You're listening to DraftKings network.

This is The Dan Levator Show with.

The Stu Guts podcast. Mike Schur in with us and Charlote and Amin and him are really geeking out on all things basketball. Excited about the basketball season starting again. Mike won't shut up for many months now about the Sacramento Kings, but when I look at the entirety of the sport, I think most people think the Bucks, they are the betting favorite, look like the favorite. But when you think of most interesting teams in the league, not who's your second best team that might win the championship, but just I find what's happening with that team interesting and I will follow that storyline all season because they might win the championship. Who is that represented by for you, Mike?

I actually find the Bucks less interesting than I think most people do because they lost some depth. They got a superstar now. There's two superstars on the team. They were really good last year and the year before that and the year before that. They'll be really good. Not that's not that interesting to me, more interesting teams are teams on the come up, like OKC and my beloved Sacramento Kings, who I will be once again supporting and rooting for in the west, because they're both at this moment where they have a ton of good young players and they maybe exceeded expectations. And now the question is, like, do they stay on that upward trajectory? Do they get better? Do the Kings get the two seed? Does OKC get the three seed? Or something crazy? Like do they put it all together or do they kind of take a step back and fall apart and need to rethink the way that they've constituted their rosters? Those teams are more interesting to me. The Bucks are just always good. Who cares? They were good last year, they'll be good this year.

But you're geeking out on good, right? You're thinking to yourself, well, the Thunder, the way they're constructed, adding homegren and now having 35 picks over the next seven years, that's an interesting construct. I'm talking about storyline for this one season. And you also think they can win the championship. You believe they can win the championship, like better than Denver, better than Milwaukee?

No, not better than Denver. The defending champions and not better than Milwaukee with two of the Suns and.

The warriors would be in that conversation, would they not?

Well, to me, that's the other team, the team that's been great consistently, that is most interesting is the warriors, because Chris Paul is now on the warriors and watching him play the other night in that offense was really fun. Also, it led to the best moment of the preseason, which was when he flopped. Was it, budy? Healed. Who was it? Or Darren Fox? Who was it? Budy Healed?

No, it was it was Fox.

It was Fox who he kind of flopped and then Fox imitated him flopping, and then the two of them jawed at each other for like, 30 seconds. This is preseason. You're already on Chris Paul for flopping in the preseason. You know what? He's got that dog in him. Fox has that dog in him. I'm telling you right now. I'm just saying. But the warriors, this is it, man. This is the home stretch for these they they do not have that many years left. They added the best point guard maybe in the history of the NBA to run their offense, or at least to come off their bench and run their second unit.

Is he coming off their bench?

I don't know right now. He is right right now he's starting.

Because Draymond's been hurt. So they've been playing Clay Thompson at the three and Wiggins at the Is. Charlote and I spoke about this on Odball. This is a season of will it work? All across the league. Will it work? Will it work? And so for the warriors, is will it work? Are you going to go super small and keep Clay at the three just to start Chris Paul and buttress his feelings? Or do you bring him off the bench, which is the more appropriate, more balanced measure, especially for a team that isn't great on size? Right at center, they've got Looney, who's undersized. They've got Kaminga. Who's undersized? They've got Sarit, who's tall but slender. They don't have traditional size. So are you going to exacerbate that and go 26263?

That's an yeah.

So but is Chris Paul capable of saying, cool, I'll come off the bench because it's been asked of him, and every time he bristles? Well, we haven't decided, buddy. It's not hard. Just look at the roster. You've got Clay, he's going to start. You got Steph, he's going to start. You got Draymond is going to start. Looney has to start. That last spot is either going to go to Wiggins, who is six, eight and has been one of their better defensive players, or it's going to go to you, who's my size. It's simple math on this one.

When you say he's 6263 and Mike, you're like, that's a tiny roster. Men on dating apps, listening to this everywhere, just shuddered. Oh, God damn it. To me, the warriors are absolutely fascinating. First of all, I think that the end of a story is always so magnetic in sports, no matter what. I think it's really fun to watch something come up and like, OKC, and how is that going to work? It's exciting. I think the most fascinating thing is to watch a team that just based on age and physics is clearly not going to be getting better.

It's one last ride. Yeah, one last ride is always a great story.

It's amazing. And then to inject not only a player who didn't really fit with their offense, but a player who is Chris Paul, who is so annoying, who Draymond already was like, I didn't like him. And Chris Paul is like, yeah, same. And they're like, So glad you're here, buddy. And now Draymond is hurt, so it's not an issue. So Chris Paul can when it's just like the most beautiful reality show, like, what's going to happen?

It's not just that Chris Paul can start it's also Chris Paul can have the ball in his hands and be the facilitator.

Yes.

Because the guy who does that is the guy that's hurt. But when Draymond comes back now, you've got to be more off the ball, more moving around. Can you accept that? And my favorite part about the whole Draymond Chris Paul thing is Draymond, in his own words, when he was talking to Young Masok of ESPN.com, it wasn't, you know what? There's a mutual respect that we have. Even though we didn't like each other, it was his words were basically, yeah, but when I thought about, I have the opportunity to help him win his first championship, even then, even for condescending.

The rudest nice thing you could say.

To somebody is, I gave you this.

You're welcome.

Will there be a moment at some point in the season when both Chris Paul and Draymond are on the court and they both want to have the ball in their hands and they end up tying each other up and having to jump off against each other?

You guys are saying one last ride. And a number of things are funny about that one. Draymond Green, one last ride. He just got four years. Clay wants four years, wants to be paid. All of these warriors want to be paid so much that Draymond punched a teammate in the face because they were talking about payments. And Chris Paul is now also eager to win the one championship that he has never won. And I think in talking about this and we'll talk about the Lakers as well, I don't know if it's possible for this to happen quietly, but the idea that you have Booker Durant together now and that they've added Bradley Beal and that their owner is all or nothing splashy. Like, it might not be Durant's last dance, but that can't be a quiet super team can feel I feel like the sun.

That is not quiet, Dan.

It's very loud.

It's very loud. And the loudest move, which I think is going to be the thing that gives them success, was trading eight and away and getting Nurkic. I could not believe how many people nationally like, what are the Suns doing? Have you watched DeAndre Ayton play? He is not anything of what they need right now. What they need is someone who is an adult, right? Nurkic. Someone who brings toughness, someone who rebounds and can facilitate at the high post and move his feet defensively and be part of a defensive system. And Nurkic is a perfect fit. You throw Grayson Allen in as just gravy. They're just an irritant who can come in and hit some shots.

But I thought you were going to say I thought were going to say.

Coming and trip some people.

Yeah, that's who. But I think for Phoenix, the moment they went above the second apron to go get Bradley Beal, your man announced himself to the league. He said, I'm doing the new owner thing of I don't give a shit about money or taxes or whatever and every bit of messaging he's had anytime he's front facing to the public, it's all a grand show of money is not an object. We're going to put these games on over the air TV and if you don't have over the air TV, we'll give you a free antenna. This is what he's saying. We're going to build a new practice facility for the Mercury specifically because right now they share with the sun's like, no, they need their own one. It's going to cost $100 million and it'll be open by the start of the 2024 season, which is less than a year away. Everything that he's saying is loud, Dan. It's not quiet. It's not like we're going to build in the shadows over here. He went and he's aggressive. Now. I don't know if it's going to work, but I do know it's not going to be quiet.

Yeah, fair enough. Wrong word choice by me, apparently, but I really got attacked for that. I did. He seems to be furious, but I don't feel like people are talking when he lays out for us. The is it going to work model where you can ask it about five or six different teams. I don't feel like people are asking that about how I don't know if they're looking at what is happening in Phoenix and saying it's interesting, but I don't actually think that's going to win together. I've seen Phoenix lose enough that I don't think losing DeAndre Ayton and adding Bradley Beal is going to be improvement enough to be better than what I.

Just saw from Mean. They won the championship and their roster stayed the same for the most part, right?

But it didn't. They lost two key contributors, bruce Brown and Jeff Green. Both of those guys played major minutes for them, major roles for the Monroe to the championship. Now they're saying, hey, we're going to take internal steps. Basically. Peyton Watson, Christian Brown, these guys, Nigga Marshall, these guys are going to take a step forward and fulfill those roles. But that is is it going to work again? Because we saw what happened with Golden State. Golden State won a championship and they said, hey, we don't need you, Bialitza. Hey, we don't need you. Oto Porter. Our young guys are going to take that step forward. And then the young guys didn't and then they had to go trade back for Gary Payton and get rid of Wiseman and all these things because the people they expected to take a step forward. Could not take a big enough step forward. Denver is doing the same math right after championship, just like the warriors did. So that's a legitimate is it going to work.

Speaking of the Warriors, I just want to go on record and say that the reason, you know, one last ride and this is it for the warriors is because I want to be the voice in the Draymond doc of the sports radio person being like, this is it. They won't win another one. It's all over. I want to be the soundtrack of that opening shot where he's getting in his car and driving to the facility. I want to be the doubter. They never have women's voices in there.

You're hearing your voice. And the lower third is like, is warriors practice facility 04:42 A.m.. And Draymond's opening the door and getting work in like 8 hours before practice.

And I'm like, I don't know. He seems old.

Guys.

When Mike talks about Marcus Smart as the guy everyone deferred to in Golden State, like Draymond punched somebody in the face, got his money. Whose team is like, whose team is that?

It's him, Steph and Clay. It's their team. It's always been their team. And that's not going to change. And that's why they're demanding the money. They're demanding clay's demanding money. Demanding. Because look at this building. I built this for you. Look at those banners. We put like we're the ones that did that, not any of these other people. And I think after four championships, you kind of earned the right to say all that, to talk like that. Even if they're wrong, right? In the same way that Kobe, when his time came to get a contract, it's like, yo, if you take less, we can get some help here. And he said, I'm not taking any less. He got every last dollar. Why? Because he's like, I made this happen for you people.

The problem, though, is that Neiman Bialitza had that dog in him.

Oh, come on. Neiman. You made him neiman.

How do you pronounce it?

Pneumonia.

Whatever.

Neiman Marcus had that dog in him.

He did.

As a department store more than any other department.

They literally sell dogs.

Don Lebotard.

He needs a wheelbarrow like Mike McDaniel. This dog got a pair, man. Does he get a pair. My granddaughter sees his schlong what?

And says, what's that?

She doesn't know.

She did.

My granddaughter saw his schlong in the kitchen and she said, what is what is this, a game of Clue? I said, that's what he pees with.

How else am I going to stugats?

It was a little extended. I don't know why he was so excited.

All right. Very good, baby.

No.

Can I take this out?

It is a baby.

Anyway, he ate my couch.

This is the Don Levitar show with the stugats.

I don't think I will forget the moment of illumination that Dominique Foxworth had at some point where he was negotiating, I think literally across from Jerry Jones and Dominique Foxworth, who had assigned whatever intellect and merit he had to the riches and billions of visionary things that he thought Jerry Jones possessed realized while sitting across from him. This person's not actually smarter than I am. This person is in a position of power, but I can negotiate with this person and be smarter than that person. I've just seen here recently, Mike Shore, lead a strike and a negotiation against somebody who had had a visionary leadership genius that all of us thought was impeccable and unassailable. Bob Iger, who had the pleasure of running Disney very well and making a lot of money at Disney. Bob Iger looked at the beginning of the Pandemic like the smartest executive in the history of executives, because he got out at Disney right as the Pandemic was starting. Got out from under cruise lines, got everything that collapsed there. Amusement parks can't have anybody during the pandemic. Cruise ships can't have anything during the pandemic. Disney cratered. He got out just in time.

Another CEO came in to fail in his absence, and then he rushed back into the breach to save it. And now he's drowning. Now he's in a position where he has to sell off parts of Disney in order to stave off the economic collapse that is happening all around streamers during a turbulent, turbulent time in Hollywood.

Those aren't your opinions. Those are the opinions of financial experts.

It's not me just going after Iger as if I hate Iger. It's just what I've seen happen here. And now the latest reporting is that Iger is looking to sell Disney. This has been in the excuse me, yes, ESPN.

It could also be Disney. He's very close to Tim Cook. But there was a Hollywood Reporter piece that came out last week that painted a very favorable picture of ESPN's financials.

The first time anyone has actually volunteered the financials of ESPN. Disney went out of its way for people to have leaked that ESPN was Disney's most profitable moneymaker over the last.

Few years, their entertainment division. And they put all their streamers together and they said that ESPN was the lead dog when it came to revenue. And that revenue was $70 million. And when you hear that, that's an impressive number. It also omits the fact that that number is half of what it once was and is only going down more. And there's all sorts of out of pocket costs that come with launching all these additional networks. To me, the timing of that, releasing it for the first time was basically a Jeff Goldblum like, Jurassic Park flair to Apple or someone. Hey, come and take it. Take it. We need to sell this or spin it out on its own. But the way that ESPN did business and when we were there, we grew frustrated because we thought we were industry leaders when it came to digital audio. They never figured it out when it came to digital audio. And they brought in good karma to help sell digital audio. They punted away all their good properties, and as a brand, they were super strong. But they weren't what even barcelo was in the sector. And they were just trying to squeeze every last dime out of terrestrial radio because that's how they knew how to operate their business.

And I see the same thing happening with television. Let's squeeze every last sign we can, because it's still $70 million in revenue right now. That's still a lot of revenue. Forget what it used to be. Let's just concentrate on this and the foresight be damned.

That's Apple's job, that's a time bomb, right? Like, every second you're holding it is a second closer to exploding and being nothing. So the time to sell is now, because we know the way this thing has gone, a year from now, it's going to be less profitable, make less revenue, and be less valuable as a piece in the sales. Now, this is tying into something that I read in the Wall Street Journal about how the NBA is trying to get ready for its new TV deal, which is going to be up soon. And its existing partners, Disney and Time Warner Discovery, are balking at paying what they've been paying, which is $2.6 billion a year. I don't know.

This opens the door for NBC Universal.

And Amazon for the other streamers, right, for them to create new inventory pieces to then sell off. The article is framed in a very positive way of, oh, yeah, the NBA can make way more money now by selling off this new inventory based on the reticence of the existing partners. But the reality is, we've finally reached the part where for the last decade plus, every rights deal is more, no more, because live is better. We need live sports more and more and more. And now, for the first time, we're like a little too much.

Yeah. Baseball was ahead of the curve in getting the big dollars, but also the bottom falling out.

Yeah.

And so that, combined with a collapse of local TV rights deals all across the league and across sports, I believe we finally, I think, reached the nexus of, is this the part where this all collapses?

The part that I have found more interesting about this particular intersection, without understanding totally the business of it is, are we finally at the place where these owners do incur a risk on their franchises, no longer going up in value? Because if the well hasn't dried out you can see it from here. You can see that the market has been saturated with so much money that once you get to the partner saying, we think that this isn't worth it, you've arrived in the place where the money can't go up anymore.

Well, it reminds me a little bit of all these tech companies going under, because the way VCs work is that they will fund ten, nine of them will fail. They'll get a unicorn on one of them. And when that stops happening at the rate that it once was, everything starts to shrink. And all of a sudden, the reality of it that so many of these things are being subsidized by so many other things. If those other things go away the way they are with local TV, with all of this, I don't think it's just a sports thing. I don't think it's just a TV thing or just a streaming thing. I think we're seeing it across industries, the economy. Yeah. And it's terrifying because you're like, well, but where do we go? Like, if you can have a movie made, for example, by Netflix, Amazon or Apple, and that's where it is, then all of the other there is no middle, and then the bottom starts to drop.

The funny thing when it comes to basketball, I've told this story before in the past, my job on NBA radio, sometimes we have callers. We had a caller call in and says, hey, guys, I'm a big fan of basketball. I listen to you guys all the time. I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is I check the box scores and see what happened. I check the highlights on YouTube and on Instagram. I follow all the news breakers on Twitter and up to date with the news and the rumors and everything. And he says, I haven't watched a game in two years.

Are you kidding me?

Yeah.

And so I thought that story was.

Going bums me out.

But it's crazy because up until that last sentence, you would say, this is the ideal customer. This guy wants to consume our product wherever it is, at all times. He is devoted, he's up to date, he's invested in a way that he's not a casual. But the number one way we make money is by you watching the game. And so if we are creating a world where you don't need to watch the game, then how do we monetize and how do we convince the big broadcasters to pay us?

Is that when the leagues start to take that back, though? Because if they're like if we don't let people have clips like the NBA has been so generous about giving you can repost stuff from game that the NFL is is maybe that's part of where things start to go, where it's like well, if you can only see the highlights from our NBA app, do they start taking some of that? You I don't know how you can have someone who watches only highlights but not have the you need the games televised to have the highlights.

This is an interesting mutant creation that's been created with a new generation of fans, though. The time that I discovered it, I mean, bill Lawrence was explaining how disgusted he is by his kids being people who are only interested in the numbers that the human beings are producing. They treat sports as all of it's a fantasy league. They don't need the games. They just need the data, the information, the numbers, because they can be traded, transacted and everything else. And so you get a level of sports fandom that is detached from loving the actual product. You just love that the product provides the soap opera, the content, the numbers that you need. But you don't actually need the game itself. You need the box score, not the Acrobatics in the sky.

But you need the Acrobatics in the sky. It's like local news, right? It's like, hey, well, why do we have local newspapers? Why don't we just all read USA Today and New York Times? Whatever. Because someone's got to be there locally to do this story that we are all going to aggregate off of at the end of it. I can't remember when I said this, but in a recent episode of the podcast, I said, these newsbreakers, it doesn't matter because nobody owns the news, right? In a way, yes. Why would I pay for something that I cannot own and make my property that everyone can just pick up on and build off of? But the reality is it does need to exist because somebody needs to be making the content that we're all aggregating off of.

But what is it worth, though? What is the content worth? When you were mentioning the idea that the warriors, draymond Green and Steph Curry and Clay Thompson, they look at what they built over the last ten years and they're like, man, we built a giant economy here. We are light years ahead because we allowed our owners to basically build something in the middle of the Silicon Valley. Everything that can absorb all of the taxes and everything else, because we're a money making machine. And now I expect a Jalen Brown to get $300 million, which can only be gotten if the TV rights deal is $2.6 billion the way that it has been. You can't put that toothpaste back in once you've paid Jalen Brown $300 million. These guys aren't going to start taking pay cuts or wanting collectively bargained pay cuts once the TV rights deals go down.

They won't, but it also comes back. So basically what ends up happening is this is deep CBA talk for everybody. So what happens is, let's say the TV rights deal goes down and the cap goes down, but all these guys are making the money that they sign on these extensions before when we thought the cap would go up. What ends up happening is the NBA holds 10% of everybody's check in escrow, and at the end of the year, they do all the math. And if it comes out that the salaries totally come up to 51% of basketball related income then everyone gets their 10% back. But if it turns out the players made more money, they ended up with 55%, then they take the money that was held in escrow and they give that back to the owners, learn something.

I had no idea.

Sometimes they have to readjust it. Yes, that is good information. It does feel like the whole thing is collapsing, though, right? If they don't get if the money goes down, then all of a sudden, if the money goes down on these TV contracts, then so too does the value of the franchises, does it not?

But, Dan, they're going to find ways to get their money and it's going to be us that ends up paying for it. It's not going to be these big companies because I love soccer. Do you know how much money I have to pay to watch all the soccer that I want to watch? Hundreds and hundreds of dollars in subscription fees. We were complaining about our high cable packages at the height of cable television and how ESPN was making all their money. And then people started cutting the cord and we enjoyed the three months or so where we were paying. Look, I'm paying $25 for everything. But they found a way. And now you're paying more for your entertainment. I guarantee you, unless you're on some illegal streaming platform, you're paying more now than you did in the height of DirecTV days.

I was not expecting an ESPN release that was basically, hey, holy, we made a lot of money last year.

We used to be so good, though.

We made so much money. Real piece. Don Lebotard, you are very comfortable talking about how you met your wife, how much you love her, how important she is to you. And that's the reason that I asked the question. I've always admired that about you, that you have no problems whatsoever professing your love.

Well, the thing is, I have a new wife know, me and Bianca didn't make it, so I moved on. We moved on.

It was for the better for both of us.

Still got things just got a little awkward there. So let me be the first on this show to congratulate you on the new wife. Vince, congratulations on feeling whole, feeling complete. Let's talk tailgating. Yeah.

Don'T feel awkward, budy.

I appreciate you soothing me in this regard, but I already feel terribly awkward. And then my teammate comes to my defense with not a question, but just a healthy congratulations. And the further pointing out of that awkwardness because he's always good for me in those spots. I'm also thinking of divorce, Vince, after many, many years, 18 years with a partner who does things like that to you.

This is The Dan Levatar Show with the stu guts.

I'm feeling slightly insecure amin because I don't know if it's because Charlote thinks that we've been making dumb content from Los Angeles. If she's trying to elevate. The proceedings around here because Odball can sink into the sewer with fun things you learn. What are you guys making?

Face? Both of them sink into the sewer. Have you watched the show?

In terms of oddities, I believe that charlote in general is trying to elevate the intellect around here for all of us.

She's just wearing glasses.

Yeah.

Are you doing that thing?

Can't see distance?

Yeah. You think people wear glasses are smarter?

People have said she looks like a physicist in both appearance and tone and tenor, but that's not what I'm talking about. For a week now, she's been wanting to talk about an Einstein theory of some sort, and she said, Dan, if we're talking about Einstein, tell me, because I want to go get that book. And I did not tell her, what the heck? Because I'm sorry, you can go get it at some point. We'll filibuster for you.

But I don't need it.

I haven't memorized are you talking about the Beauty and the Beast library that they have over there?

No, it's my book. I brought it from home.

Oh, do they not?

No. I'm not trying to make anything smarter. What happened was Dan asked me for topics for the week, and I was tired when I sent them, and I read them back, and I was like, These are unhinged. And one of them was Einstein's theory of the Future and how it comforts me. I sent that to Dan as a topic for this show.

It was right after I want to talk about how much I hate Aaron Rodgers.

Yeah.

Which we did or not?

We did.

We did.

In the future. Yeah, we did.

We did not talk about it the way that you wanted to talk about it. The rest of us expressed our hate for him. There was no room for you to get in there and express your hate for him. Mike was mostly hogging the hate space.

Were you?

Damn.

Accusations are flying in this segment.

No, I thought she properly shoehorned her hate for Aaron Rodgers.

Well, I also shouldn't I shouldn't take the bait from Aaron Rodgers anyway. I shouldn't give him what he wants, which is for me to be like, this guy sucks, so I'm gonna he.

Will debate you if you want that.

Yeah, and I don't. So the Einstein thing, though, what's happened to him?

I mean, I know what's happened.

Debate me.

I always found him kind of interesting, and then he showed me himself or whoever he grew to be.

Einstein?

No, Aaron Rodgers. And then every time I see him, I'm like, dude, I really liked you. Stop ruining this for me. I really liked you.

That's the thing. The headline from The Atlantic we all need to know I mean, from The New York Times, we all need to know less about each other. I would love to know less about most of the people I know from what they have posted on social media or said publicly, it would be great. Maybe we should all just stop talking.

Oh, but this is something that's happened a lot inside of families over the last six years. People getting divided because they didn't actually know who other people were on this one. This one is particularly personal to our show because our show was fascinated with him and friendly with him and awed by his general excellence when we didn't know certain things about his opinions that he now expresses so freely and end.

Up freely.

As a price Hollywood fee.

And ends up feeling disappointed. And it's weird to me to hear our cynical show that's been around for a few years get hurt because an athlete's opinions don't align with ours. It's weird for us to be like, oh, we can't be friends anymore. Why can't we be friends anymore?

Well, I mean, you're the ones who said you didn't want to be friends with him. It's not like he said we were.

Honest about our opinions, and he wasn't necessarily forthright early on. Like, my problem with Aaron Rodgers wasn't the vaccine. Yeah, I had my feelings, especially when we're in the teeth of it and people are dying and it feels like almost a civic duty to go out and help your fellow person. But I got on him in ways that I didn't get on Kirk Cousins because he lied about it. It wasn't even a good lie. I'm immunized like, no, just go up there and puff your chest out the way that you're doing right now, not to relitigate all these things that happened. It was 2020. That's part of my main issue with his weekly appearances is that we're still obsessing about it. And I'm playing my part in it, I guess, because I'm reacting to his reactions. And the cycle continues.

The millions are being earned as we speak. But I got a question. Is he a bigger deal now than he was when we were talking to him, even though he was a much better player when we were talking?

Yeah.

Back then, he was just a football player and a State Farm insurance man. Now he's also polarizing. It's fame and infamy.

He's a main character now. You know, that tweet someone once said, like, there's always a main character on Twitter and you never want to be it. That's like Aaron Rodgers general vibe in.

Life, but also comfortable being a troll in a way he never was when he was playing the quarterback position, like, as a character playing State Farm representative, that's where the intersection was on feeling the need to conceal himself immunized is where he decided to break free on. I'm not going to care what anybody else thinks. I'm just going to lean into this, and now I'm going to go full fauci. Fauci's a moron. If fauci is what I have to believe in, then I won't believe in that.

Am I full because I've said in reactions, I don't find them that interesting. And here we are. Yet another week is going by and we're talking about some dude that is not on the I'll tell you where.

We'Ll where we are full of is that a lot of people will now remind us hey, when all of this was happening. This show at the start, when all of us were uneasy about what's the footing in a pandemic on what our shared community response should be when all of us were confused, it felt to many people here who disagree or maybe are anti vaxxers that we thrust upon Kyrie Irving a pressure to put something in his body that didn't feel American or free, even though he didn't agree with it. That we thrust on Kyrie Irving a measure of criticism and pressure that made us part of the horde that forced others to believe the way that we do. And the ones that are most reluctant about believing that way lean in stubbornly against it and say, you will not force me to do that. And I remember when this show was doing that, you were forcing me to wear masks, you were forcing me to take a vaccine. And I didn't agree with you telling me what I get to put in my body and then shaming me for not putting it in my body.

That's how people internalize it. That wasn't necessarily what happened. And I preferred keeping it to Aaron Rodgers because what Kyrie Irving was doing was a little bit different because every day would change, seemingly.

Yeah. I just think that there's a difference between people being like, I don't want to be told what to do with my body and then the greater good my body, I have no autonomy over. But for those people to then not extend that same argument and freedom to a lot of other people in a lot of other different what but, yeah, Aaron Rogers, I just think is an agent of chaos. I think he doesn't really care what he's saying or what side he's on. It's like where the liberal and conservative end up meeting in the concentric circle because both can go.

Yeah. It's like how Robert De Niro is famously liberal, also holds up antivax principles and leads this liberal movement that was going on in Hollywood in the early aughts and mid 2000s about we're suspicious about vaccines. And then all of a sudden, several years later, the party's ideology, easy for me to say, flipped on that.

The last three years have created strange bedfellows like people who would never have been identified I was talking about this other day might have been with you, Mike. We're talking about Rogan and how Joe Rogan is not someone who in politics would ever anyone would call right leaning. This guy's a lefty, a liberalist right up until the last three years. But now, because he identifies on certain limited topics on this side of the thing. It's weird. It's like all the people on the right is like, yeah, that guy is the guy forgetting that. Oh, the majority of things you probably don't agree with him on. But because these high profile topics, not even the most important topics, I align with him. He's one of ours now, and vice versa. There's a bunch of people who think of themselves as left leaning liberals. Oh, I can't believe he would say that about the vaccine or whatever. No, I can't listen to Rogan. He's terrible.

I have other reasons I don't want to listen to not I think he's done a lot of not good stuff for a lot of men who listen to.

Don't Know.

There was a lot of misinformation, too. And it just further but it's all.

Centered around a very limited number of topics that it's the same conversation we had with Chappelle, right? Chappelle had his stand up routine that dealt with trans people in a certain way. And I remember having this conversation with you, Mike, and you're like, I'm not going to watch it. I'm like, Because of the 90 jokes he tells, five of them make you uneasy?

No, I remember that segment. I decided to stop watching the third one on it when the specials became about just that and the reaction.

But that was my point of time. They weren't about, well, I wouldn't know.

The most recent one because I heard all the feedback, and at that point, I was just awesome.

I don't have a problem not watching something or listening to it, because if I start watching a comedy special and some of the jokes I'm like, these just feel mean and lazy. I'm not going to watch the rest.

My thing was this. First of all, I never feel like any of his jokes are lazy. His jokes are like, that was my thing at the time. You might not agree with the sentiment, you might be offended, but you can't do it.

None of his work is none of it is lazy.

I just think that that we assign.

A level of intelligence to him. We credit him with being a great order. And my frustration and a fan of his comedies was clearly something's off with this bit. If you can't even nail the landing in three specials.

My thing has always been this. The point I made to you at the time and the point I'm making about any of these people is that if you look at the totality of the work, the current work, I'm not looking at resumes, but like the current work, the special. And he's got this portion of it, which is the portion that gets everybody excited and talking and think pieces and all that. But that's just a fraction of the entire work. It's weird to me to say, because I don't agree with you on this. All of it's got to go. And that's kind of what's been happening in this country on either side. Right.

The idea that's the Rogan issue, too, because I am with you, that Rogan does lean politically closer to the left on a lot. That's why they take the all of it, aaron Rodgers especially. That's why they all run into the safe, warm, gravely bosom of RFK Jr.

But Charlote's not with you on the Rogans.

No, she thinks he's I think he's a dangerous person.

Charlote? I'm not saying he's not dangerous or whatever. I'm saying that if you put all of the Rogan theories and beliefs and put them this is left leaning, this is right leaning, there's way more stuff of his that would be left leaning than would be right leaning. But because the right leaning stuff is the spotlight stuff right now, there's a rush for people who are on the left side to be like, get away from me. I don't want any of your stuff. And people on the right to be like, yes, I will disavow all the other stuff that you talk about.

I don't care if it's left or right. I care if it's kind and not hurting people. I don't care what you can say you're the right, you can say you're the left. If you have a huge platform and you're using it in a way that I think is harmful, I don't care what you are.

So, by way of example, rogan, I believe, is pro choice. Right.

The bare minimum.

Right? Okay. So but if this is someone who has the ear of people who are not pro choice, wouldn't you want like, oh, yeah, if you can convince these people that, hey, by the way, you guys are wrong on this, do you really care? But also, he says use ivomectin or.

Whatever, you're applying a rationalization. For the most part, the audience and where it's grown is because people don't want to reconcile with a conventional truth. They want someone to reinforce their truth.

Right.

And that's why they sought him out in the first place. And if he says one thing that doesn't necessarily align with their truths, I think they're willing to look past that because it just reinforced the other ones. They go all la carte on their beliefs all the time. And what we've seen with all these people, once it gets sucked into this space russell Brand did it. Rogan did it. Aaron Rodgers did it. Kanye did it. Elon Musk did it. Over a long enough time period, you see them get further entrenched and drift further to one side because that side is the one that's welcoming of their opinions. And then before you know it, they've been fully red pilled.

They'd accuse us of the same thing, though.

They would accuse I don't care. Because there's a difference between wanting policies for people that let people live freely and.

Think, what happened?

Charlote?

Charlote?

Joe Rogan's bothering you? Joe Rogan, you have not been able to speak. You have been wanting to say, I.

Don'T want to come across emotional when I talk about these. And I'm constantly reminding myself to try to be cognizant of my tone because I understand how this lands with some of the audience. And believe it or not, when it comes to boosters, even though I find it to be a lazy line like we tells Oberman and Travis Kelsey to get your 10th booster. I've had one booster. I had my concerns about it. Just like everyone, I think, applied logical reason to this thing has been rushed pretty quickly, but this is what we have to do.

I never blinked. That was like no, I understand.

I understand all that. But I do think that I'm not going to judge anybody and put them in a vacuum and say, you're definitely a Republican if you have your concerns about the vaccine. I do think that we can agree on certain points. And I think that's the overall point that you're trying to make with Rogan's audience, that it's not just this catch all, but with main redline talking points. It doesn't matter what his other beliefs are, because in dangerous times when his voice is most important, he's not on the right side of certain things.

On certain things. But I think when you radicalize, you're basically radicalizing people when you say, if you aren't 100% lockstep, people are radicalized. No, I'm saying when you tell people, if you're not 100% lockstep with me on all of these issues, then you got go. What you've done is created a situation where it's like they have no choice. They feel like, I can't even as objection. I get it. There are certain things that Nazis are bad. They shouldn't be like, Well, I support pro choice and I support the dangerous universal healthcare platform.

Super dangerous people. And they're like, this guy makes a lot of sense. And he doesn't journalistically press on. He's not a journalist. He's just a media member. He doesn't press on some of the more problematic aspects of platforming people.

But I guess my point is when you build a wall and you kick people out on the this side of the wall, you don't know what the to out there. If you keep them in here, yeah, they might be less desirables or whatever, but at least you have tabs on what's happening. You send them out to the wilderness, you don't know what they're building out there. And when you don't know what they come back as einstein.