Podcast
Torg Stories Podcast May 2026
Hosted by Bill Torgerson · EN
From the Hollywood sign in LA where Anne lives to the mountains near Boone, North Carolina where Bill lives, come hang out and talk sports and pop culture. Listeners can count on learning something and at least a couple of laughs each episode.
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Ted Lasso Season 4 is Coming, When to Retire, Women and Kalshi, and Information Sickness with David Shields
2d ago01:11:32Tap to summarizeTed Lasso Season 4 is coming, when do we think we’ll retire, women and the Kalshi prediction markets, and Information Sickness with David Shields are the texts we’re using to generate conversation this week. Click on the player above to listen to the episode. Some of the questions we discuss are below. Questions for the Reader: When do you plan to retire? Are you a spender or a saver? What did you read or watch this week? When do you plan to retire? Will you watch Ted Lasso Season 4? What subscriptions do you pay for? Do you gamble? Do you play Kalshi? We’d love for you respond to some of the above prompts in the comments of this post or on social media. Take these questions for your own writing and link us to the results. Stories Bill Read or Watched the Week of July 27, 2026 “Information Sickness” by David Shields First published in June 1993 Issue of Harper’s I wonder if I should subscribe to Harper’s? Would I like it more than The Atlantic? From their website: Harper’s Magazine, the oldest general-interest monthly in America, explores the issues that drive our national conversation, through long-form narrative journalism and essays, and such celebrated features as the iconic Harper’s Index. First issue June of 1850 Writer David Shields is 70. He’s from LA with an MFA degree from Iowa. Written 25 books. I like his book title of The Thing About Life is That One Day You’ll Be Dead. I have been accused of being very into lists. (High Fidelity is a big on list novel). Numerous people have commented on the lists I cross off. We can talk about what work we do first and save for last. Here is from the opening paragraph: love all forms of taxonomy: lists, categories, compartments, containers, boundaries. When I went to the famous Amsterdam sex shops, I was struck mainly by the arrangement of movies and magazines into exceedingly minute subdivisions of pleasure and pain. I love doing errands, and what I especially love about doing errands is crossing things off my errand list. When making phone calls, running errands, or performing ablutions, I always begin with what seems to me the least personal item and conclude with what seems to me the most personal item. This is about what he/we like to have on tv / music etc: The moment I walk into a hotel room, I turn on my laptop and the TV (the latter as wallpaper), which I turn off when I go to sleep. The worst drunk I know—twelve-ounce tumblers of scotch at eight in the morning—leaves CNN on all night downstairs as a sort of lifeline in his sleep. (He’s always talking about “black”: black air is considered the ultimate sin; he can’t tolerate black; “they went to black”; the famous six minutes of black—he’s obsessed with black, afraid of it, secretly thrilled by its suggestion of depth.) What do you tend to do when you’re nervous? I rub my head, I do breathing exercises, I used to chew massive amounts of gum but am trying to stop. I pick my nails. From the piece: When I’m nervous and need to calm down, I chew blank three-by-five cards like a woodchuck. I don’t remember ever being even a little bit bummed about moving out of a house, but I think I am now. I loved teaching at St. John’s but I felt like for my family and financially I needed to leave. From the piece: I have a persistent yearning that I don’t have to live, exactly, anywhere. I tried to think about what I think about constantly. Maybe it’s, “What should I be working on now? What is the next thing coming up I could be working on?” I also have a lot of imaginary scenarios I talk through: How will I open the next podcast? If I ran into Obama or Bill Simmons, what would I say to them first? If Caitlin Clark ask me to work her out, what could we do that might be a little bit interesting? Here is what David Shields said: Two questions constantly occur to me: What would this look like filmed? What would the soundtrack be? “Jason Sudeikis addresses ‘very difficult’ phone calls to former Ted Lasso actors ahead of new season” by Carsen Holaday in Independent. Click here for article. Click here for author profile page. An official logline for season four, out August 5, reads: “Ted returns to Richmond, taking on his biggest challenge yet: coaching a second division women’s football team. Anne, are you up for watching the premiere this week and discussing next Sunday? What do you remember from the end of season 3? Do you remember any questions you have? “Ted Lasso was finished. Then Jason Sudeikis had an Epiphany” by Lacey Rose on The Hollywood Reporter” Click here for article. Click here for @laceyvrose on X. From the article: “We were just kind of kicking the tires on it — or, as we were saying at the time, checking the viability of the soil,” says Brendan Hunt, a co-creator who plays Coach Beard on the show. They all liked the idea of a women’s soccer team as Coach Lasso’s new purview — an idea that was teased in the season three finale — but where, how and who else would be involved was still up for debate. “It all seems easy now, but it was hard because it’s not a spinoff,” notes Goldstein, another writer who also plays Roy. “You’re like, it’s not Frasier; Cheers still exists — it’s more like you’re adding a room to the bar.” When it came to doing more, Sudeikis had been the only holdout. Having worked on nothing but Lasso for the better part of five years, writing or rewriting every script in addition to starring as the team’s relentlessly positive coach, he was thoroughly exhausted. In that time, he’d also gone through a very public, very nasty split with Olivia Wilde, his longtime partner and the mother of his two children, now 12 and 9. Rapid fire what else I read or watched: Rebel Ridge on Netflix with Don Johnson and Aaron Pierre Testosterone episode on this American Life Good to see you Anne. Thanks for listening everyone! Thanks for checking out the Torg Stories website! Stories Anne Read or Watched the Week of July 27, 2026 “She Retired at 35. The Only Problem? It’s Lonely” by Charlotte Cowles, the cut She retired at 35 FIRE community (Extreme frugality in service of saving and investing as much money as possible) When do you want to retire? Are you a saver or spender? She felt unsafe in her childhood home so believes this comes from wanting to be in position of power. She also has a lot of anger – anger at having had student loans, anger at having to please people to earn money. Her savings goal at 39 between her husband and herself is $2M – that doesn’t seem enough to me “Women Aren’t Immune to Kalshi” by Bindu Bansinath, the Cut Women Aren’t Immune to Kalshi Women are gambling w/Kalshi more than traditional sports betting. Oscars, Love Island, all sorts of things you can bet on. Women are a ⅓ of sports betters already, but less likely to become addicted. Would you be interested? I do not think I would, the things they are betting on seem more open to tampering. Thanks for checking out this post. Don’t forget to post your comments below. We love hearing from you!
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LeBron to Sixers, Thoughts on Middle Age, Writing Advice, and The Odyssey
1w ago01:13:43Tap to summarizeThis week, we’re looking at LeBron James to the Philadelphia 76ers, the idea of being middle aged, Anne’s review of Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, and writing advice from John McPhee. Thanks to you all for supporting the Torg Stories Podcast! In the last 30 days, views at TheTorg.com are up 43%, visitors are up 55%, and there’s been 10 sales of my novel Love on the Big Screen! (note: we are an Amazon Affiliate) Stories Bill Read or Watched the Week of July 20, 2026 “LeBron picks 76ers as ‘Last Decision,’ to sign 2-year, $8M deal” by Dave McMenamin on ESPN Click here for article. James is 41, born December 30th, 1984. 2003 was his first year in the league. This will be his 24th year in the league. “James, 41, is signing a two-year, $8 million contract with a player option, Klutch Sports Group CEO Rich Paul told ESPN’s Shams Charania. James made nearly $53 million with the Los Angeles Lakers last season.” -from the article This choice lifts LeBron a couple of notches for me. Why not LA for the veteran minimum? Were you thinking about maybe where before the deal? I was thinking maybe Cleveland because Mobley would be helpful on defense. Thought Golden State was fun. Would probably play the “3” in those scenarios which wasn’t good. The value of reflection. Season is over vs. right now? I have recharged for Watauga basketball now that we’re ending July. “Meanwhile, a trio of Sixers players — Tyrese Maxey, Joel Embiid and the newly acquired Jaylen Brown, another surprising addition for Philadelphia this offseason — worked on James directly, sources told ESPN. That effort was led by Maxey, a fellow Klutch client who has referred to James as a “big brother” in the past.” Does this make Philly the favorite in the East? Knicks, Sixers, Celtics, Pistons, Raptors I bet the Pacers +600 to make the Eastern Conference Finals. “When Middle Age Actually Starts” by Julie Beck from The Atlantic. Click here to connect to The Atlantic story. When does middle age start and end? I think I’d go 48-55, even though I’m expecting to get to 100. When does old age start? From the article: The average life expectancy in the United States is 79. So if you cut that in half, 39.5 is the precise statistical midpoint of the average American life. But that doesn’t reveal much—middle age isn’t just a point in time but a phase of life. How long does that phase last? When does it start? When does it end? How can you tell when you’re in it? These, it turns out, are very fraught questions. I frequently say I’m old and I’m not kidding. From the article: I am 35. Is a 35-year-old middle-aged? If you ask my friends, they’d be quick to say I’m “still young,” but the word still carries a note of reassurance that I find troubling. Is a 66-year-old retiree middle-aged? Maybe, maybe not—but they sure don’t want to be called “old.” Is a 29-year-old middle aged? Surely not, yet The Wall Street Journal ran a story a couple of years ago about 20-somethings who claimed they felt middle-aged. Crisis definitely popped into my thoughts. From the article: “The No. 1 word attached to midlife is crisis,” Chip Conley—the founder of the Modern Elder Academy, an organization that offers workshops for making the most of midlife, and the author of Learning to Love Midlife—told me. (This association persists despite evidence showing the midlife crisis is mostly a myth.) From the article: Being middle-aged, to her, means truly being in the middle—having people both younger and older than you looking to you for help and guidance. That might mean you’re in the sandwich generation: caring for children and starting to support aging parents. Or it might mean you’re a leader in your workplace, mentoring younger colleagues and relied on by older ones. “Draft NO. 4” by John McPhee Originally published in The New Yorker, this is a piece about writing and the writing life. It includes the advice to write “Dear Mother” at the top of a piece and just use her as an audience to get the story or information out just as you’d tell her. There’s a book: Draft No. 4: On the Writing Process. I downloaded the sample. Click here for book. (We are an Amazon Affiliate) He’s 95! That’s not middle aged! A paragraph from Wikipedia that I enjoyed: Reflecting his personal interests, McPhee’s subjects are highly eclectic. He has written pieces on lifting-body development (The Deltoid Pumpkin Seed), the psyche and experience of a nuclear physicist (The Curve of Binding Energy), a New Jersey wilderness area (The Pine Barrens), the United States Merchant Marine (Looking for a Ship), farmers’ markets (Giving Good Weight), the movement of coal across America (“Coal Train” in Uncommon Carriers), the shifting flow of the Mississippi River (“Atchafalaya” in The Control of Nature), geology (in several books), as well as a short book entirely about oranges. One of his most widely read books, Coming into the Country, is about the three faces of Alaska: the urban, the rural, and the Alaskan wilderness. Advice from the McPhee piece: “Just stay at it; perseverance will change things.” “You’re so unhappy you sound authentic to me.” “You can’t make a fix unless you know what is broken.” There’s a great story about an editor named Eleanor Gould who when she was 22 marked up a copy of an issue of The New Yorker and mailed it in. It doesn’t seem to be a true story but it had a funny ending of, “Hire the b—-!” One more thing on Gould from the piece: She doesn’t mind when friends call her the Pencil Lady. A blog she began on The New Yorker’s website, mostly about copyediting, evolved into the best-selling book Between You & Me: Confessions of a Comma Queen (Norton, 2015). Click here for the book. (we are an Amazon Affiliate) The Hawk, season 1 on Netflix starring Will Ferrell, Fortune Feimster, Molly Shannon and Luke Wilson. Izzy and I watched all 10 episodes. I don’t know that we’ve ever watched a whole season of a show together. Izzy’s observations about the humor of Anchorman relative to the humor of The Hawk. Gets 28% on the Tomatometer and 65% on the popcorn score. I wrote my first Rotten Tomatoes Review! Stories Anne Read or Watched the Week of July 20, 2026 “LeBron’s Final Decision Is a Massive Plot Twist for the NBA” by Michael Pina in The Ringer LeBron’s Final Decision Surprised? The other possibilities did not excite me (GS, Miami, Cavs) I think this is fun. I think Denver would have been cool and the Pacers, but don’t think he ever really considered those 2, especially not Pacers Embiid is big question, along with depth. Also how will will big 4 get along? Embiid, LeBron, Maxey, Brown? Writer says East is better than past seasons.My personal thoughts are that the Knicks will not repeat but they will have a good season. Pacers will have a pretty good season, I think Detroit will drop, Heat will not be any good, Cavs will drop and the Raptors will drop. I guess I am not as high on all of these teams as the writer is. Raptors hinge on Kawhi and if he goes there and IF he stays healthy. I think 76ers have a great chance. 76ers/Knicks/Pacers. Celtics will be good but I think same as this season, they won’t do it in the playoffs. Writer doesn’t think it will have a big impact, I am going to disagree. I guess it is if all things go, then it will. If Embiid never plays, Brown clashes with team, then it won’t. “Bring Me the Beauties: A Model Cult” directed by Chris Smith <a href="https://www.hbomax.com/shows/bring-me-the-beauties...
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Is the End of Reading Here? GenAI and the Reading Writing Classroom
2w ago00:58:41Tap to summarize“The End of Reading is Here” from The Atlantic by Rose Horowitch Click here to link to the article in The Atlantic. For Rose Horowitch’s profile page on X, click here. Quotes from the article for discussion are bolded below and in quotes. Click player above to listen to the “End of Reading” podcast episode “…fewer than half of all adults reported having read a book of any kind in 2022.” This week my friend Dave Witzig texting me to ask what I’ve been reading… Going to Huzzah Books in Boone to hear Zachary Vernon read from his book Eating on a Mountain at the End of the World My wife and I are daily readers. The resurgence of daughters, ages 18 and 20, reading. I remember a faculty meeting around the year 2015 at St. John’s in Queens when I wondered aloud to my colleagues if reading was going to continue to be a primary way that people in their teens and 20’s learned. A few people thought it was a pretty funny joke. I wasn’t kidding. “Americans also get much less of their news through reading than they once did. In 1975, about half of 20-somethings said they read the newspaper every day. Today less than 10 percent do. Most Americans now get the news on their phones and laptops, and 40 percent say they prefer to watch or listen to online news rather than read it.” Where do my kids get their news? I think exclusively from TikTok and Instagram. The news sites I check out regularly… ESPN, The New York Times, Fox News, The Atlantic The challenge of figuring out news about the diarrhea lettuce. “And yet, strangely, Americans are probably reading more words than ever before. What has changed is what they read, and how. People are bombarded with emails, text messages, X posts, Reddit threads, Instagram captions. This explosion of textual fragments has come at the expense of devoting sustained attention to longer written works that convey rich and complicated information.” What counts as reading? Does an audiobook count? What counts as writing? The concepts we work with in composition applied to social media including YouTube. Is counting overrated? The stamina of attention span. I use GenAI platforms. If you use them for everything, what might you miss? Writing as a tool for knowing. You still have to “know stuff” to use GenAI the same way you have to “know stuff” to use a Google or Library Database Search. For example, you might have to have read to know who Dean Oliver is as you pursue an effective way to use basketball analytics as a coach. Students might throw around the word “pedagogy” in a reflection because GenAI produced it for them. Students who copy and paste from GenAI don’t always see how their texts stand out in a negative way among all the other texts that students turn in. “And unlike speech, it doesn’t disappear into the ether. Readers can return to a text and plumb it for new meaning and understanding. Because writing endures, individuals can temporarily forget what they’ve written but trust that it won’t be lost forever.” One of the things I like about books: a person has taken the time to pull the text together. For me, a book doesn’t diappear into the ether the way an article is more likely to. Of course, there are exceptions! “Faced with shrinking attention spans and declining comprehension, schools might have been expected to resist the impulse toward shorter passages and shallower reading. Instead, they spurred it on. A 2025 survey found that most middle- and high-school English teachers assigned zero to four books a year.” I am least partially guilty while at the same time trying to draw the students I work with into reading. Getting assigned 5 books in a week in graduate school (didn’t read it all) while at the same time showing up to a first class having read the whole text already. Reading workshops. I’m doing my favorite thing right now except for that I’m doing it on my own. The Last 5 Books I Read and Enjoyed: The Contemporary American Essay edited by Phillip Lopate Rapture by Nick Nurse with Michael Sokolove Every Love Story is a Ghost Story (about David Foster Wallace) by D.T. Max Heartland (about Larry Bird at Indiana State) by Keith O’Brien True and False Magic by Phil Stutz. (Three constants: Pain, Uncertainty, and The Need for Constant Work) Did I read or watch any other stories this week? The Empathy Exams by Leslie Jamison. She acts like a patient for med students. Domestic Gulags by Laura Kipnis. A huge list of stuff like this: You can’t be a slob. You can’t do less than 50 percent around the house, even if the other person wants to do 100 to 200 percent more housecleaning than you find necessary or even reasonable. Ann; Death and The Maiden by David Lazar. About an old relationship in which the former partner takes their life. The Hawk tv series on Netflix starring Will Ferrell, Molly Shannon, and Luke Wilson. Crass and explicit. At times laugh out loud funny. Introduced me to Fortune Feimster who both of my kids new from social media. Thanks for taking the time to visit Torg Stories!
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From Los Angeles to Warsaw, Poland: Anne from the PURO Warszawa State Miasto
3w ago00:41:53Tap to summarizeMy sister Anne has travelled to Poland where she will see Bad Bunny in Warsaw and travel to Krakow and Prague. In preparation for this conversation, I read “Notes from Poland” by Kenneth Sherman. Click on audio player above to listen to the “Anne in Poland” episode Topics for discussion from “Void and Voice: Notes from Poland.” The article was written by Kenneth Sherman and published in Creative Nonfiction. Click here to access. I’m excited to look at the Creative Nonfiction archives! The writer Kenneth Sherman goes back to Poland in a reverse trip from what his grandfather took 93 years before. I consider a trip to Norway to trace the places my own ancestors lived. Anne did one of those DNA tests and it reported we’re 25% Norwegian. The idea of a pilgrimage. Some lines from the piece for a TRUE or FALSE Discussion: A people’s grave, especially if it is ones own people, is a very special place in one’s psychic map. After a time, being a tourist becomes merely an exercise, an accumulating of numerous dates and sites. Mind travel is usually superior to the geographical kind. On the tombstones… They lean this way and that, like crooked teeth. Stuff I didn’t know before or stuff I thought more deeply about because of Sherman’s piece: Treblinka: Nazi extermination camp in Poland The Polish people under the rule of Nazis. Poland divided and disappears for over 100 years starting in the late 1700s. Anne, what do you know about Polish history? I looked into some other texts related to Bad Bunny and/or Poland: The World’s Newest Superhero: Bad Bunny by Carina Chocano in GQ. Click here. Unquiet Days at Home in Poland by Thomas R Swick. Click here for Amazon link. Exit into History: A Journey Through New Eastern Europe. Click here for Amazon link. Milk Bar article in the NY Times click here. A sweet bun so good it inspired a national holiday. BBC. Click here. From the article: As the days grow warmer in Poland, our forests teem with beautiful fruits like strawberries and plums, which we will eagerly fold into light, delicious summer dishes. By far, the most anticipated seasonal crop is the bilberry, the blueberry’s smaller and tarter European cousin. The 2018 film Cold War directed by Pawel Pawlikowski. Nominated for three Academy Awards and available to stream on Amazon. Click here to connect with film on Amazon. Some Bad Bunny tour dates: Stockholm Sweden last July 11th Warsaw Tues July 14th (the show Anne is going to) Milan Italy July 17 and 18 Brussels, Belgium after that… Anne’s list of content she read or watched related to her trip to Poland to see Bad Bunny. (Add link when possible). https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/15/travel/dan-brown-the-secret-of-secrets-prague.html Prague (also going to Czech Republic) https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/01/travel/warsaw-nightlife-clubs-edm-djs.html I won’t go to clubs, but it’s an interesting read. The writer is stayed at the hotel I’m staying at. No photos! https://culture.pl/en/article/warsaw-everything-that-was examining the rebuild of the destroyed city and Thanks for checking out this Torg Stories post!
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“Why We Travel” by Pico Iyer and Anne is Headed for Bad Bunny in Poland
Jul 601:02:38Tap to summarizeIf you travel, why do you go where you go? I’ll bet your reasons are different from Pico Iyer’s, as explained in his essay “Why We Travel.” We pick out some lines for discussion below as well as look toward Anne’s trip to Poland that will include attending a Bad Bunny concert in Warsaw. “Why We Travel” is an essay by Pico Iyer published on Salon.com on March 18, 2000. Click here to read it. Before I read Iyer’s piece, I jotted down some thoughts I have on my own travel: I don’t seem to be able to enjoy traveling without doing a research project first. From the Charlotte concert we went to (train, where to eat, stores to walk through) to walking around Savannah or going to Maui. Parts of my travel preparation: multiple books, lots of Google Earth scrolling, following social media accounts, and lots of Google Doc notes. Also: I’ve presented on multiple trips to the family and they’ve picked Also: I write out the directions for the bus before I travel to an away basketball contest I’ve become more fearful / anxious. Maybe why? daughters and wife, getting older. I have right next to zero travel abroad experience. If I could go anywhere this summer, where would I chose? My daughter Izzy asked me if I could travel to any country, where would I go? I said Switzerland, and here are the reasons I could think I would want to go to Switzerland: Wherever I’m going with my family, the connections formed doing something such as waiting to board the plane can’t be underrated. Speaks to that cliche, the journey not the destination. I’ve seen the beauty in pictures or videos, and I’d like to walk within it all myself. Experience a place different than I’ve been before. Look how it’s done here, whether that’s Queens, Winamac Indiana, Charleston, Miami, Phoenix, LA, Maui, or London. Here’s the opening paragraph of the essay. There’s a lot to discuss in it: We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again — to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more. Some lines I chose from the essay to discuss: If a diploma can famously be a passport (to a journey through hard realism), a passport can be a diploma (for a crash course in cultural relativism). And the first lesson we learn on the road, whether we like it or not, is how provisional and provincial are the things we imagine to be universal. Our only exchange like this is money? I find that I always take Michael Jordan posters to Kyoto, and bring woven ikebana baskets back to California; I invariably travel to Cuba with a suitcase piled high with bottles of Tylenol and bars of soap, and come back with one piled high with salsa tapes, and hopes, and letters to long-lost brothers. The idea of seeing with new eyes: By now all of us have heard (too often) the old Proust line about how the real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing new places but in seeing with new eyes. Anne, you probably don’t know what you will do? On the most basic level, when I’m in Thailand, though a teetotaler who usually goes to bed at 9 p.m., I stay up till dawn in the local bars; and in Tibet, though not a real Buddhist, I spend days on end in temples, listening to the chants of sutras. I go to Iceland to visit the lunar spaces within me, and, in the uncanny quietude and emptiness of that vast and treeless world, to tap parts of myself generally obscured by chatter and routine. Reminds me of Geoff Dyer bringing in Nietzsche on habits: This is what Camus meant when he said that “what gives value to travel is fear” — disruption, in other words, (or emancipation) from circumstance, and all the habits behind which we hide. The metaphor that travel is a love story: All the great travel books are love stories, by some reckoning — from the Odyssey and the Aeneid to the Divine Comedy and the New Testament — and all good trips are, like love, about being carried out of yourself and deposited in the midst of terror and wonder. What do you call yourself? I am, in many ways, an increasingly typical specimen, if only because I was born, as the son of Indian parents, in England, moved to America at 7 and cannot really call myself an Indian, an American or an Englishman. What have you brought back from previous trips? The virtue of finding a gilded pavilion in Kyoto is that it allows you to take back a more lasting, private Golden Temple to your office in Rockefeller Center. (Torg remembers his French Broad Trip, the mushroom hunt with his father) What new reasons in this essay might there be to travel? We travel, then, in part just to shake up our complacencies by seeing all the moral and political urgencies, the life-and-death dilemmas, that we seldom have to face at home. holidays help you appreciate your own home more All, in that sense, believed in “being moved” as one of the points of taking trips, So travel, at heart, is just a quick way to keeping our minds mobile and awake. This piece of loaded with references to what other writers say. Sometimes it’s a quote and other times the author refers to just talking with someone. I counted 22 references to what other writers said. In the piece. This sort of thing impresses me that the writer is familiar with all of those facets of the conversation within travel writing. Anne, does reading this and discussing it change your thinking at all about your trip? Trump is the United State President. Does that impact how you think about your trip? I think those here for the World Cup are finding that we all aren’t Trump or Trump Disciplines. What’s your prep like for a trip like you are taking? Buying guidebooks? Working on notes? Working on an itinerary? Some notes on the author Pico Iyer: @PicoIyer on X. Click here for profile. From Wikipedia: English born in Oxford son of Indian parents, both academics, moved to California when father started teaching at Univ of California at Santa Barbara, studied English Lit at Magdalen College Oxford, taught writing at Harvard and then started writing at Time, has lived in Nara, Japan since 1992 and has a Japanese wife, I counted 18 books written on his Wikipedia page For today’s episode, I almost picked a chapter from this book: Michael Palin wrote a book called New Europe in which there is a chapter about him travelling to Poland. I almost bought it and had us read that. Thanks for taking time to visit Torg Stories!
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Otherwise Known as the Human Condition (with Particular Reference to Doughnut Plant Doughnuts)
Jun 2801:14:50Tap to summarizeMy sister Anne spells it donuts and I use doughnuts. We both went out and ate some for this post, and we had a good time discussing Geoff Dyer’s essay “Otherwise Known as the Human Condition (with Particular Reference to Doughnut Plant Doughnuts” as the catalyst for this week’s conversion. Click above to listen to our donut or doughnut themed podcast Sometimes donuts are trash (sometimes I still eat them) -Anne on her donut consumption Torg got his doughnuts from Local Lion Doughnuts and Coffee in Boone, NC. Local Lion Doughnuts and Coffee. 791 Blowing Rock Road. Boone, NC. I appreciated this about the owners of Local Lion from their website: Josiah was born and brewed in Boone NC . He met Meredith as she was serving coffee on Appstate Campus and they settled into this beautiful mountain town. Together they founded Local Lion in Spring of 2012. Early mornings making scratchmade doughnuts and fresh roasting coffee are an excellent way to serve community. We love being an integral part of the high country. Los Angeles Doughnuts from Anne: https://randysdonuts.com/ Randy’s w/iconic donut sign is my favorite. Kind of far from my apt, the original location is somewhat close to work. Classic Glaze, sugar raised, vanilla iced cake, butter crumb raised. Opened in 1953 in Inglewood. I will also go Trejo’s Donuts, close by. Bob’s donuts and Sidecar both The Grove https://www.trejosdonuts.com/ https://sidecardoughnuts.com/ https://farmersmarketla.com/merchants/bobs-coffee-and-doughnuts These are all good depending on the donut you pick What about a shout out to Bolin’s Donuts in Logansport! The best donuts I’ve had and probably why I love a great donut. Sucky donuts are trash. (Sometimes I still eat them) Dyer’s piece opens with Effra Road as the metaphorical (and literal for the the writer) roads we all have to travel. Here are the opening lines of the piece: For many years I lived in various flats either on or just off Brixton Water Lane. So I was always walking, cycling, or taking a bus down Effra Road. How many times did I walk down Effra Road? How many hours did I spend walking down Effra Road? If I was going to Brixton Rec to play squash, or to Franco’s for a pizza or a cappuccino (this was before I acquired the refinement of taste in cappuccinos that, in the years since then, has invariably been a source of torment and frustration rather than enhanced satisfaction), or to the aptly named Effra to meet friends for drinks, or just to take the tube to some other part of London, I always had to trudge or cycle down Effra Road. Wherever I was going, the journey began and ended on Effra Road. One of the reasons I moved away from Brixton was that I could not face trudging, cycling, or taking the bus down Effra Road again. Torg’s potential Effra Roads: Ditmars Blvd in Astoria, Queens, NYC. It was a half mile walk from my apartment near Astoria Park and the East River from the N and W stop of NYC subway. Didn’t live there long enough to get that tired of it. It did have Martha’s Country Bakery, which we have never forgotten. Click here. Cookies and cakes but I don’t remember doughnuts. Would I usually rather have a cookie than a doughnut? AND, Dewitt Barnett Road near Valle Crucis, NC. We’ve got this 10 minute very curvy drive almost every time we leave the house. Anne’s potential Effra Roads: La Brea and Melrose. I start on these streets all the time, maybe throw Santa Monica Blvd. in there. Great donut place in Brownsburg IN. Hilligoss Bakery Also Long’s Bakery in Indianapolis, kind of by Speedway In Brownsburg, I would often go to a great gas station right by work. Get a Diet Mt Dew from fountain (not frequently available elsewhere) and a cinnamon type cake donut. Best donuts I ever had from a gas station. Casey’s gas station, a chain. I do not see them out here. In Indiana, I used to go most Sundays and read the Sunday paper at Einstein Bagels I think around 82nd street on the west side where I would hope they would have a chocolate chip cookie cake that was round, I forget the name, but loved that sometimes they would run out just like in the story. I would get it warmed up. The Nietzsche “enduring habits” section: Nietzsche loved what he called “brief habits” but so hated “enduring habits” that he was grateful even to the bouts of sickness or misfortune that caused him to break free of the chains of enduring habit. (Though most intolerable of all, he went on, would be “a life entirely devoid of habits, a life that would demand perpetual improvisation. That would be my exile and my Siberia.”) Unlike Nietzsche, I succumb all too easily to enduring habits. Programmed by habit, I kept going to Patisserie Valerie until I met the woman who became my wife. I am challenged about my enduring habits: Morning coffee and yogurt with Megan, right to the desk to work, a feel of needing to be at the desk To what degree, if any, do these need to be broken? Reminds me of how I used to say instead of going on vacation there we should just move there for a while. That feels different now. Anne’s LA Habits Used to get a fountain drink most mornings from 7-eleven. Do not do that as much. Used to also get a bagel maybe once a week, also do not do now. Now I get to work, have a diet coke and a protein bar. My morning routine for work is simple, wake up, shower, dry hair get ready/dressed, sit on couch for 10 minutes and browse internet, then leave around 6:55 am. Weekend habit. Work out and hike on Sat and Sun, hoping always to be done by 10 am. Mostly Runyon, occasionally Griffith Torg Golden Lines from the piece for brief discussion: Psychologically, the location of a place is not fixed. It is determined not by where it is but by how we get to it. Funny!: I went back to Delectica the following day and ordered another cappuccino and a doughnut. The doughnut I ordered that day was a ring doughnut, and it was an amazing doughnut. This was a major turning point in my New York life. As such, it will feature prominently in my forthcoming book Great Pastries of the World: A Personal View. Not what happened to us at Bruno’s Pizza in Logansport: It was still there and we ordered cappuccinos and croissants, and the croissant, while it was just about tolerable, was nowhere near as good as I remembered and the coffee was pretty terrible (too milky and the foam was all bubbly, and although it seemed okay at first, by the halfway stage I decided it was totally revolting). The last sentence. As we keep this up Anne, I am seeing that writers often like to go long in the last or second to last sentence: It did not seem like that at all now; now it became a symbol of the healing potential of the doughnut, of a world community of doughnut lovers living in peace and harmony, bound together by the vision and ambition of a Czech immigrant who went to New York, opened his Doughnut Plant, and then forged a doughnut empire, extending from New York to Tokyo while regrettably bypassing London, where we still have to make do with croissants that are like stale buns so that at times the whole of London seems like nothing else so much as an interminable extension of Effra Road. What does he mean “the human condition” in the title? ...
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Untold Epstein Story, San Antonio Love Triangle, World Cup Mbappe, Widow’s Bay, and Three Billboards
Jun 2200:42:34Tap to summarizeAnne and I share the stories we read or watched on this week’s Torg Stories Podcast. Check out the links to some of the stories below: Stories Anne Read or Watched the Week of June 15, 2026 “The Infamous San Antonio Love Triangle That Ended in Murder” by Katy Vine https://www.texasmonthly.com/true-crime/san-antonio-three-emmas-legend/ Pearl Beer magnate Otto Koehler killed by one of his mistresses in 1914. His wife, his mistress & wife’s nurse and his 2nd mistress all named Emma. The Three Emmas After his death his wife reemerged back into society. Was her sickness something he kind of forced on her? A “nervous disorder”. She became the pres if the beer association even Authorities wanted to protect rep and the city’s brewers from investigators so sort of swept it under the rug. Who was the man who was allowed to leave? The 2 emma nurses lived in a house together bought by Otto. Affair stopped when the 1st mistress met a man and got married, so then he got with 2nd mistress. Then the next year he decided to do a payoff and break it off. They thought she was going to be possibly killed by him? She claims he started to choke her, then the other Emma came in and so she got a gun to save the other emma. Site of the Pearl Brewing Co. is now a mixed use site called the Pearl which is very popular, including the previously mentioned in our podcast (in relation to the NBA), San Antonio’s best hotel in San Antonio “Hotel Emma” Cocktails are named after the emmas etc. Kylian Mbappe is Scoring All the Goals – and Taking All the Heat” Vanity Fair, by Aidan Mclaughlin https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/kylian-mbappe-cover-story French leader of team, left home at 14. Won World Cup at 19 in 2018 PSG then to Real Madrid, PSG wins Champions League year after he leaves and then again this year. Widow’s Bay, AppleTV final episode, Creator Katie Dipold, was a Parks & Rec writer, wrote the movie “The Heat” which is a terrific comedy Got renewed, nice twist at the end Good laughs again at the end. Had some nods to Lost with the underground ladder Stories Bill Read or Watched the Week of June 15, 2026 Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri Stars Frances McDormand as a mom whose daughter was raped and killed, Woody Harrelson as the town sherriff with cancer, and Sam Rockwell as a racist drunk town cop. Peter Dinklage (Elf and I Care A lot are two of my favorites of his) Set in Sylva, North Carolina! Came out in 2017. My kind of title! 7 academy nominations and 3 wins for Best Picture, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actor Rockwell is in another great movie you haven’t seen: The Green Mile. Interesting stuff from Wikipedia about McDormand: grew up in IL, adopted and name change from Cynthia Ann Smith, adopted dad a Disciples of Christ preacher Married to Joel Coen! Amazing job from moving around the Midwest and South eventually to the Yale School of Drama. I watched it on HBO Max. There’s a screenwriting book called Save the Cat and it tells you to just have someone state the theme out loud. I feel like it’s this for this film: violence begets violence. “The Untold Story of Jeffrey Epstein’s Death,” a NY Times Exclusive by Charles Homans, Steve Eder, Jan Ransom, and Michael Rothfeld Click here for the article. It’s one of those amazing interactive multimedia articles with lots of pictures from the jail and the scene where Epstein died. Also… shot of the outside of the prison that zooms inside, shows a map, and then labels the areas of the prison where Epstein was, 3D tour of the hub of that floor like you’d see on a real estate listing Really works to bring to life the story. Here are the opening two paragraphs: Late in the afternoon of July 6, 2019, about a dozen F.B.I. agents and New York Police Department officers gathered at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, waiting out of view of the tarmac so as not to spook their quarry. The day before, they received an email informing them that a private jet would be arriving at 5:20 p.m. Attached to the email was an arrest warrant for its lone passenger, Jeffrey Epstein.Returning from Paris, Epstein was making plans on his phone: a trip to his private island in the Caribbean, a documentary interview with Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump’s former adviser. When the plane touched down, customs agents boarded to check the passports of Epstein and the plane’s two pilots. Then they escorted Epstein into the terminal, where an F.B.I. agent and a detective told him he was under arrest. Bad working conditions for the guards. Guards not doing their jobs in some ways understandably. Cameras not working. Just a dysfunctional situation. Interviews and pictures with guards. Interesting Epstein could be scared, shocked and depressed, but also intimidating because of his wealth and access to lawyers who could cause lots of problems for everyone he encountered. It would have taken a massive conspiracy given all the levels of security, different sets of keys, etc. Last two paragraphs: In the end, the autopsy photos were like everything else in the Epstein case, offering more possibilities than conclusions. Every question was easier to ask than to answer. It made the case the perfect petri dish for conspiracy theories, a space in which nothing could definitively be proved wrong, as long as someone wanted to believe in it. It is fitting, then, that the last known image of Epstein alive appears to be a brief fragment of surveillance camera footage at 7:49 p.m. on Aug. 9, the last full day of his life, after his final phone call, as he was led back to his cell for the last time. In it, he is little more than a silver head of hair, visible for a split second — stripped of his wealth and influence, reduced to something vague, elusive, a blur, a ghost. He is there, and then he is gone. Thanks for taking time to visit Torg Stories!
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Knicks Win NBA Finals, MVP Brunson, Wemby as a Villain, Matricide, Office Romance and Other Stories We Read or Watched
Jun 1401:22:41Tap to summarizeWe discuss the stories we read and watched including articles about the Knicks winning the NBA Title, the essay “Matricide,” the film Office Romance, and the Apple tv show Widow Bay. (Check out video podcast near the end of this post) Click player to listen to episode on stories related to Knicks, NBA Finals, Wemby, Matricide, Office Romance Stories Bill Read or Watched the Week of June 8, 2026 “The New York Knicks Just Won a Championship of a Lifetime” by Danny Chau on The Ringer Click here to access the article. Chau on X: https://x.com/dannychau Opening paragraph: Fifty-three years is a long time for an echo to travel, from the legendary Forum in Inglewood back in 1973 to the Frost Bank Arena in San Antonio on Saturday night. The one tether, the one constant, across two landmark moments in New York City history was the Knicks’ blue away uniforms, with orange and white trim. This is reference Wilt Chamberlain scoring his last basket vs. Knicks losing to them in finals: Where the Knicks’ last championship served as a farewell to a walking myth, their current triumph coincides with the arrival of Wilt’s spiritual successor—a modern-day Goliath who, if this series was any indication, will be the object of awe and derision for the rest of his career. And, most importantly, an all-time night from Jalen Brunson, the 2026 Finals MVP, who stands alongside Jordan with the most points in a championship-clinching performance on the road with 45. These 2025-26 New York Knicks? One of the greatest postseason teams ever. Let it sink in. Let it linger. Mitchell Robinson proved himself to be the best offensive rebounder in basketball, bulldozing Wemby underneath the basket with 22 seconds remaining in the game to effectively clinch the title. Interesting sentence about Alvarado diving into former Mayor Bloomberg: “Alvarado—who was raised in an affordable housing co-op in Williamsburg that was the most ethnically diverse apartment building in the country—crash-landing into former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg (whose net worth exceeds $100 billion) in Game 3 is the kind of metaphor that could take years to fully unpack.” A Few More Torg Notes on the NBA Basketball Season: The #1 difference stats wise I saw in game 5 was that Brunson was 13-15 from the line. The only statistical advantage for either team was FTs made and attempted and it came from Brunson. Nobody on the Spurs can do that right now. On Game 4: one of the most exciting games we’ve ever seen with the 29 point comeback, the Wemby missed FTs, the Fox try the lay up, and the OG tip in for game 4. Oh yeah, the KAT tip of the inbound pass. I wondered if Jalen Brunson could do what he does against teams and defenders such as those on OKC and the Spurs. Yes he can! Wemby is some version of KD on offense. He’s the best defender in the league and looks like he could be the best defender since the Celtics Bill Russell. Jordan and Scottie Pippen went 6-0 in the Finals. John Havlicek went 8-0. Bill Russell went 11-1. What would you set the over/under for finals appearances and finals wins for Wemby and the Spurs? “Matricide,” an essay, by Meghan Daum It’s the opening essay in Daum’s 2014 collection The Unspeakable: And Other Subjects of Discussion Daum is a fellow born in 1970 human being with me. Another Columbia MFA graduate like Beller and the H&H Bagel story we read. Webster’s defines Matricide as the “murder of a mother by her child.” The opening paragraph: People who weren’t there like to say that my mother died at home surrounded by loving family. This is technically true, though it was just my brother and me and he was looking at Facebook and I was reading a profile of Hillary Clinton in the December 2009 issue of Vogue. A hospice nurse had been over a few hours earlier and said my mother was “very imminent.” She was breathing in that slow, irregular way that signals that the end is near. Strangely, I hadn’t noticed it despite listening for the past several weeks (months earlier, when her death sentence had been officially handed down but she was still very much alive, my mother had casually mentioned that she’d noticed this breathing pattern in herself and that I should be prepared to walk into the room and find her gone at any moment) but apparently it was here now and when I reached the third paragraph of the second page of the Hillary Clinton article (this remains imprinted on my brain; I can still see the wrap of the words as my eye scanned the column; I can still see the Annie Leibowitz photo on the previous page) I heard her gasp. Then nothing more. A second quote: My mother would die nine months later, and what most people don’t know is that of all the sad things about this fact, the saddest by far is that she did not have one day on this earth where she was both healthy and free of her mother. All her life she’d waited to be relieved of the burden of being unseen, only to have that relief perfectly timed with her own death sentence. FROM The Contemporary American Essay (p. 179) Kindle edition. Quote: It’s amazing what the living expect of the dying. We expect wisdom, insight, bursts of clarity that are then reported back to the undying in the urgent staccato of a telegram: I have the answer. Stop. They’re waiting for me. Stop. Everyone Who Died Before. Stop. And they Look Great. Stop. We expect them to reminisce over photos, to accept apologies and to make them, to be sad, to be angry, to be grateful. We expect them to clear our consciences, to confirm our fantasies. We expect them to be excited about the idea of being a bird. Makes me think of when I bought our grandpa Bill a little waterfall with a picture of us in it to put by his bed. What the heck… Love this: In the beginning, I’d laughed and told her there was no cat, but with the dying you soon learn the folly of raining on a parade, especially one that might produce that holy grail of darnedest things: insight into the afterlife. A report on our mom. Yesterday, she went to some live music. I came in and she was in the atrium. She didn’t realize she’d seen it by the time I got her in her room. She took a few bites of a sandwich and fell asleep. She remarked their were bites in her sandwich when she woke up again. How does that work? Was our mom a big talker? A conversationalist? Did I ever talk to her about a book? Quote: It started with a fever. Actually it started before that. Of course it did. Nothing ever begins when you think it does. Why did mom’s short term memory go? One year she was taking care of dad and coming out back to watch the girls shoot and in less than a year she could barely stand up. The writer gets sick: Even in my delirium, I cringed the way adult children cringe when they look down and realize the hands sticking out of their arms are actually their parents’ hands. I remember thinking that everyone was on to me now. My husband, the doctor, whoever else was there: they all knew not only that I was my mother’s daughter but that I was no different from her. Just as she had outlived her own mother by less than a year, I, too, would be denied a life outside of her shadow. The message was so obvious it might as well have been preordained: no woman in this matriarchal line would escape punishment for not loving her mother enough, for not mourning her mother enough, for not missing her enough, for refusing to touch her. None of us would be allowed out in the world on our own. For a review of the collection in Electric Lit, click here. She’s @Meghan_daum on X and click here for her X page. She has a WKRP shirt on in her X profile pic. I said this from the show this week: As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly. Office Romance on Netflix: Brett Goldstein (Roy Kent from Ted Lasso) with Jennifer Lopez. Written by Brett Goldstein. Goldstein also in Shrinking with Harrison Ford. Directed by Ol Parker who also directed Ticket to Paradise. Some funny stand alone scenes. A really good scene where Goldstein’s understated lawyering style works well and the romance starts to kindle. Some beautiful shots of the DR! Ends like Notting Hill. Hits romantic comedy tropes hard, which is no problem. Secret Window rented on Amazon. Came out in 2004. Based on the long short story Secret Window, Secret Garden Directed by David Koepp (sounds like Kep to me) who also directed some Jurassic Park movies, Death Becomes Her, Mission Impossible, War of the Worlds, Indiana Jones, Film summary spoiler alert: The writ...
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Stories We Read and Watched: Knicks and Spurs, University GenAI, Caitlin Clark, Castaway and Obama Library
Jun 701:03:49Tap to summarizeWe read or watched stories related to the NBA Finals, the billionaires who charter jets to the games, Spike Lee, University GenAI, Contagion, Caitlin Clark and Stephanie White, Castaway, The Bourne Ultimatum, Yellowstone, and the new Obama Library in Chicago. Click player above to listen to this episode of the Torg Stories Podcast Stories Bill Read or Watched the Week of June 1, 2026… NBA Story: “2026 NBA Finals: Storylines, Matchups that will define Knicks-Spurs” By Zach Kram, ESPN, click here. Now that the Knicks are up two games to zero and heading home, how can I apply what Zach wrote to what’s happened: These two teams played in the finals in 1999. Average final score back then was 85-80. Jalen’s Brunson’s dad played for the Knicks then. Spurs Coach Mitch Johnson was in middle school. Knicks were better head to head during regular season and NBA Cup and now they are again. KAT has done most of the defending on Wemby and he’s doing great. KAT has attacked Wemby on offense and took it right at him. Players have attacked Wemby in a way I didn’t think was possible. Thought was Wemby might roam and Hart might have a lot of open shots. Hart had a big rebounding game in game 1 and his minutes were way down to 18 in game two. Shamet has played those minutes and hit enough threes. Spurs won Wemby minutes by 6 last game. Spurs won by 12 when Harper played. Some of these stats come from Basketball Reference, a great site that I am not a pro at using. Click here to access. Do you remember your NBA Finals pick? I think you said Spurs in six and I said Knicks in seven. ESPN writer Zach Kram said Spurs in Six. Wemby is Going Down by Spike Lee https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/03/opinion/new-york-knicks-nba-championship.html From the Spike Lee Article: Since that 1999 series, a lot of terrible things happened to New York: 9/11, Hurricane Sandy, the pandemic and the recent ICE raids targeting immigrants, a direct affront to Ellis Island. I dreamed a vision that it’s going to happen in Madison Square Garden. I don’t believe that the basketball gods are going to let us win the deciding game in San Antonio. By the decree of God, Jehovah, Allah and Black Jesus (that was Earl “The Pearl” Monroe’s nickname), whatever you want to call it, on this day, June 16 in the year of our Lawd 2026, the New Yawk Knickerbockers will defeat the San Antonio Spurs in Game 6 at da world’s most famous arena to win the N.B.A. championship. New York is Fun City again. “Caitlin Clark and Stephanie White say all is good while Downplaying Sideline Spat Video” By Michael Marot on AP news click here. I watched a good win over ATL and Angel Reese. White and Clark looked good. Fever did lose to NY 83-75. Fever are in last playoff spot, 8th. Lynx are on top without Collier. Wings are 4th. Valkyries and Fire are in 6th and 7th. Castaway the screenplay by William Broyles JR. You can get the script on Script Slug here. I’m writing Hurricane Drive about our drive home from dad’s funeral to Boone during Hurricane Helene. I wanted to look at how Boryles handled all of that no dialogue time. (Wilson the volleyball and mom with dementia). Came out in 2000. Zemeckis directed and he directed Back to the Future, Forrest Gump, Contact, and The Polar Express. Broyles wrote Apollo 13, The Polar Express, and Jarhead. (he’s 81). The Bourne Ultimatum starring Matt Damon and directed by Paul Greengrass. 2007 I own all the Bourne movies. I watch them running on the treadmill. This is the third one, in 2007. (Damon wasn’t in the 4th one). Has that Waterloo Train Station scene early with the reporter that is killed by the CIA. Has Julia Stiles, who you said you liked. The “I doubt that” comment. “We’d be having this conversation face to face.” Awesome ending where Bourne starts swimming in the river, and we know he’s alive. Yellowstone on Peacock starring Kevin Costner Written by Taylor Sheridan who lived in rural Texas and Wyoming. This is set in Montana. Jeez: inspired two prequels and spin offs Marshals and Dutton Ranch. 5 seasons The first season has two big stories: Costner’s kid has married a Native American and lives on the reservation. The ranch and the tribe are arguing over cattle and property lines. Also, there’s a guy who wants to build a big condo development. “Obama Center’s Two Sides: A Lovely Park and a Forbidding Tower” by Michael Kimmelman. 850 million dollars in private fundraising. Write is negative about outside appearance, “Obamalisk.” Complimentary of the grounds and inside https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/02/arts/design/obama-presidential-center-library-chicago.html Stories Anne Read or Watched the Week of June 1, 2026 Whatever NBA finals article you read here. (prob wait until after first two games? “The Billionaires Booking Private Jets to See The Knicks” by Adriane Quinlan in Curbed https://www.curbed.com/article/billionaire-knicks-vip-nba-finals-msg-private-jet-stylist.html Delta Sky 360 club (ca. 150 people) or Suite 200 Spike and Ben Stiller pay for their tickets San Antonio the city Went overextends – compounding an error by trying to make a great play to make up your error https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7337180/2026/06/06/victor-wembanyama-nba-finals-game-2-mistakes/?redirected=1 A University System Went All in on AI Now Its Tearing Itself Apart by Linda Kinstler in NY Times https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/magazine/ai-university-college-california.html Highlights that we just don’t know what future is. Fear loss of job, critical writing and thinking skills. Contagion – kind of ho hum since we lived thru it? On Max National Treasure – old throwback, it was fine On Prime Tuned – pretty good about a piano tuner / safe cracker. Leo Woodhall, Dustin Hoffman Some of the writers on X: @zachkram @AdrianeQ @lindakinstler Thanks for checking out this Torg Stories post!
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It’s the New York Knicks and the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals
May 3101:08:08Tap to summarizeThe NBA Finals are set: it will be the New York Knicks vs. the San Antonio Spurs. Wemby and the Spurs vanquished the defending champions Oklahoma City Thunder in an exciting game 7. Also, at the bottom of this post check out the stories I read or watched this week. At the bottom of the page, check out the latest episode of the Torg Stories Podcast. What happened after Wemby’s big game 1? Way more physical with him. Holding jersey, shoulders and waist. Wemby not strong enough to just go inside and post up. It will probably be hard to ever be strong enough to do that. Hard tags on Wemby’s rolls. Running a high ball screen with a Wemby roll pretty much guaranteed open threes for the rest of the team. In game 7, Wemby had a stat line that was more like the ones he had when they lost. How did the Spurs still beat OKC in game 7? Champagnie went 6-11 from three. Wemby went 3-5. Sometimes Wemby doesn’t hit any. De’Aron Fox looked way more explosive on offense, more active on defense and scored 15. He was giving them zero early in the series. Caruso, who had been good, was bad on offense going 3-14 from the field and 1-6 from the three point line. A lot was made of Chet taking two shots. You can often just go to the three point line to see what happened. Both teams shot 45% from the field. Spurs were 17-40 and OKC was 12-35. That’s a 15 point difference. What kind of threes? How many off of offensive rebounds? Note: The Spurs really got their turnover numbers down. I think mostly because of De’Aaron Fox playing more and more but also their players adjusted. Even though I am Pacer fan and the Knicks are a historical rival, here are some reasons the Knicks are a fun finals team for me: I worked in NYC for 11 years I have been to MSG and “behind the scenes” at least twice. Plus, we went to Billy Joel. Timothee Chalamet brought my daughter Izzy to the Knicks. Then she liked Tyler Kolek. Now he doesn’t play. And she’s yelling at the TV. Feels fun to see who is at the game. KAT has a fascinating personality. The Villanova connection and the way those guys act together. The Bruson footwork and little guy doing it. Mitchell Robinson’s FT struggles, his mental health struggles, and his big truck driving country music listening personality. What happened with his broken finger?!!! Looking ahead to the NBA Finals Knicks vs. Spurs: Wemby’s age and don’t forget about Magic. I am thinking of Magic Johnson being 20 years and 276 days old when he won the title. Wemby is 22 years and 147 days old. We’re in year 3 with Wemby. Magic was finals MVP as a rookie scoring 42 pts, 15 reb, and 7 assists to clinch title. Brunson will hunt De’Aaron Fox and that works. Can the Spurs function without Fox? Because if they can, the player Brunson wants to hunt is gone. This isn’t James Harden and Donavan Mitchell on defense. (This sentence alone makes me wonder if the Knicks can win) How will Knicks guard Wemby? Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s not OG Anunoby. If Mitchell can play he can do what Hartenstein did for OKC. KAT isn’t Holmgren on defense. He won’t rim protect but he is A LOT more physical. Why would the Knicks win? They have a more polished offensive game. They know Brunson is the man in a way that the Spurs don’t have. They know how they work in KAT and Bridges. The Knicks can play five 3-point shooters. There’s no Hartenstein for Wemby to roam away from. The Knicks starters have had a nice rest and time to recover. Why would the Spurs win? No weak links on defense with certain line ups. They might be able to switch a lot of ball screens and successfully make Brunson a lot less efficient without much help. Shooters do their job when Wemby demands a lot of attention. Wemby just too unique on both sides of the ball. Who will win? I really don’t know. Feels like a toss up series, but I will make a prediction… The Spurs defense will be a dominant force in the series, BUT I think the Knicks will find just enough offense to win in a series where both teams have trouble scoring. Anne picked Spurs in six. I picked Knicks in seven. Thanks for checking out this post!
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