← The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
The Best of SBS: 2025 (ft. Patton Oswalt, Tony Reali, Hasan Piker, Josh Johnson, & William Shatner)
00:53:23
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- [00:02]
Hasan Piker
You're listening to DraftKings Network.
- [00:12]
DraftKings Announcer
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- [01:39]
Chris Cillizza
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- [01:57]
Dan Soder
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- [02:00]
Chris Cillizza
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- [02:06]
Jeff Bezos
Chevrolet together.
- [02:08]
DraftKings Announcer
Let's drive.
- [02:10]
Tony Reali
This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast. Smart move. Being financially savvy. Smart move. Another smart move. Having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with plan. Like a good neighbor. State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state.
- [02:50]
Chris Cillizza
I thought it was beautiful that the way that you honored your late wife. Super unique to be able. I mean, to catch it. To help catch a serial killer.
- [03:00]
Tony Reali
I mean, all I did was shepherd that. I mean, I. I handed that book over to an investigator and a journalist and please help me do this because I was still so, you know, wrecked and. And they helped, you know, they helped see it through. But she definitely, it was very. It was very funny. We all had a lot of laughs watching at the press conference went because she came up with the name the Golden State Killer. You know, before that, he didn't. And this is gonna sound really sick, but another cop, this guy Paul Holes, was like, yeah, he was never given a cool name, and that does hamper investigations. If there isn't a name that lands with the public Zodiac Night Stalker, then sometimes these cases fade away. So when she came up with Golden State Killer, something very evocative and weird and creepy about that name that she came up with, that did help reopen the case. Now, obviously, yes, other investigators brought that case home. She also did suggest using familial DNA, which they ended up doing, but whatever. But it was very funny to watch them at these press conferences. Someone was like, what about the work of Michelle McNamara? And he was like, Michelle McNamara's work had nothing to do with us catching the Golden State Killer. And we're all like, you literally just used the name. That helped anyway. But, yeah, but that was like, satisfying for us to watch.
- [04:24]
Chris Cillizza
I mean, all of it. I mean, to the degree to find any funny around any of it is a tribute to your ability to find comedy wherever it is it presents itself. But as a way to honor her work and her passion and enter in a new form of entertainment, really, that has just become really popular during dark times. It must have been gratifying to you somewhere in there to be a part of that, however tangentially, to honor her, something she cared about like that.
- [04:56]
Tony Reali
Yeah. The thing that I wish was more that she really wanted to be more focused on. And I'm seeing it in a lot of these, Doc, but not in all of them. Is what she wanted the focus to be on was the investigators and was the victims. Rather than making these serial killers have to be these dark anti heroes, you know, look, serial killers are zilches. The reason that they're killing people is because they're zilch in life. They're not contributing anything. So I'll take something. So the fact that she was able to like do something to put the focus on the people that are trying to bring justice to the, to the powerless or the voiceless, in this case, the dead or the people that survived and, or, you know, survived to testify and still put themselves at risk with these. Because a lot of these, if you re look at the Ted Bundy case, like the way that he was treated, like, oh my God, it's so tragic. This bright young guy with a. Could have been a lawyer. He was a fucking idiot. He flunked out of every. But he's a good looking white guy. And everyone's like, oh my God, we got, you know, and when the judge sentenced him, he's like, I feel terrible. Like, you know, you just took a wrong path, buddy, but I would have loved to have had you in my. Like, can you imagine being one of the survivors going, what the fuck is going on here? This guy is getting all the, you know. And his final statement was like, this is like a Greek tragedy, you know, like the wrong guy. You're like, what fucking world are we living in?
- [06:34]
Chris Cillizza
Well, what do you make though, the world we are living in? What do you make of the social commentary that you could form around murder as a podcast form, serial series, mysteries and investigations, all of this dark material for a dark time.
- [06:54]
Tony Reali
I mean, one of the reasons I think we love mysteries is because at least the ones who have a solution and we can see, oh, there was a form of justice was served here. Because right now in our world, very blatantly and very in our face and very flagrantly, justice is not being served. And evil opportunistic, just weak villains are being rewarded day after day after day and no one seems to be willing to do anything about it. So yes, I'll take a fictional world where, yes, even though evil's done, evil gets punished. People need that.
- [07:38]
Chris Cillizza
How did you go, and this is a complicated question. How did you go from the depths of grief to being able to fall in love again? And, you know, help heal yourself some, at least.
- [07:51]
Tony Reali
I mean, I had a lot of help from other people that had gone through this. You know, the grief group that I went to, and they just said, this is going to sound really weird, but right now all you feel is despair. And that's all you feel like you can feel. And then you're going to get to a point where you go, well, I can function. And thankfully, you will be thankful for the fact that you can't feel anything. That will feel like a relief. And you'll go, this is how I'll exist. I can exist at this point. And that's how I was. I'm like, I'm just going to take care of my daughter, and I don't need to feel anything. And then they said, and despite all of that, you will feel joy and hope and love again. You don't know when it's gonna happen, but when it happens, run at it. Like, go run at it. It's there for a reason. And there are people in my group that are like, I remarried six months after my spouse died, and everyone judged me for it. And there's other people going, I remarried eight years after my spouse died, and everyone judged me for it. So get all that shit out of your head. It doesn't matter. You know, there's gonna. You're not grieving to make them comfortable. You're not recovering to make them feel comfortable. You have to live whatever life is being put in front of you. And I met this genuinely extraordinary woman that I don't think I would have realized is as extraordinary as she is if I hadn't been in love with and spent all those years with Michelle to really show me what extraordinary in a person means, you know, so there was almost like that was the gift from her. That was the one gift, was losing her, having that torn away from me so horribly. But in a way, the tearing away burned the memory of what a truly amazing person looks and feels and acts like. And I was able to recognize it when it came around again.
- [09:42]
Chris Cillizza
You felt numb for how long? Or the relief of pain free or, like, how long a period was this where you viewed it as an accomplishment to simply not be in crippling pain?
- [09:57]
Tony Reali
I felt numb for, like, half a year. Just nothing. And before that were a couple of months of just, you know, April, April, May, most summer. June was just. It's not pain. It's. CS Lewis put this so well. Grief feels like terror. I was in terror 24 hours a day. Was terrified of everything. Terror and Then. So that's why I was so happy to hit numbness. And I was like, I'll live here forever. I'll take numbness over terror. And then it just turned into meeting someone who I was. Not again, I wasn't. It was just. It was a weird. We had friends in common. I didn't know who she was, but we have a friend in common, this actress Martha Plimpton, and my wife, Meredith Salader. They've been friends since they were teenagers. You know, like acting. They were both child actors. And so Martha would do these dinners where she would gather various people, different people, just to bring them together and just have a salon. Everyone just talks and meets. And so I was invited to one, and I didn't. I was traveling or something. And then Meredith, like, posted or she messaged me and said, you know, that was. You missed the best fucking lasagna, dude. And then I just said, ah, story of my life. Maybe we'll go to Arby's or something, like, just joking. And then we would just. This is all on Facebook, just messaging back and forth for, like, three months. Just. We never spoke on the phone, never met in person. It was just somebody at the end of the day that I could talk to in the dark, lying in bed, which is what I would do with Michelle. We just lie there and just talk in the dark and go about our day and to go over our day and go over the world. And it was just. And then that. Without it. Without it becoming romantic or anything, it then became romantic just having someone to talk to. And then it turned into. And then we finally. God, I don't. We didn't meet face to face till May 20, and we started talking texting on Facebook at the end of February. And it was just. And there was a time we're like, maybe we just should never meet. Let's just talk like this. And then we was like, oh, no, we. We should meet. And then that's just how it went.
- [12:13]
Ryan Glasspiegel
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- [12:20]
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- [12:39]
DraftKings Announcer
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- [13:14]
Ryan Glasspiegel
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Chris Cillizza
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- [13:27]
Ryan Glasspiegel
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- [13:35]
Hasan Piker
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- [13:37]
Dan Soder
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- [13:40]
Ryan Glasspiegel
Homedepot.Com how doers get more done.
- [13:49]
Chris Cillizza
I would assume you think it should still be on and you should still be doing it.
- [13:54]
Ryan Glasspiegel
We should love to have a show like as successful as around the Hornets. Absolutely. I think the network ESPN that I've enjoyed working for all these years should want an expanse of shows many, many different. They should want many, many different voices. They should watch shows to get great ratings. They should watch shows to not have controversies. They should watch shows and then they give other shows that could be more performative in some ways and this show could be more feeling in this way. And you can say this show became one thing or not too serious. More, more, more, whatever. Less about stars and more about journalists. And we didn't want journalists anymore.
- [14:28]
Chris Cillizza
What it became is more and more yours. And I think it's you are fitting within the confines and the limitations of television. And I don't know what and I.
- [14:35]
Ryan Glasspiegel
Was pushing it too cuz I wanted to wanted the show to. I thought there was value in being a differentiator and having a show was.
- [14:43]
Chris Cillizza
Obvious in every way on the show. Your adult growth as a creator and as an adult was obvious on that show in many different ways over the 23 years. 24 years.
- [14:55]
Ryan Glasspiegel
23 for the show.
- [14:56]
Chris Cillizza
Yeah, yeah, that was fun to watch, interesting to watch, interesting to watch your imprint on the show. But when you say you've done a 180, I don't know what that 180 is. I would just tell the audience that what I was impressing upon you again, and it wasn't cheerleading, it was the dead honest truth from someone who was just a little bit further ahead on this particular path than you. They did you a favor. They've given you an opportunity. They've given you an opportunity to stretch in a way you never would have stretched if you had stayed within the safety of those conversations.
- [15:26]
Ryan Glasspiegel
So as much work as I had done on myself, I was still harboring feelings of what is it that I do, what is my skill, right? Cuz I have been and called myself a sportscaster my whole life. I dreamt of being a sportscaster my whole life and now I am a sportscaster. I've got this dream job and I host a show and I work with journalists. I would not call myself a journalist. When I do my job, I'm trying to get up to their code of journalism and they're not committing daily acts of journalism on our show when they're debating sports. But it still is a show about journalists and that's a wonderful thing. So most of all, I thought of myself then as a TV host, right? I started to adapt and I was. Am I a sports host? Well, I'm dealing with people, I'm dealing with feelings and we're talking about sports topics. But I gave more comfortable thinking to myself, okay, now I'm a TV host. But even that I don't think was getting to the crux of it because you can be a TV host and you can be A to B, get through. I was still doing something that was more connective to an audience in my mind. But now I am receiving that back in how the show, the response of the finale of the show and the last six months of the show. But in the absence of me really allowing myself to talk about myself and be seen for a while, I'm sure I processed those feelings. Around the Horn, which was first hosted by Max Gellerman, or Around the Horn, which is produced by Eric Reinholm. Or I'm like, those things are factual sentences. But if someone knows the story, it's your show. And writing the story, that's not the story, it's your show. So it wasn't until I started talking like, how do you write around the Horn is going possibly. This is how I found out. I was on vacation in California with the family. Around the Horn possibly looks like it's going to be canceled in the summer of next year. How is that not next sentence? Not the show whose ratings were up 5% this year. Cuz if you're writing that article as a journalist, you'll be like, oh, Ryan, the Horn is getting canceled. But nobody let me look at the ratings. Oh, it's up 5%. That's an interesting story.
- [17:33]
Chris Cillizza
Nobody cares about you the way you.
- [17:35]
Ryan Glasspiegel
Care about the show's getting canceled. It's currently hosted. Currently hosted by me was first hosted by this other person. And then the next one is, you know, expendable and overpriced. And I don't know which one I was more insulted by because neither of those are true. And then I was like, wow, you know, so to have those things written about you, I recognize they weren't coming from nowhere. Somebody was feeding this. I'm like, okay, so I get this game is being played, right? So the second I started talking, I.
- [18:08]
Chris Cillizza
Read on my birthday, I'm on my balcony drinking with my wife and I read the news Le Batard show going to be replaced by Mike Greenberg's and everything else because someone leaked it. And I'm like, what is this? What is this? Cause I didn't think it could possibly be true. And then I called and was told it's not true. And then it was true.
- [18:26]
Ryan Glasspiegel
I was told that you heard. We don't know where that's coming from. You know where that's coming from. So the point is, there are any moments in your life where you know what's true about yourself. This is social media for me. I don't have the same opinion everyone else does. I get it. It's a negative place for a lot of people. And all these things. I know it's true. Those things bounce right off me because I know, I mean, somebody's telling me something about the show. I can take any type of feedback and criticism. This show got too blank for me. Yep.
- [18:54]
Chris Cillizza
That's real maturity, though, from you. Like, that's not the person I met.
- [18:58]
Ryan Glasspiegel
Not the referee who's telling me I had a traveling violation. I'm telling him that's not his call. That's referee's call. So you can't possibly.
- [19:04]
Chris Cillizza
That's the reality. I met furious with referees, unable to control his anger during basketball games.
- [19:10]
Ryan Glasspiegel
Yeah, right. So what's Dan, you're alluding to is that we had Pardon the Turnover, a wonderfully named recreational basketball team for PTI.
- [19:19]
Chris Cillizza
And around Horn won't bring any attention to you at all as the star player of Pardon the Turnover.
- [19:26]
Ryan Glasspiegel
And I was. I approached it with a lot of gusto. I was still the youngest one on staff and I was fit in ways they just wanted a little bit of exercise. I wanted, you know, to qualify for the Olympics or I don't know what I wanted to do.
- [19:39]
Chris Cillizza
There was a little arrogance there. You were getting a lot of success at a very young age.
- [19:43]
Tony Reali
Yeah, I don't.
- [19:44]
Ryan Glasspiegel
Yeah, I don't.
- [19:44]
Chris Cillizza
I mean, that's really young, Tony, to be nationally televised as part of a daily sports lineup on the worldwide leader in sports when you're the youngest person on television.
- [19:54]
Jeff Bezos
Right.
- [19:54]
Ryan Glasspiegel
But I don't know if I ever processed that as arrogance, honestly. You know, I didn't.
- [19:58]
Tony Reali
I didn't.
- [19:58]
Chris Cillizza
I'm just talking about the. If I give you. You look, maybe it's a temper problem, whatever it is, to think that you're in your early 20s, that you've got enough confidence in who you are and what you are, that it's okay to publicly berate a referee whenever, multiple times. When everyone, everyone on the. On the court knows that television's Tony Reali. That seems arrogant to me.
- [20:23]
Ryan Glasspiegel
I think my brother does the same thing and he's not television's.
- [20:28]
Chris Cillizza
But I don't think of arrogance as real confidence. I think of arrogance as something that is a barbed wire armor around insecurity. Like the most arrogant people I've ever met have this.
- [20:40]
Ryan Glasspiegel
I remember, well, you know, somebody wrote a blog that got picked up that were saying, you know, I'm a jerk playing intramural sports. And that hurt me. Well, that's it.
- [20:50]
Chris Cillizza
But you grew out of it.
- [20:51]
Ryan Glasspiegel
Well, I stopped at cold turkey. I took that out of my life. I stopped playing sports publicly, which you might say, why you didn't need to do that. Well, that's how I decided to address it.
- [21:00]
Chris Cillizza
You developed in 24 years or 23 years an immunity that is legitimate. I don't think it's bravado when you say this criticism now bounces off.
- [21:10]
Ryan Glasspiegel
I mean, I know most of the time it's about that person who's talking. I know. I like using social media as a tool and as a. I like to model. Would I aspire to be or model good behavior or model fair exchange, good faith exchange? I like to do that to show people. I would respond to eggs and retweet it. And people like you do know. I go, absolutely no, but I wanted you to see it. And I'm in tv. I'll re air my episodes. I don't care. I'll retweet this out to demonstrate that I had intention behind what I was doing. Why did the show talk about this this day, this Way. Well, first off, you're right. Maybe I missed that one. But here's what I was thinking in the moment, and I know what I was thinking. So I'll put this out there and you guys can give me feedback on whether I was right or wrong. But there was intention behind it. For me, life has become about intention, not habit. Right. If we wanted to distill. How did I mature in the way you just. You said maturity. Right. I started to get away from doing things habitually, routinely. I gotta work out every day because that's how I'm wired, because I got this energy.
- [22:28]
Chris Cillizza
When was the last time you had a day off?
- [22:31]
Hasan Piker
When I got banned for saying that if Republicans were serious about Medicare fraud, they would kill Rick Scott.
- [22:40]
Chris Cillizza
He's the worst.
- [22:42]
Hasan Piker
Yeah. I mean, hey, that's Florida's very own Voldemort.
- [22:46]
Chris Cillizza
It's a. It's amazing that people don't understand what that person has done.
- [22:50]
Hasan Piker
Oh, yeah.
- [22:51]
Chris Cillizza
In terms of fraud and that. That keeps being somehow electable. I don't understand.
- [22:56]
Hasan Piker
Yeah.
- [22:57]
Chris Cillizza
I don't understand your world enough to understand how that happens.
- [23:00]
Hasan Piker
I got banned for that.
- [23:01]
Chris Cillizza
How many times have you been banned? You've been banned a few times.
- [23:04]
Hasan Piker
I don't know. I think seven, eight times, maybe. I don't. I have no idea.
- [23:08]
Chris Cillizza
So what's the last day off you've had? That's not.
- [23:13]
Hasan Piker
I can't recall. I think the only time. Sometimes I'll take Sundays off because I have a podcast and we just have to shoot it in the middle of the day. So I just, you know, I'll be like, you know what? I'm not gonna stream today. It's fine. I guess technically that's not taking a day off because I'm still working. There's never been a moment where I haven't.
- [23:33]
Chris Cillizza
So you're.
- [23:34]
Hasan Piker
I never don't work.
- [23:36]
Chris Cillizza
You're a. I don't know if you're a loner or not, but this would seem to be hard on relationships.
- [23:45]
Hasan Piker
No, I don't talk about my private life at all because I don't want to associate anyone else.
- [23:51]
Chris Cillizza
I didn't mean romantic relationships.
- [23:53]
Tony Reali
No, no, no.
- [23:53]
Chris Cillizza
I just meant that, like, how hard it must be to be present in any interaction you're having with anybody if you're always working.
- [24:01]
Hasan Piker
I'm very family oriented, and I have my whole family around me at all times, so it is. If that didn't happen, then you'd be right for sure. And I have a lot of good friends, like, great Normie friends. That I also interact with, with regular frequency that keep me grounded and keep me centered. My family and my friends are what has allowed me to, I think, stay in tune with what's going on in the world.
- [24:28]
Chris Cillizza
Don't talk about your private life, because I imagine there's some fear involved. I imagine you're in some danger. Just the way that speak would. Would be dangerous.
- [24:37]
Hasan Piker
Absolutely, yeah. That's the reason. I just don't want to bring anyone else into, you know, all of the stuff that I have to deal with.
- [24:45]
Chris Cillizza
What is the stuff that you have to deal with?
- [24:47]
Hasan Piker
I also don't talk about that too much either, but it's just the basic stuff. It's. It's what, it's what every content creator goes through. The reason why I don't talk about it is because you don't want to offer, you don't want to encourage people to do it because there's a lot of copycats. All I'll say is this. The government has very few ways of dealing with cybercrime in general. They're not very good at it. And that's it.
- [25:17]
Chris Cillizza
What would you assign as the tax to what you do, the cost to what you do?
- [25:24]
Hasan Piker
Mental health, Physical. Like a toll on your mental health, toll on your sanity, toll on your expectation of privacy. Toll on your physical body for sure, because you're sitting a lot. Obviously you can change that if you want to, but many people just like they sit in front of the computer, myself included.
- [25:47]
Ryan Glasspiegel
Yeah.
- [25:47]
Hasan Piker
Toll on your relationships. But ultimately, on the other side of it, everyone will say, what are you talking about? You're just describing like a regular job that sucks in the exact same way. And you make not even a fraction of what you are able to make as a top Twitch streamer. And they're right. I think the real privilege that I have, on the other hand, doesn't even come from the finances. It comes from the freedom. Because I've worked with someone else, I've worked for someone else in the past, and I've worked for myself. And I know the incredible freedom that you have when you set your own time, when you even know in the back of your mind that you don't have to work that day, like that is infinitely more preferable to working for someone.
- [26:31]
Chris Cillizza
The reason that I'm smiling about that is because when I left espn, I thought I was embarking on freedom and then didn't see the number of restrictions that would come with freedom. And what you're describing in the abstract is freedom, but the cost of it has enough Restrictions that you can't take a day off. You're doing it eight hours a day. So, yes, you're making the choices on it, but it can also be a prison that you like.
- [26:56]
Jeff Bezos
The prison.
- [26:57]
Chris Cillizza
Prison doesn't really make it necessarily less of a confining place.
- [27:02]
Hasan Piker
Yeah, you're absolutely right about that. But I really like the prison. And it's doubly bad. It's doubly bad because, like, I'm a committed believer in the things that I speak about. Cause, like, if I was just grifting, that would be probably a lot easier to just be like, I love the clout. I love the money. I'm just gonna stop tomorrow. But because on. And I certainly don't hate the cloud or the money, make no mistake. But because I also am like, this is something that matters. I feel like I stopped doing this. And, you know, hundreds of thousands of people that normally tune into my broadcast on. At any point in the day to, like, figure out what's going on in the world are gonna be like, oh, what the hell? I just don't have NPR today. You know what I mean? I don't have. I don't have the New York Times, the Daily Today. And I see that as, like, something that is important.
- [28:03]
Chris Cillizza
A responsibility.
- [28:04]
Hasan Piker
Yeah, I see that as a very important responsibility. And I find that very fulfilling as well, though, like, the fact that I have this role and I try to fulfill it, and I have reached levels of success that I never ever in a million years would have thought I'd be able to.
- [28:20]
Chris Cillizza
So.
- [28:20]
Hasan Piker
So I don't take any moment for granted, and I really love it.
- [28:25]
Chris Cillizza
I imagine that the part that you love best isn't the clout or the money. I would imagine from where I'm watching, it's the crack of having your passion, giving it voice, and then having it have influence.
- [28:41]
Hasan Piker
Yes, yes.
- [28:42]
Jeff Bezos
Impact.
- [28:43]
Hasan Piker
That's what matters to me. When I hear about Chipotle unionizing and in the article, they talk about how, like, they met over and bonded over their mutual appreciation for myself. And I'm like, that's it. Because that's my goal. My goal is that my goal isn't just to yell in a room and have hundreds of thousands of people watch. My goal is I yell in a room by myself. I'm gonna do that whether people are.
- [29:10]
Chris Cillizza
Watching or not, but about something you're caring about, right?
- [29:12]
Hasan Piker
Like, something that you care about. And then you're gonna hear that, you're gonna internalize that, and you're going to take matters into Your own hands. You're gonna go and you're gon. You're gonna go and run for local office and win and start the change that is necessary for. Become the change that is necessary.
- [29:30]
Chris Cillizza
Have your parents absorbed that you're a modern teacher, that you're doing the same thing they do? You're just doing it in a different classroom?
- [29:37]
Hasan Piker
Yeah, I think so. I think to a certain degree, But I'm too brash for them to recognize that, so I think it's hard. But, yeah, I mean, especially during COVID like my mom was doing, you know, zoom teaching, like remote education, which is, ironically, the exact same thing that I was doing, you know.
- [29:59]
Chris Cillizza
Well, you are teaching to a certain degree.
- [30:01]
Ryan Glasspiegel
Yeah.
- [30:02]
Hasan Piker
And having fun with it.
- [30:04]
Chris Cillizza
I mean, your audience is at least partially in there. There can be entertainment, but they're not in the circus tent because of the entertainment. They're in the circus tent because of the information, the nourishment.
- [30:15]
Hasan Piker
Yeah, yeah. But I definitely do try to make it as entertaining as possible. Cause I think, like, I always have my entertainer first and foremost.
- [30:23]
Chris Cillizza
Well, but that's. I mean, your gift is that you're making it digestible. You're taking subject matter that well. What is your gift? What would you say is your gift instead of me telling you what your gift is?
- [30:34]
Hasan Piker
I think it's working hard and being super stubborn. Those are my gifts. I have an incredibly addictive personality. And early on in my life, I realized, like, if I focus my addictions not on vices. Cause I've struggled with alcoholism as well. So, like, for me, I realized if I just get addicted to working out and, like, eating right and working hard in general and bettering myself.
- [31:06]
Chris Cillizza
Healthy vices.
- [31:07]
Hasan Piker
Yeah. If I just focus on healthy vices rather than unhealthy ones like gambling, alcohol, getting laid, you know, things like that and partying, then I will. I will be able to. I'll be very successful and happy.
- [31:30]
Dan Soder
This episode is brought to you by McAfee.
- [31:33]
Ryan Glasspiegel
Finish your fantasy lineup?
- [31:34]
Tony Reali
No, but I'm joining this paid group chat with insider info.
- [31:38]
Chris Cillizza
Dude, seriously, Forward it to me. Security alert from McAfee.
- [31:44]
Ryan Glasspiegel
That group's as legit as that knockoff jersey you're wearing.
- [31:47]
Dan Soder
McAfee's Scam Detector is available in all McAfee plans for as little as $39.99 for your first year. Learn more at McAfee.com onlineprotection.
- [31:58]
Tony Reali
Close your eyes. Exhale. Feel your body relax. And let go of whatever you're carrying today. Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this. I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts. Oh my gosh, they're so fast.
- [32:14]
Dan Soder
And breathe. Oh, sorry.
- [32:16]
Tony Reali
I almost couldn't breathe when I saw.
- [32:18]
Chris Cillizza
The discount they gave me on my first order.
- [32:20]
Ryan Glasspiegel
Oh, sorry.
- [32:22]
Chris Cillizza
Namaste.
- [32:23]
Dan Soder
Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order.
- [32:26]
Jeff Bezos
1-800-Contacts.
- [32:28]
Chris Cillizza
You mentioned that your father never got to see you perform. You've had your family give you the proud moments and that one is absent in a way that you would have liked. Because he meant what to you along this path?
- [32:44]
Dan Soder
Oh, no, just. I think he would have got a real kick out of the fact that things were, things have gone so well. And like, he was so optimistically supportive from the very beginning. Like even when we were on the phone and I was telling him, like, oh yeah, I've started doing a little bit of standup and stuff like that. And he was like, oh, really? Such a genuine interest and, and such an excitement about it. That would have been something nice for him to see. But yeah, it's tough because losing my dad, especially when I lost my dad, I feel like was also that sort of formative time because I was just really getting going career wise and everything. And it really has shaped, at least to the best of my ability, how I treat people close to me and try to treat everybody as much as humanly possible. You could really lose someone. You could have the last conversation with somebody and not know what's going to be the last one. And so it's important to let people know how you feel and to be as generous as possible with, with all of the good things that you have to say. You know, I mean, you never want to lose somebody and not have them know exactly how much you, you care about them, how much you enjoy their company, what they mean to you, all this stuff. And so like, one of my, yeah, that was like one of my big, like, regrets, I guess. Or like, I, I think everything happens on time. But I, I wish I would have started, quote unquote, like making it a little bit sooner so he could have seen some of it, you know.
- [34:30]
Chris Cillizza
But you also can't learn until you learn what the impact is of grief. Changing your perspective on that. Because my guess is you were young and probably bulletproof enough to not consider that that's what was going to visit. The last conversation is going to suddenly visit is not a way to carry yourself until you felt it one time. And then you only have to feel it one Time.
- [34:49]
Dan Soder
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.
- [34:51]
Chris Cillizza
Because it hurts so much that you won't take it that much for granted. Like, there's real life wisdom in death. Death that way, I've found in the early stages of grief. I don't know how much that has to do with you choosing therapy. Espousing therapy.
- [35:10]
Dan Soder
Yeah, I think therapy. Okay, there are two things that I think are important about therapy. One, I think that even if you.
- [35:18]
Tony Reali
Have.
- [35:20]
Dan Soder
What you feel like is a handle on an issue or some problems or something like that, I do think that talking it out sometimes. Sometimes I will really think I know how I feel about something. And then when I talk to anybody about it, having to say out loud the thing that I've been thinking in my head is a different barrier to break than people recognize.
- [35:39]
Chris Cillizza
Sometimes it's sharing versus being alone with something.
- [35:43]
Dan Soder
Exactly, exactly. And so it's like, I think that while therapy doesn't replace these things, I do think we're in this sort of era of isolation. We're living in an epidemic of loneliness. And so I think. I think fair therapy sometimes is just the first step in. Like, it's not necessarily quite the same as community building, because I understand it's like you go up there, you. You pay a therapist, this person's being paid to listen to you. So it. It takes a little bit of the. Of the softness and the sweetness out of. Out of sharing sometimes, I guess, because there's a little bit of money involved. But at the same time, I think that. That even people who have community, who have whatever their religious leader is or who. Who do have people to talk to, sometimes you have your people to talk to about certain things. And not that you should be putting everyone in buckets, but, like, here's someone who is not. It's literally their professional job to not judge you or to not bring any preconceived notions about you when you share something. And so I think that therapy is important for those two reasons. One, a lot of people don't have someone to talk to. Even if you have someone to talk to, sometimes they're not the person you want to share that thing with because you're worried about them looking at you differently. Or no matter how much they say they won't judge, there's something about what you have to say that carries a certain weight that can't be taken back. So I think it's good for. For those two main reasons. But I'm also, like. I don't know how to put this without sounding like I'm anti Therapy now. But I do think that therapy is only to me worth it with the effective practice of what you do outside of it. And so I think that, you know, I've known people who have been in therapy for years and they're still like kind of jerks. And it's not, and it's not a, it is not as if it is a chemical imbalance thing or prescription thing or it's like, no, you go to therapy and then you tell your therapist how you were terrible to everybody and then you don't change the behavior. Feels like therapy's not really working for you. It almost feels like you're not going at this point. If you're just going to go and.
- [37:59]
Chris Cillizza
Well, if you're just going to rummage around in your bin of narcissism and self involvement as opposed to going there to get the tools open mindedly to see yourself clearly to, to have, to have tools so that you can go to work on yourself on the things. I, I liken it to just. Why wouldn't. If someone has some expertise, someone you trust, has some exper in me, they can feed my narcissism and help me be a better me, get me closer to the things that I want to be like that's. And make me more gentle with myself and all the things that you need to learn because you don't quite know everything about yourself that you think you do.
- [38:38]
Dan Soder
And it's also like I'm not saying it as if it's some sort of catch all for me. I looked at it as like I do think it could and does at times helped me become even better at what I do because like you said with tools, right? Give you give you either give you the tools or show you the tools. I think the same way that a drill will never be a hammer. Like not really. You can use a drill as a hammer if you want and you can make a hammer a drill if you want. It's not going to be that effective. But if you go somewhere and they're like this is actually a hammer, you should use this to hammer things now you and the tool are more, more effective. And, and that's kind of how I, I look at it is that, you know, I, I'm not, it's not as if I go every week or even every month. I, I think that I have a decent and, and this, this may be misguided of me, but I do think I have a decent barometer for when I should be going and when it's time to talk to somebody. And when it's, you know, when I feel like, all right, like, I do it, it's not about going until you feel okay, because you can still go and feel okay. I think it can still be. Be very important. But I think knowing when it's serving you versus like, you're just doing it to do it. And so I feel like sometimes if I think I'm gonna be just going to, like, do it in a way that's not productive, I do take a little break.
- [40:05]
Chris Cillizza
You know, you used a phrase, epidemic of loneliness. And I think you have a chance because of the style, the way you're doing this generationally new voice. You have a chance to speak to some things in comedy that. That are new because pandemic is new. Loneliness of pandemic and everything that changed with the anger of the loneliness. I just got done talking to Lewis Black, who said he could be at home for like 12 hours. And then he started looking at all his problems and he thought he was going crazy because of what the pandemic did to us. I read the other day a stat like 74% of adult American men feel moderate to high levels of loneliness. The epidemic of loneliness. It's new, isn't it?
- [40:53]
Dan Soder
I mean, I don't know if I don't know how new it is, but I know it's been building up and it needed something like the pandemic to fully be exposed. Because I think that before, before anyone was ever talking about anything 2020, even in 2016, you could. You could feel a little something like bubbling up. And. And there were just practices that we had of, like, how social, had the opportunity to connect everyone as far as, like, all the apps, all the different ways of communicating. But then all of it was also very isolating in and of itself. You could feel like you had had a bunch of little interactions with people all day while not having a single intimate conversation with anyone. And so I think that that's something that I think was gearing up that just like, I mean, even. Even if you want to Talk about pollution, 2020 exposed a lot of stuff because just people being, like inside for two months and not having the air and the pictures, the aerial pictures of cities was, like, incredibly clean. It looked like whole cities were healed in a month, you know. And so I think that as far as an epidemic of loneliness, there are certain practices that are going to be really hard to get out of just because it's human nature. Like, for instance, even with the phone, there's that phantom reach. Have you Heard about that?
- [42:09]
Chris Cillizza
I haven't heard about that, but I've done.
- [42:11]
Dan Soder
The Phantom reaches this thing where, let's say you are on, like, a cruise ship and you have no reception and your phone is useless and you have all these people around you to talk to. Even if you are, whether you're a kid or you're middle age, there will be times throughout the day, just because of how much we're on our phones, that you'll reach for your phone and you may even open it and then be like, oh, wait, yeah, I can't do anything with this. And those are some of the only indicators that we have of how much we're actually on our phone. Because if you ask someone how much they're on their phone, they might say a lot or they might give you a certain, like, metric. But it wasn't until Apple itself decided to expose our screen time and tell us every week how much we had been on our phone.
- [43:00]
Chris Cillizza
I was introduced, I thought, to another side of you. When I read a quote of yours from space. Having returned from space, I know it had a poignancy that reached a lot of people. For whatever the reason was, you're in space as a symbol for American television in space. You're going as the oldest person to have ever gone into space. And what comes over you is a profound sadness that you articulated with great eloquence. Can you take me through what you were expecting and what happened there?
- [43:36]
Jeff Bezos
Well, the original thought was, what an adventure. Adventure. I. I had gone up to. To Seattle to visit with Bezos to talk about my being in the first launch. And they thought it was a good idea. Then coveted. The next thing I read, Jeff himself is going up with his brother, a lady astronaut who never did get into space. And a kid. Some. Some kid. I should really find out who that was because I never. I never have. So he went first. And then they invited me to come up in the next launch. And I thought about it. You know, there was publicity about the first thing, but then I thought just the experience to going up there. Because there's no question the second launch is now boring. Who cares? And. And even Bezos trip didn't attract that much attention. Mansion. So I. I agreed to go. And. And the story of my going, you know, they got me there a day early and I said, what am I doing here? There's nobody here. And they said, oh, no. I said, let's go to the. Let's go to the gantry. They suggested, let's go. Let's go to the gantry, I think it's 20 miles away. So we hopped in a car and went to the gantry. There's the gantry. The Blue Origins launch pad is a mile in the air. Air. About 4,000ft in the air. Then they had a gantry. There's 11 flights up. Now let's walk up the gantry. So Now I'm at 4,000ft walking up 11 flights of stairs. Now that I get to the top, I'm out of breath and okay, we're here at the top of the gallery. Let's look over the gantry. And I look over that. See that?
- [45:20]
Chris Cillizza
Look at that room.
- [45:20]
Jeff Bezos
That's got 12 inches of concrete around it. What's that there? Well, that's in case something goes wrong. Wrong? What, what could go wrong? So the next day everybody comes and we try and rehearse a little bit. About what? About what we're going to face. And then we get to the spaceship a couple of days later and it's venting what looks like steam, but it's gas, it's hydrogen. I said, what's that? He said, it's hydrogen. I said hydrogen. Well, anybody over 12 remembers the documentaries about the Hindenburg burning and that guy who was the announcer's name? Nobody remembers, but he was screaming, oh, the humanity of it. And people are dying and running away from. I mean there's a real newsworthy experience going on in front of your eyes. A an event for the ages is taking place on camera and there's a guy ad libbing, trying to have the words to be the equal of the event in front of him. Can you imagine this spaceship, this lighter than air ship is burning, consume by hydrogen gas.
- [46:47]
Chris Cillizza
Are you admiring his commitment to the broadcast right now?
- [46:50]
Jeff Bezos
Well, I'm thinking, what would you do? You're a broadcaster and I would be in a position. How do you ad lib? My God. And all he could come up with was the humanity of it. But that word humanity meant the world is coming to an end in front of him. And he comes out with the humanity of it and in his voice the torture.
- [47:15]
Chris Cillizza
But you haven't even taken flight yet. You're just standing.
- [47:18]
Jeff Bezos
I'm looking at the venting, thinking, my God, the humanity of it. And then I get in the spaceship and on the countdown the guy says, God, you know, T minus. Oh, there's an anomaly. It's an anomaly. No, no, I'm the only one who knows what the word anomaly means. The what's anomaly? Anomaly means it shouldn't be there.
- [47:39]
Chris Cillizza
Oh, I see there's an anomaly. Wait, you're not during the countdown. There's an anomaly.
- [47:45]
Jeff Bezos
Yeah, the guy says T minus 17. T minus 16. Oh, there's an anomaly.
- [47:52]
Chris Cillizza
He didn't make that sound.
- [47:53]
Jeff Bezos
You're making that up.
- [47:54]
Chris Cillizza
He didn't make that sound.
- [47:56]
Jeff Bezos
No, he didn't make that sound. No, that's true. He didn't go up. He went. Oh, there's an anomaly. Holy cats. What's an anomaly? What's going on? You mean that vending? Maybe it's caught fire. No, no, it's okay. The anomaly's gone. T minus 14 minus 30. Now he gets to about T minus 10. And this is what he says. And this is the God's truth, word for word. All right, we're removing the gantry. Anybody who wants to get off should get off now. Can you imagine? Can you imagine being an astronaut and you're sitting with your back to the ground. You know, you're, you're looking up at the sky. You know that this thunderous engine is going to take you to Mars. And the guy says, if you want to get off, you get off. 10 seconds.
- [48:47]
Chris Cillizza
Last 10 seconds.
- [48:49]
Jeff Bezos
Last call. Right. Don't envy you if you want to get off. Man, I would get off if I were you.
- [48:54]
Chris Cillizza
But you're expecting what you're like roller coaster adventure. I want to live big.
- [48:58]
Jeff Bezos
I don't know. They say weightlessness and we've learned how to deal with weightlessness by anchoring ourselves to a five point harness. But 600 people, apparently, maybe a few more now have been weightless. There's no word for weightless in our language. There's no comparable experience. You're in a swimming pool underwater that doesn't even. You're still part of gravity. Do not have gravity. And when I undid the five point harness, when they said, you're okay, and, and I floated out of the seat. Can you imagine? So obviously we went, we, we got up. The Carmen line is.
- [49:43]
Chris Cillizza
Let me stop you here though. Searching for what? Before you get up, you're searching for what? It's not just the adrenaline rush. There's discovery. What do you. So far, the experience is about what you wanted to be, even with the dark comic humor of interrupting with an anomaly.
- [50:00]
Jeff Bezos
And weightlessness is an amorphous term. You can't describe weightless, you can't say, it's like. Because there's nothing. It's like there are no words. You know, there are scientists who look back, who do digs, what do you call them? Archaeological archaeologists. They're archaeologists who dig into the ground and discover the history of man, history of the earth, by digging down over the coating of dirt, dust that have happened over the millions of years that earth's been around. So the digger. The further down you dig, the more you read the levels of things. Things that Volcanic ash and the.
- [50:53]
Chris Cillizza
The age of things. How to measure the age of.
- [50:55]
Jeff Bezos
How to measure the age of the Earth and thus the age of civilization. Okay, archaeologists, Another way of doing it is by language. When words entered the language is about the time that thing existed. So the word for horse came into our language wasn't English, but the antecedents of English about 10,000 years ago. So archaeologists have found bones to. What's the word I'm looking for? To validate the fact that horses came in about 10,000 years ago. But it's also part of the language. A word called horse entered the language. Language. And we then, well, the horse runs the horse. We eat the horse, get on the horse. And it became a fact. There are no words for weightlessness yet because nobody's 600 people have experienced it. There will come a time when Agadudu is weightless. Okay. Oh, my God. Agadudu happened in 2025.
- [52:07]
Chris Cillizza
You say all of this with the purpose, though, of someone who did a spoken word album. You're saying there are words for everything here offering you. I've gone to a place only 600 people have been to, and there are no words.
- [52:20]
Jeff Bezos
That's right, because that sensation when I loosened the. The word, there was somebody. Audrey, I don't remember Audrey's last name, who's a member of Blue Origin, was on the trip. And Audrey says, we're, we're. We're above the carbon line. We can get out now. And I undid my harness. This. I floated out of the seat. And we were warned that would happen. And there was a little ledge on the floor to hook our toes in to keep ourselves in the seat. I floated out of my seat. So when Bezos did it. And there's obviously numerous cameras around the. The interior of the spaceship. Bezos can be seen floating on his tummy with his legs akimbo, spread out. And the camera's looking at his feet. He's like facing a window and the camera's way. And the kid is throwing candies at his rear end. He's having fun. I saw that. I thought, that's not what I'm going to do. I don't care about weightlessness. I want to see outside the window. So I ignored I floated to the window, held onto the the whatever I could at the window and peered out at the blackness of space. I have been fascinated, as I'm sure every human being to one degree or another another about what's going on in the universe. The incredible amount of energy, the mystical, unknowable forces at work in the universe that fascinate anybody who thinks about it. And the more you know about it, and the more I began to acquire knowledge through my association with Neil Tyche, the more incomprehensible, the more awe of not just the forces on earth, but the incomprehensible forces in the universe.
- [54:48]
Dan Soder
The high octane phenomenon Sisu Road to.
- [54:51]
Jeff Bezos
Revenge comes home with a bang.
- [54:53]
Dan Soder
It's an insane ride in an adrenaline filled action epic. Critics are raving with an explosive 96% score and certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, saying it's the action spectacular of the year with some of the craziest fight set pieces ever put to screen.
- [55:10]
Tony Reali
Don't miss the ultimate adventure.
- [55:12]
Dan Soder
Get it now on Prime Video, Apple TV or Fandango at home. Rated R.