BONUS - Florida Is A Cowboy Hat (w/ Dan Le Batard)

Summary

Staying Alive with Jon Gabrus & Adam Pally

Episode: BONUS – Florida Is A Cowboy Hat (w/ Dan Le Batard)
Date: June 23, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this special bonus episode, comedians and best friends Jon Gabrus and Adam Pally sit down with sports broadcaster Dan Le Batard for a lively exploration of Miami, “Heat culture,” and the wider oddities of Florida. The episode meanders through nostalgia, urban sociology, and the unique contradictions that define Miami—both as a city and a symbol. Highlighted by their signature irreverent humor, the conversation skips through sports fandom, city identity, and the peculiar joys and headaches of living in South Florida.

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Key Topics & Insights

1. Sports Broadcasting and Seasonal Rhythms

[01:11–02:29]

• Adam Pally is asked about his favorite time of year as a sports broadcaster, reflecting on how the show's focus has shifted from Miami-centric sports to the sociology of sports at large.
  • Quote (Adam, 01:27): “After 21 years, there’s a certain sameness to the daily droning of sports. I like the times where there are less sports… so we can just wander all over the place.”
• Mentions how sports serve as a “safety net” for their show, allowing for sudden pivots when the conversation stalls.

2. Miami’s Transformation Through Sports and Celebrity

[02:36–03:48]

• The arrival and later departure of LeBron James significantly affected Miami sports media and the city’s perceived relevance.
  • Quote (Adam, 02:54): “They built me a studio at the Clevelander Hotel because LeBron moved down here.”
• Miami Heat Culture: Examines the intense, military-like structure of the organization, contrasting the mythos of “Heat culture” with the less romantic reality.
  • Quote (Adam, 03:14): “If I had to go anywhere in the apocalypse for safety, I would stand next to wherever Pat Riley is… he’s running a military camp.”

3. Myth vs. Reality: ‘Heat Culture’ and the Importance of Talent

[03:48–05:31]

• The discussion digs into the limitations and contradictions of 'Heat culture'—especially in moments like Bam Adebayo’s high-scoring games.
  • Quote (Devin Tory Bryant, 03:59): “As a Knicks fan, I see ‘Heat culture’ on t-shirts… then Bam goes for an 83-point game. Explain that.”
• Consensus arises that while culture elevates role players, true success still hinges on superstar talent.
  • Quote (Jon Gabrus, 05:18): “When people talk about, ‘the program is powerful,’ it’s like: but you also have one of the best players in the league.”

4. Miami Identity: International Waters on Land

[05:34–08:08]

• Miami is described as an amalgamation of diverse influences—“northern Havana, southern Manhattan, eastern Austin”—and distinctly separate from the rest of Florida.
  • Quote (Devin, 06:28): “Miami is like a swimming pool and Florida is a cowboy hat. They have nothing to do with each other.”
• Dan Le Batard recounts the city’s unique crime stories and its blend of color, vibrancy, and illicitness, largely shaped by decades of immigration and drug money.
  • Quote (Adam, 07:03): “Miami presents as an international city that’s not a spring break town only because of the proliferation of drug money and the ethnicities over 30 years that have sort of ransacked it…”

5. Living in Miami: Safety, Chaos, and the Illusion of Control

[08:08–10:49]

• The panel agrees that Miami feels safe in its own unique way, thanks to its density, public life, and palpable chaos.
  • Quote (Adam, 09:16): “I’ve never felt unsafe in Miami. Even though it’s had a reputation as being a dangerous place. I’ve always felt safer.”
• Contrasts are drawn with suburban or rural spaces, which can feel more unnerving despite ostensibly being “safer.”
  • Quote (Jon, 09:24): “I always feel safer in cities because people are out… If you walk down the street, there’s other people, there’s a hive mind safety.”

6. Everyday Absurdities: Miami Traffic and Infrastructure

[10:49–12:53]

• Miami’s rapid population growth and poor city planning are mocked for resulting in tangled roadways and wild driving experiences.
  • Quote (Devin, 11:27): “If you took a bird’s eye view of Miami and looked at the streets, it would be as if someone threw pasta on the floor.”
  • Quote (Adam, 11:39): “We’re wildly mismanaged… It’s got a little bit of banana republic in it.”
• Humorous anecdotes about harrowing Uber rides, language barriers, and “smells like cologne and cheese” round out the segment.

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• “Miami is like a swimming pool and Florida is a cowboy hat.” – Devin Tory Bryant [06:28]
• "I would stand next to wherever Pat Riley is… he’s running a military camp.” – Adam Pally [03:14]
• "You can be a high roller in Miami without actually being rich — just rent a McLaren." – Jon Gabrus [08:24]

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Important Timestamps

• 01:11 – Kicking off with Dan Le Batard: Sports broadcasting, favorite seasons, and show evolution
• 02:36 – The LeBron effect and Miami’s national relevance
• 03:14 – Lifting the veil on Miami Heat “culture”
• 05:31 – Superstar talent vs. system/culture debate
• 06:28 – “Swimming pool and cowboy hat”: the flavor of Miami vs. Florida
• 07:03 – Drug planes, crime watch, and the chaotic DNA of Miami
• 09:16 – Banter on feeling safe in Miami despite its reputation
• 10:49 – Miami’s traffic, infrastructure woes, and unique urban chaos

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Closing Note

This bonus episode is a fast-moving, funny, and revealing look at Miami through the experiences and witty perspectives of comedians and a famed sports broadcaster. The crew debunks myths, pokes at urban legends, and shares their affection for the city’s contradictions—all with their signature mix of candor and humor. Even for those unfamiliar with Miami or “Heat culture,” the episode offers an entertaining window into what makes South Florida such an anomaly.

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Transcript

[Commercial Narrator]

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[John Gabris]

BONUS clip I have a question for a sports broadcaster. Is there a time of year that is like your favorite, like where to like for, for talking about or stuff like is it playoff baseball or is it that overlap where like three of the big ones are going at the same time?

[Adam Pally]

Well, our, our show, particularly show's popularity has more to do, I think, with the sociology of sports. Right. Like, and so I, you know, after 20, what is it now, 21 years or whatever it is, there's a certain sameness, I think, to whatever it is is the daily droning of sports. And so I like the times where there are less sports so that I'm less beholden to anything that is rules or, or news. And now we could just wander all over the place. Sports for, for us, sports has always been the safety net. Right. Like in the evolution of our show, we start in Miami, but when we become a national show, the national audience isn't very interested in the Miami stuff. So at the beginning, what was my safety net was just the Miami stuff. That's the easiest stuff for me. But now it's just sports, the safety net. At any given time, no matter what we're talking about, I can pull the rip cord on. That's not working. Let me just get back to James Harden.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

Right, right.

[Adam Pally]

Let me get back to whatever thing

[John Gabris]

more Don Shula news.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

Right. The nation loves to hear about.

[John Gabris]

We still talking Shula in 2026.

[Adam Pally]

I mean it was difficult right? The first we had LeBron when we went over to ESPN, so that made it easy. But Miami sports, yes, those Were great. That's. I mean, Look, I owe LeBron a debt of gratitude. They built me a studio at the Clevelander Hotel.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

Amazing.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah, because LeBron moved down here and. And when he left, they better hurry up and get that studio built. So me and my dad should have been wearing construction hats in there because. Because once LeBron left, Miami became less relevant to the moment that he did.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

Right. Yeah. Speaking of that Heat culture kind of bs, right?

[Adam Pally]

I mean, it is now, but the. It is in terms of results. But what's not BS is that is absolutely a military school for millionaires. Like.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

Yeah.

[Adam Pally]

If I had to go anywhere in the apocalypse for safety, I would go stand next to wherever it is Pat Riley is in that building because he's running. It's a military camp like those. I don't think the people involved with the Miami Heat would tell you that the doing of it is very fun or joyous. The results might be, but the living in that furnace is very. I mean they're. You're fighting the world for money, like.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

Right.

[Adam Pally]

You're the top 1% of the top 1% of what it is that you're doing and you're fighting like war torn areas in the inner city for money.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

Yeah.

[Adam Pally]

And they run it like very, very strict.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

I guess it's just one of those things as a Nick fan where I see Heat culture on T shirts and stuff and then you see like the bam out of bio 83 point game and you're like, explain that to me.

[Adam Pally]

Right?

[Devin Tory Bryant]

Like, explain this like superior, quote unquote moralistic way to compete in the sport. And then at the same time, we're gonna let this guy shoot threes and play against the G league team and not take him out and let him go for a record that was previously held by Kobe Bryant and all those

[Adam Pally]

things in the church of Heat culture. That particular thing you're mentioning is someone taking a at the altar, like. Oh, like that particular thing. No, but I'm just saying that had nothing to do with culture. That had to do with the one guy that they all loved and an absence of scorers because they love so much. How hard he is. He's great.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

Ben's amazing.

[Adam Pally]

But how hard a worker he is, how professional he is. They were rewarding one guy. I, I think heat culture is more result based when you're talking about they can take the gay Vincent's and the Max Struces and all of these people. Yeah. And they can make them a little better than they were. But you still, you still Kind of need the guy who's better than everyone else. It's better when you have gone Wade and bot.

[John Gabris]

Yeah. I love that you. When the people talk about like, the program is powerful. The program is powerful. It's like. But you also have one of the best players in the league.

[Adam Pally]

You still need that.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

The triangle offense. The triangle offense. He had Kobe and Shaq.

[John Gabris]

Yeah.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

You need like.

[John Gabris]

You can't have an isosceles triangle.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

Exactly.

[Adam Pally]

We could. I can allege that Miami has been infected by a. An assortment of my lifetime, over my lifetime of New Yorkers who come down here and tell us how much better New York is than here while living here.

[John Gabris]

Oh, yeah.

[Adam Pally]

But many of them do come down here to die. I don't know a lot of Florida who go to New York to die. The New Yorkers.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

I would never. I love Miami. I mean, like, to me, Miami feels like there's this like, common. Like it's. It's on the edge of the. Of the country in a way that makes it feel safe to me.

[Adam Pally]

You think it's in this country? You think Miami is a part of this country?

[Devin Tory Bryant]

Yeah, I love it. I think that's why I love it

[John Gabris]

because it's international waters on land.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

I know that. I think that's why I love it because it's like once you get here, you're not in Florida anymore. Really.

[John Gabris]

Like it's the Perth emerge full time. It's a crime. Is legal.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

Yes. Completely different than the rest of Florida. Florida has this kind of different. Florida's got like my Miami is. Is like a swimming pool and Florida is a cowboy hat.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

You know what I mean? Like they have nothing to do with it.

[John Gabris]

Actually. No one knows what you mean by that.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

I gotta work.

[John Gabris]

Florida is the northern Havana, southern Manhattan, eastern Austin. It's like Culmin. A lot of some of the best and worst things about other major cities in America is all happening here in this city.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[Adam Pally]

Well, I grew up as a newspaper columnist here, right. During a heyday of newspapering. And one of the things that would happen in Miami, I tell this story quite a bit is that on page 6D. I know a lot of the audience isn't going to know what newspapers are, but deep in the newspaper you'd have a crime watch meeting hosted by a local sheriff. And the coast guard is chasing a drug plane across the sky that drops a giant mountain of coke marijuana in the pool. And it doesn't like, interrupts. It interrupts the crime watch meeting because that's. That's Miami. And when you say. I actually understood the. The analogy was making swimming po. Swimming pool and cowboy hat. Because the rest of Florida is kind of a spring break type of town. And Miami presents as an international city that's not a spring break town only because of the proliferation of drug money and the ethnicities over 30 years that have sort of ransacked it so that it brown and vibrant and colorful and illicit in a way that the rest of Florida. Well, some of Florida is illicit.

[Angie Hicks]

Yeah.

[Adam Pally]

But not the specific kinds of illicit that Miami.

[John Gabris]

There's like. Like an opulence here in a way too. Like, you know, it. It has. Like, you can be. Miami's a city. You could be a high roller in. You can, like, ball out in Miami without.

[Adam Pally]

You can't.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

In other actual.

[John Gabris]

You could be like a guy who rents a McLaren.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah, I was really. I shouldn't have been. But was surprised by the reaction to Bad Bunny at the Super Bow. Like, do you know how many neighborhoods in Miami. I don't even get English. Like, I just simply. And I'm not even saying just Spanish. I'm saying there are neighborhoods all over Miami where you can absolutely get by not speaking English. That's not. That's not a lot. There's not a lot of that.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

In the middle of my neighborhood In Manhattan is 100. Well now 99% Dominican.

[Adam Pally]

Do you live in Washington?

[Devin Tory Bryant]

I do. I moved up there and I love it. And we have an awesome. But, you know, and my kids now speak Spanish. It's awesome. I never really gave it a shot, but I. It's. You know, it's like that. That feels like safety to me. The. The. The opposite feels like where you start to get scared.

[Adam Pally]

I've never felt unsafe in Miami. Even though it's had a reputation my entire life as being a dangerous place. I've always felt safer.

[John Gabris]

I always feel safer. Like, while we're just. Before we get to our one question again, I always feel safe in cities because people are out. Like, you know, you're not alone on the street like, that. You're like. If you walk down the street, there's other people out. And like, in New York, that's sort of becomes like, hive mind. Safety granted. One of those people could be a murderer.

[Commercial Narrator]

Yes, but probably.

[John Gabris]

But the idea that, like, if I'm alone on, like, a weird.

[Adam Pally]

On a dark desert highway.

[John Gabris]

Yeah, I'm, like, freaking out. But if I'm like. If I see like six other people on the street, whether they are unhoused, a family, a guy selling Bananas or whatever. Like, I feel safer just seeing people.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

Last night we took an Uber to dinner to Cafe Latrova. And I got out of the Uber because the street was blocked off. So gay was text me and goes, just a heads up, streets blocked off. Cop car spun out into a deli

[John Gabris]

into like a cop car. I looked, a cop car was back like, like trunk first 12ft into a liquor store.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

Yes.

[John Gabris]

And then there was another car that was absolutely total than another cop car. But I'm like, I don't know what happened here, but we missed something super exciting.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

So I made the left and I'm walking down and I just pass like, like old domino table. And they look at me and they look and I'm like looking at the thing and they go, Miami nights. They must have seen that a thousand times.

[Adam Pally]

Wednesday, Wednesday in the deli, you know, and like, fine. We are. And we are a crazy place. I wonder if you guys have noticed though, because when I talk about the idea that the state of Florida is just all spring break, Daytona type of towns and that Miami is also that. Have you guys noticed how much more difficult it is to get around traffic wise here? Because our infrastructure is simply not built for the number of people that we now have here. Because it's become so popular, so opulent and what you say, it's always been a place where people can pretend like they're ballers even if they're not.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

Right. Right. Someone told me the other day that the, if you, if you took a bird's eye view of Miami and looked at the streets, it would be as if someone threw pasta on the floor.

[Adam Pally]

Yeah. It makes no sense. They really blew a golden opportunity on what just our skyline could be.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

Yeah.

[Adam Pally]

Because we're wildly mismanaged. Like, it's. It is. It's got a little bit of banana republic in it. And when I say Miami isn't part of the United States, I say it to be funny, but also because it's true. Like, it feels like it's an entirely different place that exists somewhere between Cuba and the United States, but isn't. Isn't quite a part of either.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Yeah.

[John Gabris]

Yeah.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

Well, I will say it's me.

[John Gabris]

It's difficult to get around, but at least Some people drive 90 miles an hour when the stretch is free. I was in an Uber driver. I was in an Uber where I was like, I don't, you know, toxic masculinity won't let me say. Could you please slow down a little? So I'm just sitting there like this just going. I'm like, a little stoned that the guy's driving so fast.

[Adam Pally]

I'm just going.

[John Gabris]

He's just going, like, 90 to a stop sign. 90 to a stop sign. And I'm just in the back, like, five stars, 20%.

[Adam Pally]

Smells like cologne and cheese. And also, he doesn't speak English.

[John Gabris]

No, not at all.

[Adam Pally]

But he speaks Spanish.

[John Gabris]

Un poco estoy aprendiendo.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

Yeah, you're fine.

[Adam Pally]

That's pretty good.

[Commercial Narrator]

Yeah.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

No, that's why I can't be here without him.

[John Gabris]

You have been listening to Staying Alive with John Gabris and Adam Palley. A Smartless media production in association with SiriusXM.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

Produced by Devin Tory Bryant and Anne Harris. Engineered and edited by Devin Tory Bryant, who also wrote the music.

[John Gabris]

Associate producer and video producer is Matty McCann. Social media producer Tommy Galgano.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

Assistant engineer Kyle McGraw. Special thanks to Jared O' Connell at SiriusXM.

[John Gabris]

Executive producers are John Gabris.

[Ryan Reynolds]

Ooh me.

[John Gabris]

Adam Pali.

[Adam Pally]

Ooh, you.

[John Gabris]

Will Arnett, Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes, Richard Corson and Bernie Kaminski. Do us a favor. Just rate and review the podcast. It actually helps.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

Just so everyone knows, we do not have a discord.

[John Gabris]

Don't reach out to us.

[Devin Tory Bryant]

See us on the street. Walk the other way or you'll catch hands. Smart bl.

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[Adam Pally]

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