Share & Tell (Screaming Sh!t-Monster Edition) with Mina Kimes, Dan, and Pablo

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Share & Tell (Screaming Sh!t-Monster Edition)"

Pablo Torre Finds Out
Host: Pablo Torre
Guests: Mina Kimes, Dan Le Batard
Date: September 22, 2023

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Overview

In this episode of "Share & Tell" on Pablo Torre Finds Out, Pablo gathers his friends Mina Kimes and Dan Le Batard for a roundtable on three big topics: the strange moral relief of Deshaun Watson playing badly, the realities of parenting, friendship, and work-life balance as parents, and the modern media landscape through the lens of the Russell Brand controversy. Blending humor and depth, the trio dig into sports, culture, ethics, and personal growth, all with their trademark banter.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Deshaun Watson: Moral Dilemmas in Sports Fandom

[04:04–21:09]

• Mina Kimes’ Dilemma as an NFL Analyst:
  Mina opens up about her professional anxiety over what would have happened if Deshaun Watson—embroiled in sexual misconduct allegations—had played at an elite level for the Browns. She and other analysts, she admits, feel “kind of a cop-out” relief because bad play means they don't have to reconcile public celebration of athletic performance with disturbing off-field behavior:

  “This dude just bailed out our entire industry by being bad...boy, it’s kind of a cop-out in some ways because we never had to reckon with that cognitive dissonance.” (Mina Kimes, 05:12)

• Pablo on the Karmic Angle:
  Pablo discusses the karmic sense that Watson’s bad performance is a rare real-time comeuppance:

  “...the most morally reprehensible transaction in sports history has been rewarded by a comeuppance that we rarely get with this magnitude. But...we, as people who talk about this stuff, are getting an undeserved break.” (Pablo Torre, 06:26)

• Dan’s Perspective—Fans, Journalism, and Accountability:
  Dan quantifies Watson’s bad play and connects it to broader questions about sports, fame, and moral responsibility:

  “...You have given 230 million guaranteed dollars to somebody who at 28 is playing like someone who does not have long term prospects at the position. In a sport that’s gotten better at measuring so many things...how do you measure...the effect of being unmasked in a way that might affect performance?” (Dan Le Batard, 08:12)

• The Real Impact of Performance on Media and Fan Backlash:
  Mina describes the double standard for public reaction based on player success:

  “If he was playing well, I would be inundated by hate mail right now. Because that’s what happens when we bring up this sort of behavior with players who are playing well.” (Mina Kimes, 11:28)

• Where Should Journalists Draw the Line?
  Mina and Dan debate the journalistic responsibility in sports analysis—when to bring up off-field behavior, the difference between TV segments and in-depth interviews, and the social pressures against “being a downer”:

  “The definition of success in sports demands celebration. Literally...The idea that you would try to rain on someone’s parade is itself evidence that you are a hater.” (Pablo Torre, 11:28)
  “...Who does the average American hate more? The misbehaving athlete or the media?” (Dan Le Batard, 13:25)

• Audience Commentary on Complexity:
  Mina recounts her audience survey indicating fans do care, albeit quietly:

  “A lot of sports fans do feel conflicted about this...It’s just the tone and the scope of it does tend to fluctuate based on play.” (Mina Kimes, 19:26)

2. Friendship, Parenthood, and Work-Life Balance

[22:00–35:56]

• NY Magazine Story—Can Childless People and Parents Be Friends?
  Pablo introduces the story, noting their group spans the parenting experience: Pablo and Mina are parents, Dan is not.

• Mina’s Take—Privilege and Siloed Friendships:
  Mina finds the reported friendship drama overblown and attributes her own friend stability to privilege—access to childcare, low demands for time, and friends who compartmentalize:

  “Frankly, most of them...seemed relieved to have a space to not talk about their kids... But I do think...we just don’t ask that much of our friends.” (Mina Kimes, 24:57)

• Dan on Life Getting “Smaller”:
  Dan reflects on how major life events—kids, lost time—naturally shrink the circumference of friendships:

  “...as you get later in life, your life shrinks some. The things that are important to you are the most important things. And there are fewer of them...” (Dan Le Batard, 28:18)

• Pablo’s Honesty—Not Just for the Kid, But Himself:
  Pablo confesses that his work-life motivation isn’t just parental self-sacrifice:

  “...I’m doing this all for Violet...and that is honestly not true at all.” (Pablo Torre, 28:46)

  “...I also love it...I think if our sample here is over indexed on something, it is people who are obsessed with their jobs in a way that is legitimately fulfilling to them.” (Pablo Torre, 29:06)

• Mina’s Hopeful Approach:
  She anticipates change but expresses intent to maintain boundaries between “kid life” talk and conversations with non-parent friends.

  “...my friendships with, you know, people who don’t have children, like, it’s really not something I plan on having take over my relationships with them...” (Mina Kimes, 30:54)

• Dan on Not Wanting Kids (“Rent, Don’t Own”):

  “...I like renting kids. I don’t like owning kids.” (Dan Le Batard, 32:21)
  “The permanence of not being able to put that responsibility aside ever...I would assume a lot of things would get gone because all of a sudden the thing that’s most important is that child.” (Dan Le Batard, 32:40)

• Mina’s Analytic Leap Into Motherhood:
  She admits she never dreamed of being a mom but chose to for personal growth:

  “I never fantasized about being a mom...But as I was kind of pondering existence...I just kind of woke up one day and thought, you know, I’d like my life to be different...my close relationships...make me so much happier than everything else. So why not introduce another variable that will probably do the same thing?” (Mina Kimes, 34:20)

  “High upside prospect. I got the cap space.” (Mina Kimes, 35:56, joking about her future child)

3. Russell Brand, Conspiracy, and the Crisis of Media Trust

[36:14–48:05]

• Dan Sets the Scene:
  Dan frames Brand as a “charismatic, whip smart” figure who’s harnessed suspicion towards traditional media and wields it to deflect credible criminal allegations:

  “Part of his platform is he’s just showing you all the time how corrupt the media is...It’s part of why people will follow him anywhere on conspiracies.” (Dan Le Batard, 37:03)

• Pablo on Brand’s Defensive Playbook:
  Pablo and the team play and dissect Brand’s video response to the allegations, noting the broader emergence of this “the media is out to get me” stance.

  “I am transparent. I am free. I am a truth teller. In an era when you cannot trust the mainstream liars who allege the truth. And this...is clearly an effective strategy...” (Pablo Torre, 40:45)

• Mina: The Algorithm Wants Slop
  She connects Brand’s (and others’) success to the shift in information distribution:

  “The pipes have changed, and the pipes are giving us slop. And that’s how you end up in this place. There’s always been bad faith, actors and people and hucksters, but they’ve never had the kind of distribution that they have now.” (Mina Kimes, 47:39)

• Nostalgia vs The New Reality:
  Pablo and Dan mourn the loss of gatekeepers with standards, even as those systems had flaws:

  “...the era of a guy in a suit and tie who has a newsroom behind him telling you, we’ve thought really deeply about these stories...now...the guy giving you the news media can be dressed like Dan. And that’s a little dangerous, I think.” (Pablo Torre, 46:12)

  “You combine...an easy platform with a skillful orator...We shouldn’t be surprised that they’ve developed these massive fan bases.” (Mina Kimes, 42:55)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Ask your mom.”
  —Mina Kimes, joking about childhood urination mishaps (01:11)

• “You can't rain on the parade; otherwise, you’re a hater.”
  —Pablo Torre (11:28)

• “I like renting kids. I don’t like owning kids.”
  —Dan Le Batard (32:21)

• “High-upside prospect. I’ve got the cap space!”
  —Mina Kimes, on approaching motherhood like an NFL GM (35:56)

• “The pipes have changed, and the pipes are giving us slop.”
  —Mina Kimes, on algorithmic media consumption (47:39)

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Timestamps of Important Segments

• [04:04] – Deshaun Watson’s struggles and the analyst’s moral “escape”
• [08:12] – Quantifying Watson’s poor play and media responsibilities
• [11:28] – How success shields players from scrutiny, sports celebration culture
• [22:00] – Friendships between parents and childless people (NY Mag story)
• [24:57] – Mina’s “siloed” friendships and privilege
• [32:21] – Dan on not wanting kids: “renting” vs. “owning”
• [35:56] – Mina’s analytic approach to motherhood, “high upside prospect”
• [36:14] – Russell Brand’s controversy, media trust, and algorithmic slop

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Tone and Style

The episode is candid, warm, and intellectually curious. Pablo, Mina, and Dan fearlessly examine personal, professional, and societal dilemmas; their blend of self-deprecating humor and journalistic rigor makes even heavy topics approachable.

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What Each Guest “Found Out”

Mina: Dan calls kids “monsters,” which will color future interactions when he inevitably buys her baby's gifts. (48:45)
Dan: Pablo lies to himself about working “for his family”—his true motive might be love of the work itself. (49:04)
Pablo: He needs to password-protect YouTube to shield his daughter from his podcast antics. (49:27)

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A funny, thoughtful look at the intersection of personal lives, professional demands, media crises, and sports, with lessons (and farts) for listeners in every stage of life.

Transcript

[A]

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

[B]

That is underwater. That's a hot tub.

[A]

Amina.

[B]

Hot tub fart.

[A]

Right after this ad.

[C]

You're listening to Giraffe Kings. We doing here, y'.

[A]

All.

[C]

That's what we're doing right now.

[A]

We're good now. We're good now.

[C]

Oh, we're good.

[A]

I'm told that this is. I'm told that this is a show now.

[C]

Here he is. I, you, I, I feel like would be devastated when you listen back to the audio and realize you missed out on a conversation about my baby pissing on my face. Potentially. So that's bittersweet for you.

[A]

I missed the baby piss face conversation. I showed up late to the baby piss face conversation.

[C]

It's a thing that happens.

[A]

It is.

[C]

You wouldn't know you have a girl.

[A]

Yeah, I am. I am. Well, I've done it. Probably, I should say.

[C]

You both have. And you just don't know. Ask your mom.

[B]

I still do it. I still do it to my mom.

[C]

Oh, God.

[A]

I have a question for you guys. Do you guys remember any phone numbers? Have you memorized phone numbers that you still recall?

[C]

I have my husband's memorized, out of which I, I think it was an. I was reading an article about. It wasn't like kind of broke down palace, but it was someone in a foreign country who's like imprisoned and couldn't reach their relatives. And I read that and I, and I thought, I'm going to spend the next 15 minutes memorizing my husband's phone number. So I've got that one locked down.

[B]

Yeah, I have a few. Yes, A few important ones. But I also am somebody who comes from an age who. I still leave voicemails. I still.

[A]

That's right.

[B]

You know, make.

[C]

It the worst. Just kidding.

[A]

Can you imagine if dan could leave FaceTime voicemails?

[C]

You can't do that now, right?

[B]

Or that, can you? Oh, thank you. I love that devil. Leaving them for both of you.

[A]

Somehow the newest technology employed in the oldest possible way. Yeah.

[B]

Shirtless FaceTimes. I'm going to have for both of you shirtless FaceTime messages.

[A]

Well, I have, I have set up a phone number and yes, this was all my way of sneaking in a promo. It is 51385, Pablo. It's a phone number. We're taking calls now. Requests for me to find stuff out. And so if you're listening to this 51385, Pablo, leave a message like Dan Lebatard might and shirtlessly, you know, help my show by making content for free.

[C]

Can we leave requests for you to find things out?

[A]

No.

[C]

Like from.

[A]

No, I can't allow.

[C]

I can't.

[A]

No. I know what you would do. You would. You would just. You would mock it.

[C]

Yeah. I mean, I might ask you how to find out how to start a show on time. I don't know. Something I would request how to. How to create a working Zoom in 2023. Something you should look into.

[A]

Hey, this is Pablo. Let me know what you'd like me to find out. Tell me a story. Leave me a message. We might use this on the show.

[B]

Thanks, Pablo. I'd like to find out what the. We're paying you for. That's what I'd like to find out. How much we're paying you and why are we paying you that much. And for what.

[A]

We should. We should answer. We should delete that one.

[C]

Oh, man. I'm excited for the stories we're going to talk about today. There's one that I'm really excited about. So excited. I was texting you last night, Pablo, my early thoughts. Yes. So that's tease. We'll get to that. I think after mine, mine's probably the only sportsy one. Sort of. So here's the premise. Deshaun Watson stinks right now. He is playing very bad football. Dan and I talked about it a little bit this morning on his show. Talked about it on my podcast, Me and Kaim show, featuring Lenny. Check it out wherever you get your pods. Yes, he is not good. He looks like a shell of himself. He has. And this was something that started last year. He came back in week 12, I believe it was. But, you know, people attributed it to rust weather. Some of the games were, like, in really bad weather. They haven't integrated him into the offense. There was a lot of excuses made, and, you know, some of them were legitimate. So he has an entire off season to work with his team for the offense to be built around him, for him to ostensibly become the guy that he was, the guy that incentivized Cleveland to sell their soul and give him the most guaranteed money in the history of the sport.

[A]

And.

[C]

And it is not working out through the first two weeks of the season. He does not look good in a way that is apparent to everybody. The thing I wanted to bring up, however, is not. We all agree that's not up for debate. Is something that has occurred to me watching him, something that I've had conversations about with other NFL writers and analysts, something that I pondered going into the season as I mulled over the possibility of a Watson returning to form. This dude just bailed out our entire industry by being bad because Pablo, as I was thinking about this season and I thought the Cleveland Browns have a really good football team. I think the defense is going to be good. They've got good skill players. Something that kind of occurred to me is like, God, how am I going to talk about this in my capacity as an NFL analyst if he's good? I truly have actually talked to other football people about this, how everybody kind of feels like, oh, like a little bit of relief. But boy, it's kind of a cop out in some ways because we never had to reckon with. And maybe we will. I just, you know, it's been two weeks, but we certainly haven't so far had to reckon with that cognitive dissonance and what it would have entailed.

[A]

I love the meta aspect of this story because it's both very funny and also it also says a lot about us. And I say this because I watch the Browns now. And here's a stat that just makes the point that Mina was saying, through these two games, the Browns offense has given up more touchdowns than the Browns defense because Deshaun Watson has been throwing pick sixes. The turnovers, One touchdown given up by the Browns defense, two given up by the Browns offense. And I say that because it feels, when I watch it, Dan, like it's. This feels karmic almost, right? Like the most morally reprehensible transaction in sports history has been rewarded by a comeuppance that we rarely get with this magnitude. But then in terms of the karma of it, it does feel like we, as people who talk about this stuff, are getting an undeserved break. Like the whole thing about Deshaun Watson. And we talked, Mina and I have talked about Watson on all sorts of pods in the past, and we've always done it with the perspective of here is a test for everybody, not just for the Browns. We know the Browns failed. We know the NFL failed for. For the reasons of all those teams signing up in a line to sign Deshaun Watson. But for us, there was some, like, there was some notion of here we get to show how enlightened we are and instead we evade it. And I think that is both something that's eating Deshaun Watson's brain. That's the other part of this, right? Like he's on Twitter blocking people. He is feeling the comeuppance in a way that is particular and familiar to anybody who's just been online too much, who's been popular and now isn't. But Dan, like this is something that you yourself have dealt with, right? What do you do with the guy who is back and is suddenly a news story?

[B]

Let's quantify though, what Mina is saying when she says that he is bad because according to NFL's Next Gen Stats, he ranks dead last and expected points added per drop back among all 35 quarterbacks with at least 200 passing attempts. So when you say it's worse than Davis Mills, worse than Zach Wilson, worse than Carson Wentz, you have given 230 million guaranteed dollars to somebody who at 28 is playing like someone who does not have long term prospects at the position. And in a sport that has gotten better at measuring so many things that are hard to measure, I put in front of you guys, how do you measure? Because you went from from popular to unpopular. But it's more than that. From someone who has had a charmed famed existence to someone who has had his sexual deviant slash crimes put in front of everybody in a way that would make any of us uncomfortable. If these kinds of privacies were there for all the world to see and you were unmasked in a way that might affect performance that might harm you energetically on who you are as a human being carrying around a drape of the world is looking at me, laughing at me and everyone I meet. The word association is this guy did at the very least things that are publicly, privately, shamefully reprehensible and at the worst criminal stuff.

[C]

I think it's undoubtedly affected him. But I also think that we have a lot of counterfactuals of guys who have not been affected by it or guys who have been involved in scandals involving sexual assault, rape accusations, domestic violence, whatever, and have come back and balled out. And when they do that, the fans immediately rally behind them. So that's what kind of makes this sort of tricky because we can point to him and try to like armchair psychologize and say clearly the back knows that he's being memed and hated and that's affecting his. And I'm sure it is. Honestly, it is something that when we try to put ourselves in not necessarily those shoes, but the idea of being exposed in the way that Dan just described has to affect a human brain. But there are just so many other examples of it not happening. And I think that's why this story is so interesting to me, because I was just so prepared for that to happen. Like, mentally. I was like, okay, like, if. Like right now. Because he's playing bad, too, because he's playing poorly. If I. If there. If you were to put a clip of me saying something about the fact that he's been accused of all these, you know, he was accused of all these sexual crimes and misdemeanors and whatnot. And if you put that out now, I would not get hate. That's what I want to. That's what I want to drill down in here. Like, if you aggregated this and put it out, I would not get hate mails. If he was playing well, I would be inundated by hate mail right now. Because that's what happens when we bring up this sort of behavior with players who are playing well.

[A]

Pablo, this is why sports is such a unique place, is that the definition of success in sports demands celebration. Literally. Yeah, right. We're clapping. Like, the idea that you would not acknowledge that, that you would try to rain on someone's parade is itself evidence that you are a hater. You are a player hater in the most definitional sense. And in fact, part of. Part of the. The whole con of this. Of sports in this way is that we shouldn't need someone to be, you know, good or bad, to render a verdict when they are just there appearing. And the whole point is that they are there appearing and paid this much money with this context. Like, that's all we need, right? Journalistically speaking, that's all we need. But, Dan, as you know, part of being a sports journalist is not merely doing the journalism. It's figuring out how to be a part of the party as well. Because right now, if Mina in this alternate world is pointing out at the party, hey, let's not clap too hard. It's the definition of being Debbie Downer.

[B]

Mina, you saw already, Cleveland was. When this was starting, you saw what was happening at the tailgates. Cleveland was already rallying around with all of its history of losing and everything that's happened with the Browns. There was already stuff happening that suggested to you that Browns fans were ready to support this decision in the name of regional identity, team identity, in the name of I support my team no matter what. I felt some of this. This. This week in a way that was strange, where we were just talking about something like this, and I mentioned casually that Tyreek Hill, you know, that I had declined to go on his podcast. We were going to do podcasts. I would do his, he would do mine, and then I told his people, I. I'm going to ask just a fair warning. I know it risks the interview, but I'm going to ask at least a question about some of the stuff that he has hitting, you know, men, women and children. And then all of that evaporated and I immediately got hit, Mina. Because you can imagine the enthusiasm around the Dolphins right now and specifically brought by that guy. 20 years of losing. This is the Dolphins. This is a team with. That was with Marino and Shula, the winning franchise anywhere in sports, okay, in the 80s. But for 20 years, they've been terrible. Cleveland's been terrible always. And the crimes here are worse, you know, in number than what it is in number. What we are talking about with Tyree Kill. And what came after me was, well, why would you ask him any of those questions? Why is that necessary? This is what's wrong with journalism today. Because I'm honestly not sure, Mina. I'm honestly not sure. As we speak about this, who does the average American hate more? The misbehaving athlete or the media? Because it might be the media and us asking questions and moralizing about this. And. And a lot of people don't want it in their huddle. Like, don't want it. Like they'll take the guy who scores touchdowns no matter what he's done, because he makes them feel good. And the journalist asking those questions does not make any of it feel good.

[C]

I think it's not it the. I think where we're kind of getting at and this is both of these stories illustrate that is a lot of sports fans care. They do. But the quality of play triumphs all and informs how much everybody cares and the scope of the response. I mean, when Tyreek Hill was drafted by Kansas City, I was writing back then and I wrote a column for it about it. And I wrote about. Or pardon me, it wasn't even when he was drafted. It was actually early in his NFL career there. I wrote a column about it. I wrote about how he had pleaded guilty to domestic violence by strangulation. I wrote about some of the details of why he was kicked off the T. All of it. It's all out there. You can find it on ESPN.com, it's pretty. I mean, you read the police report. It's hard to read. It's really awful stuff. And I can tell you right now, because he was not an established, successful player, I thought didn't get a lot of backlash. If I was to bring that up a couple years later after his success, completely different I don't know, maybe what we're saying, maybe it's obvious that, you know, in sport, Sports is a success or failure in the case of Watson, seems to inform whether or not people give a About other stuff. But those two athletes are a pretty good case study for the way in which sports fans react to us even bringing it up.

[A]

But we should also point out, too, that the tests that we've been talking about here, the tests that we don't have to take because of Deshaun Watson's failures, is a hard test. It's hard because the question becomes like, so is it a footnote that we have to append to every mention when we're on around the Horn? You know, like, do I have to sneak in after talking about Tyreek's Hill 80 yard touchdown? You know, like, do I have to just sneak that in there? Are we sort of sticking a finger in the air and saying, okay, it feels like Twitter's been talking about this a lot, so I don't need to talk about it today. Like, in an era of fragmentation, of media consumption in which no one is watching the same thing, all of us also then feel this responsibility that is also fractured as to, like, so who am I communicating with and what context do they have?

[C]

Here's how I came down on it in my capacity as an NFL analyst, and you guys can tell me if this is a cop out. And I'm totally open to being told it's a cop out. I felt this way about Hill, who I have talked about a lot as a football player, and I have not brought up any of this. I have purely talked about his play, the way he impacts spacing, the way he impacts the game, all of it. My feeling. And I was prepared to do this with Watson as well, and I have been. When I talk about him as a player so far, I have in conversations where I'm like, I'm gonna get 45 seconds on TV and talk about the football, I have not brought it up. However, when you're in an environment where you're talking about the person, their career, who they are, you gotta bring it up. And people still fall short in that regard when they talk about why Watson wasn't on the field. Broadcasts have gotten a little bit better about this. Or if you're talking about, again, a Hill off the field, his life, his, like, whatever, that's what, you know, any omission is egregious to me. And Dan, if you were to, you know, like, I think you were correct, you're gonna Podcast with the guy.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

Talked about him 100%. That's not you giving 45 seconds about him. You know, running a wheel route off of a short motion, you gotta bring it up and we fail there.

[B]

But some of the things here that are interesting to me, right. Because we've had some pretty seismic shifts in America over the last 20 years. So journalists are allowed to be befuddled here. Even though I know we're in the take industry. You gotta have conviction and you gotta know everything. It's okay to not have your footing here. On exactly how I would discuss this, because we're setting the template for how to discuss it going forward because once upon a time, we weren't talking about it at all many years ago. And America's change in sports is going to change, too. But when you say that fans do care, I do believe that this transaction, when it comes to the playpen sports, it can be as simple as this. Tyreek Hill scoring touchdowns makes me feel good. You asking me to read a police report makes me feel bad. I am a sports fan. I am here for the entertainment. Don't make me feel bad. The Cleveland Browns make me feel bad enough because they don't get into the end zone enough. And so this is not something I want from my journalists in sports. I understand the customer taking the position. It's not my position, but I understand why. Some arrive there, some do.

[C]

I just want to just. I recently did a survey for my podcast, asking my listeners how they felt about. And so many of them were like, hey, thank you for talking about Deshaun Watson. I just wanna say, like, yes, it feels the loudest guys are the ones in the parking lot with horrible signs, you know, Browns fans. But that isn't the majority. I truly believe a lot of sports fans do feel conflicted about this. A lot of sports fans do want to hear about all of these things at once. It's just the tone and the scope of it does tend to fluctuate based on play. I think we are all agreeing here.

[A]

Yeah, look, the idea of human interest stories, right. Like, we hear this, I feel for, like, for instance, someone who's been getting a lot of this criticism is Malika Andrews, our colleague at espn. She does the NBA draft, right. And so during the draft, she tells stories that are human interest stories that are often sad or they involve the complications of a legal history. And the question is, like, when you're doing introductions of human beings, do you actually want to know, or does it feel like you're raining again on the parade that you are in fact, like, why are you bringing broccoli to the party? Like, we're not here for that. No, this is not, this is not time for vegetables. And even now, at the end of a segment like this, I'm wondering, truly, full disclosure, how can I melt some cheese over this broccoli? This has been a really serious topic, Dan. How are we gonna get the out of it to get to the funny stuff?

[B]

Yeah, we need to do that. And I think we failed. I think in every respect, we as media members have failed. You did, though, make me feel flinch when you said there was funny here. And then we found none of it because you did use the word funny on karma. And then we found none of the funny.

[A]

I, I, I, I should mention that I meant to say this too.

[B]

There you go.

[A]

There you go. Yeah, that was, that was for the podcast audience. That was, that was, that was Ivy League education. That was an Ivy League, Ivy League fart.

[C]

Wasn't even a good fart.

[B]

It wasn't even a good one.

[A]

You guys got better.

[B]

That was more raspberry.

[A]

Oh, God.

[B]

That is, that's a hot tub. I mean, a hot tub fart.

[A]

Yo.

[C]

Oh my God. How did my baby's foot end up right here? It's like on the other, so big that it's, it's almost hitting my back.

[A]

So your baby knows what you wanted to talk about today because we've arrived at the point where I have to talk about this. I guess it's in name this New York magazine cover story. And I want to give you the headline of this because Mina cannot stop texting me about it, as aforementioned. But the headline, the COVID story is can parents and Childless People be Friends? And I am laughing for the podcast audience, smiling wide because we arrive, the three of us, in a sort of perfect arrangement of people to consider this because I have a three year old daughter, Violet. Mina has the kid who just kicked her, as aforementioned. And Dan is our childless friend who maybe won't be our friend if this story has legs.

[C]

I'm in transition. I don't know when this is coming out though, so it could be, I could be at any of these three pockets by the time this episode comes out.

[A]

So I should say as a matter of setup here that there is a line referring to a study from, from a Netherlands based researcher that says that friendships of parents are the most fragile when their children are around three. And so I come into this conversation embodying that it has been both very difficult for me to feel Like a present, Dad. I don't know how many of the Dutch people this researcher surveyed have been launching shows at a company founded by a man who demands to know why we're paying this person all of this money. But that's my situation. And I find myself to be struggling the most with just presence. Like, it's not the issue of, like, am I losing friends? It's the issue of, am I just paying enough attention to my child. A lot of the story, Mina, is about parents being consumed. Consumed with their kids to the point where they lose friends. I'm somebody who's been so consumed with making sure the show is good, that my friends at work and in life don't see me as the guy who has been consumed by his kid, that now I'm wondering if I'm not enough consumed by my kid.

[C]

The story is full of, like, horror show anecdotes from people whose friendships have been ruptured. When one friend has a kid, feels like their lives aren't connecting anymore. And the author talked about she's a childless person, talked about feeling that way, like she's losing friends, like she's being judged. Everybody in this story seems to feel that way, like, oh, this has not gone well. Like, I have lost friends. I have. And I feel like I'm doing this wrong. So I want to start by saying my read on the story was a lot of these people suck. That was my first reaction. I don't Dan. Like, I don't know if you felt that way. I was like, God, these people are so self conscious in their. Or judgy or something. Because my experience. So I'm recently turned 38. Pablo is about to turn 38, right?

[A]

That's right. That's right.

[C]

A little bit younger than that, 27. And so I think I'm in a good position to judge as someone whose friends. A lot of their friends. My friends have had young children over the last five years or so. And I don't feel like I've lost them. I've been able to sustain those friendships. Frankly, most of them, I feel like in their friendships with me and I would include Pablo in this category, we just. They don't talk about their kids that much. Like they, they bring up other stuff with me. Career. It's a lot of working moms who frankly have seemed relieved to have a space to not talk about their. That's just my. How I have viewed the situation. I have not felt judged or left out or anything like that with the majority of my friendships. That said I do think this is important. As I chewed it over a little bit more. My friends and I, I think, come at this from a pretty privileged position. They are all people who can afford childcare. They are all people who can afford to bifurcate their lives in a way that I think a lot of the people in this story, maybe I don't know, or just generally cannot. Some people have to involve their children much more in their lives by default in a way that I think me and my cohort are lucky or have the advantages not to. And I'll also say one more thing. I don't ask that much of my friends, like if I see a friend three times in a calendar year. We are tight. And I think reading this, a lot of people have more significant expectations out of adult friendship. Like they seem to hang out a lot.

[A]

There's expectations, Dan, in this story. Their expectations of like, sorry, I'm gonna have to bring my kid with me when we go to our all day brunch. And I'm like, what are you guys?

[C]

Who's having these?

[A]

What is happening here?

[C]

So anyways, that was my read on. It is like I was like, these people are very different from me and my experiences and I am not afraid of this. However, I want to recognize that I bring privilege and a different sort of perspective to the situation.

[B]

I would assume that in the hypothetical here, just not saying it's a baby, just saying your life is everything it is right now. But I am now going to bring into it the overwhelming responsibility of a screaming monster. And I am going to put that screaming monster at the centerpiece of your life in a way that reduces it to something very small. You're always feeling kind of overwhelmed and you've just invited something that is bigger and more overwhelming than anything you have ever known. I would assume that that would alter your life as you knew it in all ways and friendships would be one of them. My best friends, the commonalities I have generally tend to be work related things, people that I connect with because we have similar interests. I would assume if you get new friends in adulthood that it would be going to games or schools or wherever it is that you're congregating with other people who are dealing with the same overwhelming, screaming monster situations that you're dealing with. And so that that would be a place that you would connect and perhaps you would outgrow friendships. I don't know how many friendships you guys have that are long standing, that are 20 and 30 year friendships, but they all change. I think you Lose a lot of them. And as you get later, later in life, you, your life shrinks some. The things that are important to you are the most important things. And there are fewer of them or you have time for fewer of them.

[A]

I mean, I want to be honest too, right? There are two things about my life, my work life, balance. On the one hand, I like to say what I was about to say, which is that I'm doing this all for Violet. I'm doing this all because I'm providing for my kid. And that is honestly not true at all.

[B]

Not true.

[C]

As the father, as a father of.

[A]

My daughter, I am hosting this show to fund her college tuition. That is literally true. But it's also something that if I'm being honest and I want to be on this show, perhaps uniquely, I also love it. And so something that I'm curious to see Mina go through, Dan, because Mina, like me, like you, we all really care about work. Like, I think if our sample here is over indexed on something, it is people who are obsessed with their jobs in a way that is legitimately fulfilling to them. That's why I just said all that I said. Cause I relate to how both of you guys have lived. It's part of why I think we get along. It's part of why our friendship now manifests in literal work for me. And I think what Mina is going to deal with as this kid kicks his way out of her body is the question of, like, how much am I going to have to carve out of my work schedule to feel like I am checking the box of good parenting, which can be anxiety inducing as I have felt it.

[C]

I, Dan and I were talking about this before the show. I know my life is going to change a lot and my priorities will change and I fully expect that and approach it with, I hope, a great deal of humility. But on the topic of like, whether it'll affect my friendships, I don't really plan on bringing it up around my childhood friends. That much, I guess is what I want to get at. Like, I. Something that's changed over the last nine months is my friends who have kids. The aforementioned friends who have been so excited to just go out with me on their own, have sitters, talk about their careers, friend couples with that, like my husband and I, our relationships with them are changing. My relationships with those people are changing. Like now I started to talk to them about like, damn, how much does a nanny go for? Like, you know, stuff like that, like, what is this, like Diaper Genie?

[A]

What's that about.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. So that's changing. But like. So that's kind of introduced, like a cool element into those friendships. But I really plan on not, like, again, having friendship. And again, this is something that I'm lucky enough to be able to do. My work friendships, my friendships with, you know, people who don't have children, like, it's really not something I plan on having. Take over my relationships with them in a way that they haven't with me.

[A]

In the past, you know, and so I have. I have Dan, I have been a siloer. I silo stuff. I have work, I have kid, I have wife. I am always trying to. I mean, maybe Amina said this before and I really resonated with it. I'm trying to find out what my friend is interested in. I'm not trying to impose on them the thing that I unilaterally want to discuss because that doesn't seem fun for me as a person who's wired in that way. All of which brings me to, I think, the elephant in the room here, which is, Dan, ever even contemplating whether this thing, this, this monster is something that you ever wanted to, you know, bring into your precious world?

[B]

I have given so little thought to it over the course of my life that I believe and have questioned myself as to whether there is something wrong with me in terms of not thinking about this responsibility. The size of something that would create so much upheaval that it would take you to a larger place in growth and love, but also would be, I think, a complete upending of anything that you've known. I'm ashamed, actually, to admit to the both of you how little time I spend or have spent the entirety of my life thinking about this. And I don't know that I have a good reason for you. Like, it's not a fear. I like kids. I'm good with kids. I like renting kids. I don't like owning kids. I like borrowing them for a little while and, and. And turning them upside down and doing TikTok by the ankles. But the. The permanence of not being able to put that responsibility aside ever. And furthermore, because I think this is what's going to happen to you, Mina, I would assume it happens to everybody, that you only have so much bandwidth, that of course something like friendships or something is gonna get gone when this overwhelming thing makes an appearance. I don't even know what your checklist is on priorities, but I would assume a lot of things would get gone because all of a sudden the thing that's most important is that child. It has to be I.

[C]

That this is another thing from the article. Like, they, the way they depicted childless lives is so different from mine. They're like talking about, like, going to, like, music festivals and like, to these, like, weekly game nights. I'm like, my life is like, I work, my husband and I go out to dinner three nights a week and then we watch Netflix. Like so. Yeah, it'll change.

[A]

I just heard the thing that's changing. You go out to dinner three times a week.

[B]

It's gone.

[A]

Oh my God.

[B]

Gone.

[A]

Babies scream in restaurants.

[B]

I've been in so many restaurants with screaming babies. You're going to be embarrassed by the screaming baby.

[C]

I give up. Yeah, well, I guess this kind of enters into for me the decision to do it because I'm not great with kids. I don't love them. I don't look at my friends, kids and think that I'd like to spend more time with them. I have never particularly enjoyed babies and I never fantasized about being a mom my entire life. But as I was kind of pondering existence, one thing, you know, I had a moment, Dan, where it wasn't like, ah, this is going to disrupt my life or whatever. I just kind of woke up one day and thought, you know, I'd like my life to be different. And we talked about this when we did the South Beast sessions. The older I get, the more I realize that I do love my job. But I get significantly more fulfillment from my human, my relationships, and particularly my close ones that have kind of expanded my heart. And I see the way in which this new relationship seems to expand other people's hearts and their minds. And so that seems like an experience that I'd like to have. And I have this recent history of, like, my really close friendships, my marriage, my relationship with my dog, all being the things that clearly make me so much happier than everything else. So why not introduce another variable that will probably do the same thing?

[A]

I just want Mina's future son, when he plays back this video, to appreciate that when your mom is talking about you like an analytically minded gm, that means she loves you as much as she possibly can.

[C]

High upside prospect. I got the cap space.

[A]

You're just a great variable.

[B]

I wanted to talk to you guys about everything surrounding Russell Brand. I have found him fascinating for a long time. Wildly charismatic, whip smart, somebody who I have marveled at as a comedian and a fast thinker and somebody who's so articulate that throughout his career I've been fascinated by him. And now as a recovering sex addict, recovering drug addict, he stands accused very credibly, very thoroughly. And a lot of reporting of criminal actions against women that a lot of men are getting accused of these days and getting the support of the usual subjects of Tucker Carlson and Andrew Tate and Alex Jones. And just a strange phenomenon to see who supports this kind of reporting, this kind of criminality. And without getting into too many of the particulars about what he stands accused of. What I wanted to actually talk to you about was I remember after 9 11, the horror of the plan hitting the buildings. I remember my local news, my national news. It felt like the anchors were no longer impartial. They were scared and they wanted to attack someone. And I saw on my television, objectivity evaporate. And I also saw what had been the newsmen of my time, the Dan Rathers, the Walter Cronkites, the Ted Copples, whatever the respected newsmen were. Polling showed that the most respected newsman in America was Jon Stewart. Became jon Stewart after 9 11. And as comedians have become our independent thinkers because government, everyone thinks government and media are corrupt. The following that Russell Brand has, not unlike Joe Rogan's, makes him a media entity unto himself. And part of his platform is he's just showing you all the time how corrupt the media is. It's part of why he's popular. It's part of why he has an enormous following. It's part of why people will follow him anywhere on conspiracies. And it's part of why those people will now support him as he stands up and says, see, it's a witch hunt. I'm now the victim. Women aren't victims of my crimes. I'm the victim. I told you they were gonna come after me. I'm just fascinated by everything happening around this person. And I wanted to explore with you guys. We'll start with pab, I suppose with you guys, the media element of this, the audience grabbing of this and how it is that these people get so much clout that their following will follow them anywhere.

[A]

Yeah, I wasn't sure when dan brought up 911 Mina. I was like, where the are we going? But then he got there. I wanted to state very clearly that when Russell Brand is the subject of an investigative report that involves testimony, Credible reporting about four women, including one who was just 16 years old, right, Accusing Russell Brand of rape, sexual assault and abuse, it's not something that is merely interesting because holy, there's a lot of real reporting here. I encourage you guys go to The Times, the London Times. Go to check, go out and see what the reporting here is. The BBC was involved in this stuff. It's not just like a couple of tweets. And we should say that when it comes to Russell Brand's defense, what Dan is describing him as this sort of sharp tongued, British accented, charismatic leader. It's probably easier if we actually listen and watch what he said.

[D]

These allegations pertain to the time when I was working in the mainstream, when I was in the newspapers all the time, when I was in the movies and as I've written about extensively in my books, I was very, very promiscuous. Now, during that time of promiscuity, the relationships I had were absolutely always consensual. I was always transparent about that then, almost too transparent. And I'm being transparent about it now as well. And to see that transparency metastasized into something criminal that I absolutely deny makes me question, is there another agenda at play? We are obviously going to look into this matter because it's very, very serious. In the meantime, I want you to stay close, stay awake. But more important than any of that, if you can, please stay free, there.

[A]

Is what Dan is describing. Mina. I am transparent. I am free. I am a truth teller. In an era when you cannot trust the mainstream liars who allege the truth. And this has been. I don't, again, I don't know how much of this was strategized. I'm gonna pivot so that I can claim this. If these accusations come out. That has been a theory, but it's clearly an effective strategy that he has followed because lots of other people have done it to great monetary success.

[C]

Living in a space or cultivating sort of an ideology that's trust nothing. When accusations like this come up, it's a very convenient place to be in conspiracies. Yeah, right. Like it's if, you know, if you've already cultivated your fan base to question everything naturally when these sorts of very credible accusations, again, like his defense is that he had a consensual relationship with the 16 year old when he was 31. I just want to hit that again.

[A]

Yes.

[C]

You've already kind of primed the pump, so to speak. Right. Like that's kind of what is happening here. I think the first thing I would say is his primary stances as a truth teller are really easy ones to take. Mainstream media and big Pharma are bad. That is like literally the easiest thing you can do. Right. Like in terms of, like things that people Are already all people, frankly, in society right now, around the world have suspicions about. You know, like, that's the elites. You can put the things that.

[A]

Politicians are bad. Mina, I don't know if you've heard.

[C]

But politicians are bad politicians. Big pharma, really? Billionaires and mainstream media.

[B]

Yeah, but don't underestimate it as a platform. Donald Trump took out the career I care about. Yeah, no, because there's something to be said for gathering followers, just simply telling people again and again the media's bad.

[C]

You're choosing the thing that people already wanna believe or already have feelings about. And then what we've seen is people who are unusually charismatic. I think Donald Trump probably falls into this category. Good at, good at being on television or in the case of brand. And this is what Dan, you brought up at the beginning. Just very hyper articulate. You combine. So you take these things that people are already suspicious of that just lots of people, but a certain type person in particular is already inclined to be suspicious of. And then you take someone who's really good at talking and you combine those two things together. And we shouldn't be surprised that they've developed these massive, massive fan bases. It's, it's take. It's an easy platform combined with a skillful order. All these people who, who traffic in this space on the Internet and there's a lot of them are in podcasting. They're doing it because, I mean, this is the great, the hilarious thing about it, they're making a ton of money off of it. Like, no question, they've, they have recognized the most lucrative possible space. This is their like the equivalent of big Pharma finding the drug and then like pricing it up. And a very willing audience. So we shouldn't be surprised by any of it or surprised by the fact that like, you know, it seems to be one of the most lucrative spaces in independent media or entertainment right now.

[A]

It's about the Internet. Right? Like, so much of this is about the rise of the Internet and what has been called the democratization of media, which has resulted in authoritarian impulses, of course, as we've alluded to with Trump and all that. But to me, it's about, okay, now you have the ability to get what you want to hear from anywhere. And the media as an entity has such a losing hand. Because two things are true. On the one hand, yes, it is totally bad that elites have determined the flow of information when you say that in that way. What's less bad is when you have people who have devoted their lives to professional standards and ethical introspection and accountability, who may fail a lot. Right. But they're still trying to hold themselves to a rigorous standard and, in fact, can be shamed. They can be shamed. Shame being the guardrail on all of this. I always return to this because reading and listening to Russell Brand talk about his relationships reminds me of the immunity that so many of these people also have to conventional shame and conventional shame. Again, I get why it's an outdated concept. It feels musty. It feels. But it's also a guardrail in a world without them. And so the media has to have. The media is like a goalkeeper that can't allow a single goal, otherwise they get to be criticized by the fan who's like, I could do that, but in this case, you actually get to get podcasts. I mean, it occurs to me also that part of what Dan is nostalgic for, that I am too, despite being that much younger, is, I don't know, the era of a guy in a suit and tie who has a newsroom behind him telling you, we've thought really deeply about these stories. We've investigated them, we've reported them, and he has a very sonorous voice, and he brings you this news. And now, for better and for worse, the guy giving you the news media can be dressed like Dan. And that's a little dangerous, I think.

[C]

It's not that people like you can draw the line from Jon Stewart to getting to Russell Brand or whatever, that all these people are trusted or credible or whatever. It's just what Pablo is saying, which is that everything now is kind of algorithmic, right? Like, we're not being fed something that's curated with standards, with. You gotta have this. You know, there's accountability. That's all gone. You're being fed what you want. And what a lot of people want is slop. Or they want to be made to feel like smarter or like they're seeing through things or whatever. I mean, every. You just look at everything that. This is the point I was trying to kind of make about, like, when I say. When I was saying, like, he's attacking big pharma and mainstream media, it's like the easiest thing you can do. That's what people want. That's what the algorithm, the algorithms all reward what we want. They reward hate, they reward conflict and dissent. And so I think what's. This is not a. A figurehead problem so much as it is a distribution one. The dis. The pipes have changed, and the pipes are giving Us slop. And that's how you end up in this place. There's always been bad faith, actors and people and hucksters, but they've never had the kind of distribution that they have now.

[A]

By the way, YouTube.com Pablo Torre finds out.

[C]

Yeah, I'm trying to figure out the same thing right now. I'm like, how do we get jumped on this algorithm to, like, get people to get this.

[A]

These views up? Dan. I'm watching.

[B]

Doing it for you, Violet. Only for you. Pablo Torre funds out.

[A]

So at the very end of every episode of Share and Tell, we go around and we find out what we found out today. So, Mina, what did you find out on today's episode?

[C]

Hmm. I find out that Dan calls kids monsters, which is gonna hit differently when he sends me a present and pretends like he's happy for me.

[B]

Screaming monsters.

[C]

Sorry.

[A]

Screaming scream too.

[C]

Screaming monsters takes one and no one.

[B]

I found out that Pablo Torre lies to himself daily and believes that he is working and spending time away from his daughter and wife so hard because he's doing it for them. That is his crucifix. Jesus had his crucifix. Pablo has his crucifix. He is doing it for you, Violet and Liz.

[A]

Yes, I found out that I need to password protect YouTube so that Violet can never gain access to the ability to watch what we just recorded today. Pablo Torre finds out a show with a phone number. A phone number that is again, 51385, Pablo. That's 51385, Pablo. A number that I now realize David Sampson is furious about, because guess what, Samson? Yeah, we have a phone number. That show is produced by Michael Antonucci, Ryan Cortez, Sam Dawig, Patrick Kim, Neely Loman, Rachel Miller, Howard Carl Scott, Ethan Schreier, Matt Sullivan, Chris Tominiello, as well as studio engineering by Viridian Tech, Post production by NGW Post, and our theme song by John Bravo. I'll talk to you next time.