You're listening.

To.

Draftkings Network.

Welcome to The Big Suie, presented by DraftKings.

Why are you listening to.

This show? The podcast that seems very similar to the other Dan Levitard podcast. I'm sorry, I'm not going to apologize for that. In fact, the only difference.

Seems to be this imaging. I have been tempted in restaurants just walking past tables to grab somebody's fries if they're just there. That hasn't happened to you guys?

I've done it. And now here's The Marching Man to Nowhere, Fatface, and the habitual liar.

I have to admit it, I am sad to admit it, but when I just saw the fried turkey emerge from its broiler, it looked really good.

It.

Looked the correct color of brown. Greg Cody might be victorious here. Look at him, how happy he is in the parking garage, working hard near the flames. He is stirring the oil.

We haven't checked in much with Roy.

Yeah, Roy, we'll check in with him in a week, see if he's finished and if he's had enough time. He's taking his time. But before we do any of that, Pablo Torre joins us from New York. I want to get his expert opinion here on some sound produced by Eric Adams, the mayor of New York. He seems a little bit loopy. He says a lot of funny things that are unintentionally funny. And here he is being asked a question about describing New York in one word. Mr. Mayor, we've come to the end of what was a very.

Eventful 2023, right?

So when you look at.

The totality of the.

Year.

If you had to describe it.

And the stuff to do in one word, what would that word be?

And tell me why. New York. This is a place where every day you wake up, you could experience everything from a plane crashing into our trade center to a person who's celebrating a new business that's open. This is a very, very complicated city. And that's why this is the greatest city on the globe. An amazingly terrible answer.

You do wake up.

I mean, some of us do, yes.

He was asked for one word just for the record there. And he started with New York and then proceeded to say about 35 more words.

Some of which- Well, I didn't think it could get any worse after he was asked for a word, gave two. Then the first thing he says, You can wake up any morning. And this is one of the things that makes the city incredible. 9/11s happened.

Yes, yeah. I'm in this place, Dan, where I have to check how funny I find all of these politicians, because I know there is this larger argument that I should not find Eric Adams hilarious because he does real things that affect real people with real policies. And yet I just laugh at that. I think to myself, This is part of, in a weird way, Eric Adams's real answer is, New York's a great city because New York has mayors like me, a total maniac, who you, New Yorkers, somehow tolerate and find a way to laugh at, despite the fact that I materially make your life worse.

Is he popular? How is he viewed in the city?

No, I wouldn't say he's popular. I would say I like that I'm now local. I'm like a man on the street now. Eric Adams, he's got problems, but he makes me feel safer. I think that's what people in New York would say. Like, He's a cop. He's there to increase security. He seems to do that. But in reality, all of that seems to be smoke and mirrors. And he's an insane person. He's an insane person who has trailed by a series of insane lies that are... They're George Santosian in a way. He claimed to live in New York, but really was living in New Jersey. He brought the local news to a weird tour of his home, which clearly was set up for a sad TV shoot. He claims to be a vegan or a vegetarian, but clearly eats meat. He's at nightclubs all the time at 2:30 AM, and when he's asked about it, he's like, The city needs to see their mayor. And I'm like, Yeah, that's a good answer. Insofar as you can have an answer for why you're totally irresponsible. And then there's those serious stuff that he messes up routinely.

So no, not popular, but definitely an insane person.

I keep saying some form of we get the leadership that we deserve. Can you explain to me what it is that you want from leadership? Because at bare minimum, I want the people who are leading us with maximum power to be smarter than I am or smarter than the average person.

Yeah, the real trick of who I want to be a political leader right now is that I want someone who is not deeply thirsty to be a political leader right now. The guy that I want to be President of the United States, Stan, which will be no surprise to anybody who I think has heard me talk about him, is Dominique Foxworth. I want Dominique Foxworth to be President or at least Senator because he doesn't want to do it. He's overqualified. He actually has principles, and he's concerned about whether this is even a thing that he would enjoy. Those are the qualities I want for the guy who is supposed to take the lives of millions into his hands.

So no wild political ambition. You distrust anyone in this climate who has wild political ambition.

It's the Catch-22, right? I went to... I literally, again, as I belabor this point, I went to college with Vivek Ramaswamy. I believe I broke the news while filling in for you on your show some of the things that he would do. And that is the person who, in all of his attention-seeking and all of his hunger and thirst to just be that guy, that's the opposite of what I want to select for. Right now in politics, you're seeing the melding of the fragmented media economy with the political system, and you're seeing people who are really good at gaining traffic get traction as a politician. And I want the person who is hesitant to be in public at this point to want to be a politician, which is why it's incumbent upon people that I know, my friends, for me to bully them into, Hey, can you save the Republic maybe? Can you do a miserable job that actually should feel miserable if you have principles because it's hard and it should be unglamorous, and it does involve real consequences for people. Or you could do this.

Pablo Torrey Finds Out was voted by The Big League, the best sports podcast that there is. But God-blessed football and nothing personal. Billy, what do you want to tell people about how they are coming to rival Pablo Torrey finds out? Because he was not nominated as opposed to nothing personal and God-blessed football for what?

Well, I don't think that we're rivaling Pablo Torrey.

We're not competing. Thank you. We're not figuring anything out.

We've won twice already. Pablo's won once. So Pablo is trying to catch up to us. We were nominated for a third time for the sports podcast awards for the best American football podcast. David Samson is nothing personal with David Samson was nominated for best baseball podcast and Best Sports Business Podcast. This is a fan voting thing. You can go and you can vote, and then maybe a couple more trophies, and then maybe there'll be a newsletter about us one day within the company, but probably not.

Where can they vote? Just to mention.

Where's the voting?

I'll put out a link because it's a sports podcast awards. You can Google that. But we'll put out a link.

And we can go vote. Was I not nominated for that? No, you weren't. Is that what I'm learning now?

This is fan vote. We don't care about what the experts… I don't care what they have to say about my podcast or Billy's podcast. I care about what the fans have to say.

You have to submit the podcast, and then it goes through to the fan voting phase. There's a selection process. These are the awards that got through to the fans to decide the winner.

Can I award Greg Cody the award for a person who looks most like a Grand Theft Auto sixth NPC that I've ever seen? He does. I don't know, Dan, have you done a good enough job explaining for the listeners what he looks like? Because beyond the barefootedness, beyond the fact he has this giant apron and a T-shirt, and this... It's like he's literally in an abandoned garage. But the thing I am focused on the most is his hat. What's the deal with that?

Greg, you showed up with a hat today? Yeah, Team Valor, Cincinnati, Louis gave an acceptance speech before on the hat. I didn't.

Get it. He said it's his cooking hat. I didn't get it at all. No, Team.

Valor is.

Connolly.

Like his horse, that's.

Their team. Yeah, but he said he likes to wear it when he cooks, when he fries it bird.

That's what he told me. And Christopher said that he looks cool. His father looks cool for the first time. But Pablo, you are right. He looks like a cliched stereotypical street merchant in a video game who you just drive by as an extra, who's standing outside of a delicates and looking to commit a crime.

Yes, he's yelling things indeciparably and removing the turkey from the brine. And it looks actually shockingly good to your point.

I agree. When going up there to cover this, I saw that this floor is under construction, so it looks like he snuck into this floor and should not even be there. There shouldn't be humans on this floor.

Doing this. He looks like a morlock, like a mole person.

He also has the quality and skin color of someone who's embalmed.

Can we show his feet? It's the feet that really make it.

All right, let's go down, please. And is he still barefooted? Foot, foot. John Reed, if you can make yourself useful there. There it is. There it is, ladies and gentlemen.

I've touched those feet.

We encourage you. Youtube. Com/atlevitard show is where it is that you find our YouTube offerings. He got it. Wow. Pablo Torrey Finds Out is a very… It's gotten very popular as a podcast. The quality is very good. Before we get to what it is you're doing on the next Pablo Torrey Finds Out, what commentary do you have on what we were discussing about John Oliver and Elon Musk.

Oh, yeah. It's that anybody who says the word woke unironically and has since maybe 2020 is scamming you on the internet. Nobody who intends the word sincerely is saying it anymore because it's been co-opted in a way that lots of terms, by the way. I think there are lots of terms that have been co-opted so successfully by the other side of things in bad faith ways that we should just stop using them. White privilege to me is once a descriptive term that was useful, no longer, because it's just a conversation ender, because it denotes all of these things that people have campaigned on against. And so Woke is that way. And the thing about John Oliver and Elon is that what makes me laugh the most is that what is most cutting, I think, to the Elon Sims is that John Oliver is just like, This guy isn't cool. The way that he described him in that piece was he looked like a more unfuckable version of Billy Zane's character in Titanic, which I think we could all appreciate.

I have a child, Cody.

What's.

On Pablo Torreys Find Out? Look, you mailed that one in, Chris. That's one of your signature phrases. It's one of your signature phrases. Because there was an F-word.

Said, and Billy tapped me, and I thought Billy was tapping me to do Billy Zane, but he was like, F-word.

And then so right before I said, I have a child, I looked over.

I was like, F-word, but Dan wants.

Me to talk right now, so I have to do, I have a child. Is that better?

I'm barely. The joke might have been that Billy Zane, in this version did not have a child because of his bleepable aspect. But I digress.

I don't.

Have a child. We have less than a minute left. Why should people find, Pablo Tori finds out?

Yeah, so today we have a sit-down interview with a guy that I've been obsessed with for a very long time, a guy whose name may ring a bell in your brain, and that guy is Smush-Parker. And I've been thinking about Smush, Parker because last Friday, there was this report that Shohay O'Tany was convinced to join the Dodgers because he got this posthumous message from the late, great Kobe Bryant, and it moved him. And it was the thing that closed the deal. And it's this mythology I realized about Kobe still, even more so now in death than ever. And Smush, Parker happens to be the one brave voice in NBA history, really, to have shared a backcourt with Kobe Bryant and said, quote, It was overrated. And Kobe Bryant has basically made fun of Smush, Parker. He had been making fun of him for years, called him the worst, basically did to Smush, Parker what his name suggests he got smushed. And so Smush Parker, now, beyond having a whole life that I find fascinating, is doing something crazy in his last act. He is trying to become the fourth NBA player ever in retirement to become an NBA referee.

And so he is a guy who contains multitudes. He comes clean on all the stuff about Kobe and beyond. He's at the Malice at the Palace. He was bringing up the ball at Auburn Hills when that was happening. He's like this Forrest Gump character, but he says things with a truth-telling aspect that you just don't hear elsewhere because he is from the underclass. He is, metaphorically speaking, the guy next to Greg Cody, under the bridge in the Annals of NBA history, and he says that things that the people above never want to hear, and he actually says them. So please listen.

Kobe treated Smush very poorly. Thank you, Pablo. We will talk to you soon. Thank you, sir.

Thanks, guys.

Don.

Libertard. It's been a lovely cruise. Oh, man, that's my outro. As my casket is being lowered- Jesus. I'll have been cremated a week before, but we'll do the casket thing just for sure. And as my casket is.

Being loaded.

Empty casket? Yeah, it'll be empty. Closed. Just for sure we're.

Going to do that. Well, what's the redundancy there?

We're going to put on a public display.

Yeah, naturally. Stugats. What do you do with the ashes?

You're going on lovely crews. Exactly. Maybe we'll throw him over, my wife will throw him overboard. I would assume- She's nicking with her new husband.

This is the Dan Levator Show with.

The Stugats. Stugats, I am deeply, deeply uncomfortable right now. We've got the bare feet of Greg Cody around some wires, around some flames. I will tell you, Stugats, and I think this is universal, universal truth I'm about to express.

Okay.

That most of the men listening to this, Greg Cody included, always think they're younger than they actually are. Every single male listening to this does not think he is the age that he actually is. Greg Cody is one of the worst culprits when it comes to this stuff. So I'm afraid he's going to trip over a wire, break his hip, and then catch fire. Greg Cody, where are we in the proceedings? I'm getting a lot of tweets here saying, among other things, why is he preparing turkey in what appears to be, well, for lack of a better word, a dungeon of some sort. Then, Billy Gill, this is directed to you. Greg handled the raw turkey, touched the mic, and then handed it to you. Wash your hands, or you will get salmonella.

I saw that. I Clorox wiped my phone and everything else. I use a lot of hands, Sanny, so hopefully I'm okay.

You can't get salmonella from a turkey. Different species.

Greg Cody, put it on the poll. Can you get salmonella from a turkey at Levitard show? Greg Cody.

Update us on- Get that from a salmon.

-update us on where it is that we are, sir. How close are you to Dunn? Talk, Dad. Greg Cody. Greg. Please, Greg.

You guys are going in and out. I'm having a lot of trouble hearing you.

All right, just give us an update and get back down here, please, and don't catch fire. Just tell us where we are, pull it out and get back down here.

It's very close to being done. Wow. We expect to pull it out for real in about less than five minutes, possibly three minutes, and then we'll be resting it, cutting it, bringing it downstairs, the whole bit.

Okay, and.

How- So you're going to cut it in the garage?

No, we're going to cut it in the kitchen. Okay. Good. In the heating area.

Good choice.

How.

Are you feeling about how it looks? It looks crispy and it looks wonderful. How are.

You feeling? I feel great. It looks wonderful, honestly. If it tastes as good as it looks, I'll be a happy man. It looks great. We had a little bit of a calamity with the oil. We've been working extra hard to keep it in the green zone where it should be at about 3:40 to 3:50.

The alarm's going off. Time to.

Take it out. I'm real happy.

I'll tell you this, Dan. I'm not something to balance the phone off. From my time up there with Greg, off Mike, he kept saying that it was trending a little high, the oil. So does Greg think that that's going to impact the bird at all. He can't hear.

No, he's doing a famous test where.

You see how if the wing is going to easily break off, you know it's done.

Yeah.

The turkey tells me when it's done. You want the legs, you want the two legs to have a visual indication of breaking away from the body on their own, and I'm maybe a minute or two away from that. Wow. It's very close to being done.

This guy is an expert. The turkey talks to him.

Yes, we will wait for this payoff. We will linger around the Dungeon. Billy, are there any more details from being up there that you can give us? It seemed a little sparton up there and dungeoning.

It appears to be an active construction site, so if there's some dust particles or whatever on the turkey that you get, don't be surprised because there's active construction going on right around the corner from where Greg is at the moment. He also looks like someone who has just taken over that floor and maybe spends extra time there.

We will check in with Roy here shortly to find out where he is. Get the Snooze button. Greg, that is not a flat surface that you have placed your phone on. That seems- It's all he's got, Dave. -it's not a great place to put your phone. Can you give us, Greg? You'll cut in while I'm talking here and give us our payoff whenever it is that we're going to get our payoff? Greg? Yes, please.

Yeah, we're about two minutes from lifting. We have lift-off in two minutes.

All right. In the meantime- Exciting. -stugatz did his waddle swagger today and told everyone who would listen, six and one in bowl games. I'm six and one against the spread in bowl games. Had no business winning that Western Kentucky bet he made yesterday.

But I won it.

He was down, I think, 35 to seven or 28-7, and he did win it. Now give us all of the information that went into that bet that you have on Western Kentucky.

Well, the Hilltoppers, Dan, they don't get off to quick starts. They usually finish strong. And that's why I was banking on them to fall down 35-7 and come back late in the second half and bring it home in overtime. That's what the Hilltoppers have been doing the entire year. They win close games. They win at the end, and they lead the nation in wins and overtime. How about that? I got today, Dan. Do I have a big one today? The Scooters' Coffee Bowl. I believe it's Scoters. I have the thundering herd of Marshall, plus 13.

I'm going to write that down. You should have been red hot. You should have six and one. Dan, did you watch the famous Toastery Bowl yesterday?

I did not. What I saw was I was laughing when Old Dominion went up, six and seven Old Dominion, when they went up 28 to seven.

Oh, yeah, the Tops had a tough start. They were they were turning it over. At the beginning of that game, it was a very sloppy top. But they did figure it out as the game went along. They brought in a true freshman quarterback, Cade Veltcamp. As a Miami Huricans fans, I just go gaga over a three-star quarterback who was also a white guy. I fell in love. They have a lot of talent over there. There was two different approaches to the game, Dan. The old Dominion Coach said, Hey, if you're entering the transfer portal, if you want to get out of here, you're not playing in this bowl game. Whereas Western Kentucky's head coaches, I don't care if you're leaving. You want to play in this bowl game? Put on some pads and let's get her done. It was amazing to see Western Kentucky show so much resilience. In the end of that game, I flipped over to ESPM Plus to watch a bunch of kids do Snow Angels on top of Toast. That was stale. They loved this. This really meant something to them, and it made me fall in love with bowl games.

All over again. Amazing to you, but not amazing if you've been watching The Hilltoppers all season. I'm telling you, they get down big in the first half, they always come back. That was a quick hook for Turner Hilton.

They don't always come back. They lost five or.

Six times. Well, five times they didn't come back.

You're right. They also have an NFL receiver that came out to play three plays on the drive and then decided that's enough of that. I'm going to the NFL. I'll take my pads off here.

Anything else from the toastery bowl worth mentioning of any kind?

I'm getting word right now that, yes, the.

Turkey is ready. All right, let's go to breaking news. Let's do this. Let's get the pay-off. There you go.

Touch the headphones right.

Before you touch the turkey. -yes, touch the headphones. Drop the hanger. You drop the hanger that is used to pull the turkey out. It's on the floor. Now he's bending over where the flames are.

The hanger does not touch anything.

Don't.

Worry about that.

Well.

It touches.

The turkey. We're about to have lift-off.

It's touching the turkey now.

Guys, lift-off. Why are you using the mit on the microphone?

Your mit is on the wrong.

Hand, Greg. No, it isn't. No, it isn't. You'll find out why. It should be, Dan. -wow, look at that bird. -i'm draining right now.

-is anyone.

Helping you? -draining it.

It's.

Beautiful. -beautiful. -brown and orange. -it is. -hue. Incredible. A festive bird.

Where are you going to put it? -are you going to drop it? -just going to carry it?

-just.

Lay it.

Down on the floor. -no, okay. -he's got a pen.

Stagat, you're surprised that we don't trust him?

You're surprised. No, but I'm telling you, when it comes to this, I've never seen a more confident, more organized. It's a different person around a fried bird.

Look at how close his foot is to the fire. He's not paying attention to all the things that need to be paid attention to.

Greg, how satisfied are we with this bird?

It looks great, Mike. If it tastes as good as it looks, I'll be a very happy guy. It looks terrific. I'm about to tent it with foil before I carry it downstairs. Let it rest. Like any other meat, it's got to rest for about 15 minutes. His crotch is.

Right over the propane. I don't want to ignore what Billy said. Righty-tidy on the propane tank. Let's just go righty-tidy.

You are straddling the propane tank. Everything you're doing looks… I thought those were flames climbing and not aluminum just being pulled out of the wrapper. All right, we will see that when it comes down and we will check in with Lloyd.

I'm going to leave the tank on.

Turn the tank off, Greg. -turn everything off. -he's got it.

I'm.

About to, Dan.

Yes.

He's got it. I'm about to. I can't do everything at once. I'm doing the best I can.

The bird comes first.

This is horrific. I'm simply trying to make sure he doesn't explode. That's all I'm.

Trying to do. It's a pleasure watching that old man turk off.

Where's.

Roy? We're going to catch up with him. He's almost done turking off.

Yes, we will catch up with him in just a second. Basically, all I want to do is make sure that we get out of this situation with videos- Alive. -of him alive.

There's a lot of oil stains on that backsplash, which is also a concrete garage.

A lot of oil. Oh, no. This is what I'm.

Worried about. This is exactly.

What I'm worried about. That's why we.

Told him to turn it off. The apron.

Only got a little bit caught on.

The propane. That's exactly what I'm scared of. He's okay.

He turned it off.

He crushed this, though.

This.

Is great. Well, we'll see. I fully expect Roy's hotel room to be covered in flames.

And.

Just fully engulfed.

Again, I'd simply like to revisit what I believe to be something that is outside the realm of my comprehension, which is Roy claiming with a straight face that he did not have time for the turkauff to get exactly the turkey that he wanted to be preparing so that he can make excuses on the front end of why he's going to lose this turkauff, because I believe he is going to lose, and he's going to blame it on a series of preparation techniques, all of which were under his complete control.

I mean, man, when it comes to birds, though, it is peak season. It could be a supply chain issue.

He didn't go to the butcher and.

Said- We found out yesterday.

-that he only had a week when he had more than a week. I mean, he's claiming it's a week. It was more than a week ago that we started the planning for the turkov. And Greg Cody, who never has a back in my day, is wildly unprepared for all things that we do professionally. Greg Cody just crushed it. Greg Cody's got no excuses. He did that expertly. He did not set fire.

To anything. He did to bring all his own shit.

We were afraid. He was going to try and do it in this room. And we were afraid that that would be something that would make all of us catch fire. Yeah. He did it on the 11th floor under construction, and he succeeded. None of us doubt that that will be a great tasting bird. It was like.

Jadenherge traveling, not with the team. We can all die. If something bad is going to happen, go away from us.

It's going to be televised upstairs. If we have the viral calamity of an old man catches fire, which was at risk there. In fact, it seemed more dangerous than the pepper. I don't know that we vetted-It's stepping over wires. -i don't know that we vetted any of that properly.

Just giving him a microphone.

All of it.

Laying a phone on a cylinder.

One of my-There are so many things that.

Gave me anxiety. -the midhand on the microphone.

With that shot, the bare.

Feet, the phone.

The oven.

Mid on.

The mic. On the penis-shaped pillar. It was just an obstacle course of triggers.

You do realize, right? If he had caught fire in a live calamity that went viral on the internet, all of us would have been, in retrospect. Well, yeah, of course. Of course, that's what happened when.

We tried that. Just a week's notice.

Don.

Lebertard. If you lob a 30-mile-an-hour fastball to a Major League, of course, they're going to hit a home run. The worst Major League in baseball is going to hit 10 or 12 home runs under that format, being pitched that way.

They should.

Be throwing curveballs? No. What's your solution here? It's a fake event. It's not even real.

Stugats.

Dad, you had a funeral.

Okay. Those were my deck shoes of long standing.

They meant something to me. Real shoes. Right, exactly. No, I am with you, Greg. What's wrong with that?

He got me on that one. This is.

The Don Lebotar show with the Stugat. I have in.

Front of me the best-selling book done by Greg Cody and Ron McGill, The Pride of a Lion. You can get it now. Many of you have already pre-ordered it, but it is a legitimate best seller in a number of different categories, thanks to our audience, which obviously supports Ron McGill, one of the more popular people we've ever had around here, and Greg Cody, also popular. Roy, less popular. Roy is in the kitchen now, and we didn't get the payoff of Roy pulling the turkey out of the oven. We spent a lot of money to have him up there with cameras and whatnot. Now he's in the eating area with Greg Cody. We got no dramatic payoff.

We also never saw him put in the turkey. We never saw him with a turkey at any point. The only turkey reference is he couldn't go to his butcher and it's not his turkey. So we don't know that Roy actually cooked anything.

That's correct. Roy, terrible at television and not helpful in this regard at all. So far failing the turk off is going.

To lose. But gave us a turkey to turk off with. That's right. That we're grateful.

But that we haven't seen yet.

Right. No, I guess there's an air mystery around.

It now. But you say he's going to lose. It all gets down to the taste. It doesn't matter what you do before. It matters how.

The turkey tastes. So far, he's losing.

I have hope it's a ham. Well, no doubt. I want it to be a ham.

We.

Will see what Roy has produced in a moment. We've got Ron McGill here as well. Greg, Cody, what are your thoughts? Very quickly before we go to Ron McGill, what are your thoughts on how poorly everything has happened here from a televised event standpoint with Roy Bellamy? You've really kicked his ass so far.

Well, we overcame the calamities to produce what I hope is a good bird to eat. So it's all good.

Thanks for nothing. Yeah, thanks. I'm glad I went to you. Okay, let's pull out of that and let's just do Ron McGill. I'm glad you guys were ready with the proper energy there to do a televised thing. Excellent work, as always.

Dan, you mentioned- Christ, You mentioned the Pride of the Lion, and we have a giveaway for the Pride of the Lion. Beginning today, December 19th through next Tuesday, December 26th, when you purchase a copy of the Pride of a Lion on Amazon. Com or barnstownnoble. Com, leave your honest review of the book and you'll automatically be entered for your shot to win a holiday gift basket from mango Publishing. No gag reviews, I'm being told, just honest reviews only. You must actually be able to verify your purchase. Winner will be notified next Wednesday.

Ron McGill, the last time I saw him, was genuinely despondent. I don't believe I've ever seen him quite so sad. Your Cesta cyclones lost an ability to get $50,000 for your substantive endowment on Friday. Yeah, you were crushed. You were crushed and you looked at... Were you a misery to be driving home with your lovely wife, Rita, who had plenty to drink?

No. Yeah, she did have plenty of drinks. She was happy. You were drinking either, Dan. I saw you with a bottle of tequila. That's right. Anyway, there was.

No reason for that.

The bottom line is just a... You know, it was $50,000, just a lot of money. What that could have done for conservation is incredible. At the end of the day, the guys played really hard. They're a great group of guys. I mean, Vah, you're my new.. These are great guys. They really took it to the end. They're in the finals. They made it to the Super Bowl. A lot of other teams can't say that. So I've got to be very proud of what they did getting to the point that they got into. But at the end of the day, you got Udonis-Haslem. You got all these guys that look like a bunch of Odonis is out there. They won. They all ripped off their shirts like they're in freaking doing whatever that Magic Mike stuff.

Yeah, there was shirtlessness. Ray Lewis and Udonis Haslem were celebrating their victory. I was proud. For years, we've been trying to keep Highly alive. We did it at Dania. This is the only place where they're still playing Highly in the United States, and that crowd was big and energetic. That was not a small crowd.

No, it was packed, standing room only. It was packed, people screaming, people getting very happy. When you have Ud take off his shirt and slide on the champagne along the highlight court like he's doing a dance, I guess it's a big thing.

Ron, I want to bring Lucy here to tell you what it is that she did with a dog this weekend. It was very kind what she did. We made her feel bad about it. And there was a plot twist at the end when she returned the dog. So Lucy, tell Ron what you did.

Ron, I need your support here because everyone has been very mean to me about me participating in the PAW Venture program with the Miami Dade shelter. So on Friday, I took a dog out of the shelter for the day, and we went on walks, and we went to the park, and we just had a fun little day together. And then once the day was over, I went and turned her back to the shelter because I am not in a space where I can have a dog. For our YouTube audience, she is on the screen right now. Her name is Dolly. She was the best dog. And I really thought that I was doing a bad thing because of how mean everyone here was to me. So when I was dropping her off, I started crying because it felt so bad. But then when we got back to the shelter, she ran away from me and wanted nothing to do with me. So can you please tell me that I didn't do anything wrong?

You didn't do anything wrong. You did everything right. You fostered that dog. You gave that dog an afternoon of happiness away from the shelter. I mean, at the end, she was happy to go back. Dogs are very social animals, so all the other dogs in a social group there, she's back with her family, so to speak. But that afternoon off, it was like a snow day, so to speak. Where you're away from school, you're having fun, you gave her a lot of love, you did the right thing. You should be very proud of yourself, and the rest of you guys should be ashamed of your sofa making her feel bad.

Thank you. We all feel bad. What is the most social of the animals, Ron?

Dogs are very social. I mean, the dogs are incredibly social, more so than cats, of course. But if you're thinking domestic-wise, you got to think dogs. Wild-wise, you got to think of animals like mere cats. Very, very social, very structured. The painted dogs, the wild dogs of Africa, very social. Lion, of course. The pride of a lion will tell you how social they are, how family-bonded they can be. There's a lot of social animals. Birds can be very social depending on what species they are.

Social animals are not uncommon.

Ron, when you rent a dog, though, aren't you providing that dog with false hope? You're not renting a dog. She rented a dog for a day. It's renting a dog. She didn't rent.

The dog. She fostered a dog. There's a difference.

Okay, when you foster a dog for a day, are you not giving the dog false hope?

No, you're giving the dog a great time. When you bring your family to Disney World for a day, are you giving them false hope they're going to be at.

Disney World every day? No. I'm going.

To be with them later, though. I'm going to be with them when we get home. Right. I'm not dropping them off at the end of the day. There are days where I wish I could, but I'm not.

Well, they're friends. It's like they went on a field trip. When your kid goes on a field trip at school, do they expect to be in the field trip? No, they come home back to their family of their kids, and that's what's happening. That dog got back, and that's why Lucy said it ran away because it ran to see his friends. Let me tell you about the great day I had with my foster parent, who was very nice and very thoughtful to do that for me. As opposed to you guys that were probably watching a football game and drinking.

Not as much as your wife, though.

I own a dog, though.

I would say of Stugatz, one of the things that I'm enjoying about this is he really does have the dog doing the process of how one fosters, which is, if this person takes me out for six hours, this is my forever friend, correct? You have the dog understanding how the fostering application process works and then having hope, Wait a minute, this is my big chance to have a different life, as opposed to I go back to the facility at 6:00 PM and that's when they give me the bits, the kibble and bits, which is the only reason the dog was running back in that way. It's totally fair. It wasn't running in that way to be back with its friends. It was time to eat and be back where it is that it's normal instead of with that weird lady who took me all over. Weird lady?

Why are you going to be like that? That's not right, Dan. You should really be complimenting her. You should be elevating her on all your social media platforms about the heart that the people on the Dan, Levitard, and Stugart show have.

That's what you should be doing. I do want to get behind this, and I want to do more of it to help dogs in Miami. There are plenty of them that need the help. But I want to go first here to show you some photos of Steven Segel.

They need help forever, not just.

For a dead. That's correct. But a day is better than nothing. Lucy gave the dog that. But I wanted to show you Steven Segel in Dubai at a zoo, from from a zoo. From a zoo. From a zoo. And he is wearing right there the outfit that I like to call my pandemic wear, where it's just you've gained a lot of weight and you're just putting some bedsheet on you because it is comfortable. Ron, what do you make of these photos here of Steven Segel playing tug of war with the animals with a lion and fooling around, feeding a bottle to a tiger or something.

His hair looks great.

It's just a very bad message, so to speak. I mean, these people look at this like, Oh, yeah, I want to play with a lion. I want to do this with a lion. Him, Mr. Macho, Steven Segel. I'm in here with the big cats. I'm fearless. I'm going to do tug of war with the big cat. I'm going to give it a little bottle because I'm the dominant one here. Listen, this is a guy who's got a little bit of a complex. He's gained some weight, and he's trying to get some relevance in when I've been done with my career type of mood.

I don't think that it.

Seems.

Unnecessary. I don't think both of us had to take him out there as gaining weight. I at least filed it under I did the same thing during the pandemic and then just put a series of curtains and drapes on myself.

I will say, Dan, you are looking very fit. I was, When you walked in a highlight, I just went, What happened to Dan?

He's been working out. Are all of you wearing sweatpants now? Did you guys all break out the sweatpants because it's 50 degrees here and you don't know what fits and you need something a little bit elastic around the waist?

Jeans, regretably for me.

Yeah, jeans for me.

Too snob. Me too.

Yeah, the least favorite game. Well, second least favorite game behind does this suit still fit. Does a dude with jeans still fit.

Let's show Ron another photo here. Ron, tell me, I'm told that this is one of eight. There are only eight in the world. The white- The white alligator. -the white alligator in the world. This is at the Orlando Zoo. It seems like a baby. Does that mean that this was just born, that a white alligator was.

Just born? That hatched out. It just hatched out. It's a genetic mutation. It's called a lucistic alligator. It's not an albino, because there are more albino alligators. Albino, the eyes would be pink. Lucistic means that it retains some pigment in the eye, but the rest of the body is white. And it's just a very rare genetic mutation. And I don't know if there's only eight in the world, but I know there's only a handful. There's certainly not a lot of them. There were some very famous ones that were at the Audubon Zoo for a long time. We had one here at Zoo Miami years ago that was on a tour, a traveling tour to zoo around the country. It looks like white chocolate. They look like they're made out of white chocolate when you look at them.

What is the rarest animal you have ever seen in the wild? There was a Jason Williams there four years ago. We know that.

-we're rehearsed that a lot.

-window closed. Is it a snow leopard or.

Something else. I've never seen a snow leopard in the wild. It's one of my dreams to see one in the wild. To rehearse that, it's going to sound anti-climatic to you. It's called the Panamanian golden frog. They are now believed to be extinct in the wild. I spent days going up and down a hill, mountain, and monsoon rain trying to find one to photograph, but I finally found one and I photographed it. It's a beautiful little frog, but it's just a frog. It's not like a snow leopard.

Is it your proudest photograph? Do you have a photograph that you waited the longest for that you regard as your greatest feat of persistence?

I don't know if I have the greatest photographs of the greatest... My favorite photograph of all is... Oh, there's the Panamanian Golden Cross. Look at that. My famous favorite photograph of all is actually the photograph in the book, Pride of a Lion. It's the photograph when Kashifah goes to comfort Kwazie after Kwazie almost got killed by his stepdad. Spoiler. That photograph is just, to me, my favorite of the over a million photographs that I've taken. That photograph, when I took it, I remember it brought me to tears.

He is an exceptional photographer. How often has that happened? Give me a number, Ron. Number of times you've taken a photograph that brought you to tears. Less than five. Yeah, I imagine. And he's an exceptional photographer. The Pride of a Lion, as I mentioned, it has been very popular. Thank you to our listeners for supporting it. Get it wherever it is you get books. And I remind you this holiday season is an excellent time to donate to Ron McGill, who spends his time every week here. He does not get paid for any of this. You pay him with support. You pay him by supporting his substantive endowment, which he uses to buy new Cadillacs and better clothes. Ron, thank you, sir. Good talking to you. And booze for his wife. And booze for his boozy wife, Rita, who's a lot more fun.

Than he is. Merry Christmas.

To all you guys. See you later, Ron. Good talking to you. Always a pleasure. Can't spell Margarita without the Rita.