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This is The Don Levator Show with the Stu Guts podcast.

Charlote, it would be nice if, while we're working here together with Amin and Mike Ryan, we could get your attention and get your face out of the Einstein book that is titled, what the.

World as I See It?

The world as I see it. You have a theory in the Einstein book? I was expecting something more substantive, less pamphlety. I was expecting something that had theorems in it.

You know, Dan, was it George Bernard Shaw who said, if I had more time, I would have written you a shorter letter?

Oh, Charlote uses school word. Get her.

I was not expecting a George Bernard Shaw quote to make an appearance.

I'm the worst right now. I am truly the worst. I'm wearing glasses, paging through an old Einstein book, quoting George Bernard Shaw. I also can't find the quote. But basically he was like, the future is as determined as the present and the past. And for some reason I found that very comforting because I think I get the idea of it's like, I'm just looking for the choice I was always going to make, or I'm looking for the right choice. It's not that I can't make choices. It's just that whatever happens is like, well, that was always going to happen, so I can't blame myself.

You're saying everything happens for a reason. You're saying he is saying that the future there's no free will, is what he's arguing. He's arguing.

And a study just came out that some guy did at some college, I think Stanford, and he was like, There is no free will. I studied people for 40 years.

That does sound like how Joe Rogan introduced studies on his podcast.

No, I don't know. Maybe it's just the way that I think about I don't think there's no free will. I don't think we don't make choices. I just think the idea of there being a path leading out before you somewhere is sort of comforting to me, and you're just trying to find it.

See, this is my theory. Well, I haven't always believed this, but the last maybe 1520 years of my life have been centered around this. The universe talks to us all, but it's just suggestions. You can do it. You cannot do it. But when you follow, when you're tuned into what the universe is saying, you tend to make the right decisions. And when you don't, bad things happen. And the example I always give is about wanting to go to a party and all these obstacles happening on the way to the party, and then finally say, the line's long. It's a $40 cover. We don't want to hell with it. Let's just go to this bar over here, and the bar over there isn't great, and it's all right, and we go home, and the next day you wake up with, how's the party? Oh, it got shot up. Oh, man, I could have fought it. I could have said, no. I waited all week long. I'll pay the 40. I'll wait in the line. I'm going to get in there. I had the free will to do all that. I probably would have gotten shot, but I decided to subconsciously at the time because I wasn't in tune to listen to what the universe tell me.

Like, hey, you really don't want to do this. And so I'm like, okay, I want to do this. I'll do something else.

Stop being stubborn. And I think to tie it to the last segment, I think generally what was permeated through the country over the last few years and maybe since the dawn of time, if you're looking at it through a certain gender prism, is people just don't like to admit that they're wrong.

They don't.

People hate admitting that they're wrong.

That's not true.

I felt it too. Like, why am I fighting years ago? Because it still gets thrown in my face. Why am I still fighting the Goran Dragic thing where I was like, Tyler Johnson's a better fit because he's a three point shooter and he's a spot shooter. And I think in sports, like, because you have so many receipts in the sports content game of you being wrong that it doesn't account for anything when you come around and say, I've admitted that I was wrong.

Except for me, I don't have any.

Yeah, I've never been wrong, famously.

But I think it's a human condition to learn and grow. Look, I've voted on people and things that I've changed my position on. I think that's kind of refreshing.

I believe it was 2004 when they called John Kerry a flip flopper, and that's when it became, you pick something, you better die with it. No matter how misguided you were when you picked it, you're like, but this was my position, and if I switch positions, I'm a flip.

I think that's the real danger with how content is put out now with the rise of YouTube and the free thinking movement and all this, is there really aren't any bumpers for you now. And we saw how they the free thinking movement well, that's what they like to call it, but what it really just is I don't want to admit that I'm wrong, and I think in previous generations, they had to ultimately conform to certain truths that were accepted universally, certain shame that had governance over stuff. And Trump found the hack into like, Well, I'll just be and now politicians double down, and they realize that if they have a complete disregard for shame, then there really is no punitive measure.

They can have a complete disregard for rules if they have a complete disregard for shame. But given what Charlote is talking about there, when she fumbles through the Einstein book and says that free will is not a thing that's as close what Amin just described there because she's looking through science. But what Amin just described there about listening to the cosmos on signs and which paths you're going to take and then accepting the consequences of those paths is a scientific approach to spirituality. Like, that's legitimate spiritual.

That's actually closer, though, to what I mean, to be honest. That there is a path. And if you hear it and you find your way I see what you mean, though about but it's possible to make the wrong choice, because if it's.

Not right, then why are we here, right? If it's all predetermined I hate what oh, it's in the stars. It's faded. Nothing is faded. You have complete control. You're never going to take my agency out of what I do. It's my decision at the end of the day. But I do believe that there are metaphysical mile markers and stop signs and.

One way signs, clarity, alignment with things like paying attention. When you're talking about paying attention to the universe, you're talking about something arriving that the religious might call a sign that you're just looking at as an alignment on a choice you're making because your heart tells you this is the correct intuition. Some people get shot up at the club. Other people have the night of their life because they're following whatever they think. The path of the cosmos.

It didn't have the night of my life for sure. It was actually quite mediocre. We were bummed. And we got back it's a true story, by the way. Like, we got back, whatever, and then the next day like, hey, how was it? Like, oh my God. And it got shot up like 20 minutes after we were there when we were debating whether to go in or not. So it's one of those things where and as I go through my life because at the time when it happened, I didn't say, wow, the signs were there, I was like, wow, that was really lucky. But then when I started reevaluating my life and the different things that were happening, I realized all the while there were all these little things that you want to do this you want to do, or you don't want to do this. And sometimes I listen. And it happened to great success. Like, for instance, going to go work for Summer League and doing a podcast with Henry Abbot just because I was like, whatever. And then next thing I know, ESPN wants to hire me, and I'd never, ever even thought about being in the media.

Next thing you know, it's a career.

Next thing I know, it's a career. And has introduced me to more people and a better life for myself and my family than I ever could have had if I had kept doing the thing that I wanted to do, which was just stay in the front office and work my way up to director or player personnel somewhere.

You were headed toward a joyless career of not making creative things through the most creative path that you could get to.

Found joy in that profession?

Yeah, I wouldn't call it joyless. I would call it a roller coaster of peaks and valleys of emotion. Right. I say this all the time. I have never felt as happy as I felt when I was working for a team and we're successful, and I love all our players and the people I work with. I've never felt as low as working for a team and were not successful. And the people I work for were complete monsters, like terrible humans.

But what you're doing now has more to do with your individual fulfillment than that could give you as part of a team.

Correct.

Like, that being that small a feature in an organization that is having great success can bring you joy, but it's not personal fulfillment that is under your control. Like, you have so little under your.

Control if a player you directly scouted ended up being a key piece, you.

Could personalize well, that's what being on a team is.

Yeah, I would have gotten immense joy, but maybe, like, creative expression, that's the part that would have been missing. I would not have had that creative expression, but I think I would have found joy if I was in the right work environment, in the same way that I found joy working at ESPN up until a point where I didn't find joy because everyone I liked working with was gone. And I'm like, am I staying just to say I want to stay, and just like, should I have stayed with the sun? Just say I work in the NBA and to impress people at a bar, or should I do things with people that I enjoy working with? And that's what I did.

I think I'm going to stop talking about Aaron Rodgers. Or maybe I won't. No, I think maybe I'll just keep talking about him. I do think, ultimately, to answer the question I am full of because I am interested in the conversation. I'm interested in his heel turn. At least that's the way that I'm processing well.

And people will enjoy you being hurt by his heel turn.

Yeah.

I think your heroes could let you down. And I put him on a pedestal that, in retrospect, kind of feels ridiculous. And I want to know about your family life. I want to know about this dynamic. I want to know about the guy. And as the years turn and variables.

Change, putting men on pedestals doesn't always go great. Just tossing that out there.

Remember when we thought that his family was awful and he was the nice guy? What if it's the opposite? What if they were right?

Oh, no.

Weird that he found solace with RFK Jr. Right?

Don Lebotard, you got to know I'm a big Colombo guy. Salute to that boy.

Okay. I don't think that's a lie. I don't think that's salute. I don't think that is evidence. Salute to that boy. It suggests camouflage. It suggests that juju has no idea what we're talking about. And now he's just googling it.

Stu guts.

I'm not googling it. My grandmama stayed in the country. I watched the braves. I watched colombo. I watched matlock. I watched you, sir. But you go to the pill of the liar.

You tell him, juju.

Back to you, stu.

This is the dan Levitar show with the stu guts.

Lucy is here with us in a very uncomfortable you've noticed this, lucy a very uncomfortable mike ryan. He is really squirming around in the tightness of his shirt. He makes it seem because he's been fidgeting around in it for about, I'm going to say, 90 minutes. Like he didn't try it on before he left his hotel this morning.

Like, I wear this shirt.

It really hates it.

It's a really bad shirt.

I don't know.

Why did you buy it?

Because I wanted a collared shirt just to start the week and set the tone. And I needed something that went with navy because I had clean navy pants. And I just hate this shirt. It's an awful shirt. I didn't really look at it leaving the hotel. And then after makeup, I'm like, why am I wearing this goddamn shirt?

So you'll forgive whatever his discomforts are. He is fidgeting shopping the entire time.

Thrifting that could be a fun segment.

We can just walk into a store and just be like, top this, lucy, if you can.

You are doing nothing but spending metal arc expense account money. All you're doing is shopping, as far as I can tell.

I have so many hats now. So many hats. And everyone loves them.

And she can expense it because of the fit check.

Exactly.

They perform so well on social.

I know, right? I beat the system.

Content making of content is expensive. And it leads me to something that I wanted to talk about with you guys because I was legitimately bummed out when the problem with jon stewart, they were doing excellent television for two seasons, filling a lane. I think I can make a decent argument right there with whoever it is you view as the comedy greats of all time that are performing right now. Seinfeld any of them that you want to put in the discussion of greatest ever? I can make the argument that no one has had a career like john stewart has had in terms of impact. And for him to be growing this late in life, trying to do activism type things that almost all of us can agree on. Helping military servicemen get health benefits when they return undressing, an oklahoma lawmaker and a viral clip on gun control because we're all fed up with schools having slaughters in them from guns, fighting for.

Health care for the first responders of 911. He's done a lot. And some of the choices that he makes when it comes to activism are historically conservative causes that he's heading up. And he seems pretty reasonable with everything that he discusses, even when he undresses that Oklahoma State Representative conceding certain conservative arguments to the point that it really disarms, no pun intended. The Representative I'm a huge fan of what Jon Stewart did with The Daily Show, what he chose to do, and taking a break in some of his film choices. And now with the problem on Apple. Granted, I wasn't tuning in weekly to Apple to see the problem, but it would always show up on my algorithms because I enjoyed so much of the work and I would digest it primarily in clips. And now comes the news that it is no longer going to continue.

Creative differences is what they said. But I'm eager to hear what Jon Stewart will have to say about this. But it seems like it's political differences. Some of the reporting is that he was going to do because what Mike said is accurate. John Stewart is fact based. One of the reasons that he became such a credible journalist as a comedian is because he is so fact based. And so he was going to do something on AI, on China and Apple's like, no, you're not, and then dismiss him. Creative differences. And if that guy can get gone, then a corporation can stand for nothing and make everyone go away and never allow anyone to speak honestly, because brand management is the most important thing, from.

What I've read so far. It had to do a lot with, hey, they wanted to talk about China and Apple wasn't cool with it. They also were unhappy with the guests that Jon Stewart was bringing on. And I watched this show. It wasn't a weekly show. It was a very weird cadence of when it came out, but I've watched every single episode. And he would make jabs at Apple all the time in his funny little John Stewart way where you could get away with it. But it was pretty much only a matter of time before this happened, in my opinion.

I remember getting some calls from some industry types when he interviewed Larry Summers, the former Secretary of the treasury, basically arguing on behalf of we should have, haves and have nots. The wealth gap is fine. It's fine for corporations to make all the money. And he tried to pin down Jon Stewart in a hypocrisy by saying, well, you're paid by Apple. Would you say that Apple is gouging by grabbing all the money that they can? And he's like, absolutely, I would. And I got the call right then. That show's done. That show is over. Because I don't understand, I legitimately don't understand. What is your point as a company if you are owner of all the fu money in the world and all you're about is collecting more and more fu money, but never using it for standing for anything.

Well, why even bring Jon Stewart on in the first place to do that type of show? Because don't you know where you're exposed if you're Apple. And for me, the disheartening part of seeing the reports that it will no longer continue, someone that experienced it, not in the way that Lucy did, but experienced these clips, and I went out and saw individual episodes, depending on the topic, is this is no surprise given that Apple is funding the entire operation. Yeah, editorially, they're conflicted when it comes to China. They're pushing the limits on artificial intelligence like all the tech companies. And it makes me really afraid of what content might be in the future because someone went to the mat for having Jon Stewart on, and they obviously saw the merits in it because they brought him on. And I guess they omitted where they might be exposed. But now you have this case study, and you have this as an example. And considering where the industry is going with streaming, with Apple emerging getting critical acclaim, with Netflix being a part of everyone's subscription model at this point, with the rise of YouTube, which is owned by Google, you have these big tech companies and you understand why they have no interest in actual journalism that might expose where they are exposed.

But when you say you're afraid for content, I'm afraid for something a bit larger than that, which is the idea that we get to a place where these tech companies are the four networks that that's all that there. Is and that all of them are already I talk to industry types now. They're already saying that it's hard to get anything bought that's going to bother a fraction of the fan base. And so when you say you're scared about what the content is I'm scared about the inability to just tell the truth, to just tell the truth without fear of reprisal, which is what I thought was the America that I lived in. And the more power that these companies get to cancel a Jon Stewart and be able to do it quietly. I don't even know what the financial penalty is for doing that to Jon Stewart, but to be able to do it and not even think about it's.

A financial penalty to the likes of Apple or Amazon or Google or even Netflix, though they're in a different class because all Netflix has is the content. Apple can price a phone, basically whatever they want at this point and have because of the cheap labor that they're getting in China, and they can assume any kind of hit. It's a rounding error. Prices doesn't even come up when they're talking about whether or not they should extend or cancel Jon Stewart's show. I think that there is always going to be a market for true, honest storytelling. However the buyers are now all these tech companies and it's only becoming more and more that way. What it will eventually call for is a sort of United Artist, fully independent type of streaming service that you'll pay a mighty premium for and eventually that'll get bought up by a tech company.

Do you think people care? When I was leaving, when we were leaving ESPN, I remember telling people a couple of things that I didn't want to do. I didn't want to team up with an NFL partnered entity that would limit our ability to talk about football how we wanted to.

You wanted that at ESPN?

No, after we left ESPN, not at.

Mean, because being at Disney, we were plenty exposed and we got into plenty of trouble because of those partnerships.

That's correct. And so I didn't want to do that again. But I also had mentioned at the time that I didn't know how important these microphones might be in 2024 because I did not have in my vision then. I mean, you see a lot of different things collapsing. The idea that an Apple could step in and extinguish what is clearly a good product could extinguish a comedian if he's not beloved. He's certainly very popular and means something to people and can extinguish him in an ashtray without even giving it a second thought. And now he doesn't have that platform anymore. A platform where they had five Emmy nominations and indisputably were doing good and important work.

This is a person that when you go online and you see the Gen Z coverage of John Stewart, he is a person that people want to see as president one day. Like someone that people really trust. Him, I trust him.

His tone is always so good, and sometimes even when he loses his tone, it meets the moment to an understandable.

Point, and he's able to take these very complex issues that feel so beyond scope and make them funny and understandable. And it is something you don't really see very much. I would say John Oliver is the only other person who's doing something like this. And for like the last few weeks have been tough where I'm watching the news and I'm having a really hard time understanding and figuring out, hey, is this a source that, yeah, I can trust that or not. And when you have someone that you're like, okay, I trust John Stewart, I respect him, and you see him just like, all right, that's done, you're gone. It feels very scary and very daunting.

Do people care, though, the people listening to this care? Or is this just something that people like us who care about media things are obsessing over? It because I'm telling you that that Larry Summers interview that I'm talking about is something that nobody in television would have even tried because it's too sprawling to talk about topic matter. That's that difficult. And I've mentioned before, the television news anchorman was replaced in polling, according to Americans as most trusted news source by Jon Stewart and what he was doing with comedy and journalism at Comedy Central to change the form. And I do wonder, outside of fans of Jon Stewart, are there so many problems right now in America, on your television set, in your home with your bills? People don't have time to care about stuff like this that we sound like we're flimsy because we're scared. Oh, sorry. You can't speak honestly to your boss. Your boss is in charge of you. Jon Stewart doesn't have any actual power.

Well, let's be realistic about this. I think we're breaking to a large portion of the audience that Jon Stewart actually had a show on Apple. The way that it was marketed wasn't necessarily great and largely people don't know what they don't know. So I think the only people that are really going to get frustrated about it are content creators worried about honest, true storytelling and actual journalism. Because if you're worried about where might Jon Stewart find a platform to reach the masses and you can argue whether or not Apple TV is the masses because it's finite. Still in the scope of streaming, all the options have plenty of hypocrisies, have plenty of partnerships that are troubling. And I heard you say something earlier about how you didn't want to necessarily partner up with someone that had a partnership with the NFL. DraftKings is one of the biggest partners that the NFL has.

No. But control what we say.

No, they've been great partners in that respect. You're always going to be worried though, when the other shoe might drop just because operating as a Fortune 500 company in America means you're going to have your hypocrisies. There's going to be some money in the fray that you're not comfortable with and it might be sizable enough where they have input on what you say and it may land wrong and it may totally jeopardize where your content goes from there.

Don levitard all these high paid analysts, I don't want to mention names, TNT, ESPN.

They are dead.

They're not going to make it. Even if they win in if they.

Lose in Miami to calm you down.

That's right. If they lose in Miami, they don't get a chance in Boston or they are going to have their ass. You know what, in know Stugats, they were wrong. Are they going to lose their job?

No.

Are they going to get a cutting paint? No. What are they going to do? Keep predicting. What is the obvious? They are going to say, oh, the Nuggets are going to win. Oh Denver, the altitude and you know what, the Heat are going to win at all. This is The Dan Levatar Show with these two guts.

I don't know if this relationship with intern Adam McKay is working. People are getting very mad at this segment. It's not surprising. Anytime you mention a bunch of things that nobody wants to hear nobody wants to talk about that's where you arrive. So we're doing it still because we've got a long term contract with the filmmaker, Adam McKay. It's the Horrifying climate stat of the day. And how do you feel like it's going?

So, you know, I think we're improving. I think credit to Metalark, you've hired some great consultants, McKinsey Bain, and I think they're really starting to kind of jump it up a notch. The new image of me tested through the roof.

It is handsome. It's a very handsome version of you. You've spent a lot of money to create an avatar for yourself that is much more handsome than you actually are in person.

That's not cool. And the money came from Metal arc, and it was a lot, and Skippers upset. It was over 6 million. But what we're trying to do is, like, look, if people are bummed out about the climate thing, nothing's going to change. So we're really working hard to give it a positive hue. And lately and I'm letting a little bit of your background business out of the bag here. We've been talking to Chevron and Exxon about how to make this a little more pleasant.

I'd love to hear this. It's not even just pleasant. I'd like to find the laughter around some of this. People are finding it dark. They're finding it depressing. They're blaming me. They're blaming you. They don't understand why we're spending any money on any of this.

Yeah, I mean, the big thing is no one wants to be driven to the point of alarm, where they have to go in the streets and march or yell at their representatives or demand action. That's the last thing anyone wants. So we're working on making it more of a lifestyle pleasant kind of thing, and I think we're doing well. I mean, look at the image of me.

This is all we have to prove what you're suggesting. How else are we doing this to make this a little more positive, a little lighter?

Well, we're working with the big corporations to create carbon offsets. I don't know if you know that Metalark has a new program where a helicopter flies over Northern Florida and drops tree seats. We don't know if they take or not, but it's a carbon offset.

I don't know why we're making any of these business deals with you.

You're not the guy in charge. It's Skipper. It's McKinsey. It's Bane Now, chevron and Exxon. And they're really smart. It's all market based. In fact, every word I've said to you so far is market based.

Tested.

What's that?

Tested?

Yes. I'm looking at a screen right now that shows when I get it out of line with the market testing we've done, and today's stat is in line with that.

All right, let me find our music here. Hold on a second. Let me see where this is. Die. We're all going to die. We're all going to.

Die.

We're all going to catch you.

But it could be we're all gonna be inconvenienced. We all need to recycle.

So we're going to not limit. We all need to recycle. That's not a solution for what comes this way. What is the horrifying climate set of today? I do feel like some of the information you've been giving people has gone over their head a little bit. You use fancy language sometimes that they don't understand.

All right, so the East Bering Strait is where all of the snow crabs that we have come from. So if you've eaten snow crabs in the past ten years, 95% chance it was from the East Bering Straits. So they, because of warming waters, just had a massive die off of the snow crabs. So you have to tell me, is it 100% of the snow crabs that died? 2500% or three? 1000%.

Well, the worst is 100%. It can't be any worse than that.

Correct.

So all of them have died, but.

It was the least of the three.

But all of them died. A crab is now extinct. Because I did read a story this weekend about billions of blue crabs dying. Billions?

Yeah, it was 10 billion snow crabs are now gone because their ocean water was two degrees Celsius warmer than it should be. But it was the least of the three.

That's right. It is. So that is how what Chevron has helped and the Mackenzie group have helped make this more positive. Because it was the least you're giving the least percentage of crabs that could have died from those choices, even though 100% is the most yeah.

Everything you said everything you said is okay.

All right.

I just wanted to make sure I wanted to make sure that I had that right.

Here's the bottom line.

Okay?

So that was people don't want to hear and I've learned this from McKinsey Bain exxon Chevron. No one wants to hear bummer news. Like they want to hear things that you can donate $50 for or hey, the Democrats, even though Biden is expanding drilling leases like crazy, they're still better than Republicans. People want that kind of outcome. So if you're going to go towards immediate alarm, take towards the streets, your representatives in government, your news media have totally sold you out. It's just not going to fly.

Okay, but we'll continue pouring resources into this segment. Continue pouring music into this segment, animation into this segment. I don't think that people quite understand how hard it is for this character to come to life, this character to have this sophisticated of an animation. You're somebody who works at the top of Hollywood, and the fact that you have spent this amount of money to try and make this segment funnier. When people are rejecting all parts of this segment, they're rejecting everything. Why are you laughing in my face? You're a character here who's being very expensive to Metal Lark, trying to make climate change funny. And it's hard. It's hard to make people feel light about this subject.

.3 million for the base animation. And then every time we do the segment, it's $700,000.

All the crabs, Adam. All the crabs.

Every one of them.

All the crabs?

Done.

All the crabs.

Snow crabs. Done. By the way, real quick. And Chevron told me not to say this. It did not test well. All the coral in Florida and now in progress, the Caribbean dead and it doesn't come back.

All right, another bonus. Horrifying. Climate fact of the day. You didn't even ask for that one. A little bonus one as this maniacal figure laughs in my face. Thank you, Adam. We'll pick it up with you again at some happier time.

All right. Thanks, Dan.