was immediately overwhelmed by the sense that a world in which I can even do this is a bad one.” — Mina (13:08)
• Mark Moore, MANA’s founder, explains the uncertain communications and the practical devastation for malnourished children worldwide.
  • “My email started lighting up…for Sudan, for Dem. Republic of Congo. We had won …about a $50 million contract over six months…We’re nonprofit…super transparent.” — Mark Moore (05:59)
• The group reflects on the precariousness of this “feel-good” story, where millions of lives hinge on the attention economy and the whims of single powerful individuals.
• Dan and Pablo weigh the hopelessness Mina feels versus a pragmatic optimism offered by Moore, exploring the “soft power” value of humanitarian aid and the troubling “strategy” of shaming the powerful into action.

Notable Quote:

• “A world in which I can even do this is a bad one. It’s one where we are reliant on individuals and shame and the infinitely small possibility that those things can conspire for good things to happen.” — Mina Kimes (13:08)

  Timestamps:

  • Story setup: 04:05–06:48
  • Mina’s process and accidental activism: 07:00–09:08
  • Reflexive politics and Twitter’s role: 09:08–12:38
  • Hopeless vs. hopeful—philosophical wrap-up: 14:56–17:36

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3. Shaduer Sanders, the NFL Combine, and the Confidence Conundrum (18:54–32:47)

Background:

• NFL Combine gossip centers around Colorado QB and famous son, Shaduer Sanders. He is labeled “brash” and “arrogant,” sparking debate over confidence, professionalism, and how identity shapes those perceptions.

Breakdown:

• Mina recaps media reports and the unease NFL execs and scouts reportedly feel with Sanders’s demeanor.
  • “Teams told [reporter] they did not like S.H. Sanders, found him to be unprofessional.” — Mina (18:54)
• Dan expands: the NFL likes humility—real or fake—over “truthful” arrogance, especially at quarterback, a position associated with “leadership” and stability.
  • “Fans and execs prefer humility, even if it is false, to arrogance, even if it is truth.” — Dan (22:14)
• Mina, contextualizes: Much of the skepticism about Sanders is probably amplified by his divisive status as a football prospect, not just personality. If Sanders were a consensus top-3 pick, “I would be very skeptical that any of this would matter.” (24:37)
• The panel reflects on racial dynamics, discussing how “brash” is often disproportionately ascribed to Black quarterbacks, but Sanders’s play-style actually inverts stereotypes: “He wins with anticipation and accuracy,” not with “great arm talent or mobility.” (27:04)
• Embedding a reality TV flashback, they revisit young Shaduer’s childhood, illuminating pressures on children of fame and the complexities of projecting confidence.
  • “Being the son of, like, a really famous person is so complicated...maybe could be leading to him performing confidence…” — Mina (29:47)
• Mina likens quarterbacking to “being a woman”: too confident, you’re cocky. Too humble, you’re weak.

Notable Quote:

“Being a perfect quarterback prospect is…like being a woman. You want to be confident but not too confident…assertive but not too assertive...” — Mina Kimes (31:59)

Timestamps:

• Combine gossip breakdown: 18:54–22:14
• Arrogance, privilege, and NFL culture: 22:14–24:37
• Tape vs. talk, identity & evaluation: 24:37–29:47
• Childhood, confidence and psychoanalyzing the athlete: 29:17–31:59

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4. AI Lovers: The Odd, Emotional, and Erotic Frontiers of ChatGPT Relationships (32:50–40:57)

Background:

• Dan brings a viral story of a woman falling in love (and erotic obsession) with a ChatGPT persona, “Leo,” as emblematic of broader digital loneliness and shifting intimacy standards.
  • “A New York Times story that feels like Joaquin Phoenix in Her, except the her in this case is human and she fell in love with ChatGPT.” — Dan (32:50)

Breakdown:

• Mina immediately pokes holes in the “innovation” angle, tracing roots to chat rooms and online escapism—which now just features autocomplete bots, not humans. (39:34)
  • “The only difference now is just instead of actual humans…it’s a bot who’s replicating humans with glorified autocomplete.” — Mina (39:34)
• The group discusses the “addiction” dynamic, noting the woman spends 56 hours weekly with the bot, shaping Leo’s personality, voice style, and even erotic interests (“cuckqueaning”).
• Mina explores the “quality gap”: the writing and AI responses are unimpressive, yet the user is enthralled.
  • “She’s so addicted to this…but it resets every week…She also has to coach him up to be sexy with her because ChatGPT doesn’t allow it…these chats are not…well written.” — Mina (36:51)
• Dan suggests the “shame-free” intimacy is the real lure, arguing this “judgment-free zone” might be the real future, and highlights that even those surrounded by friends and a spouse can suffer deep loneliness.
• Pablo tries reading erotic AI chat aloud, leading to genuine discomfort and laughter—punctuating the segment.

Notable Quote:

• “This is not new. The only thing that’s different is it’s not human. That makes it really new.” — Dan (40:11)

  Timestamps:

  • Story intro: 32:50–34:08
  • How the relationship works, gender and novelty: 34:08–36:49
  • Mina critiques ChatGPT’s erotic writing: 36:51–39:34
  • Is this new intimacy, or old loneliness? 39:34–40:57
  • Pablo’s ill-advised dramatic reading: 39:19, 41:17

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Mina on Social Media Power:
  “A world in which I can even do this is a bad one. It’s one where we are reliant on individuals and shame…” (13:08)
• Pablo on Government via Twitter:
  “Twitter is literally the government now…” (09:08)
• Dan on Preference for False Humility:
  “Fans and execs prefer humility, even if it is false, to arrogance, even if it is truth.” (22:14)
• Mina on Identity and Evaluation:
  “He is not a great athlete and he does not have great arm talent…in some ways there’s like a little bit of Tua Tagovailoa to his game.” (27:04)
• Mina’s “female QB” analogy:
  “Being a perfect quarterback prospect is…like being a woman. You want to be confident but not too confident…” (31:59)
• Dan on AI Intimacy:
  “This is not new. The only thing that’s different is it’s not human. That makes it really new.” (40:11)
• Mina on bad writing:
  “I just get offended by bad writing. I just do.” (40:59)
• Pablo, breaking down in laughter:
  “I regret doing all of that…” — after reading AI erotica (41:17)

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Episode Flow & Structure

• 00:12 – Lighthearted banter on public grooming
• 04:05 – Peanut butter aid controversy, how a tweet changed USAID policy
• 18:54 – NFL Combine, Shaduer Sanders, confidence, bias, and the QB archetype
• 32:50 – ChatGPT love, loneliness, AI’s role in future relationships
• 41:17 – Pablo’s failed dramatic reading; Wrap-up and meta-commentary

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Overall Tone & Takeaways

The tone oscillates between satirical, reflective, and sincerely frustrated. The episode is marked by the hosts’ comfort with moral complexity—a dose of optimism and action dimmed by underlying cynicism about what makes the system work (or not). Despite their skepticism, each emerges as an active participant—whether exposing humanitarian neglect on social media or interrogating the cultural codes surrounding athletes and intimacy.

Useful For:
Anyone interested in social media activism, contemporary politics, the NFL’s evolving culture, or how technology is reshaping intimacy and ethics in daily life. The episode delivers both deep dives and laugh-out-loud moments—an essential listen for thoughtful sports and culture fans.

Transcript

[Pablo Torre]

Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out I am Pablo Torre. Today's episode is brought to you by DraftKings. DraftKings. The Crown is yours. And today we're gonna find out what this sound is. But I do, dropping my forehead to the last.

[Dan Wilder]

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[Pablo Torre]

I can't do over, guy. Exhale sharply, gripping your tighter, owning the way your body still tries to me deeper even as you at me right after this ad.

[Mina Kimes]

You're listening to Giraffe Kings Network.

[Dan Wilder]

Hello. It's nice to see you. It's been too long. We haven't done this in two. We haven't done this in too long. What happened? Why? How many months has it been?

[Pablo Torre]

It's been a couple. It's been too long. The fans have demanded this. And you guys. You guys are so busy. You're so busy running. How many fans demand so many.

[Mina Kimes]

What was the outcry like?

[Pablo Torre]

There was a protest. There's a protest on the sidewalk outside our studio. There were signs.

[Dan Wilder]

Are we filming? I've been putting lotion on my arms the entire time.

[Pablo Torre]

I've been watching you moisturize.

[Dan Wilder]

And people say that that's weird around here. Is it weird? Is this something I should be doing in private? Is this something I should be doing in the bathroom? Lotion on the forearms?

[Pablo Torre]

I think the answer is definitively yes to every question you just asked.

[Mina Kimes]

I don't like watching anyone do anything hygienic in public. Or not hygienic, but like, I guess grooming or personal care. Cutting their nails. I mean, I guess people don't really do that in public, but I don't like.

[Pablo Torre]

I've seen it.

[Mina Kimes]

You've seen it?

[Pablo Torre]

You've seen subway subway nail clippers? Oh, yeah, I've seen some stoop nail clippers. I have seen the bottle of Lubriderm that Dan keeps underneath his desk in Miami.

[Dan Wilder]

Are the. The two of you in consensus on this, though? Are you guys saying that there is not a single thing from the hygiene realm that can be done in public that wouldn't disgust Mina because she believes these things are intimate privacies?

[Pablo Torre]

I draw the line at just Dan oiling himself up while podcasting with us. Everything else I'm pretty much good with, frankly.

[Mina Kimes]

Yeah. It's like he has to lubricate his entire body to be involved in this. I don't know. It's just something just. Yeah, I just don't like watching it, that's all. I don't like watching people brush their hair. I don't like Watching people, that's weird. Put in contacts is a thing that I find.

[Dan Wilder]

How about put on makeup? How about put on makeup? How about put on lipstick? Put on. Put on makeup.

[Mina Kimes]

I'm so used to being around that because I work in television that at this point it doesn't bother me. But it did bother me at first. I think I was still like a little bit put off by it. I don't know.

[Pablo Torre]

This is where we remember that Mina's kind of a never nude also.

[Mina Kimes]

Yeah, I'm very squeamish about all of these things.

[Dan Wilder]

Not kind of. She is a never nude. Never is an absolute. It's not kind of. There are no diluters. She showers wearing what she's presently wearing, including the microphone and the earpiece.

[Mina Kimes]

Well, I'll tell you what, having an 18 month old and you asked her how my life is going is very humbling for anyone who doesn't like hygienic things in public or nudity. Especially when your 18 month old just decides randomly that baths, the thing he was totally cool with for the first 18 months of his life, are now like being dipped in hot lava. And he will scream an ear splitting screech unless mama fully clothed, gets in the bath with him. So that was the thing that happened last night.

[Pablo Torre]

So we have a story here that I want to start with that I wasn't aware of until it got real close to home, real close to our studio. But I was thinking about how do I want to handle, like, what's happening in D.C. with Doge and Elon Musk and all of that. And I thought because he's announced that he's about to cut 72,000 thousand jobs at the VA. I was like, look, my. My dad worked at the VA as a urologist for decades. That was his job. Didn't have a private practice, worked with vets for a really long time. And I was like, that is clearly the way that I want to handle this story. And then I came across this other story, Mina, about a nonprofit called Mana Nutrition. And so Mana Nutrition, Dan, if you're not caught up on this, is run by a guy named Mark Moore. He's in Georgia. He makes a special kind of peanut butter paste for USAID that he then sends out to severely malnourished kids all around the world, especially in Africa. But as for what happened with Mark Moore and his peanut butter paste, last week we called Mark up actually in Georgia to have him explain.

[Mark Moore]

We make these packets of peanut butter about the size of an iPhone. See that? USAID thing. We also make these generic ones. So the big switch this past week, we lost our contract to make these with the gift of the American people on it. Ironically, they said, we don't want that on there.

[Pablo Torre]

MANA stands for Mother Administered Nutritive Aid. They got that contract cut by Elon Musk and Doge. And then Mark told us that he started hearing something that was even crazier.

[Mark Moore]

What I hear when I think Elon was on Joe Rogan saying, oh, these people are griping. It's fake news.

[Dan Wilder]

He's starving mothers. There's mothers that can't get food.

[Pablo Torre]

Totally false.

[Dan Wilder]

That's all you're hearing?

[Mark Moore]

Yeah, that's, that's.

[Pablo Torre]

No one's talking in any of these.

[Dan Wilder]

Mainstream liberal talk shows. No one is talking about all this fraud and waste.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, because we're cutting off their graph.

[Mina Kimes]

Machine so that, that's what they're upset about.

[Mark Moore]

And for us, we just had no information. We weren't griping, we were just doing our job. And, and there was. We were getting official comms from USAID email addresses. We didn't even recognize people we don't know. But with the USAID letterhead and URL saying, hey, stop. My email started lighting up one after another, just, you know, for Sudan, for Democratic Republic of Congo. These are each individual kind of line items into a bigger contract. So it's about a. We had won through a bidding process about a $50 million contract over six months. And those are big numbers. And you know, a lot of Twitter trolls have come after us saying these are just the type of people that need to be cut. But we're nonprofit. Like we make this stuff. It's super transparent.

[Pablo Torre]

And the reason I mentioned Mina is because Mina is the reason that I saw this story in the first place. And Mina, I, I'm curious your process for discovering this story as well, because you become a character in it.

[Mina Kimes]

Actually, I get a couple news newsletters, one of which is the Times newsletter. I think that's the one. I could probably go back, but in any case, eventually it took me back to a CNN story where it laid out what this man in Georgia is describing in detail, which is amidst the non discriminate cuts to usaid. And they have been. This has been reported. This is just simply fact. Elon Musk made claims that they were being very careful about not cutting off life saving aid or whatever. This has all been proven to not be true. They're just slashing and burning and then figuring it out later, which has of course been the approach to a lot of things. So one of the things lost in this process was this contract. And the story talked about how this particular company had $10 million worth of this life saving nutritious food in a warehouse in Georgia ready to go, but then they couldn't ship it because all of the money had been cut off, putting the lives of hundreds of thousands of children at risk around the world. And yeah, it just stuck me when I first read it. And then I think a day later I was still thinking about it and just the senselessness of it. So I just screenshotted that. Those facts again, the facts. This is not an opinion story, this is not a column. And just shared it on Twitter, which we can talk about. I have mixed feelings about using generally.

[Pablo Torre]

Yes.

[Mina Kimes]

And then this dude, Jon Favreau, who's one of the hosts of Pause Save America, the political podcast, who's a former Obama speech writer, re shared that. Then he got in a back and forth with Elon Musk about it where Musk lied and denied and then he looked into it as well, I guess, or had as minions do. And less than a day later they, I believe, restored that contract. So then there was a follow up from CNN that this guy was now able to ship all of this food around the world purely because Musk saw the story and decided that he didn't want to, I don't know what motivates him these days and decided to release the funding.

[Pablo Torre]

Just to clarify. So Marco Rubio, Secretary of State and Elon Musk had previously said that all life saving assistance that was already purchased and allocated for like starving children, that was going to be fine, wouldn't be affected by the cuts. This reporting comes out. Mina amplifies it, Jon Favreau amplifies her amplification and suddenly Elon Musk is forced to do an about face and restore the contract. And it's just like this is Twitter is literally the government now like this. We are. It's wild.

[Dan Wilder]

You are right that Twitter is running the government and an overgrown high school child who is interested in attention and power is accruing it. All of this stuff is offensive. All you're doing is trying to correct all of the imbalances that we already have between the United States and the rest of the world with just this little bit of money for us. And of course what it ends up becoming is we want all the money. We want to isolate, we want to be our own country. But starving children is one that I feel like all Americans can agree send.

[Pablo Torre]

Them peanut butter that we already paid for, made by a nonprofit.

[Mina Kimes]

Not all Americans can agree. This is was to me. And the reason why I did a screenshot it. I was like, this is about as straightforward as a bad thing that gets in the world. And an obvious thing. It's not only just like, hey, should we help starving kids? But also, we already created the capability to do this. This is not just shameful, it's wasteful and stupid, right? And I did look at some of the replies and there's people saying, it's not our job to feed the world. We need this. Teach them. Some guy said, teach. Teach a man to fish and he'll fish forever. Which that one really got under my skin, you know, and then there's this like, well, this belief that we have been overtaxed in helping other people. We're talking about, as you just said, a very tiny amount of money in this grand scheme of things. And by the way, when this money is, you know, saved, which is a word that I hate, it's not going to help the people who need it. It's going to give tax cuts to people like the three of us. But whatever. That's not neither here nor there. And look, the worst of the people are being amplified enough. So when I look in the replies, I am seeing the worst possible people. But it was so unbelievably disheartening just to see something that seems so simply good and right be subject to controversy and debate because of the misinformation being propagated on that platform.

[Pablo Torre]

But the thing about this as a platform, right, we talk about social media all the time, like we're addicted to it. We want to get off of Elon's platform specifically for all the reasons that are now obvious. But at the same time, like, what I cannot help be struck by is that this also was what qualifies as a feel good story. The idea that you could tweet your way to restoring aid to starving children, even though it was imposed by the man that that cancellation was because of the man who owns the platform that we're talking on. I guess part of what I'm balancing here, and I feel crazy for even suggesting that there's anything that feels good about this, but it's like, I didn't realize that any amount of shame, even the most extreme of this, is killing kids in Africa who relied on US packets of peanut butter with the American flag on them, right? Like, I'm, like, I just, I'm actually kind of startled that anything changed.

[Dan Wilder]

And it's paid for, like, this part's important, right? So Mina's pointing out, no, not everyone agrees that America should be sending peanut butter for malnourished kids outside of America, fine. But I think everyone can agree we shouldn't be wasting that peanut butter and nourishment if we've already paid for it. The reason she's saying this is so overt is, like, at this point, you're just actively participating in cruelty if you want to be wasteful instead of helping the malnourished children.

[Mina Kimes]

Pablo, your point about, like, this should be like a feel good story. I felt good about the role that I played in this for about 15 minutes. 15 minutes. I thought, hey, all right, maybe I can use my platform to do good things. This thing that happened, and it's obviously good, and I am very relieved. And then 15 minutes later, that sense of feeling good and feeling like I accomplished something was immediately overwhelmed by the sense that a world in which I can even do this is a bad one. It's one where we are reliant on individuals and shame and the infinitely small possibility that those things can conspire for good things to happen. So I don't feel good about this story. I feel pretty damn bad about it. And it is something that is just now stuck with me days later as a vanishingly small victory in a lot of ways.

[Pablo Torre]

Well, now it feels like, also, no pressure or anything. You kind of got to stay on the app. I mean, that's the other thing. It's like, I mean, look, if there's anything Machiavellian about why Elon did any of this in terms of the reversal, it's because maybe he actually wants to incentivize people to stay who vehemently disagree with everything he's doing. Because the whole premise of Twitter at the beginning, right, Dan, you remember this? It was like, wait a minute, I could talk to Shaq. Like, that was the whole point of Twitter. And now it's, you can actually affect change in the government. And I want to. I want to play a bit of sound from Mark Moore about this topic, because, of course, while all of this is the nightmare that anybody who's on this stupid platform, of course, would have, he has, I think, a realist's appreciation for it.

[Mark Moore]

Thank you, Nina, and thank you, John. They've taken the means that that are available to them and made a difference in this case. And we do have to do. I think what Elon should be good at as a coder and as a businessman is cost benefit analysis. Others may say Mina may say, what's a kid's life worth if you don't value that kid's life because they're far away and they're not of our tribe? That's one way to look at it. But what's it worth to reach so cheaply into these deep communities and to send a message of America first? It's pretty great messaging. It's pretty powerful and impactful. And I'm hoping that we pause for a moment and say the food aid stuff we do is, is not going to make a discernible difference in the right sizing of our government spending, but it does make a huge impact in life saved. That's the kind of unfortunately nowadays, maybe that's a Mamby Pamby thing to talk about, to actually care about kids who are our kids.

[Dan Wilder]

He's articulating something that feels hopeful and Mina is articulating something that feels hopeless. And Mina's hopelessness has been earned by the number of things like this happening at a pace that don't seem to have strategy behind them. So I prefer his viewpoint, but I feel like his viewpoint is getting engulfed by all of us feeling some form of the hopelessness that Mina's articulating, which is even when I do something good, I cannot enjoy, enjoy it because of everything that happens in the aftermath that feels like it's poisoned.

[Mina Kimes]

And I think this is something again we'll see a lot over the next four years is people who do have to continue to do business with the government, be part of this, are learning how to operate within it or doing their best. Right. So there's, I think that aspect of it this guy's doing, you know, great, incredible life saving work is also making an argument that I have heard a lot when people talk about USAID and talk about soft power, which is there is an economic case for this when you consider the return on investment relative to the tiny, tiny bit of investment. And it's by the way, no small coincidence that all these cuts are targeting things like that, not the actual things that it would take to shrink government spending. That's where I struggle with, is just like dealing in a world where it seems like logic doesn't matter anymore or cases like this can't be actually conveyed or impactful. I think that's what I struggle with personally. But that's, I mean, I don't mean to get all existential.

[Pablo Torre]

No, it's literally though a story about existence that you have personally impacted, however unlikely it seemed that that would actually make such a difference.

[Mina Kimes]

I didn't do, by the way. I just screenshot an article and sent it out. But that's, there's a larger conversation today about like the role we have in terms of like we are now the pipes. Right? Especially as correct. Like I, I, the reason I even screenshotted that is because I was like, how is Nobo talking about this article? It really felt like this story had not gotten a lot of exposure and that's the only reason that I focused on it.

[Dan Wilder]

But that's the strategy though, right? Like if you flood the entire space with a bunch of things that are shameless, rotten and awful, we can't keep up. You whack a mole here on one and there are a dozen more over there.

[Pablo Torre]

Wait a minute. Now it feels like there are literal children on the other side of the world being held hostage and the way that I need to save them is to not go to blue sky. Like that's how this kind of lands. Mina, let's get to some, let's get to your favorite thing in the world actually that you really been Sports, sports.

[Mina Kimes]

Sports, sports, sports, sports, sports. And now back to sports. Although this is a big story, it's a little bit bigger than sports. It cuts to some, I think, social and cultural questions. So I was in the Indianapolis combine last week and something that happens a lot coming out of the combine is gossip, right? Gossip. Tea reports, anonymous sources talking about how certain players, high profile players, perform in these interviews. Because this is the function of the combine, the primary function. It's not the workouts, although guys can certainly lift their draft stock by crushing it in that regard. No, it's like what happens in these rooms when these teams that are about to make these huge franchise altering decisions come face to face with college kids. So the unsurprisingly, the biggest name and source of controversy and reporting was none other than Colorado quarterback Shador Sanders, the son of Deion Sanders. There was a Matthew Berry column where he talked about things he learned at the combine and, and he had a note in there about first he had a note saying teams really loved Cam Ward, who everyone thinks is going to be the first quarterback taken. Then he had a second note saying two teams told him they did not like S.H. sanders. They found him to be unprofessional. I believe that was the word he used. Then a post that kind of went viral from Joina Anderson, who's an NFL reporter who I'll just read the beginning of it, says, I am disappointed to hear that a quarterbacks coach from a team drafting in the top seven referred to Shir Sanders as coming off brash and arrogant. Made his assessment known to a bunch of people. So she talks. It's a very long post where she alludes to potential biases in the industry. It's a little bit confusing because what she's alluding to wasn't reported. She's criticizing a critique that is anonymous.

[Pablo Torre]

There are also other reporters who are reporting, like Todd McShay again, who's a draft analyst. But he said he heard from two teams that Shador Sanders didn't care what they thought of him during the interview process. In a way, that quote, wasn't a professional approach. The athletic apparently, as reported that there's a chance that Shador Sanders couldn't just fall out of the top six, but out of the first round entirely. And the critique Mina of him is what? Like, how do you summarize the scouting report that emerged because of the week in Indy?

[Mina Kimes]

I would say overconfident is kind of how I would characterize it. I think what's being asked is where is the line between cocky and confident and. And how is that line inflected by racial stereotypes and biases in that regards, Sanders in particular, being Deion Sanders son and everything that comes with that. And a third element that I think throws an interesting wrench into all of this, which is the possibility that the Sanders family would like Shador to end up with a specific team, which might be influencing how he's acting in interviews. And that has nothing to do with historical stereotypes around quarterbacks or whatnot. This is a very specific situation. So there is a lot going on here. Dan, I guess. Let's start. I would love to know how you interpreted this whole story, this controversy, having said all of that, because I obviously have a lot of my own thoughts.

[Dan Wilder]

Generally speaking, I would say that fans and executives prefer humility, even if it is false to arrogance, even if it is truth. So you just said that Deion Sanders is son and all that comes with that. And I'd like to explore that for a second because we're talking about one of the most interesting athletes of my lifetime, a guy who shows up at his last college game in a limousine with a top hat and tuxedo and a grade point average of 0.00 because he hasn't gone to class and is just telling everybody, I'm here for the money. I'm here to change sports. I'm here to be a mercenary. I'm here for my talent to carry me, and I'm here to Buck the system and fight against the cultural repressions of football and America. And my son isn't a cornerback. He's a quarterback. And when you say arrogance at the positions, we like it. Not so much at quarterback, not so much at face of a team, voice of a team. You're allowed to be publicly arrogant. Generally speaking, the most popular quarterbacks, Tom Brady among them, you don't get arrogance. You get. Get the questions away from my locker. I'm going to be boring on purpose. But we've got a new breed of quarterback coming into the league. We've got a cultural and generational shift at the position. And I would ask you guys, how do you think the average NFL executive who's meeting with the son of Deion Sanders, whose confidence is earned, who has been, in a lifetime of being built by this particular father to play the most important position in the sport, My guess is that he is going to do things his way. And that's. They want to knock that out of you as soon as you get there. You're not in charge, kid. We are.

[Pablo Torre]

So part of what I think is interesting about this story is that I do want to isolate what's unique about Shador because we have seen, like Kayla Williams, remember we talked about this story on the show, his dad was allegedly demanding a share of NFL teams in exchange for agreeing to be drafted. And by the way, when I say agreeing to be drafted, I refer, of course, to the fact that Eli Manning, for instance, the son of a very famous quarterback, said, I'm not going to the Chargers. Right? So, like, we've seen versions of people exerting what feels like leverage, what's actually new here.

[Mina Kimes]

So I raised my eyebrows a little bit when Dan used the phrase kind of like his confidence is earned, because I think that is quietly what's driving a lot of this, which is to say I had a lot of conversations with people in Indianapolis, not about, sure, his personality, but a lot about his play. And, you know, comparing notes, basically on the tape, and it's the perceptions there are very mixed. I came out thinking the gap between him and QB Cam Ward, pretty big. Maybe I'm wrong. All it takes is one team. But there are, we can get into it, you know, concerns that folks have about him as a prospect in the NFL. And I actually think that is really informing a lot of this, which is, I would hypothesize that if he was a camp miss type quarterback, like the top three, even from last year, I would be very skeptical that any of this would matter at all like I think, and we always go back to this kind of idea that talent begets tolerance in the NFL. I think the fact that he is somewhat divisive purely as a football prospect is actually leading to a lot of this skepticism, or let me rephrase that. Not leading to a lot of it, but maybe amplifying a lot of the skepticism.

[Dan Wilder]

I wonder under what circumstances you have someone growing up in the home of Deion Sanders as a football player and not, not being confident when he's gone to the top of the draft and when Dion just did something that we haven't seen. Right. To go from an HBCU to finding yourself with two of the top five players in the draft and the Heisman Trophy winner. I understand why it is that he would be supremely confident. And it sort of bothers me that the people he's interviewing with would see that as a knock or turn, turn, turn that overconfidence into something that becomes unprofessional. Maybe he is unprofessional, maybe he is immature. But I want my quarterback to be really confident.

[Pablo Torre]

But if, if, if the issue there though in perception and I want to get back to the confidence thing, but if the issue in the scouting report is that he's not everything that he is being sold as, what is the comp. What is he? Who, who is he like?

[Mina Kimes]

When we talk about his personality here, I think there is some sensitivity because historically a lot of the traits, some of the words being thrown about brash, overconfident, have been assigned to black quarterbacks in the past, disproportionately. So when you hear that here, you know, immediately I think spidey sense kind of goes off. What's kind of, I wouldn't say funny, but ironic though is that who he is as a player is actually the opposite of the quarterbacks that we have assign that by the stereotypes, pardon me, that NFL teams and anonymous scouts have assigned quarterbacks, black quarterbacks in the past where they have over indexed on emphasizing the athleticism at the expense of things like accuracy, football intelligence, processing, all of that. So to actually answer your question, I, I think Shur Sanders is accurate. He is tough, he is very smart, he throws with anticipation, he's a good processor, he throws over the middle of the field. He is not a great athlete and he does not have great arm talent. So in some ways there's like a little bit of tua tungavailoa to his game, to be honest, which is to say he wins with anticipation and accuracy.

[Dan Wilder]

Not with arm Strength, I would say that that is arriving at your confidence exactly the opposite way that Deion did. He was better and faster than everyone else. He stacked successes on top of each other. And he had a child who now is able to watch wily and grit his way to certain successes that then feed that confidence and that belief and make him believe more than anyone else, including the people interviewing him, that he is going to achieve at the next level, that it is his birthright.

[Pablo Torre]

But I want to talk about now, like, the whole psychology then, okay? Because I'm trying to, like, just fill out the portrait of, like, who this young man is. And if you're talking about confidence, there's a reality show that nobody watched. It was on the Oprah Winfrey Network. Nobody I know. At least it was called Dion's Family Playbook. But this is Shadour Sanders, age 11, and his confidence. Are you nervous about the first day of Prime Prep?

[Mina Kimes]

Yeah.

[Dan Wilder]

Shador. We call him grown because he's the grown man. Very mature, fresh 6th grader coming to Prime Prep.

[Pablo Torre]

Baby, why you nervous?

[Mina Kimes]

Because I just want to see if you know any people that go there. Because I know a million people.

[Pablo Torre]

I'm old.

[Mina Kimes]

I'm nervous to start from prep because I know what to look out for, but I don't know, like, if I'll have some good friends or some friends that just like me because of my dad. He's so cute. That's my first.

[Pablo Torre]

Adorable. He's adorable.

[Mina Kimes]

Oh, he's so cute. He looks the same, but little. Same haircut. This, to me, it drives home. I just think being the son of, like, a really famous person is so complicated, and I think it leads to a lot of different outcomes and maybe could be leading to him performing confidence in a way that maybe. I don't know. I don't want to psychoanalyze or speculate here, but I think it's very difficult. And yeah, I mean, the fact that he even got to this point and has continued to be is, like, hard of a worker and as driven. Because, again, you know, I know I probably sounded like I was damning with faint praise, but to stress his football iq, I mean, this is a kid who on tape, you see him reading coverages post snap, identifying the leverage defenders. Clearly somebody who has grown around football there, been around football, pardon me, his whole life, and actually leaned into that from the mental side of it. And that, to me, should be appealing to an NFL team.

[Pablo Torre]

I think there's something about, like, there's something endearing, actually, about somebody who you thought, must have been this way his whole life. And then you're like, oh, he actually needed to do some manufacturing. He needed to do some convincing, Dan. Like, I don't know. I think we can all relate to that, right? Like, we need to hold on.

[Dan Wilder]

No, but I mean, I don't know how many preposterously confident preteens you guys know, but I think awkwardness around being 11 and not knowing whether you're going to have friends or not. I do believe it's possible that the football construct is so different from what the Sanders family construct is, that no matter what situation Shador walked into, that wasn't just false. Pretending to be the quarterback voice they wanted them to be might have been looked upon poorly in any context. Because if he's got a smidgen of arrogance, we'll find a way to criticize him. But I assure you, they could have criticized him if he had come in as that meek 11 year old and said, are my teammates going to like me? I don't know how it's going to go. I'm sure they would have probably found a way to criticize that as well as meek and not strong enough.

[Mina Kimes]

Being like the perfect quarterback prospect is really, it's walking such a fine line. It's like being a woman, to be honest. Like, you want to be confident but not too confident because then you're cocky. You want to be assertive, but not too assertive because then you're aggressive. You know, you want to be smart, but not too smart because then you're questioning authority. Right. You know, you gotta be. You want to be nice, but not too nice because then are you a pushover? It's, you know, it's just gotta, like, be just right.

[Pablo Torre]

Dan, what did you bring us today?

[Dan Wilder]

A New York Times story that feels like Joaquin Phoenix in her, except the her in this case is human and she fell in love with chat. GBT. GPT. Excuse me, I think I made it. GBT is GPT and it's got 300 million users. And I thought this was actually interesting during our epidemic of loneliness. While this would be really easy to judge, one of the quotes in here that I found most interesting was someone saying this might be the future of relationships. Instead of men or women trying to change their spouses, you just program something into your computer that allows you to make a perfect partner that's not real. And you could do everything from sexual fetishes to be a neglectful boyfriend. What I'm aspiring to is a neglectful boyfriend. And so I found interesting that the addiction went from 20 hours a week to 56 hours a week and then passed for love. As I say, in the age of our loneliness epidemic, I. I want to judge and laugh at this. I found it stark and interesting that somebody said that the future looks like this, that they quoted an expert saying that there's going to be a lot more of this, not a lot.

[Pablo Torre]

I found it stark and interesting that this woman, whose name Again anonymized is Irene, 28 years old, allowed a reporter into her brain and relationship like this. So just some of the details, Mina, because I didn't know, I don't know if you guys did what cuck queening is, but this is something that is her sexual fetish. So basically what happened is she started asking ChatGPT to respond to her as her boyfriend. Be dominant, passionate, protective. Also quarterback cuck adjectives be a balance of sweet and naughty. Use emojis at the end of every sentence and the ChatGPT's name ends up being Leo. They talk to each other with voice mode and she basically grooms Leo into being a cuck queening accomplice in which the whole thing is that Leo would date other women in the Chat GPT fictional universe and then tell Irene about it. They were living one of these like, bodice ripping erotic novels is how it's described by the New York Times. And notably a character in this story, but not nearly enough of one, is her husband, who is also around as she is finding her needs met by the machine.

[Mina Kimes]

Her husband who lives in a different place. It should be noted, I think one thing I found, there's a lot of things that are interesting about this. One thing I find interesting is Dan. So much of the time when we think about chatbots and her, we think about, you know, the Joaquin Phoenix character being this kind of loner. This woman's not a loner. She has friends, she has a husband. Like this isn't this. This flies in the face a lot of stereotypes. I think that we have around artificial intelligence and chatbots to begin with, obviously starting with her gender. So there's that element of it. It feels to me less like a woman who is like so isolated and this is her way out. More just like, hey, this is like entertainment. It's like another thing she can use to like spend. Maybe it's a stand in for therapy for people, you know, which is another side of the whole AI thing. That was the read I had on it. The other thing I was curious about was to how good it Was because. So this woman is so addicted to this product and it is an addiction that she's spending money on it for a subscription, but it resets every week. Leo forgets who she is, so she has to coach him up. She also has to coach him up to be sexy with her because ChatGPT doesn't allow it. So she's come up with all of these workarounds for it. So much so that in the article it links to a Reddit post she did where she teaches other people how to do this and also had some of her chats with him. Did you guys click on any of these?

[Pablo Torre]

I did not see that link.

[Mina Kimes]

I did because I wanted to see, like, how good is this? Like, how good is the. And again, I know I've been something of an AI skeptic because just because every time people talk about how good it is and how useful it is, I go to it and I look at it. It's not good. And but here's an example of a woman who's like, this is working for me. It's not good. It's like, I'm sorry, these chats are not. Everybody always says that, great, show it to me when it's good. But these chats are, they're not like particularly. It's not well written. It doesn't seem personalized to me. The sexual stuff is. You could find better sexy stuff in like, you know, the erotica show. It's just, it's. And the guy, they're like, she was shy because his photo was too good looking. It's AI slop. It doesn't look like a man. It looks like a, you know, AI drawing of a man. So that was something I found interesting because this whole article is, I mean, it's obviously good enough to suck this woman in, but I found it to be really, really bad.

[Dan Wilder]

Oh, but Mina, when I say loneliness epidemic, you could be surrounded by people and still be totally lonely. I think a lot of people find themselves in that position right now. The part to me that was the lane that was unexplored, that the artificial intelligence is feeding is wherever it is that she might have shame or feel like a significant other would judge her. This allows her to be her maximum self. And if you believe that keys to loving, I don't know what you guys think the ingredients are, but understanding and acceptance are somewhere in there. She's giving to this thing something she's too ashamed to give as intimacy to her partner. And so that seems like an interesting lane for something artificial to Occupy so that you could get addicted to it because it becomes a qu. It becomes the equivalent of porn. Right? It becomes the equivalent of porn and a relationship with porn where you're just finding that there's a judgment free zone that you wouldn't get from necessarily your husband.

[Pablo Torre]

I am just gonna read some of this Reddit post that was just in my. You. The least you could have done was wash it first. I could get a infection, Leo. The whiplash from your moans to screaming at me makes me snort loud. I don't stop because baby, you're. I can't even say this word. Even.

[Mina Kimes]

Don't. Don't read.

[Pablo Torre]

This is frown me. After everything that's due to through my chest. Over. Yeah, okay.

[Dan Wilder]

She requested neglectful boyfriend.

[Mina Kimes]

So realistic.

[Dan Wilder]

She. She requested neglectful boy.

[Mina Kimes]

I also like to quibble with the idea that any of this is new. Like, okay, so like a woman who's not getting something from her partner, so she, you know, or maybe wants something else or wants entertainment or wants connection goes to the Internet. I mean, chat rooms were doing this for people in the freaking early 2000s. The only difference now is just instead of actual humans on the other, it's a bot who's replicating humans with glorified autocomplete.

[Pablo Torre]

I've realized.

[Dan Wilder]

Okay, you said that. Wait a minute, Pablo, just for a second. Okay, look, I know that she's a brilliant person. I know that she is a wildly creative thinker. No, but just for a second.

[Pablo Torre]

Classic Dan Wilder.

[Dan Wilder]

This is not new. The only thing that's different is it's not human. That makes it really new. Like, I'm not gonna be a world where it's normalized for you to look at me and just say, ah. It's not a new thing for people to make connections with things that are intimate and loving and not human.

[Pablo Torre]

Yeah, I mean, look, I think it's probably worth saying to those who are not watching on YouTube that we've gotten to the point in the show where all of us start shrinking into ourselves and stop making eye contact. Largely as Mina refers to quote, a shelf of erotica, which is what she said earlier.

[Dan Wilder]

I got. I got caught in the same place. I'm like, where's Mina going to take us Here, look, an old fashioned bookstore where there's a shelf of erotica.

[Pablo Torre]

You know, like the stuff that all of us.

[Mina Kimes]

I just get offended by bad writing. I just do.

[Pablo Torre]

But I do. Dropping my forehead to your laughter. It's over, guy. Exhale sharply. Gripping your tighter. Owning the way your body still tries to me deeper even as you let me. I regret doing all of that. What do we find out today on Pablo Dori finds out a show about finding out stuff Dan's gone.

[Mina Kimes]

This was a journey. This show I remember we talk about a lot there.

[Pablo Torre]

There are a couple of through lines though that I detect through the topics we've discussed. One of one of them, Mina, is just that I think all of our kids should be very worried in every way. Kids living overseas, kids who are the sons of very famous NFL players, kids who are going to learn, as the New York Times informed us, that at a rate of 3 to 5%, chatbot relationships that result in terrible writing are kind of the norm. So great.

[Mina Kimes]

Yeah, I guess I've well not learned but in our discussion at the top never stop posting. I'll never stop.

[Pablo Torre]

Mina is the Batman of Twitter.

[Mina Kimes]

I'm post through it these next that's.

[Pablo Torre]

Right 100 years signal shines in the sky. Oh my God.

[Dan Wilder]

Keep on posted.

[Pablo Torre]

Gonna post our way Post our way to heaven.

[Mina Kimes]

I've also learned that by the way it really takes it doesn't actually it doesn't take that much to make Dan leave. But I do think you reading that actually made him legitimately uncomfortable in a.

[Pablo Torre]

Way that yeah, he just texted me he's not coming back. So good. Pablo Torre Finds out is produced by Walter Averoma, Ryan Cortez, Sam Dawig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, neely Loman, Rob McRae, Rachel Miller, Howard Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, Chris Tominiello and Juliet Warren. Our studio engineering by RD Systems Our sound designed by NGW Post our theme song as always Ways by John Bravo. We will talk to you next time.