"I Just Am That B*tch": Ilana Glazer on Broad City, Broadway and Bursting Bubbles

Before she rode the shooting star of Broad City into the comedy stratosphere, Ilana Glazer lived in Pablo's old apartment. The non-roommates reunite to blow off steam on: the infuriating inequality of New York; the Helveticazation of Silicon Valley; the re-establishment of Hollywood; the Fox Newsification of a "trillion-dollar hate propaganda machine"; the wisdom of Edward R. Murrow and George Clooney; and the spiritual engine inside us all... even (and especially!) if you're Jesse Watters playing the recorder at morning assembly. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

  Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre, and today, we're going to find out what this sound is.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  You are a Clooney head. You're a full-on Clooney head, dude.

• 0:11Pablo Torre?

  Right after this ad.

• 0:14Speaker 02

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• 0:47Pablo Torre?

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• 1:30Pablo Torre?

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• 1:55Speaker 01

  Hi, Paula. Good to see you.

• 1:57Pablo Torre?

  Good to see you. Thanks for coming.

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Hi, nice to have you.

• 2:02Pablo Torre?

  I hope this wasn't an annoying commute.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  No. Why would it be, A, annoying, or B, more annoying than any other?

• 2:08Pablo Torre?

  I don't know.

• 2:09Speaker 01

  Commute? Thank you.

• 2:10Pablo Torre?

  I don't know.

• 2:10Speaker 01

  Do you do the headphones?

• 2:13Pablo Torre?

  Doesn't matter.

• 2:13Speaker 01

  I'm gonna not.

• 2:14Pablo Torre?

  Let's do no. So it's like UN General Assembly Week. So genuinely a horrifying traffic proposition.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, sure, traffic, but the whole thing is horrifying.

• 2:28Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 2:28Speaker 01

  Do you feel...

• 2:31Speaker 01

  Do you feel represented geographically where you live? Does it feel right for you?

• 2:38Pablo Torre?

  It does feel right because I'm now a washed dad.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Copy that. I didn't know you were a dad.

• 2:42Pablo Torre?

  I have a five-year-old who started kindergarten.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Washed. Ugh, I just learned about this slang. Get over it. Get over it. You're cool. Shut up.

• 2:49Pablo Torre?

  I am.

• 2:49Speaker 01

  Also, you're a nerd. Me too. Like, great.

• 2:51Pablo Torre?

  All of these things can... We can contain multitudes.

• 2:54Speaker 01

  That's right. Wait, you have a five-year-old, you said?

• 2:57Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, and you have a...

• 2:58Speaker 01

  I have a four-year-old.

• 2:59Pablo Torre?

  Okay.

• 3:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:01Pablo Torre?

  So I feel represented because I'm surrounded by either small children and their parents, or extremely old people who I aspire to be one day.

• 3:09Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. Desperate, honestly, like a little desperate to be them.

• 3:12Pablo Torre?

  Yeah. I've gone from, "Oh, I wish I was in a cool neighborhood," to "I wanna trace the arc of the life I wish to live every day when I walk outside my building."

• 3:25Speaker 01

  I love it. That's honestly beautiful to me. I was just talking to a comedian yesterday. Like, she's 27 years old, she lives in Murray Hill, and she's like, ready to like, make the move to Brooklyn, which means like, I'm older now to her. So it's like Murray Hill, that's... I wouldn't call that cool. I'd call that a party neighborhood.

• 3:43Pablo Torre?

  So what's so funny is that I grew up there.

• 3:45Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 3:45Pablo Torre?

  Right. Your, I mean, your characterization is correct. As I often have to point out to people, it wasn't always a place where consultants went to vomit.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  Hmm, oh my god.

• 3:56Pablo Torre?

  And now, of course, it is entirely that.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  It's only that. Oh god, it's so puky. I'm shook that you grew up in New York City because, you know, I'm from Long Island and it's just mostly transplants, if not from around the world, from the suburbs. So you grew up here?

• 4:12Pablo Torre?

  I grew up here.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  That's major. That's major.

• 4:16Pablo Torre?

  Thank you, Alana Glazer, for being here, by the way.

• 4:17Speaker 01

  Thank you, Pablo Torre, for having me.

• 4:19Pablo Torre?

  I introduced myself to you. We had not met before, earlier this year. And you came to the set of Morning Joe, where I happened to be co-hosting that day.

• 4:29Speaker 03

  Joining us now, one of the stars of Good Night and Good Luck, Emmy Award-winning actor Alana Glazer, who is also making her Broadway debut. She plays the trailblazing CBS News journalist Shirley Wershba.

• 4:44Pablo Torre?

  And I accosted you in a way that, in a deposition, I would be arrested for.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Girl, no. It was not accosting, but it was shocking. And I wouldn't say aggressive, but it was like, like you had, literally, we had shared space.

• 5:03Speaker 01

  At different points in time.

• 5:04Pablo Torre?

  At different points in time.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  So tell your people, tell the people.

• 5:06Pablo Torre?

  So what I told you, as I leaned across the table, past the other co-hosts, and I was like, hey, just so you're aware.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Just hone in, just focused in, I was the bullseye.

• 5:17Pablo Torre?

  Here's a thing I've been meaning to tell you, Alana Glazer, for literally 10 years.

• 5:21Speaker 01

  Top it up.

• 5:22Pablo Torre?

  Despite never having reached out to you before, which is, I'm pretty sure we lived in the same apartment.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  And we had. Let's not say the address, even though neither of us live there anymore.

• 5:32Pablo Torre?

  You don't want to retroactively dox us?

• 5:33Speaker 01

  No, it's like scary, just, ugh, exact addresses are frightening, but, and we had.

• 5:38Pablo Torre?

  I will say that it's in the East Village, generally speaking. And I'll say that because the reason I knew this is even creepier, because I went through my email, and I was like, when? So me and my roommate, to be clear, this is a lovely two-bedroom.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:55Pablo Torre?

  In the East Village.

• 5:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 5:56Pablo Torre?

  Recognized, first and foremost, I would say, for its enormous patio.

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Enormous.

• 6:02Pablo Torre?

  Can you please explain for people who didn't visit our apartment, what this was like?

• 6:06Speaker 01

  Okay, can I, I'm just like sort of like sorting this out and like getting my, my feet on the ground here. So first of all, you are like over correcting for, yes, it is a creepy thing, period. To be like, I know where you lived. Yes. And you're a man. So it's like.

• 6:20Pablo Torre?

  I've slept in your bedroom, potentially, depending on your setup.

• 6:24Speaker 01

  You're a man, I'm a woman. I get it. It is like, what? You know, it is like intense. But you were like not weird and this happens in New York. I'm remembering that I lived in South Slope. And it happened to be the same apartment my friend Boris had lived in. Boris Keiken from comedy?

• 6:40Pablo Torre?

  Shout out to Boris.

• 6:41Speaker 01

  Shout out to Boris. But I got his mail. And literally, there were like roaches, like weed butts? In the brick from Boris. And I don't think you got that from me because that's not exactly the type of stoner I am. But, um, but we had the same experience. So it's not, I just want to say New York City vibes. And you grew up here. It's not the craziest thing.

• 7:04Pablo Torre?

  It's not the craziest, but just to be very clear about like me discovering this in 2015.

• 7:09Speaker 01

  And Broad City came out 2014. So like this is like, you're like.

• 7:13Pablo Torre?

  And I'm, to be very clear, like a super fan of Broad City.

• 7:17Speaker 01

  Really? I didn't know that. That wasn't clear.

• 7:20Pablo Torre?

  Me and my wife, we watched it together, my roommate, we watched it going through. This is not just me blowing smoke up your butt.

• 7:24Speaker 01

  Oh, that's crazy then.

• 7:26Pablo Torre?

  My Gmail archive was like full of Broad City references and I'm like.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  Oh, that's so sweet.

• 7:31Pablo Torre?

  March 10th, 2015. It gets creepier now.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Okay, you're, you're over correcting, but okay.

• 7:36Pablo Torre?

  No, it's just that I, I've, I.

• 7:40Pablo Torre?

  On this show where I find out stuff, I was finding out stuff 10 years ago, it turns out. And I had found your then roommate's Instagram account because there was an article in New York Magazine, in which was referenced that you lived in the East Village. And you lived with, again, not to dox him, but a writer for BuzzFeed. This is published, so I feel comfortable saying that. And I was like, oh, wait a minute. I know people who work at BuzzFeed. Who is it? Is my mental process.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 8:05Pablo Torre?

  And I looked up on Instagram, your roommate, and like dropped my phone on the ground. And I was like, why?

• 8:11Speaker 01

  You, you knew him?

• 8:12Pablo Torre?

  I just recognized.

• 8:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:14Pablo Torre?

  My apartment.

• 8:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 8:16Pablo Torre?

  In the photos.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, crazy.

• 8:18Pablo Torre?

  I lived there before you guys.

• 8:20Speaker 01

  Oh, I thought you had lived after.

• 8:22Pablo Torre?

  Oh, no, no, no.

• 8:22Speaker 01

  So you weren't receiving my mail. I literally was receiving yours. Yes, dude. Yes, Pablo. I literally, it just hit my brain of seeing mail.

• 8:33Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 8:33Speaker 01

  And being like, oh, who's Pablo? Literally, literally, dude. That's, oh, it just hit me.

• 8:39Pablo Torre?

  It's me.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  Copy that, okay. Wow, that's so funny.

• 8:43Pablo Torre?

  If the New York court system is looking for me, blame Alana Glazer for never affording the jury summons.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Yep, I, I now, it just hit me. Oh, my goodness. Wow, wow. So our deck was crazy.

• 8:55Pablo Torre?

  It was.

• 8:56Speaker 01

  It was huge to a, to a.

• 8:58Pablo Torre?

  Comical.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  It, it was clear that a mistake had been made.

• 9:01Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  And then they, you know, slapped some walls around it. And they were like, it's a huge deck or whatever, which was smart. But the grotesque part was that it was visible by thousands. Thousands of trapped New Yorkers in tiny apartments could look at the deck we shared across spacetime. It was not chill.

• 9:22Pablo Torre?

  It was just, we called it, and this is again, a very nerdy nickname for it. We called it the Panopticon because just like.

• 9:28Speaker 01

  Hysterical.

• 9:29Pablo Torre?

  Everyone watched the deck.

• 9:31Speaker 01

  Is that a word?

• 9:32Pablo Torre?

  It is, and it's like a, it's a very highfalutin word for just like, I think Foucault may have talked about how in a certain vision of a prison, one way to keep the inmates always under surveillance is to just make them feel perpetually watched. And so for us, the joke was like, we are being watched in this basically like canyon of air conditioners and windows.

• 9:55Speaker 01

  Ugh.

• 9:56Pablo Torre?

  A rect, an alley of just like apartments looking down.

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Grotesque.

• 10:01Pablo Torre?

  On like, I don't even know what the square footage of this thing was, like 600 square feet.

• 10:04Speaker 01

  The deck was bigger than the two bedroom.

• 10:06Pablo Torre?

  It was way bigger. And the, the joke was like, we're just out here, like, we had a.

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Pablo Torre, I'm seeing it on mail. Ah, go on, sorry.

• 10:14Pablo Torre?

  We put a kiddie pool out there and sat in it for a while.

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, you did.

• 10:18Pablo Torre?

  But yeah, we just

• 10:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, you did.

• 10:19Pablo Torre?

  unrepentantly just like got high in front of like

• 10:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 10:24Pablo Torre?

  the Lion King Canyon.

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Before it was decriminalized, it was brave.

• 10:28Pablo Torre?

  We were pioneers.

• 10:29Speaker 01

  Panopticon and Foucault are the like the homework I gotta do.

• 10:34Pablo Torre?

  This is the kind of podcast you've wandered into.

• 10:54Pablo Torre?

  2014, Broad Cities out. You're living in this two-bedroom apartment. You're kind of living in a place that feels, given your level of rising fame, I would say beneath your station. You're kind of like still living like an actual young New Yorker.

• 11:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:08Pablo Torre?

  And things are happening.

• 11:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, I was city biking today with a backpack, a heavy backpack, on the basket of the city bike, strapped to the city bike. And I was like, I just am that bitch. I'm just the person I've always been and will always be. Like, I don't, I don't think I was living beneath my station is so funny. I think, I think I was financially smart to be renting at that time until I could afford to buy.

• 11:34Pablo Torre?

  A very economical price point in my memory.

• 11:38Speaker 01

  I was living with Matt. We were like sharing groceries. We were eating tuna on spinach salads. And it's like, I like to live feeling connected to people and sharing reality. You know, in a personal sense, Broad City was like, what a miracle. It felt like, you know, the, the star, the more you know, or whatever. It feels like Abby and I were straddling that star and like riding across the sky. And we were just riding it. We, all we could do is ride this shooting star like, wow, how amazing in our. I mean, it was just, um.

• 12:07Pablo Torre?

  Were you surprised by the, how, how, I mean, again, I, I'm a New Yorker, so I have a very biased point of view, but were you surprised by how widely popular it was?

• 12:18Speaker 01

  I mean, like, I was surprised to be the person in that position, but given Broad City, the artistic entity, I'm not surprised that.

• 12:26Pablo Torre?

  It was so good.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  Real, thank you so much.

• 12:27Pablo Torre?

  It really is.

• 12:28Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 12:28Pablo Torre?

  I went back and watched some of it, I'm like, this is good.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  I love it, I love it. And it's like, you know, I just think that people, all different kinds of people are starving for an honest, female lens, you know? I think people, I think it is particularly funny to move through a story with a woman, because the way women move through the world is absurd. We're like placed in a box, and then we try to embrace the box, and then the box [BLEEP] us, but not the way we want to be. You know, it's like, it's just, it's a funny pickle women are in. I'm not surprised, looking at the work of Broad City, that it was successful, but then it was a phenomenon in New York, and a phenomenon among a certain type of thinking and feeling person.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  It stayed kind of niche, and was never, I, I would say, like, embraced by the establishment, in a way. It stayed for the people who knew about it.

• 13:20Pablo Torre?

  It did have like this thing, which I love, as a true, like, genuine, unapologetic New York elitist.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Do you have an example? Because lately, I'm, I'm rethinking this concept elitist, and I want to talk about it.

• 13:30Pablo Torre?

  Sure.

• 13:31Speaker 01

  But when you say New York elitist, do you mean the, um, understood, shared value that everybody's equal on the subway? Is that what you mean?

• 13:39Pablo Torre?

  I mean it very simply, like, greatest city in the world, and I wish there was another place that provided me. Again, like, the vast diversity inside of what feels at times like a little town.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:50Pablo Torre?

  And so the whole idea of like, New York's a bubble, I'm like, it is, but it's also a bubble containing the biggest possible, most diverse sample of humans, in which we all have to interact.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 14:01Pablo Torre?

  Including on the subway, including on the sidewalk, including on line at whatever. It's just like, and, and there's that level, anyway, this is just, I'm not trying to give a stump speech for New York City, but that's.

• 14:10Speaker 01

  I am. No, not even, not even for New York, because also, like, you know, New York City is really tough, it's really hard to live in.

• 14:18Pablo Torre?

  Yes, it's incredibly difficult.

• 14:20Speaker 01

  It's also like, since COVID, I, I think the income disparity has widened even further, and it's been impossibly. Heartbreaking to see this suffering rise in visibility. And I'm not saying it should be in the shadows, but it has become more visible. We pay so much taxes to live here. Why are people starving in our faces? Why are people not sheltered? Why are people unhoused and feeling unsafe even in shelters? So there are people are on the street, on the subways, suffering. It is hard to live here. And the wealthiest people don't even live here. It's a tax haven for whatever. And their brownstones are empty. I mean, it's like, it's infuriating and upsetting. And so many people need just basic, their basic needs met here in New York City.

• 15:05Speaker 01

  And the idea that it's some bubble, utopian bubble, is the thing that I want to like, I'm starting to push back against because Fox News and a very, and enormous, like beyond what we can really see, like trillion dollar hate propaganda machine that is actually bigger than Fox News, but Fox News is perhaps the largest container for it, has sown this narrative about coastal elites being against people who live in smaller cities or suburbs or rural areas. And meanwhile, Fox News comes out of midtown Manhattan.

• 15:39Pablo Torre?

  Oh, yeah.

• 15:40Speaker 01

  And the people stumping for hate, by the way, stump all you want for pride and love, people stumping for hate are multi, multi, multi millionaires, like manipulating people who don't have their basic needs met to profit themselves. And I'm like, we don't live in a bubble. We live in a hard place where we confront our differences and accept each other all day, every single day. And the elitists are the Fox News hosts and the Fox News producers who are creating these narratives to divide the people that they consider beneath them.

• 16:18Pablo Torre?

  I think Jesse Waters is a good guy. I think that guy's all right.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  Dude, I have a good, I have a good thing about Jesse Waters. My friend went to high school with him and they went to, I believe, a private high school in the suburbs of Philly. And Jesse Waters, I learned from my friend posting the day after Trump got elected the second time, that Jesse Waters would play the recorder every morning at like morning announcements, and it was not a recital. Nobody else was performing. Jesse Waters would play the recorder because he wanted to.

• 16:48Pablo Torre?

  Nobody wanted this.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  Nobody wanted this. And also, this young, creative person wanting to be seen and heard, and then probably wasn't met by the external world the way he had hoped. So then to turn into this hateful propaganda machine, it's just like, dude, you chose this and you know better, is what I think.

• 17:12Pablo Torre?

  And so this is where I just got to jump in here to point out that we here at Pablo Torre Finds Out did, of course, reach out to a Fox News spokesperson to fact-check Alana Glazer's friend's story about Jesse Waters unilaterally serenading his suburban high school with his recorder during morning announcements. And what the spokesperson told us is that, quote, "Jesse doesn't recall the exact morning announcements." End quote. Fox News also did not deny to us that Jesse Waters was greedy into the recorder in high school. Which brings us back, I suppose, to that television network as an institution

• 17:52Pablo Torre?

  and the truly bizarre origin story of a different television career. So I've done sports television for over a dozen years now. The first, as a young fact-checker of Sports Illustrated, my staff is so tired of me telling this story. The first one I ever did, the first appearance, the first hit, was on the O'Reilly factor.

• 18:14Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 18:15Pablo Torre?

  And I had no idea-

• 18:16Speaker 01

  How old were you?

• 18:17Pablo Torre?

  I was, it was 2008. I was 23.

• 18:21Speaker 01

  Oh my god.

• 18:24Pablo Torre?

  And Bill O'Reilly, this is '08 O'Reilly, like, '08. The point being that this was like weeks after the We'll Do It Live.

• 18:33Speaker 04

  Now, I can't read it, there's no, there's no words on it.

• 18:37Speaker 05

  Okay. Hey, sure.

• 18:40Speaker 04

  There's no words there to play us out. What does that mean, to play us out?

• 18:46Speaker 05

  Sting is gonna do, it's a video, Sting video.

• 18:51Speaker 04

  What is...

• 18:51Speaker 06

  For credits.

• 18:52Speaker 04

  I don't know what that means to play us out. What does that mean? To end the show?

• 18:57Speaker 06

  Yeah, yeah.

• 19:00Speaker 04

  Alright, go, go.

• 19:01Speaker 06

  In, five, four, three.

• 19:04Speaker 04

  That's tomorrow and that is it.

• 19:07Speaker 06

  In, five, four, three.

• 19:11Speaker 04

  That's tomorrow and that is it for us today. And we will leave you with a... I can't do it.

• 19:19Speaker 04

  We'll do it live.

• 19:19Speaker 06

  Okay.

• 19:21Speaker 04

  We'll do it live! Fuck it! Do it live! I can... I'll write it and we'll do it live!

• 19:29Speaker 04

  (bleep) Thing sucks!

• 19:31Speaker 06

  In, five, four, three.

• 19:36Speaker 04

  That's tomorrow and that is it for us today. I'm Bill O'Reilly. Thanks again for watching. We'll leave you with Sting and a cut off his new album. Take it away.

• 19:44Speaker 01

  Oh, incredible. I'll never forget.

• 19:46Pablo Torre?

  And so I walked into a television and inside...

• 19:49Speaker 01

  You're a little baby. You're 23 years old. Oh my god.

• 19:52Pablo Torre?

  The first floor of the Fox News building with those big windows like up against the sidewalk.

• 19:56Speaker 01

  Oh my goodness.

• 19:57Pablo Torre?

  And there was literally a panhandler making noise.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Oh my goodness.

• 20:00Pablo Torre?

  And he was like yelling for silence as we're counting down like in our ear in our I F V. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, I'm like, in my mind, I'm thinking, are we about to get another "We'll Do It..." Am I about to be like the...

• 20:15Speaker 01

  "We'll Do It Live"?

• 20:16Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, am I gonna, am I gonna witness this? Am I gonna be in this, in this viral video? And however it happens in a way that I presume is also horrifying, the panhandling sound stops and suddenly I am being told by Bill O'Reilly about Michael Phelps's swimming career through the lens of his experience as a high school swimmer on Long Island. And that's what it was. That's what I was there to do, was just like listen to Bill O'Reilly talk to me about swimming.

• 20:43Speaker 01

  About himself being a swimmer?

• 20:45Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, he had takes as a swimmer.

• 20:48Speaker 01

  Because Michael Phelps smoked weed? Is that the thing?

• 20:50Pablo Torre?

  I wish that there was any more depth to what the conversation could and would have and should have been. It was entirely just, man, this guy's really good at swimming. Let me tell you about swimming.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  Oh, that's it?

• 21:02Pablo Torre?

  I was just like a representative from Sports Illustrated. It was entirely irrelevant what I said or thought. And by the way, that's fine. That part's totally fine. I just say that to say, when you go to that building, you realize how it's right across the street from MSNBC.

• 21:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:18Pablo Torre?

  It's right across the street from every other, every fancy restaurant that is like lampooned as like elitist is where they eat.

• 21:26Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 21:27Pablo Torre?

  And the premise of like their black car service, taking them through real America is like, nah, Sean Hannity wasn't doing that [BLEEP].

• 21:33Speaker 01

  And also like definitely, I imagine Bill O'Reilly grew up swimming and golfing and whatever, like him describing his like illustrious.

• 21:41Pablo Torre?

  Oh, yeah. His origin story begins in Levittown, you know, the cradle of suburbia.

• 21:46Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 21:46Pablo Torre?

  So he's a real, he's a real American.

• 21:49Speaker 01

  Goddamn.

• 21:50Pablo Torre?

  I say all of this to say that when those guys are traversing their version of New York, it's a very both familiar experience to any New Yorker who's also just like been around it. But also for you, your particular version of fame in 2014, 15, to go back to that era, that must have been fun.

• 22:13Speaker 01

  The fame part wasn't fun, but making Broad City was so fun. But the fame part, I think, was like overwhelming and I was really young. And also people were understandably confusing our characters with who we were.

• 22:23Pablo Torre?

  You're in New York City, living as you do on the show.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I am who I am. And you know, the, it was funny, we, um, we would often get asked if the show was improvised. And it's like, no, we're really good writers and producers and we're directing this.

• 22:40Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, Amy Sedaris showed up and was just like, you know, we're just gonna, we're just gonna vibe.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Right, right. But people really were confused. I think it was so good and such a touchable texture that it was hard to parse from reality. And also I think it was a new way to see women so honestly and so funny. So it was just hard to make sense of for a lot of people.

• 23:05Pablo Torre?

  How do you describe the show for people who have never seen it?

• 23:09Speaker 01

  I don't.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Well, you have to see my show, Bronson. It was a millennial, you know, I don't know.

• 23:17Pablo Torre?

  Because two women in that way, and like, almost like a buddy cop sort of like dynamic was, for me, something I'd never seen before in that way.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:28Pablo Torre?

  By the way, like, Amy Poehler had blessed the show was one of your...

• 23:32Speaker 01

  She was our executive producer. We pitched it with her, and she was also in our web series, our finale.

• 23:36Pablo Torre?

  Yes, right, right. And so here was just like this legitimate, this, immediately it was like, okay, so what's this gonna be? And then it ended up, as I've ranted and raved about, just like this special thing. And when I try to explain it, I don't know, I'm like, you should watch the scene where Amy Sedaris is giving a tour of a quote-unquote railroad apartment to Alana Glazer and Abby Jacobson.

• 23:59Speaker 07

  Well, what do you think? It's a hallway. It is a beautiful railroad-style apartment in your budget. Where's the bathroom? Where isn't the bathroom? Jeez, where a catheter, go in the corner. You can fit a king-size bed in here. Yeah, if you fold it up like a taco. Wow, why am I so turned on right now? Ew, Pam, this place is horrible. Let's just move on. Look, don't bully me, all right? I can't take it. I was cyberbullied within an inch of my life last night.

• 24:31Speaker 01

  Two knuckleheads running around New York City in their twenties is how it feels to me. The show was also like part of this robust moment for Comedy Central, which was my go-to channel growing up. Like, I would always, it was...

• 24:44Pablo Torre?

  That era.

• 24:45Speaker 01

  Oh, that era. That era of Comedy Central, of Amy Poehler, Upright Citizens Brigade, and The Daily Show, when Jon Stewart took it over, Chappelle's Show, Strangers with Candy, Amy Sedaris also. Like, I remember being on Long Island, watching Comedy Central, and being like, where is this all being made? It was being made in New York City. It was like right there, you know? And then to have, to be part of its, this other sort of... Rise in Comedy Central's portfolio. It was such a family vibe at the time. And it was, we didn't really realize it would be the last gasp of the channel and also TV in that way.

• 25:26Pablo Torre?

  Right, right, right. I mean, you guys were clearly like internet fluent, but you were being housed in a way that was linear and analog.

• 25:36Speaker 01

  Right, right, right. It was, it was, it was traditional television.

• 25:40Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  Straight up.

• 25:41Pablo Torre?

  And that lineup, just in a sports sense, it's just like an insane lineup.

• 25:45Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 25:46Pablo Torre?

  It's just like, okay, that was all there at the same time.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:49Pablo Torre?

  And now we can never have that again.

• 25:51Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 25:52Pablo Torre?

  And.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  But we will, in our own ways.

• 25:55Pablo Torre?

  Will we?

• 25:55Speaker 01

  We'll find our way back, I think. I don't know, I don't know. I think there's going to be different ways of it that don't seem one to one, like an analogy, but what are we going to do? Disappear? What are we going to do? Just fall over and die? I mean, like, we're living in this world that we live in and everybody's got, we're human beings with engines inside of us, spiritual engines, where we, just like Jesse Waters, playing the recorder at morning announcements when nobody asks, just like Jesse Waters playing the recorder. It may not be in the same form. And I think the establishment TV and film has like stopped bringing in fresh blood and has really clung to its tent poles.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  And, you know, that's, that's sometimes comforting, sometimes frustrating, but I, I'm a hopeful person and I'm a faithful person. And I do have faith. I practice the faith that, you know, new voices will keep speaking up and being heard.

• 27:05Pablo Torre?

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• 28:08Speaker 02

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• 28:47Pablo Torre?

  I think, right now, what you're describing, which, again, is seen every day online, is like the open battlefield of content.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:55Pablo Torre?

  And we're all elbowing each other, and no one's watching the same thing.

• 28:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 29:00Pablo Torre?

  And people are, again, blessed by various financial instruments and/or tech companies.

• 29:06Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 29:07Pablo Torre?

  What I miss about, like, oh, wow, a channel, is that if you trust the people on any level who used to run it, and of course, they were wildly imperfect and made horrible decisions at times and all of that, they still had the power to, like, help and enable and platform someone that they thought was good. And in that way, I'm just like, oh, no. But now, we're just like all competing in the open battlefield of content. And that's just scary in a different way.

• 29:30Speaker 01

  This moment where authoritarianism has like a chokehold on our democracy makes me look back at our history and say, has it always been this way? It's hard to draw the line of when democracy... Was doing its thing because of the genocidal framework on which this country was built.

• 29:49Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, the whole thing of like, when would you like to have gone back to? It's just like, well, tough, tough for lots of people to even pick anything before 1990.

• 29:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, if that, if that. And you know what has historically happened here against Native Americans and black people and immigrants? It's just like, what democracy for whom, you know? So it it starts to blur the lines for me. And when you're talking about these institutions and I'm thinking lovingly about TV and turning on a channel. And now it's it's kind of perverse and creepy, the way tech companies pretend like they care about humanity and are trying to maximize for humanity, but they're really trying to maximize for their own profit. And also they're focused on AI and trying to create that as a new species that takes over humanity, not really humanity. So to see like they're sort of soft colors and a soft move and Helvetica or whatever.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  And and they put that together and try to act like it's progressive, but it's really just a choice of optics.

• 30:47Pablo Torre?

  I should be very clear that like my nostalgia for that time is rooted in a just like despair at the lowest bar that I wish we could clear. Which is that someone who had a ton of money and a ton of power and authority over what America broadly was consuming could feel anything like shame or accountability, even if it was on a relative basis.

• 31:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 31:16Pablo Torre?

  That I'm like, man, that sounds that sounds great relative to the utter like state of nature.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'm also not, I mean, I really love disagreeing and like getting into it to find the middle space. But I'm not even disagreeing with you. I'm like sort of exemplifying how hard it is for me to parse right now. Where does the line get drawn?

• 31:37Pablo Torre?

  Totally. And so this is my extraordinarily long segue to explaining like why you were on television at that table with me. Because you decided to do a thing that seems so hard to me. And so ancient by comparison to all the things we're talking about, which is you did theater.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  Broadway.

• 31:59Pablo Torre?

  Broadway. You did Good Night and Good Luck.

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:02Pablo Torre?

  Which I got to see.

• 32:04Speaker 01

  And I saw you in the audience. Was that incredible?

• 32:06Pablo Torre?

  That's when I was just like, I, I hope she understands that like, this is, I'm just like locking eyes with you.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  No, you're, um, I appreciate it so much, but you're over correcting for a creepy factor that isn't there.

• 32:19Pablo Torre?

  Great.

• 32:19Speaker 01

  But I love it.

• 32:20Pablo Torre?

  Great.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  I love it.

• 32:21Pablo Torre?

  I did lock eyes with you and it's the sort of thing where it's just like, she's, I have no idea what you can see in the audience, like the curtain.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Every face.

• 32:28Pablo Torre?

  Every.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  No, and I'm like looking like at every face. Cause I also like, it was so, um, so I did Good Night and Good Luck.

• 32:33Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 32:34Speaker 01

  Written by George Clooney and Grant Heslop, starring George Clooney and.

• 32:38Pablo Torre?

  As Edward R. Murrow.

• 32:39Speaker 01

  As Edward R. Murrow. And this is based on a film that he directed, I think it was like too young at the time to play Murrow, who like brings this sort of heft and seriousness. And then he was able to play Murrow for the Broadway show. And it was an incredible experience. I was nervous for previews to like break into from rehearsals to performances, but I wasn't nervous after a certain point. And I attribute that to having gone on the biggest standup tour I've, I'd ever done just the year prior. And I was really missing standup because you look at people's faces and it's almost like a conversation, but it's not, but it like, it's just a different connection. And like onstage, I'm, I'm laughing about seeing you because I'm like desperate to look at people's faces and talk to them

• 33:24Speaker 01

  like it's standup when I was doing Broadway. It was interesting to have that fourth wall, they call it.

• 33:30Pablo Torre?

  What? So for, again, to make you do the thing of like summarizing what this was about, for people who are not familiar, Edward R. Murrow, a true standard bearer of what it meant to represent the public interest as a journalist.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:45Pablo Torre?

  Was a war reporter.

• 33:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 33:48Speaker 06

  But we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. The actions of the junior senator from Wisconsin have caused alarm and dismay amongst our allies abroad and given considerable comfort to our enemies. And whose fault is that? Not really his. He didn't create this situation of fear. He merely exploited it and rather successfully. Cassius was right. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves. Good night and good luck.

• 34:21Pablo Torre?

  And your role in this newsroom, which again, I long for despite the fact that we're talking about like the 50s.

• 34:28Speaker 01

  Yep, yep, yep.

• 34:29Pablo Torre?

  But I'm like, man, look at that. An institution with people who care about this thing. You played the role of.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Shirley Wershba. So yeah, Edward Armero was a true patriot. You're right. I love the way that you said that, like representing the public interest. It's so true and it felt so good to embody that. And Shirley Wershba is an unsung hero of broadcast news.

• 34:53Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  She was there the whole time. She was a journalist who worked with Walter Cronkite, too. Like an illustrious career.

• 35:00Pablo Torre?

  But, but the whole notion now of like doing this play at this time, in which McCarthyism is, that's like the plot.

• 35:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:08Pablo Torre?

  Is that Joseph McCarthy, Senator Joseph McCarthy. He's rooting out communism in America and particularly in the news media, in the press.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:15Pablo Torre?

  In this case. And I don't know, I was watching it and I was like, this feels both incredibly important for people to hear and learn about again. And also in comparison to what's happening now, almost quaint.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Yes, that is exactly what my husband said. Quaint is the exact word my husband used. And it was like, shivers me. So another way to summarize this, also this play, is that Edward Armero went to battle for free speech. The group of journalists were building up to fully cover McCarthy and show what an unpatriotic politician he was being by causing terror. And like, who really wins? We would talk about in rehearsals in shaping this play, like who really wins? Because McCarthy was censured, but he's still in the Senate. And Edward Armero's program was knocked down to a Sunday afternoon like civics lesson.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  And yet, it happened and that sort of notch in history was carved out. So at least we have it to look back at. But I think the onslaught, the overstimulation that we are facing right now and all feeling crazed by was such a useful tool to disempower the masses. Whereas at the time, you weren't constantly taking in signals and stimulation and screens. So I think with, I really believe that with enough quiet, people really share values and share the value of freedom of speech. When you're saying, I'm longing for this like 1950s newsroom, but like at least it was quiet enough that people could look at each other and hear each other and hear themselves.

• 36:57Speaker 01

  And we really do, I think, share values, most people around the entire planet.

• 37:04Pablo Torre?

  Oh, and this one way specifically, freedom of speech, it is the thing you hear all the time from the MAGA Republicans. It's ostensibly a thing they care deeply about. It is very conveniently the thing they care deeply about when it is their speech. And so the premise of like, is this on paper, the thing that everybody can unite around? Absa-fucking-lutely.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:25Pablo Torre?

  We hear it rhetorically all of the time. It's just that when it comes time to actually enforce it and who must feel like, in this case, it's the FCC and the literal President of the United States, in this case, it is them feeling like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, you can't say that about us. Now it's, it's, it's, it's absurdist.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  It's so painful. Oh, my goodness. Um, yeah.

• 37:53Pablo Torre?

  From a trying to do the play perspective, at what point does it stop feeling surreal that you're looking into the eyes of George Clooney? When do you normalize that?

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Well, it's like you're talking about me like, um, living in the apartment that we both lived in, right? And like that it's beneath my station, but I'm like, no, it isn't. I'm, that was the right place for me to live at the time with my friend and roommate. So with George Clooney, when I first met him, just at a workshop for this play, he was so...

• 38:25Speaker 01

  Down in the soil in the process of it, that it wasn't like the Casamigos's very own George Clooney. You know what I mean? It was like he just had thoughts and ideas and we were just talking about the play. He made it easy to just be in it with him in a real way.

• 38:42Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 38:43Speaker 01

  He's so grounded. It's, it's, you know, there's people I think in this, in my business, who are kind of in the business to get to a position where they can perform fame in personal settings. That's so far from who George is, what he really, and as you could see in the play. Oh, my God, he cares about democracy.

• 39:03Pablo Torre?

  He's a true believer. I mean, the whole idea of like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna make one of my causes journalism. And I know he comes from a family of, his father was a journalist.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 39:12Pablo Torre?

  It's just something that, man, like journalism as a concept, I often talk about this on this show. We just need better branding. People don't think it's cool. They don't understand what it is. You sort of need a cosign from someone cool.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 39:25Pablo Torre?

  And I share your sort of like, some version of your nerve endings, where it's like, you meet enough famous people and you're like, okay, I get, I get the general gist. This is not like perpetual like sticker shock.

• 39:39Pablo Torre?

  But with him, I, I just see this public confidence and comfort, even how it comes out for like the curtain call, just like the way he walks, as if like he's, and again, I'm gonna sound like I have a, I do have a crush on him. But like the way he just is able to be the balancing point between, I know I'm [bleep] famous, but I'm gonna sort of like arch my spine in a way that suggests that I am also not above all. It's just like, there's that, you know what I'm talking about?

• 40:12Speaker 01

  Surreal is what's sort of tripping me up about your question where I'm like surreal, surreal. Like he's so grounded and for me, it was the artist and the leader. That it just takes the surreality away. It's like he's just such a leader that, again, the shared reality and the common values that we all share. If we quiet ourselves enough and turn off our phones. George is leading with those values. He leads with his heart. He believes in what he does and what he says. And it was just so inspiring. He really, he really is my hero.

• 40:43Pablo Torre?

  Part of my concern, I was like, man, is this gonna feel over the top? It's, it's giving a portrait of journalism through this man, this iconic figure for whom like awards are named after that we strive to win. How much of that is gonna feel like, oh, this is a little on the nose? And then you sort of like zoom out to what's happening in real life and you're like, yeah, this feels, this feels like a useful thing for people to be reminded of.

• 41:13Speaker 01

  Somebody had asked me in an interview about the show, do you think it's an echo chamber? Do you think it's like you're doing this for the, you know, for New York's elite? First of all, New York's true elite are so conservative.

• 41:25Pablo Torre?

  That's the other part about the New York bubble that people don't realize.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  I'm like, is the richest people controlling so much of the narrative? The New York elite are conservative. What was so brilliant about this play was the Trojan horse of George Clooney. And people coming to see this, the icon that you ask if it's surreal, but they're meeting the artist and activist and advocate that I so admire. And some people leaving, getting up and leaving.

• 41:51Pablo Torre?

  How often did that happen?

• 41:52Speaker 01

  Not often, because I think people were like, wait, what happened? Like, we don't know this story well enough, that Edward Amaro went to battle against Joseph R. McCarthy and took him down, but was also somewhat taken down in the process. We don't, I mean, it's a fascinating story. It was told so beautifully.

• 42:08Pablo Torre?

  Oh, but his network, yes, under pressure from

• 42:12Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 42:12Pablo Torre?

  political, obvious political forces, decided we need to compromise our principles to support the business

• 42:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 42:19Pablo Torre?

  and the cooperative relationship we want to have with the most powerful people in our country.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  That's right. And that thing I also want to say is, it was New York's elite, which are deeply violently conservative, but then also tri-state area people. I grew up on Long Island. These are the conservative people who made Fox News happen. I remember being a caterer waiter at the golf club in the rich part of my town and like seeing Fox News play, and it was moderate back then. So it was kind of similar to what was on NBC and ABC. And tri-state area people who live in Jersey, Connecticut, and Long Island, who are coming to Broadway to see what they imagine is Ocean's Eleven, George Clooney, or whatever, coming in like really learning something and seeing him stand up for what he believes in.

• 43:07Speaker 01

  Seeing people stand up for human rights and what they believe in is rare these days, not because it doesn't happen, but because it isn't distributed by the algorithms.

• 43:16Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 43:16Speaker 01

  So I see these people like moved, and it was important that these people are moved and know where we're at.

• 43:26Pablo Torre?

  The other thing about why it's meaningful to me for like a very famous person like George Clooney to stand up for journalism is that I presume as a default at this point that if you're a very famous person who's been reported on, you resent the general genre of the profession that is doing that to you. And of course-

• 43:49Speaker 01

  And do you mean reported on like famous stuff?

• 43:51Pablo Torre?

  I just mean public scrutiny from people who call themselves reporters that may well be, as well as tabloid people who are not aware the costume of it.

• 44:00Speaker 01

  Right, right, right, right.

• 44:01Pablo Torre?

  But just like the general thing of like, I can understand if that guy's like, if anyone in that position's like, yeah, this isn't going to be my cause. But the fact that it is for him, I mean, I just presume that very few super wealthy, super famous people are like down to ride for the institution of journalism when it means that they themselves might be investigated at some point for any reason.

• 44:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're right.

• 44:25Pablo Torre?

  And here's this dude who's like, yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna teach people about how this is important.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  So inspiring. And like, the act of George standing up there every night, and can you believe the montage at the end?

• 44:37Pablo Torre?

  I know.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  The montage, that was the only part that I was like, woo, it's on the nose. It was like a nail and a hammer hitting that nail.

• 44:44Pablo Torre?

  And so, that's the thing I was referring to, where I'm like, is this necessary? And the more I think about what's happened since, I'm like, it's actually more subtle than it could have been.

• 44:55Speaker 01

  I know.

• 44:56Pablo Torre?

  Given every, again, given, whatever, pick your example from the last several days.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  For people who didn't see it, the montage was basically a history of television through journalism.

• 45:07Pablo Torre?

  Like newscast, it's the post-credit scene of like a comic book movie. It's like, this is what happened after.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  And George would stand there and the montage would play behind him and it would get worse and worse and worse. And this was something that he like would always like hit him. There was this Jerry Springer beat and it's Jerry Springer like having poor people wrestle each other on his show. And George would specifically, and you're asking, could we see out? We could see everybody. And he's looking at the faces of the American people to see how they're responding to the montage behind him. And at the Jerry Springer point, he would look for who was laughing and thinking this was funny. But I think also they were like, people were confused and also shocked and the anxiety building of watching this, this montage. And it would build to Elon Musk giving the Nazi salute

• 45:56Speaker 01

  at the presidential inauguration, which happened just this year. So it meant so much to me as a Jewish person who's stood up for the dignity and safety of Palestinian people in this moment of Israel's war against Palestine. As a Jew who is afraid for Jewish safety too, to see that montage end, highlighting the Nazi salute was so meaningful to me. And I just felt like so, so grateful to him for that.

• 46:36Speaker 05

  Hey, I'm Max Brown. You know, The Athletic is home to the world's best sports journalism. But this fall, just in time for football season, we're launching something unlike anything we've ever done. We're building a daily show streaming live on YouTube. Me, Kofi Yoboah, Charles McDonald, and The Athletic's own Zach Harper and Daniel Popper. We'll be hosting live watch alongs of the biggest games with award winning analysis and behind the scenes insights from athletic insiders. On off days, we'll go deeper into the hard hitting stories you can't get enough of. And we want you, the smartest fans in sports, to be part of it. Come drop questions in the chat and we'll bring the answers straight from the source. The Athletic Live, presented by Google Gemini. Follow us on YouTube and we'll see you in the chat.

• 47:26Speaker 02

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• 48:05Pablo Torre?

  I feel this as I walk through my neighborhood and encounter very old people. I'm like, you guys, you guys were on to something.

• 48:15Speaker 01

  In what way?

• 48:17Pablo Torre?

  The way of life that came before the disruption of the internet.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  It's the noise. And it's not even, I don't know, like the, it just didn't get regulated soon enough.

• 48:28Pablo Torre?

  Can I give you my political platform?

• 48:30Speaker 01

  Please.

• 48:30Pablo Torre?

  For how to solve the internet?

• 48:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, please.

• 48:32Pablo Torre?

  And I hesitate to do this. But I think we should all go back to 56 kbps modems. I think high-speed internet.

• 48:41Speaker 01

  Say it again.

• 48:42Pablo Torre?

  56 kbps modems, like the fastest of the modems that would scream at us.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:49Pablo Torre?

  That, when like, as I say, like, when a JPEG really meant something. When it unfurled like a tapestry on your computer screen.

• 48:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:59Pablo Torre?

  I just feel like we, you earned it.

• 49:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, the slowing. I think everything needs to slow down.

• 49:05Pablo Torre?

  Quiet. I loved what you said before about like, in the quiet of just like fewer distractions, noises, voices, as much as we want, lots of voices, the more that we can just like, really like, just sit and not be assaulted.

• 49:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. And you're, when you were making me think like picturing Shirley worship in the newsroom and like the... The quiet of going out to get a newspaper or whatever, or going out to get cigarettes, like on your walk, you're not checking your phone. It's the pace. The pace is part of the assault. And we have to, unfortunately, you know, like the fossil fuel companies have made us think that we're the problem, so we have to recycle. And then it's like-

• 49:48Pablo Torre?

  That's right.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  And then it's kind of unclear where the recycling's going, right? And-

• 49:53Pablo Torre?

  We did, I think we all agree that the recycling isn't going anywhere that we thought it was.

• 49:57Speaker 01

  I know, I know. It's not, is my sense as well. And then in the same way, I've been, I've been taking it upon myself to slow down my intake of social media and the internet. But I'm making that connection now to like recycling, where it's like, it really isn't our responsibility individually. It needs to be, and, and parents with children, like we are, we have to shape very carefully how they're going to be taking in this or that. And screens are everywhere now. We have to talk to our kids constantly because it's genuinely unsafe for our children. The tech billionaires know that. They're not being tracked the way we are. But there needs to be government regulation. And right now, we're in such a crisis.

• 50:40Pablo Torre?

  I'm laughing at the idea of like, regulation. It's like, yeah, it would be nice. It would be nice.

• 50:45Speaker 01

  It's hard right now. Things are so upside down and so absurd, it's hard to even think about asking for reasonable things, or demanding reasonable things, or protesting for reasonable things. But I do think that's going to be part of moving forward, to keep naming the baseline, like healthcare, access to healthcare for everybody. And to keep naming it as what would be normal, because we're in such an abnormal time.

• 51:10Pablo Torre?

  I think I just generally would like our elected officials in this administration to just feel the watchful gaze of thousands of eyeballs upon them, as if they are sitting on a patio in the East Village-

• 51:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:26Pablo Torre?

  -in New York City, just like knowing you're being watched.

• 51:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:30Pablo Torre?

  We see what you're doing.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  Millions. I'm hoping it's millions. There's like 330 million people in this country.

• 51:36Pablo Torre?

  You know, at a time like this, as we- Go around the table and say what it is we found out today. On a show called Pablo Torre Finds Out, a show about finding stuff out. I have found out that, uh, in the quiet, it's important to distinguish between voices you wanna hear and the sound of a lonely recorder being played by a Fox News host who just wants to make everybody listen to the [BLEEP] that's coming out of his mouth.

• 52:09Speaker 01

  I've found out today that you are a Clooney head. You're a full-on Clooney head, dude.

• 52:17Pablo Torre?

  I am, I am-

• 52:18Speaker 01

  And, and you have good taste.

• 52:19Pablo Torre?

  I'm unrepentant about that.

• 52:21Speaker 01

  Wait, can I say what I've found out actually more personally? Today, what I've found out is that I was getting your mail. And I had the memory, truly the memory, of seeing Pablo Torre on mail and being like, you know, in New York, well, I'll never meet them. And it just hit me in recording this, that I, like, have seen your name since-

• 52:43Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  -10 years ago.

• 52:44Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 52:44Speaker 01

  How cool is that? Like, that is magic, dude.

• 52:47Pablo Torre?

  It's one of the reasons I love New York City. It's also another one of the reasons why I'm missing a lot of Sports Illustrateds. So if you wanna-

• 52:55Speaker 01

  Those are, that's what you're-

• 52:56Pablo Torre?

  Get those back. This direction.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Sports Illustrated, it's just like one sexy issue a year, right?

• 53:03Pablo Torre?

  Well, it depends on what you're into.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's right.

• 53:06Pablo Torre?

  Cause other times-

• 53:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:08Pablo Torre?

  Those, those guys-

• 53:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, them football costumes. Yeah. So into it. I should watch football. I would watch football more if it weren't so scary.

• 53:17Pablo Torre?

  Well, there's that.

• 53:18Speaker 01

  It's just everybody's getting so hurt.

• 53:20Pablo Torre?

  They are hurt, but...

• 53:23Pablo Torre?

  But.

• 53:25Speaker 01

  But their butts?

• 53:25Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 53:26Speaker 01

  I know.

• 53:27Pablo Torre?

  Um, Alana Glazer, thank you for doing this.

• 53:29Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me, Pablo. This is so, this closed the loop for me as well. And I'm just so, um, so pleased to talk to such a smart man in my generation. Smart, feeling, thinking men have been so [BLEEP] over through representation. So it's really nice to talk to you and remember that my husband isn't the only- My husband and George Clooney aren't the only good men.

• 53:52Pablo Torre?

  The holy trinity: me, your husband, George Clooney.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  You're not the only good men out there. There are, there are more.

• 53:58Pablo Torre?

  I feel like, I feel like, though, at the, on the medal stand, that's a pretty good big three.

• 54:03Speaker 01

  Hell, yeah. Hell, yeah.

• 54:12Pablo Torre?

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production.

• 54:18Pablo Torre?

  And I'll talk to you next time.

• 54:39Speaker 02

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