Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out The 2nd Annual Ronny Chieng Content-Prostitution Hour About this episode The Daily Show senior correspondent, Interior Chinatown star and NBA nerd is here to make your three-level nihilist host feel a rare sense of insecurity, while comparing: humility and arrogance; the bipartisan popularity and cognitive logic of jiu jitsu; the ageless wonder of Tom Brady and Daniel Dae Kim; the love lives of Jeremy Lin and Hideki Matsui; Pablo's career and his cameo in Ronny's spiked pilot about the Brooklyn Nets' front office; and the hierarchy of Most Fun Asians. Plus: uncensored Russell Westbrook slander, unabashed Free Darko nostalgia, last-minute Dennis Leary antagonism, scarring David Lynch surrealism... and a revisiting of Ronnie's awkward encounter with (and hollow apology from) Dan Le Batard — all in the chase for instant aggregation by Buttcrack Sports.
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Transcript 10,829 words · 7 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:48 Pablo Torre? This episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out is brought to you by McDonald's. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Medium Fries and a Drink is now $8. And look, I've chased down a lot of strange stories, but nothing quite like what's inside a Quarter Pounder with Cheese. It is 100% fresh beef cooked right when you order it with no artificial flavors, colors, fillers, or preservatives in the beef. The onions are hand-topped by someone who knows the perfect amount by memory, two slices of cheese and a star, and two pickles side by side. So every bite gets both. And every time one's ordered, a cowbell sound rings in the kitchen. That's the grill master's cue to put a fresh patty on the grill. My move?
2:30 Pablo Torre? QPC, fries and a drink after a long day of recording. That is my happy place. The Quarter Pounder with Cheese with Fries and a Drink, now $8 for a limited time only, only at McDonald's. For a limited time only. Prices and participation may vary. Prices may be higher in Hawaii, Alaska and California, and for delivery. Fresh beef not available in Alaska and Hawaii. Offer not valid for delivery. Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today, we're gonna find out what this sound is. Ahahaha. Is Pablo S. Torre Mexican, Asian or American? Ahahaha. Right after this ad.
3:13 Speaker 02 You're listening to Giraffe Kings Network.
3:29 Pablo Torre? I was gonna make fun of you for that bet, now I see what's in it.
3:32 Speaker 03 Ah. You can make fun of it.
3:35 Pablo Torre? Well, I wanna, I was, I have questions about the [BLEEP].
3:38 Speaker 03 Good to see you.
3:39 Pablo Torre? Good to see you, man.
3:39 Speaker 03 How you feeling?
3:40 Pablo Torre? I'm good.
3:40 Speaker 03 I haven't seen you in so long.
3:42 Pablo Torre? I know.
3:42 Speaker 03 I only see you when you need something from me.
3:44 Pablo Torre? Ahahaha.
3:46 Speaker 03 Which is this.
3:48 Pablo Torre? Listen.
3:49 Speaker 03 This is all I am to you.
3:49 Pablo Torre? I'm not saying that [BLEEP] content prostitute, but...
3:53 Speaker 03 Just because you did a favor to me one time on a pilot, now I gotta...
3:56 Pablo Torre? I have to resort to booking fellow Asian people because no one else wants to come on my show.
3:59 Speaker 03 Oh, [BLEEP].
4:03 Speaker 03 Well, that doesn't make me wanna be here.
4:05 Pablo Torre? Ahahaha. This is charity. This is, this is, this is, uh...
4:09 Speaker 03 This is worse than charity.
4:10 Pablo Torre? This is social charity. You get, you get points. Um, you get your punch card of Asian podcasters. Then at the end, you get a free boba [BLEEP] or whatever.
4:19 Speaker 03 Hate that punch card.
4:22 Speaker 03 I'm the most gettable for my
4:25 Pablo Torre? No, don't say that. Don't say that. Don't depreciate the value of this appearance.
4:28 Speaker 03 Juice to getability. I have the highest ratio of my assist to turnover ratio. My juice to getability ratio is very high for Asians.
4:38 Pablo Torre? That's right. You have Russell Westbrook qualities. Have we been rolling? Awesome. Great. Cut the Russell Westbrook slander. Keep in everything else.
5:09 Pablo Torre? I want to reveal that I've been unhelpful in creating peace and brokering peace between you and a certain podcast host.
5:17 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah.
5:18 Pablo Torre? Based in South Florida.
5:20 Speaker 03 I got no beef with him. We don't need to go into it.
5:22 Pablo Torre? Are you sure?
5:23 Speaker 03 Yeah, I don't want people to be like, he won't let it go because I did let it go.
5:27 Pablo Torre? I know, but I would like to force it into your life again.
5:32 Speaker 03 No, it's okay.
5:32 Pablo Torre? Because it amuses me.
5:33 Speaker 03 It's okay. We don't need to force it. Yeah, yeah, I think so. I don't want to become the guy who keeps bringing it up.
5:39 Pablo Torre? I know, I know. But would you mind if we brought former North Carolina receiver Taylor Vipolis back onto a speedboat again?
5:47 Speaker 03 Oh.
5:47 Pablo Torre? And just put to you over and over again?
5:53 Pablo Torre? Okay, so just real quick here because we have lots of actual special stuff that I've been meaning to discuss all year with Ronnie Cheng, our special guest today, the actor, stand-up comic, Daily Show correspondent, et cetera, et cetera. And I have been truly waiting to do this for months now. But the thing that I do need to just get past first is Ronnie Cheng's first and only interview on The Dan Lebatard Show, which was disastrous and from earlier in 2024 before the Super Bowl, when a bewildered Ronnie was zoomed in to Dan's show, which kept trying to hijack the Taylor Swift YouTube algorithm.
6:39 Pablo Torre? I am told by cutting away from Ronnie to producer and former North Carolina receiver, Taylor Vipolis, who is live streaming his swift football takes while on an actual speedboat.
6:55 Speaker 04 Hold on a second, Ronnie. So we're bringing in our speedboat here. We're going very fast again. Do you have a sports question of any kind, Ronnie, that you would ask our speedboat correspondent that you would want him to give you an answer to as fast as possible?
7:13 Speaker 03 Um, no.
7:19 Speaker 04 Okay, I put you in a bad spot. You apologized in advance. Yes, I keep doing that. And now Taylor is going slow again.
7:27 Speaker 03 This is, I feel like it's, I feel like I'm doing the interview with the, with the countdown on the, um, okay, because I'm looking at the guy on the boat. So I'm wondering how long I have to answer.
7:39 Pablo Torre? Yeah, I would not say that Taylor's swift takes were a rousing success, but I am pretty sure that all of this was ultimately Dan Lebatard's idea.
7:51 Speaker 04 Ronnie, I also apologize on the back end, though. Well, we're gonna have you on again and do it right and do it better without someone on a speedboat, okay? So if you would be, if you would do us the courtesy of doing it again, because I botched the first six minutes of this.
8:05 Speaker 03 Um, maybe not. Sure.
8:10 Speaker 04 Doesn't sound promising. It doesn't sound, it doesn't sound, I don't blame you if you don't, but, but thank you for this.
8:18 Speaker 03 He called me to apologize the day after, and I asked him, how did you get my number? And it was you. You gave him my number. And he apologized for taking my number. He actually did.
8:30 Pablo Torre? The funny thing about Dan is that he is, he loves, Lebatard loves nothing more than a comedian.
8:37 Speaker 03 Really? It could fool me. But, but here's the, here's the real sad part was, I, when it comes in in the list of requests for me, I say no to all this crap.
8:47 Pablo Torre? I know.
8:48 Speaker 03 I said yes to him because I was actually a fan of his.
8:50 Pablo Torre? I know.
8:51 Speaker 03 That's what was kind of sad. It was, oh, damn, you know, we've gone this thing, but.
8:54 Pablo Torre? And now you've said it in the past tense.
8:55 Speaker 03 Oh, fans? Oh, yeah, yeah. Uh, let's just say he's not my algorithm.
9:03 Speaker 03 But you know, he did call me apologized, but like, it feels a little bit like hollow because it's like, well, you left the clip on. So it's like, what, are you really sorry?
9:12 Pablo Torre? What I want to keep proud of it though is the genuine...
9:18 Speaker 03 Is this a big thing in the sports journalism subculture?
9:21 Pablo Torre? At a company that Dan owns and operates that I work for, it's very much an inter-office.
9:27 Speaker 03 Oh, you work at the same company?
9:29 Pablo Torre? I should say that.
9:30 Speaker 03 Oh, I didn't know that.
9:31 Pablo Torre? I should have probably disclosed that legally.
9:32 Speaker 03 What, Metallock?
9:33 Pablo Torre? Yeah, that's right.
9:34 Speaker 03 Oh, so he works for Metallock?
9:36 Pablo Torre? Dan, yeah, he founded it.
9:37 Speaker 03 Oh, he founded this thing? Well, why the [bleep] am I here then?
9:40 Pablo Torre? I was gonna say, you probably shouldn't have done this.
9:42 Speaker 03 Yeah, you should have opened with that. I thought this was like your own thing. No, I didn't know that. That's why you're so interested, I see.
9:48 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
9:49 Speaker 03 I know, I didn't know that it was the same company. But that goes to show that's how little like I hold grudges about this, you know what I mean?
9:57 Pablo Torre? Truly, truly.
10:00 Pablo Torre? What I was gonna try-
10:01 Speaker 03 Hey, Dan, can we get a new chair?
10:02 Pablo Torre? I know.
10:03 Speaker 03 This is, this is, Dan paid for this? Get this on, get this on camera. This is the level. This is where we're at. ESPN to this now.
10:11 Pablo Torre? This is peak sports podcasting, by the way. I don't know if you've noticed this, but we're in a boom time for sports podcasting.
10:15 Speaker 03 ESPN to this. We can't even get chairs that don't wobble. That's how far we've come. That's how far we've come, everybody.
10:23 Pablo Torre? I genuinely did love you going on Rich Eisen's show, though.
10:26 Speaker 03 Thanks for having me on. It's nice to be on a sports show with a host who actually wants guests on the show. Versus some other sports podcast shows I've been on, so great. Oh yeah, Rich was great. Rich was the best. Respectful. He was trying to get in-depth.
10:44 Pablo Torre? Meanwhile, you and me, like, we have had off-the-record dinners in which we criticize NBA players that we're afraid to say in public.
10:51 Speaker 03 What do you mean?
10:52 Pablo Torre? I think the first time we had dinner.
10:53 Speaker 03 Yes.
10:55 Pablo Torre? This is probably over, how long ago was this? Like, this was-
10:57 Speaker 03 Years ago.
10:58 Pablo Torre? This was a time, and this is how I sort of carbon date our friendship, and also like the arc of our demographic. It's at a time when we were still talking mostly about Jeremy Lin.
11:11 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah. Hey, I'm gonna go see him in Taiwan.
11:14 Pablo Torre? You are?
11:15 Speaker 03 I'm gonna go see him play in Taiwan. But sorry, don't let me-
11:17 Pablo Torre? No, no, no.
11:18 Speaker 03 No, don't let me derail it, please.
11:19 Pablo Torre? I was just saying, like, we met up, talked about, again, your genuine love of basketball.
11:24 Speaker 03 Yeah.
11:24 Pablo Torre? Did you know that he had been married before he announced it on Instagram?
11:30 Speaker 03 Yeah.
11:31 Pablo Torre? I didn't.
11:32 Speaker 03 But it's okay. He's a private guy.
11:34 Pablo Torre? I know, I know, but I thought that I was.
11:37 Speaker 03 You thought you were better friends with him?
11:39 Pablo Torre? I've known him since he was in college.
11:41 Speaker 03 Yeah.
11:42 Pablo Torre? But I also was, this is my weird relationship with him though, is that I was always also, and this is my conflict.
11:47 Speaker 03 Yeah, you went to Harvard with him, that's right.
11:49 Pablo Torre? And I was also like a journalist who was like writing about him. And so I was always kind of mining him. He was the first.
11:55 Speaker 03 He was your big cat.
11:56 Pablo Torre? American I turned into a content prostitute, where I was like, hey man, I needed this quote, I need to follow you around.
12:01 Speaker 03 The adventure career.
12:02 Pablo Torre? To cover stories.
12:03 Speaker 03 The adventure career, yeah.
12:04 Pablo Torre? Legitimately, I was a barnacle on his leg. But when I saw that he had announced years after he had gotten married. And I get why, by the way, to be clear.
12:12 Speaker 03 Sure.
12:12 Pablo Torre? His level of celebrity and fame, especially.
12:14 Speaker 03 Yes.
12:15 Pablo Torre? Overseas, China, Taiwan, all that, is unthinkable.
12:19 Speaker 03 Yeah.
12:19 Pablo Torre? And so when I, when I saw it, I was like, I was both happy and sad.
12:25 Speaker 03 I'd be happy for him.
12:26 Pablo Torre? No, no, but, but sad because he had to go through this whole layer of privacy protection.
12:34 Speaker 03 No, don't be sad, because, because the truth, I don't want to speak for him, but the truth is, I think he just doesn't think it was anyone's business. Maybe he's, he's a very humble guy, he probably didn't think it was a big deal, you know, and so it wasn't like he was like, oh no, I have to hide this from the world. He more like, if anything, I think it was more like he doesn't care about, you know, letting the world know what's going on.
12:57 Pablo Torre? Do you remember, I don't know if you remember this story, when Hideki Matsui, again, former Yankees slugger, one of the great stars of Japanese baseball.
13:05 Speaker 03 Yeah.
13:05 Pablo Torre? When he announced his, his engagement.
13:08 Speaker 03 Yeah.
13:09 Pablo Torre? In America, and he announced it at a press conference that he called, and instead of showing a photo of his, his wife. He produced a drawing he had made.
13:22 Speaker 03 Here you go.
13:24 Speaker 03 It looks like, it looks like he's describing who mugged him. You know what I mean? It's like this person, if anyone's seen this person, they have my wallet.
13:35 Pablo Torre? Yes, it looks like that. Have you seen that local news, uh, segment they did in like Alabama when they saw the leprechaun?
13:41 Speaker 05 This amateur sketch resembles what many of you say the leprechaun looks like.
13:46 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, she's more beautiful than a leprechaun, but...
13:49 Pablo Torre? To be clear, for those just listening, uh, on audio, um, she is beautiful and the drawing is, uh, better rendered than I would say 99% of most baseball players would attempt to draw their own wife.
13:59 Speaker 03 Yeah, man, if I drew my own wife, I mean, it wouldn't look anything like, it wouldn't look anything like that, yeah. It, she, I think, uh, so that was a privacy thing, right?
14:08 Pablo Torre? That was a privacy thing.
14:09 Speaker 03 But then why even do that? So that's a quirky thing, you know what I mean? Just be, I married someone, don't worry about it.
14:13 Pablo Torre? But this is, but this is, I think, the obligation of celebrity that, that makes me sad, which is if you're Jeremy, like, at some point you gotta say...
14:19 Speaker 03 No, you don't, you know?
14:20 Pablo Torre? I wonder actually when you sort of, what's your Goldilocks level of celebrity at this point? Because that is, like, drawing a picture of your own wife is too famous.
14:32 Speaker 03 Honestly, I don't think about it and I, I do think that people like Jeremy who are very focused on the craft, uh, and I'm lucky to be focused on stand-up comedy, I don't think about getting famous. I don't think about getting clips. I just wanna write a funny joke. So, you know, sorry, this is a roundabout way...
14:49 Pablo Torre? That's just the most Asian thing you could possibly say.
14:51 Speaker 03 No, it's a craftsman thing. I don't know if it's Asian. I mean, I, I guess Jeremy and I are both Asian, but I'm sure...
14:56 Pablo Torre? But also just the dedication to like, I wanna be good at this.
14:59 Speaker 03 Yeah.
14:59 Pablo Torre? And I'm not here for the superficiality of it. I actually want to meritocratically earn this.
15:04 Speaker 03 Yeah, I, I gotta be honest. I'm surprised when anybody recognizes me on the street. I'm shocked. When someone's like, oh, I saw you on the thing, I'm like, you watch that?
15:12 Pablo Torre? You're genuinely shocked.
15:13 Speaker 03 I'm genuinely shocked.
15:14 Pablo Torre? You've been in a Marvel movie.
15:15 Speaker 03 Yeah, but we're small roles, like, I genuinely am, am shocked when anyone's like, I saw your stand-up comedy or I saw you on The Daily Show. Cause a lot of times, The Daily Show, it feels like we're making a show for ourselves, in a, in a good way. It's like we're making a school play. That's what it feels like. It feels like we're like, eh, we're just doing it for, like, in this building, this weird, you know, little, like, um, comedy performance piece.
15:38 Pablo Torre? How are you with people who say stuff like that? Is it a fun interaction?
15:42 Speaker 03 Unfortunately, I'm not great at it because I think the humility makes people think I'm being arrogant.
15:48 Pablo Torre? Yes.
15:48 Speaker 03 So people will come up, be like, "Hey, are you the guy?" I'm like, "Oh, no, I don't know if I'm the guy. I don't know who you're talking about." Like, "I don't know who you mean."
15:55 Pablo Torre? Are you the crazy rich Asian?
15:58 Speaker 03 They'll be like, "Are you that person?" And then I'll be like, "I don't know if I'm that person. I don't know who you're thinking of." You know, and my wife is always like, "Just say you're freaking..."
16:06 Pablo Torre? Stop gaslighting them.
16:07 Speaker 03 Yeah, no, I'm not gaslighting. They're not specific enough. And the lawyer in me is like, "Well, I don't wanna freaking tell you... I don't wanna assume that I'm the person that you're thinking of. Maybe I'm not, you know?"
16:18 Pablo Torre? That's right.
16:18 Speaker 03 So they'll be like, "Are you that guy?" I'm like, "No, I don't know if I'm that guy. Probably not."
16:23 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah. Now I can see why your wife is like...
16:25 Speaker 03 Just say you're the guy. Just say you're Pablo Torre. And then, just say you're Pablo Torre.
16:32 Pablo Torre? That's right. And then they'll be confused again, as always. Like, "So why is the Mexican guy with a Chinese face talking about sports? Why is he on the sidewalk?"
16:40 Speaker 03 You've never solved that issue.
16:41 Pablo Torre? No.
16:42 Speaker 03 What, 20 years in the game now, you've never solved the, "Why are you a Chinese guy with a Mexican name?"
16:46 Pablo Torre? Literally, one of my books... So Google Chrome, I used to use it in a way that was like, uh, sort of more rigorous. And I used to have these bookmarks, and so bookmarks toolbar. This is not something I prepared for you. Look at what's floated over that. That's a Yahoo Answers.
17:01 Speaker 03 Is Pablo S. Torre Mexican, Asian, or American?
17:07 Speaker 03 It's the worst phrasing of that question. The "or American."
17:10 Pablo Torre? Or American.
17:11 Speaker 03 Is the best punchline to that, yeah. So why don't you answer it?
17:16 Pablo Torre? Um, I'm Mexican.
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21:05 Pablo Torre? Dude, I was in a pilot that you taped.
21:07 Speaker 03 Yes, I know, I appreciate it, yes.
21:09 Pablo Torre? Can we talk about that pilot, or?
21:11 Speaker 03 Yeah, I think the statute of limitations has run out on that two years ago. Yeah, we should talk, we never got to talk about it, that's right.
21:17 Pablo Torre? So I was trying to actually start with that because the reason that you have been genuinely frustrated as well as artificially gassed up to be frustrated by me about this whole Levitar thing is because you are a sports fan to the degree that you filmed a pilot in which the concept was what?
21:35 Speaker 03 I was the general manager of the Brooklyn Nets. That was the pilot. We filmed it, we actually filmed it, we didn't just write it. We filmed it, Pablo made a cameo in it as the sportscaster at the start. You know, when you have real, like, sportscasters acting.
21:54 Pablo Torre? Yeah, I think ambiguous sports anchors.
21:55 Speaker 03 Yeah, and you and Jalen did it for me. I was really appreciative because it wasn't easy to get you guys. And it came down to the wire.
22:03 Pablo Torre? Oh god.
22:03 Speaker 03 And luckily, the synergy of Disney, Hulu came together and you guys jumped in. I was really appreciative.
22:09 Pablo Torre? It was really fun for me to theatrically yell about you.
22:13 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
22:15 Pablo Torre? But the premise, like, the log line of Ronnie Cheng becomes Brooklyn Nets general manager. Frankly, I was in based just on that sentence.
22:24 Speaker 03 Yeah, thank you, yeah, thank you. I thought it was a fun idea.
22:26 Pablo Torre? But also, like, what is most sad to you?
22:30 Speaker 03 To you about the pilot spoiler alert not being picked up. We had a lot of great themes in it, you know, it became this kind of way of addressing bigger themes in America in a very fun way. Foreigners being asked to take over a very American institution because they determined that we were the best at it. Cause I had one, my, my character that won championships in the Philippines. Oh, God, I didn't know that part about the pilot.
22:56 Speaker 03 Yeah, so the, so the owner was.
22:57 Speaker 03 That's so good. Oh, now I'm even madder about this. So the, so the owner owned the, in the story, the owner owned the team in the Philippines and several other teams and, and the Nets. And so because I won so many times in the Philippines and the Nets weren't doing so well in the, in the pilot, he would, he brought me over. So he stuck his neck out to bring me over, even though everyone was like, this guy's not appropriate for this league, cause he's been, you know. So that was the, that was the pilot, yeah. I could have played so many different extras. Yeah, you could have been the sideline, you could have been the. I could have been again, the 40th Filipino guy in the flashback. You could also have been the annoying podcaster who's like talking about the team and. Season two, I would have been radicalized. I would have been selling crypto and supplements and hated you.
23:39 Speaker 03 It would be really funny if every season, like you start off, because we started you off as the ESPN anchor and every season you just goes from ESPN anchor to podcaster to just like, like. This guy outside, just like yelling at people. I've clearly just gone insane. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I, I loved, I loved that concept. Thank you, I, we loved it too. We loved it too. We put a lot of heart and money into it and we, we had Dennis Leary was the main antagonist.
24:06 Speaker 03 What? So this is me learning this, finding out about this for the first time, like what this would have been. I didn't know any of this. Yeah, Dennis Leary was the main antagonist. He was great. He was my, he was my assistant GM. So I got hired over him. He got passed over, so he was. I would love to have seen Dennis Leary yell at you. He was the best. He was the best. And not just on screen, but he was a great guy off screen as well. He saved the pilot a little bit, cause we came to him quite last minute. And he's not someone who, he's a great guy, but he's not someone to do a charity project. So he liked the script and then he came on board and he understood what we're trying to do. And it was great. He loves basketball. He was the traditional like ex-player, became assistant GM and I'm like this, you know, dumb young kid and it was, yeah, it was great. Do you think that you would?
24:49 Pablo Torre? Be a good front office executive.
24:52 Speaker 03 I don't know that, you know, when I was in college, I fantasized about going into sports, you know, whether it was, that's why I admired you so much, because you were the guy who made it. I was watching you in Australia, like, oh, man, this guy's in the system. He's in the ESPN, around the horn.
25:06 Pablo Torre? Industrial complex.
25:07 Speaker 03 Yeah, he's writing the thing. I think for me, it was either going to sports journalism or maybe try to become an analyst. Because I had a law degree, so I was like, hey, maybe I could become an analyst for a sports team, the way, um, what's that baseball movie?
25:20 Pablo Torre? Moneyball?
25:20 Speaker 03 Moneyball, yeah. I was doing Moneyball, because when we were in college, analytics was just coming up.
25:25 Pablo Torre? Exactly.
25:25 Speaker 03 So it was almost like a way for geeky guys to get into sports.
25:29 Pablo Torre? Back, back in my day, right, when this was like the beginning of the analytics boom in sports, um, I got credibility because I was Asian.
25:40 Pablo Torre? Seriously, I would be moderating these panels at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, basketball analytics, like these GMs.
25:45 Speaker 03 MIT, yeah.
25:46 Pablo Torre? And they're assuming that I could like double check their math, and I'm just like, I.
25:51 Speaker 03 So you, you rode the Jeremy Lin and analytics wave just because you are Asian?
25:57 Pablo Torre? Absolutely, absolutely.
25:58 Speaker 03 What do you think is your, your strength then, from Harvard?
26:01 Pablo Torre? I don't, I don't, I don't.
26:03 Speaker 03 What are you good at?
26:04 Pablo Torre? That, uh, huh.
26:06 Speaker 03 Like, what do you think?
26:07 Pablo Torre? Analogies?
26:09 Speaker 03 You're good at analogies?
26:12 Speaker 03 I guess that's a skill.
26:13 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, truly, like, the, what I felt my superpower was, was, uh, writing. If you gave me time to write something, I could create something, uh, that could hang with the best students at the best college was my confidence.
26:29 Speaker 03 Yeah, so why, why don't you use this skillset?
26:32 Pablo Torre? Instead of writing?
26:33 Speaker 03 Yeah.
26:34 Pablo Torre? Now, now, now you have become my mom.
26:37 Speaker 03 But I've been saying this since I first stepped into this studio, like, three years ago, I've been like, why are you doing this?
26:42 Pablo Torre? Um, have you heard, uh, about magazines and how they're dead now?
26:47 Speaker 03 Yes.
26:47 Pablo Torre? And how people are paying four NFL players, nine figures to speak into microphones?
26:52 Speaker 03 It's not about the money.
26:53 Pablo Torre? Isn't it though?
26:55 Speaker 03 No, but this is genuinely why I ask, is there's not so much a dig at you, but like.
26:58 Pablo Torre? No, it's, by the way, a. Valid question and insecurity, both.
27:01 Speaker 03 Oh, sorry. I guess I managed to find it. The, the, I, cuz I, I met up with the Free Darko guys.
27:09 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
27:10 Speaker 03 Cuz it turns out one of the Free-
27:11 Pablo Torre? When did that happen?
27:12 Speaker 03 Yeah, one of the Free Darko guys is married to a writer at The Daily Show.
27:15 Pablo Torre? Oh.
27:16 Speaker 03 Sophie Zucker. So Sophie will keep telling me like, hey, do you like Free Darko? I'm like, how did you know that?
27:20 Pablo Torre? Right, so Free Darko, how do you explain Free Darko for people who don't-
27:22 Speaker 03 Free Darko was like-
27:24 Pablo Torre? Well, your, your MBA nerd credibility is off the charts right now.
27:26 Speaker 03 Guys, this is what I wanna talk about. Don't get me on your stupid show to jump on a- With Taylor Vipulis on a speedboat? On a speedboat. With some guy who doesn't like me, you know what I mean? Like, get, let's talk about something in depth. Anyway, I know you're gonna clip that. Go for it.
27:44 Pablo Torre? Producers are ready to clip that.
27:44 Speaker 03 I didn't even know that this was Dan Libertad's company that he owns.
27:47 Pablo Torre? We're kind of like in his basement.
27:48 Speaker 03 Yeah, I can't even believe that.
27:50 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
27:50 Speaker 03 A good thing you didn't open it up, I probably wouldn't have come. But, um, the Free Darko was like the first, um, elevated sports writing that I saw. I think that happened in American culture, that kind of merged pop culture with specifically basketball.
28:08 Pablo Torre? On the internet.
28:09 Speaker 03 With cool graphics. So they were kind of like the precursor to Grantland in, in, in many ways, I would say.
28:15 Pablo Torre? A bunch of the Grantland people came out of that coaching tree. Jay Caspi and Kang, another great Asian American writer who still writes, wrote for Free Darko blog for them.
28:23 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, and so they would do, they, they released a book, you know, with graphics. They would do these really fun analogies of like, uh, you know, uh, players and, and, uh, figures in pop culture. Compare them to movies, and then they would combine it with these really cool graphics. And I'd never seen anything like that before, so-
28:43 Pablo Torre? Now you've described something that is omnipresent. Back then, it felt revelatory.
28:48 Speaker 03 Yes.
28:48 Pablo Torre? Again, it was on a, I think it was also on like blogger.com.
28:51 Speaker 03 Yes, it was on blogger.com.
28:52 Pablo Torre? It was like, yeah, one of these blogspot things.
28:54 Speaker 03 And they spawned, they spawned books and, and t-shirts. And ultimately, I guess they never transitioned into the new social media era and Grantland.
29:01 Pablo Torre? God bless them, they, they, they, they opted out at probably the right time.
29:05 Speaker 03 The wrong time, to be honest. They opted out at the right, the wrong time if they had- I just kept it.
29:10 Pablo Torre? Wrong for the capitalism of it, right for the psychology of their own well.
29:16 Speaker 03 Oh, why? Why'd you say that?
29:17 Pablo Torre? Because I think just creating content right now is.
29:19 Speaker 03 It's a nightmare. Like, look at us right now.
29:21 Pablo Torre? Yeah, I know.
29:21 Speaker 03 This is a **** nightmare.
29:22 Pablo Torre? Just like praying we get aggregated by butt crack sports.
29:26 Speaker 03 Oh, man.
29:31 Speaker 03 That's what it's come down to now.
29:33 Pablo Torre? I mean, you're off social media.
29:34 Speaker 03 We used to be. I'm off it, yeah.
29:36 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
29:36 Speaker 03 We used to be Grantland, you know, who's that guy who wrote Breaks of the Game?
29:43 Pablo Torre? David Halberstam.
29:44 Speaker 03 David Halberstam. And now we're trying to get aggregated on butt crack sports.
29:49 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah. NBA Centel. We want to get aggregated by the scammer accounts that imitate the real aggregator accounts. We are three levels beyond actual content creation. We're just eating people's regurgitated vomit.
30:02 Speaker 03 I know. So why don't you elevate this by like making a, you know, revitalizing that Grantland McSweeney for sports?
30:13 Pablo Torre? Ronnie, I have to say, without tooting my own horn in a not self-deprecating way. When you're not on this show, the show is kind of doing that.
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33:55 Pablo Torre? We all work for tech companies.
33:57 Speaker 03 Yes.
33:57 Pablo Torre? You draw, you connect the dots back far enough and you will either soon be working for one, some conglomerate, or we are competing with them, which makes media companies behave like them.
34:07 Speaker 03 Yes, yes.
34:08 Pablo Torre? And I imagine for you, this is something that you also have contemplated slash had to grapple with.
34:14 Speaker 03 Yeah, yes, very much so. And I'm someone who, I grew up loving American institutions from afar. So for me, the NBA was an institution, The Daily Show was an institution, ESPN was an institution. And so for me, I guess there's a certain nostalgia factor for that, where I respect the institutions so much.
34:33 Pablo Torre? I'll tell you what.
34:34 Speaker 03 Maybe I'm romanticizing it, but.
34:35 Pablo Torre? Well, I, look, you're, that's a bit of a stump speech that I would vote for, frankly.
34:41 Speaker 03 Yeah.
34:42 Pablo Torre? It does feel, I say this, I get asked to talk to journalism students.
34:46 Speaker 03 Oh, no.
34:47 Pablo Torre? I know, no. And so what I always have to catch myself from being is like, third level nihilistic about everything, where I go immediately, they're like, they're like, no, they're like, so how do you, what should I do in the future? I'm like, well, we're all OnlyFans creators now, working for these soulless tech companies. And so I don't know what. And so I'm like, yeah, you want me to show some ankle? What do you want me to do? Like, there's.
35:09 Speaker 03 I know, it's very sad. I love how you're a level three, three level. I had to research what three level in basketball meant.
35:17 Pablo Torre? Oh, sure.
35:17 Speaker 03 2K, like a level three facilitator, like Scottie Pippen is a three level, it means that you can.
35:23 Pablo Torre? Three level scorer.
35:24 Speaker 03 Yeah, you can score at the basket, mid-range and three-point.
35:27 Pablo Torre? That's right.
35:28 Speaker 03 So you're like a three level nihilist. You can be a nihilist at any point.
35:32 Pablo Torre? Yeah, I can, I can, I can depress a journalism student in a myriad of ways.
35:36 Speaker 03 I love how we're talking about this, because this won't make you any money right now. But I love talking about this. Here's the other factor is that like. Like, for me, I'm lucky with comedy. I feel like you don't worry about what people are doing. Do the comedy you wanna see and don't chase the algorithm or the trends. That's oftentimes when the best comedy comes out. So in your case is like, forget what the landscape is.
36:00 Pablo Torre? Correct, correct.
36:01 Speaker 03 Be the change you wanna see. And I just got back into reading like a year and a half ago. After eight, seven years out of the game, which is, I can't believe how long I went without reading properly. Dude, reading is the perfect antidote to social media. If you feel like social media is doing you damage, just reading a book or reading a news article, a long form, well-written essay or article, it's the perfect antidote to it. So I think that it's actually a matter of, of a national priority, like imperative.
36:37 Pablo Torre? Yes, yes.
36:38 Speaker 03 For mental health and just, you know, for civilization that you start writing.
36:44 Pablo Torre? Oh, come on.
36:45 Speaker 03 Yeah, it is. If you don't write, this is, if you don't do it, this is, it's just a race to the bottom of this.
36:52 Pablo Torre? Metalark Media colon, a race to the bottom.
36:55 Speaker 03 A race to the bottom. I can't believe the name was so innocuous, Metalark. It makes it sound so, you know, like cheerful.
37:03 Pablo Torre? Metalark is a bird. This is John Skipper's, by the way, John Skipper from president of ESPN.
37:07 Speaker 03 Yes.
37:08 Pablo Torre? His whole thing was like, the Metalark is the bird whose song heralds the beginning of a new morning.
37:15 Speaker 03 What a, what a, what a dressy way to hide the destruction of civilization through clip content.
37:23 Speaker 03 This is the new morning, then someone should shoot that bird, because if, if this is what it's heralding, we don't need this.
37:31 Pablo Torre? You quoted inadvertently or not Gandhi.
37:35 Speaker 03 When?
37:36 Pablo Torre? The change you wanna see in the world.
37:37 Speaker 03 Oh, be the change you wanna see.
37:38 Pablo Torre? Apocryphally least attributed to Gandhi.
37:40 Speaker 03 Yeah.
37:41 Pablo Torre? Is Gandhi Asian?
37:42 Speaker 03 Uh, is Gandhi Asian? He's Indian. Yeah.
37:47 Speaker 03 I don't know if he's, I don't know if he's, he'll be considered classically Asian. When you see Gandhi, do you think Asian or do you think Indian?
37:52 Pablo Torre? This is why, this is why I ask.
37:55 Speaker 03 Yeah.
37:55 Pablo Torre? This is why I ask. I'm now trying to poke holes in the coalition. I've gone from solidarity building to now trying to undermine us.
38:01 Speaker 03 Yeah.
38:03 Speaker 03 I would argue that Gandhi himself would reject the term Asian because that's a colonial term to, to try to reference all of one continent as one people, you know? Whereas even in India, that's separate people, so.
38:15 Pablo Torre? Right.
38:16 Speaker 03 I would say.
38:16 Pablo Torre? You just managed to make the Indian caste system woke.
38:20 Speaker 03 Ah, I guess so. I guess, yeah, so the caste system was original.
38:24 Pablo Torre? That's right. They actually understood the complexity. Of humanity.
38:29 Speaker 03 Of society, yeah.
38:30 Pablo Torre? The reason I am, I am attempting to segue back to something relating to our ethnicity is because, uh, interior Chinatown is something that I watched and enjoyed.
38:37 Speaker 03 Oh, thank you. Thanks for watching, I'm very proud of that.
38:40 Pablo Torre? I chose not to read a book.
38:41 Speaker 03 Sure.
38:41 Pablo Torre? Instead, I watched this new show on Hulu.
38:43 Speaker 03 Well, in that case, then that's good.
38:44 Pablo Torre? Absolutely. It was excellent. It was ambitious, it was complicated, it was funny, it was meaningful.
38:50 Speaker 03 Yeah.
38:51 Pablo Torre? And your character, I just want to point this out. Your character has some of you in it, but in other ways, I'm like, this is, this does not seem like Ronnie in real life.
39:01 Speaker 03 Oh, thank you. I was trying to do my best to act.
39:04 Pablo Torre? Well, your character is a stoner in the show, and I don't, I don't think of you as, as, as a, as a, as a weed guy.
39:11 Speaker 03 No, I'm not a weed guy, yeah. I grew up in Singapore. We don't do weed in Singapore, so.
39:15 Pablo Torre? And I know you don't do weed because you call it doing weed.
39:17 Speaker 03 Yeah. I don't do it. I just don't. So, yeah, I had to pretend to be a guy who does weed.
39:33 Speaker 03 I'm not saying I want someone to die. So what are you saying? Well, I'm saying if someone's already dead, I would like to be the person who finds a body. That's weird, man. Okay, you know how in cop shows, there's usually a cold open? Cold open. The first scene before the main titles. Right. Okay, so for a couple of minutes, you fall in this random character who you've never met, who's not one of Leeds. And part of you is thinking, why am I even watching this game? Why are you?
39:56 Speaker 06 You're watching this guy? You're watching because either he's about to get killed, or...
40:02 Speaker 06 Or? You seriously never seen a cop show?
40:07 Speaker 06 How is that even possible?
40:09 Pablo Torre? Video games and weed. At what point your character declares that Koreans are the most fun Asians?
40:15 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah. No, I... Yeah, do I?
40:18 Pablo Torre? That's what I wrote down, but I was stoned when I was watching it, so maybe it's, you know, not quite accurate.
40:24 Speaker 03 Maybe that's why the writing hasn't happened because of the drugs.
40:27 Pablo Torre? The drugs did develop kind of concurrently with the decline.
40:31 Speaker 03 Decline of the writing?
40:31 Pablo Torre? Of the writing, now that I think about it.
40:33 Speaker 03 Uh, I... Yeah, I probably did say that. I definitely said that in my stand-up special, so...
40:39 Pablo Torre? Do you have a hierarchy?
40:41 Speaker 03 Of fun Asians?
40:42 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
40:42 Speaker 03 Yeah, I... Yeah, I watched my stand-up special. I described the hierarchy. Yeah, we can play this game.
40:49 Speaker 03 Yeah, I'll push, I'll push people to my [BLEEP] and then I'll use your [BLEEP] in my [BLEEP].
40:54 Pablo Torre? What I remember, Filipinos were not number one, and that is criminal.
40:58 Speaker 03 Oh, most fun?
40:59 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
40:59 Speaker 03 No, but in my stand-up special, they were like second.
41:03 Pablo Torre? Not good enough.
41:04 Speaker 03 That's not good enough?
41:04 Pablo Torre? No.
41:05 Speaker 03 Oh, wow. All right, well...
41:07 Pablo Torre? We sing, we dance.
41:08 Speaker 03 I mean...
41:09 Pablo Torre? Put on masks and become Jabberwockies.
41:11 Speaker 03 Filipinos are like up there with the most fun. So, the only reason I didn't give them the most fun right now is because I... I was arguing, my argument in my special was that Koreans right now are dominating...
41:23 Pablo Torre? They are.
41:23 Speaker 03 Western, uh, media with, you know, music, movies, and...
41:27 Pablo Torre? Squid games.
41:28 Speaker 03 TV shows, Parasite, BTS. So, so that's the only reason why. But I think Filipinos were a close second in my...
41:35 Pablo Torre? I, uh, I ran into, uh, somebody that you know, Daniel Dikim. I saw Yellowface on Broadway.
41:39 Speaker 03 Yeah, me too.
41:40 Pablo Torre? Excellent.
41:41 Speaker 03 I'm also cultured.
41:41 Pablo Torre? Yes, that's right. We love theater and books and reading.
41:44 Speaker 03 Yes.
41:44 Pablo Torre? Uh, and, uh, Daniel Dikim noted Korean. Um...
41:49 Pablo Torre? Dude is 56.
41:51 Speaker 03 Yeah, ageless.
41:52 Pablo Torre? I'm like, I am used to the trope of Asian people looking young. I have been carded at a bar in the last two years.
41:58 Speaker 03 Yeah.
41:59 Pablo Torre? That guy, it's ridiculous.
42:02 Speaker 03 Yeah.
42:03 Pablo Torre? Like, we will show a photo of Daniel Dae Kim. Like, he should be studied.
42:08 Speaker 03 Yes.
42:09 Pablo Torre? By science.
42:10 Speaker 03 Yes, him and Tom Brady.
42:12 Pablo Torre? Well, Tom Brady, I mean, your favorite, your demigod.
42:16 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
42:17 Pablo Torre? That guy had just intense plastic surgery, though. You know that.
42:21 Speaker 03 Oh, Tom Brady had plastic surgery? I didn't know that.
42:23 Pablo Torre? You don't think so?
42:24 Speaker 03 I, no, I don't know.
42:26 Pablo Torre? Oh, Ronnie, this is like ruining Santa Claus.
42:29 Speaker 03 Wait, let's not forget from Daniel Dae Kim first.
42:30 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
42:31 Speaker 03 Daniel Dae Kim, yes. Super fit, looks young, has two, like, 20-year-old kids.
42:38 Pablo Torre? It's crazy.
42:39 Speaker 03 Like, um...
42:40 Pablo Torre? Also, also a big football fan?
42:42 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah, he used to play quarterback.
42:44 Pablo Torre? What?
42:44 Speaker 03 You should get him in to talk about football.
42:46 Pablo Torre? I didn't know he played quarterback.
42:46 Speaker 03 Yeah, he ran a lot of wishbone.
42:48 Pablo Torre? I got, okay, all right.
42:49 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
42:50 Pablo Torre? Thank you for feeding my, uh, content.
42:52 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah.
42:53 Pablo Torre? My content furnace, just shoveling coal all the time.
42:56 Speaker 03 Yeah, he used to be a quarterback at his high school in Philadelphia.
42:58 Pablo Torre? That's great.
42:59 Speaker 03 It's crazy, Asian quarterback.
43:01 Pablo Torre? I love it.
43:01 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
43:02 Pablo Torre? I love it. But Tom Brady, definitely, I mean, you can see.
43:06 Speaker 03 He had plastic surgery?
43:06 Pablo Torre? Yeah. I mean, allegedly, I guess I should say legally speaking, but I, I'm just gonna Google, uh, Tom Brady face transformation.
43:14 Speaker 03 Yeah, but that's just 'cause he stopped eating sugar.
43:17 Pablo Torre? You attribute that to the TB12 diet?
43:19 Speaker 03 Yes.
43:21 Pablo Torre? You think, you think this is, this is the TB12 diet?
43:23 Speaker 03 Yeah.
43:24 Pablo Torre? Look, I mean, his, his jawline is, is carved out of marble on the right, and on the left, I'm just saying, like, none of us should be so confident, I should insult old Tom Brady, but come on.
43:38 Speaker 03 No, but that's a kid coming out of college versus grown man.
43:41 Pablo Torre? That's baby fat.
43:42 Speaker 03 Yeah. Yeah, yeah, he just, he, the TB12 diet, you know? And then, um... Uh, what do you, what do they call it? Pliability?
43:50 Pablo Torre? Pliability, right, right, right. No nightshades, all that stuff.
43:53 Speaker 03 Yeah.
43:54 Pablo Torre? Um, this does provide me with a convenient segue, though, because Tom Brady, um, the trauma visited upon him recently, of course. I'm not making light of this. I just want to point out that his ex-wife fell in love with her jujitsu instructor.
44:07 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah, yeah.
44:08 Pablo Torre? And behind you, you walk in, and I'm like, Ronnie, what the [bleep] is this? What are you, what are you bringing in here?
44:13 Speaker 03 I gotta go.
44:13 Pablo Torre? What do you have? What do you have in that bag?
44:15 Speaker 03 I, I'm going straight to jujitsu after this. I fuck.
44:18 Pablo Torre? Can you show, can you, can you show us the bag?
44:19 Speaker 03 Oh, okay. You, oh, actually, I, I picked up this, uh, gi at random, but you'll love this one.
44:25 Pablo Torre? This is, again, as always with Ronnie, like, I have no idea what this is. It's unplanned.
44:29 Speaker 03 Look at that.
44:30 Pablo Torre? That is.
44:33 Speaker 03 It's that Neon Nicks gi.
44:34 Pablo Torre? Ronny Chang whipping out a jujitsu gi festooned with Nicks logos.
44:40 Speaker 03 Yeah.
44:40 Pablo Torre? I have, this.
44:42 Speaker 03 Albino and, uh, I should shout out Albino and Prito.
44:44 Pablo Torre? Was this, was this custom made for you?
44:46 Speaker 03 No, no, they, they sold it. They had a partnership. They did a collab with, uh, with, uh, the, the, the NBA. So there's a few, you see, there's official logo. Okay, this is all legit. Um, yeah.
44:56 Pablo Torre? That's ridiculous.
44:57 Speaker 03 I didn't even realize that when I pulled it out. I just pulled it out of the.
45:00 Pablo Torre? I love that the last thing you might see, or the last thing your opponent might see as they lose consciousness, is, is, is, is a logo that reminds them of, like, Karl-Anthony Towns.
45:11 Speaker 03 Yeah, yeah. And, and to be honest, it's on, it's biggest on the back. So if they.
45:15 Pablo Torre? It's enormous on the back.
45:16 Speaker 03 If they see this, if they're, if my opponent's looking at this, that means I'm going out. This is the last thing they see before they choke me out.
45:35 Speaker 03 I do want to talk about this in short Chinatown thing real quick, because I feel like I haven't done a great job of, uh, of selling it to people.
45:41 Pablo Torre? Of explaining what it is.
45:42 Speaker 03 It, it's kind of hard to explain, but just imagine it's guys, it's two, two, well, it's a bunch of people who are in, uh. TV show and they're unaware that they're on a TV show.
45:55 Pablo Torre? Right, like Law and Order is like the analog for what the show is.
46:00 Speaker 03 Yes.
46:00 Pablo Torre? Police procedural.
46:01 Speaker 03 Police procedural, Law and Order, and what background characters in it, but we don't know what in a TV show.
46:06 Pablo Torre? Right, you're the guys working at the Chinese restaurant in the police procedural.
46:09 Speaker 03 Right.
46:09 Pablo Torre? Who it turns out have a vast universe that they are inhabiting themselves.
46:14 Speaker 03 Yes.
46:14 Pablo Torre? But they're.
46:15 Speaker 03 But we're constantly in the background.
46:17 Pablo Torre? And what's hard to explain, though, is the shift in.
46:21 Speaker 03 Perspectives.
46:21 Pablo Torre? Yes, in like the, wait a minute, so is this real? Who's aware of this?
46:26 Speaker 03 Right.
46:26 Pablo Torre? Are the characters, are the cops aware of what they're thinking?
46:30 Speaker 03 Yes.
46:30 Pablo Torre? In that way, it becomes both gripping and also hard to summarize.
46:34 Speaker 03 Yeah, it's hard to summarize, but I think that's what's cool about it. It's weird and ambitious. We're not spoon-feeding you. Like when you watch Twin Peaks, are you like, well, eh, what, what?
46:47 Pablo Torre? I vividly remember the first time I saw Twin Peaks.
46:49 Speaker 03 Oh, yeah, yeah.
46:50 Pablo Torre? It was on VHS. I was doing a Christian service trip to Ecuador, because I'm a good person.
46:54 Speaker 03 Wait, what?
46:56 Pablo Torre? This is in high school. This is in high school.
46:58 Speaker 03 Wait, you're Christian?
47:02 Pablo Torre? You do service? I was raised Catholic. I went to a Catholic all-boys high school.
47:07 Speaker 03 Okay.
47:07 Pablo Torre? And we went on a Christian service trip to Ecuador.
47:09 Speaker 03 Oh, my God.
47:10 Pablo Torre? Which, again, confusing because not Hispanic.
47:13 Speaker 03 But.
47:13 Pablo Torre? But there I was. And there was a TV with a bunch of old VHS tapes. And one of them was Twin Peaks. And I had no idea what this was. We put it on one day. And I just remember being almost scarred.
47:27 Pablo Torre? Like haunted, actually.
47:28 Speaker 03 Right, haunted.
47:29 Pablo Torre? But it's the highest compliment to compare anything to David Lynch, is my point.
47:33 Speaker 03 Sure, I mean, I don't.
47:34 Pablo Torre? But it aspires to a surrealism.
47:38 Speaker 03 Yeah.
47:38 Pablo Torre? That is, it's, the whole thing about like working for any tech company now, it's like, what is this show like?
47:45 Speaker 03 Yes.
47:46 Pablo Torre? And we are making comparisons to things that are elevated.
47:49 Speaker 03 Yes.
47:50 Pablo Torre? Which is a compliment, because that's not what you would do if you were just trying to maximize the simplicity of the elevator bitch.
47:57 Speaker 03 1,000%. So how cool is it that we got to make this thing?
48:01 Pablo Torre? It's awesome.
48:01 Speaker 03 With Asian. Guys, just, and, and, I mean, it's making a broader point as well. It's this idea that, why are we background characters in the story all the time? You know, what does that mean? We're always on the background of culture in America, right? So like, how do we navigate that?
48:17 Pablo Torre? Yes, what is that waiter in the background scene of this Law and Order episode thinking?
48:23 Speaker 03 Right.
48:24 Pablo Torre? Is just, is a very funny premise?
48:26 Speaker 03 Yes.
48:27 Pablo Torre? And then, you, the thing that makes it work, though, to me, as a viewer, was, but there is an actual mystery.
48:35 Speaker 03 Yes.
48:35 Pablo Torre? That's unfolding. It's not merely beating the same drum of, this is a clever premise.
48:41 Speaker 03 Yes, yes, yes.
48:42 Pablo Torre? And there is a social good to come out of this. It's like, you're actually trying to figure out what is happening.
48:47 Speaker 03 Yes, what is happening. All the characters are slowly trying to figure out what's happening, and it gets weirder and weirder.
48:52 Pablo Torre? Right, why is Ronnie Chang, spoiler alert, getting thrown into a vat of hot sauce?
48:55 Speaker 03 No, that's not me. That's not me. That was someone, that's Jimmy.
48:58 Pablo Torre? Hey, guys, I'm here with my main man, Detective Willis Wu. And when Willis wants something with a kick, he reaches for Chinese supper. Whoa, wait, wait, wait! Whoa, what the [bleep]? No, wait, whoa, whoa!
49:21 Pablo Torre? How's the spice level? Is spicy enough for you?
49:25 Pablo Torre? You throw Jimmy into that.
49:26 Speaker 03 Yes, I throw that, yeah.
49:27 Pablo Torre? You all look alike.
49:27 Speaker 03 That's okay, yeah, that's okay. I understand, I understand coming from a Mexican guy.
49:32 Speaker 03 Tell us a part.
49:34 Pablo Torre? So, okay, so the jujitsu thing, though.
49:35 Speaker 03 Yeah.
49:37 Pablo Torre? I, on, you're not on, you're not on Twitter, X, or whatever, but on Instagram, I see, I see the proof of the body transformation. But more than that, the martial art transformation that you've been undergoing for how long now?
49:51 Speaker 03 Oh, I've been doing martial arts since 2004. So, I mean, not jujitsu, but other martial arts, so. I used to do escrime, which is the Filipino.
49:59 Pablo Torre? Oh, my, really?
50:01 Speaker 03 Yeah, I've been doing it for a while, it's fun. It's not even about fighting, it's just good mental health. You know, and, and in a weird way, jujitsu, this could be an article for your never-to- Be created, you know, um, long form magazine.
50:14 Pablo Torre? Yep.
50:15 Speaker 03 Like Brazilian Jiu Jitsu has been and totally embraced by America, middle America.
50:21 Pablo Torre? We we did, we did an episode early, early on with Jay Caspian Kang, actually.
50:25 Speaker 03 Okay.
50:25 Pablo Torre? About why Mark Zuckerberg is so into Jiu Jitsu.
50:28 Speaker 03 Right, right. I joke about that in my special as well. Please watch Netflix December seventeen.
50:32 Pablo Torre? I I I I unfortunately do recommend that they do that.
50:36 Speaker 03 Oh, thank you.
50:37 Pablo Torre? But there is a sort of cognitive um logic and intellectualism to Jiu Jitsu in terms of strategy.
50:46 Speaker 03 Yeah.
50:46 Pablo Torre? That I certainly never appreciated because I only know about it because, oh, yeah, it's like MMA stuff now, BJJ, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is very popular. There seems to be, it's a thinking man's martial art is the way that it was described to us.
50:58 Speaker 03 Yeah, it is. I think so. I think because you can do uncooperative sparring every class, so.
51:05 Pablo Torre? What does that, what does that mean?
51:06 Speaker 03 It means that when you're um, when you spar in Jiu Jitsu, you traditionally spar at the end of every single class. And it's, there's, it's not like you're, you're both trying to win. So it becomes an actual competitive game.
51:20 Pablo Torre? Right. Practice feels like the real thing.
51:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, a- and um, and because of that, you get like the strategy. Because you're, you're not just drilling mindlessly, you're both trying to win. So then it becomes like chess a little bit, so. And because you're not striking, so you don't get, you know, any long-term brain issues.
51:37 Pablo Torre? Well, except for all the consciousness that you lose.
51:39 Speaker 03 Well, no, but you you should, you should be tapping out before that. So, yeah, so uh, in in in that sense, it's a real kind of gentleman's martial art and. Um, yeah, but my my broader point, we could talk about Jiu Jitsu forever, but like my broader point is that for some reason, middle America.
51:55 Pablo Torre? Yeah, why?
51:55 Speaker 03 Loves it. I don't know. There's something about Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and like that American something that they just go like that, you know, it's a real.
52:05 Pablo Torre? It it has been startling to me as somebody whose dad, uh, again, Filipino guy, did martial arts in the Philippines.
52:11 Speaker 03 Oh.
52:12 Pablo Torre? And put me into karate classes and taekwondo classes and stuff.
52:16 Speaker 03 What did your dad do?
52:17 Pablo Torre? He did a little escrema. He did karate uh, in the, in the Philippines. I like, I think he used like a brown belt, which is the second.
52:24 Speaker 03 Whoa, your dad could kick some butt.
52:26 Pablo Torre? I mean, as as every Asian father must.
52:29 Speaker 03 Right. Wow, must be crazy trying to fight your dad.
52:32 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
52:34 Speaker 03 Wow, but you never did it, eh?
52:35 Pablo Torre? I I I I tapped out. At white belt every time.
52:40 Speaker 03 Wow, as impressive as you are as a person, Harvard and ESPN pioneering Asian American journalists. Your dad is like some-
52:48 Pablo Torre? He's way better. LeBron James of Filipino urologist is what I always call him.
52:51 Speaker 03 Crazy.
52:53 Pablo Torre? This is making me feel both better and worse about everything I've accomplished. But, uh, the point being that jujitsu clearly is just cool and, and sort of like, and obviously there's the MMA's part of it. There's the UFC, there's the Joe Rogan, there's, it's just hard to disentangle it from all of it.
53:09 Speaker 03 American culture, yeah.
53:10 Pablo Torre? But it's, it's so popular right now that it is a remarkable and unthinkable thing for, again, an Asian American to be like, "Oh, middle America just loves this weird Asian art now."
53:21 Speaker 03 Yeah, jujitsu. I mean, and, and I think it has something for left people, left and right.
53:27 Pablo Torre? Yes.
53:28 Speaker 03 I think, I think the left, if you're on the left, then you do jujitsu, you kind of toughen up a little bit. You learn some self-reliance and you kind of learn that no one can help you. You gotta help yourself. It's one-on-one. And if you're on the right, you learn the opposite. You actually learn that, oh, there are people, you can't just be a, you, you have to look after other people in your class. For you to have a good training session, everyone needs to be okay, you know what I mean? And so you learn kind of putting other people before yourself, you know, not, not going for the kill every single time, because that's not what creates a good atmosphere. And when, when you talk about jujitsu, it becomes above politics. You could be left or right wing, and if you talk about jujitsu, you bond over jujitsu. It's like a common cult thing.
54:11 Pablo Torre? Have you been workshopping this take?
54:13 Speaker 03 No, no, I haven't, but I-
54:14 Pablo Torre? That's, that's, I mean, but the idea of like, I, I like the idea of like the Democratic Party, actually. The DNC-
54:20 Speaker 03 Doing jujitsu?
54:21 Pablo Torre? Needs to all take jujitsu.
54:22 Speaker 03 Yeah, because I, I think it might be the answer to, you know, solving the divide in America.
54:29 Pablo Torre? Is that we all sort of culminate instead of an election in a martial arts tournament?
54:33 Speaker 03 Yeah, no, no, not fight it out. It's just, jujitsu might be the only common thread that could connect left and right, you know?
54:41 Pablo Torre? What are you like as a competitor, though, in jujitsu?
54:45 Speaker 03 I'm bad. I'm bad at jujitsu. I tap early. I don't like, my whole- The whole thing is don't get injured.
54:50 Pablo Torre? Yeah, don't mess with the moneymaker.
54:51 Speaker 03 Yeah, don't mess with the moneymaker. Tap early. I got no ego with tapping. Women, children, white belts, everyone taps me out. I have no problem with that whatsoever. I'm just, my, my goal is mental health. Do not get injured, do not injure anyone else. That's my main goal.
55:11 Pablo Torre? In interior Chinatown, there are fight scenes.
55:16 Speaker 04 Ever since I was a boy, I've dreamt of this moment. Practicing, waiting to step into the light.
55:44 Pablo Torre? Hi, can I place an order to go?
55:50 Pablo Torre? I wonder, when you were doing those fight scenes, was your jujitsu training helpful? Or no, were you actually throttling what you knew? Because you weren't a guy who was a jujitsu student.
55:59 Speaker 03 I mean, jujitsu helped insofar as body control. But what we were doing, I was throwing a phone at someone's face. You know, Jimmy was like, like.
56:07 Pablo Torre? Yeah, Jimmy Oh Yang.
56:08 Speaker 03 Crescent, yeah, Jimmy Oh Yang's in it, crescent kicking. There's no kicks in jujitsu. But it definitely helped with body control and knowing how to move. And it was, and most of the fight scenes was the stunt guys making us look good. So shout out to the stunt guys. But yeah, I think it's a very cool show and very ambitious. And I hope people check it out and they like it. Because it's rare to make something original IP like that. That's just ambitious.
56:34 Pablo Torre? It was based on a bestselling book.
56:36 Speaker 03 Based on bestselling books, so it's free market tested.
56:38 Pablo Torre? Books.
56:39 Speaker 03 Yeah, books.
56:40 Pablo Torre? If there's anything that we've learned on today's episode of Pablo Torre Fides Out, it's that we should prioritize books.
56:47 Speaker 03 Yeah, I seriously doubt anyone watching this clip on Instagram. Has read a book in the last five years. I'm happy to be proven wrong.
56:56 Pablo Torre? Ronnie Chang.
56:57 Speaker 03 Write in the comments the books that you read.
56:59 Pablo Torre? Yeah, sound off in the comments with the last book you read.
57:01 Speaker 03 I will never see any of those comments, but it will help the video make some money.
57:05 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
57:05 Speaker 03 Which is the point of this, yeah, I guess.
57:07 Pablo Torre? Ronnie, thank you for a session of uncooperative sparring.
57:11 Speaker 03 No problem. Oh, yeah, there you go.
57:13 Pablo Torre? See?
57:14 Speaker 03 And I, thanks, thanks for having me on again. Always great to see you. I'm a huge fan, remain a huge fan. I've been a fan of yours since college. It's so, it's surreal to actually meet and talk to you sometimes and see you face to face, and I love your writing. I hope you can get back to it.
57:27 Pablo Torre? Okay, that's enough, though. I think the point's been made. I think the point's been made.
57:30 Speaker 03 All right. Yeah, so I'm beating a dead horse, man. But, um, yes, I love everything you do, except for this.
57:35 Pablo Torre? Yeah, uh, the feelings are mutual, uh, except I love this.
57:53 Pablo Torre? Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Abaroma, Ryan Cortez, Sam Daywig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Rachel Miller Howard, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, Chris Tumanello, and Juliet Warren. Our studio engineering by RG Systems, our sound design by NGW Post, our theme song, as always, is by John Bravo. And we will talk to you next time.
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Previous Share & Gift & Tell with Domonique Foxworth and David Samson Next The Butthole Story (Or: A Thoughtful Conversation with Sue Bird and Ezra Edelman) Page updated November 5, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated