The Butthole Story (Or: A Thoughtful Conversation with Sue Bird and Ezra Edelman)

This year has seen a boom in the worlds of women's sports and documentary films (and podcasting https://www.atouchmore.com/). So we invited the best point guard in the history of women's basketball (Sue Bird) and the best documentarian in the country (O. J.: Made in America's Ezra Edelman) for an in-person summit to discuss all of it. Plus: one-word answers from multi-hyphenates, wanting control, the good-faith mind games of talking to refs, the bad-faith ickiness of extracting controversy, the Billie Jean King of it all... and why the hard's not as hard, when you're doing the thing you were meant to be doing — even when it's hard. 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?

  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?

• 0:42Pablo 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.

• 1:09Speaker 01

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• 1:54Pablo Torre?

  This episode is brought to you by Apollo.io. A lot of the stories on this show start the same way. Something that looks pretty simple turns out to be a mess once you look under the hood. Well, it's no different in the sales world. Your team has a tool for finding prospects, a different tool for reaching out to them, and a third for keeping track of it all. On paper, that's a system. In practice, it's a salesperson spending the better part of the day copying names from one tab into another, and not much of it actually selling. Apollo.io is a platform that helps sales teams find the right buyers and reach out to them. It brings prospecting, outreach and follow-up into one place instead of several separate tools. It's used by sales teams of all sizes, from small businesses to larger

• 2:39Pablo Torre?

  organizations, and it's built for teams who want less manual busywork and more time with buyers. If your marketing and sales teams are trying to work from the same view of the customer, it's worth a look. Sign up for free at Apollo.io. That's Apollo.io. Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out. I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is.

• 3:03Speaker 02

  This is all your [bleep] right now.

• 3:05Pablo Torre?

  Right after this ad.

• 3:08Speaker 02

  You're listening to Giraffe Kings Network.

• 3:24Pablo Torre?

  Wait, what else is on your actual rider?

• 3:26Speaker 02

  My actual rider has, granted, this was, this list was made probably like five, it's still true, but it probably was made like five to 10 years ago. Plantain chips, beef jerky, Twix and Pellegrino.

• 3:42Pablo Torre?

  So to summarize again, you are not high.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  No, I'm not.

• 3:46Pablo Torre?

  You just love all the things that I would love while high.

• 3:49Speaker 03

  Wait.

• 3:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess so.

• 3:51Speaker 03

  But tell me what things you would demand a rider for.

• 3:55Speaker 02

  I love seaweed.

• 3:56Pablo Torre?

  I like seaweed.

• 3:56Speaker 03

  But why would you, to what events and places that you're invited to would you need a rider?

• 4:02Speaker 02

  Like a commercial shoot, you have your trailer, a lot of like, you know,

• 4:07Pablo Torre?

  That's a very down-to-earth rider, I gotta say. You should be more of a diva. Have you considered that?

• 4:14Speaker 02

  Like what is it?

• 4:14Pablo Torre?

  Like no eye contact.

• 4:15Speaker 02

  M&M's only red ones.

• 4:16Pablo Torre?

  Yeah. Green M&M's, no eye contact, and I want this to smell like, you know,

• 4:21Speaker 02

  I could just Starburst only red.

• 4:23Pablo Torre?

  By the way, can you tell them to stop airing your commercial?

• 4:27Speaker 02

  The Carmax one?

• 4:28Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 4:29Speaker 02

  Why?

• 4:30Pablo Torre?

  It's, I love it.

• 4:31Speaker 02

  Well, there's, there's the new iteration when Asia got.

• 4:34Pablo Torre?

  I've noticed that there was an update.

• 4:36Speaker 02

  Third MVP. When you became MVP once, was that fine? No, you did it thrice.

• 4:42Speaker 03

  How often in the world have you actually used the word thrice?

• 4:45Speaker 02

  Thrice?

• 4:48Speaker 03

  Have you ever?

• 4:48Pablo Torre?

  I'm guessing it's less than-

• 4:49Speaker 02

  Now, like, ten times a day, every time they roll that.

• 4:51Pablo Torre?

  I was gonna say, I'm guessing it's less than thrice.

• 4:54Speaker 02

  I've been in commercials before. Maybe they didn't run this much, but I've been in commercials before. You could have seen me while I was playing.

• 5:02Pablo Torre?

  I saw you-

• 5:03Speaker 02

  You probably weren't paying attention.

• 5:04Pablo Torre?

  I saw you-

• 5:05Speaker 02

  The world wasn't paying attention.

• 5:06Pablo Torre?

  Naked?

• 5:07Speaker 02

  You did see me naked, although blocking certain areas.

• 5:11Pablo Torre?

  That's right.

• 5:11Speaker 02

  Body issue.

• 5:12Speaker 03

  In, oh, in the swimsuit issue.

• 5:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:14Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, journalism.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  ESPN, body issue.

• 5:15Speaker 03

  But you're in the swimsuit issue too.

• 5:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, but that was-

• 5:18Speaker 03

  Wasn't that last year?

• 5:19Speaker 02

  No, that was, no, that was, god, what year was it?

• 5:22Pablo Torre?

  It's funny that you don't-

• 5:22Speaker 02

  That was 2022.

• 5:23Pablo Torre?

  Necessarily remember when you were in the SI swimsuit issue.

• 5:28Speaker 02

  I think 2022.

• 5:29Speaker 03

  But wasn't that post-retirement?

• 5:30Speaker 02

  No, right before. It might have been 20, it might have been 2021.

• 5:37Speaker 02

  Do you know what I remember about the swimsuit shoot?

• 5:40Pablo Torre?

  Please?

• 5:40Speaker 02

  Not-

• 5:41Speaker 03

  Did you have a rider for that?

• 5:43Speaker 02

  Um, no, we didn't. Of course, I remember things about the shoot. What I remember is Brianna Stewart was also there. And she leans over to me at one point, she's like, "Yo, I think something happened with BG and Russia." And I was like, "Oh, really? Like, what?" She goes, "Yeah, I'm not, I don't know, I don't know the details, but I don't think it's good." And I was like, "Oh." Cause kind of like shrug, what could it be? Like, what could be that bad?

• 6:07Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 6:08Speaker 02

  And then, fast forward forty-eight hours, maybe a week. Cause you know it was held, I think it was held for a while, like the actual news.

• 6:15Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, right, this was like State Department-

• 6:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:17Pablo Torre?

  Level embargo.

• 6:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, so then, so that's how, that's like technically how I found out, but I didn't know the gist. And she was like, "Yeah, I think it's bad."

• 6:24Pablo Torre?

  What an absurd setting to learn about that.

• 6:27Speaker 02

  We were in St. Thomas.

• 6:29Pablo Torre?

  The opposite.

• 6:51Pablo Torre?

  All right, so if you're wondering how it is that I'm sitting with Ezra Edelman, who's arguably the best documentarian in America, and Sue Bird, who is inarguably the best point guard in the history of women's basketball, you should know that I sometimes wonder that very same thing in real life. But what I knew going into today, which I hoped would be a little bit of a year in review here, was that Ezra, who won the Oscar for OJ Made in America and has since become the journalistic conscience of my podcast, was gonna ask questions, lots of questions. And that's partly because Ezra does this professionally, and also partly because he hates answering them personally.

• 7:33Pablo Torre?

  And I also knew that Sue, who launched her own pod this year with Megan Rapinoe, her partner, called A Touch More, would be undaunted by whatever it is that Ezra decided to throw our way.

• 7:47Speaker 03

  Now that you're retired for over a year, over a year, right?

• 7:51Speaker 02

  Two years.

• 7:52Speaker 03

  Over two years, okay. Like, I might be conflating this from getting to know you over the past year, but in some ways, I mean, I've always known you, you're Sue Bird, you're Hall of Fame basketball player.

• 8:04Pablo Torre?

  You guys are friends, I should establish that, we are friends.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, we aren't strangers, we're all friends.

• 8:08Speaker 03

  We're all friends. But I would venture to say that you have penetrated the world and our culture in a way, in the last two years post-retirement, than you, in a way that you hadn't as a basketball player. Not only are you in commercials, not only are you doing shoots and then you're head of companies and you're, you know, basketball player emeritus, you show up everywhere, you actually are a grinder who does a podcast every week.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm in the podcast world.

• 8:37Speaker 03

  So how do you think you're doing?

• 8:40Speaker 02

  I don't know.

• 8:41Speaker 03

  No, for real.

• 8:41Speaker 02

  I think we're doing all right. We're hanging in there. Um, no, it's getting better. It's getting easier, better from, from our standpoint.

• 8:47Pablo Torre?

  What's your standard of success as now this? Cause before you had a pretty clear one.

• 8:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:53Pablo Torre?

  This is a very different business. If I may lay down on the therapy couch on this side of the room.

• 8:59Speaker 02

  Um, good question. I'm still figuring that out. Um, I don't know what Meghan did recently. It was an interview or maybe something I read. I can't remember. It might've been a podcast we were on. And she talked about her sister, her twin sister, asking her after retirement, "Do you have some new measure of success? Like, how do you judge?" And the answer is, "I don't know." Like, I don't really have, is it money? Is it, like, what is it?

• 9:26Pablo Torre?

  Is it retweets?

• 9:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, is it retweets? Is it comments, you know, on the YouTube? I don't know. I don't really know what it is yet. I think we're both trying to figure that out. But what I was getting at was, we are, I don't, it does, it does not feel like a grind. So that's success. It is getting easier in terms of like the preparation and how and getting like a flow and an understanding. So, which obviously speaks to the grind part of it. So it doesn't feel as hard as it did early on. I think we're getting a little bit more of a flow together. Learning how to do it with two people is different than probably, I'm sure you can speak to this, than just by yourself.

• 10:02Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 10:03Speaker 02

  Um, so yeah, so it's getting, it's getting easier for us. And I think right now that feels like the level. That's, that's the measure of success. That it doesn't feel like a grind. Cause something weekly could feel that way.

• 10:13Speaker 03

  You guys have an amazing rapport, which is, which is a good thing.

• 10:17Pablo Torre?

  By the way, that's the head start, is that you guys are authentically enjoying each other's company. You have natural, real chemistry and people want to hang out with you guys. So much of the battle is, we're at a cafeteria and I'm over here with my weird friends. And Meghan and Sue are over there and I want them to sit with me so other people want to sit with us.

• 10:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:37Pablo Torre?

  Totally.

• 10:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 10:38Pablo Torre?

  And you're just like, do I want to, do I want to spend time with this person? And that is, you guys are over indexing on likability, I would say in that regard. You have nothing to worry about.

• 10:48Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 10:49Pablo Torre?

  Me and Ezra have a different proposition.

• 10:52Speaker 03

  Hold on a second. We're gonna turn this down a problem.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  Okay, great.

• 10:55Speaker 03

  You're 15 months into this, right? You celebrated your year anniversary, what, in September?

• 10:59Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 11:00Speaker 03

  All right, how are you doing? How do you think you've done?

• 11:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, what's your measure?

• 11:04Speaker 03

  In terms of where you started, how you conceive this?

• 11:07Pablo Torre?

  People didn't come to this episode for this.

• 11:10Speaker 03

  I did, oh, I did.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  I'm curious.

• 11:12Pablo Torre?

  Unfortunately, I know Ezra did. What's funny is that I have found myself at parties, or gatherings, or whatever, or kindergarten admissions events, which I go to these days. And people ask me, who don't know sports or me, what do you do? And I always have to figure out, like, my elevator pitch for my show, which was designed to be hard to summarize.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  Wait, hold on a second, before you keep going. What do you do, one word?

• 11:41Pablo Torre?

  I talk. Talk.

• 11:43Speaker 03

  You don't say journalist?

• 11:48Pablo Torre?

  Let me retract that. Journalist.

• 11:52Speaker 03

  Okay, so you say journalist over podcaster?

• 11:54Pablo Torre?

  Well, because I go on television, and I...

• 11:58Speaker 02

  You also have multiple...

• 12:00Speaker 03

  Oh, so you do, okay, so fine.

• 12:01Speaker 02

  You've got some tentacles.

• 12:03Pablo Torre?

  I've got some W9s, W2s.

• 12:05Speaker 03

  As a former writer, how does that make you feel?

• 12:09Pablo Torre?

  It makes me feel like the more I say that I'm a journalist, which I say a lot on this show, the more I am compensating for my insecurities about mostly talking.

• 12:17Speaker 03

  Sorry, so, fair enough.

• 12:19Speaker 02

  I can't wait till we ask you this, by the way.

• 12:20Speaker 03

  I'm not talking about this [BLEEP]. So, like, I...

• 12:22Pablo Torre?

  This is gonna send me a legal letter if I ask him questions.

• 12:25Speaker 03

  So, I digress, so, I digress. So, anyway, I interrupted, go back to what you were saying. So, you're in the elevator, you're talking to people, and...

• 12:31Pablo Torre?

  As the ghost of Christmas future, it will never feel cool to say, "I podcast." You'll notice I did not say "podcast" when presented with the choice of a single word. That is low on the draft board. And it's even weirder for me to have to say, "I host a show called Pablo Torre Finds Out." That's me. Because inherent in the premise of me having to say the name of the show that you don't know is that you probably don't give a [BLEEP]. About me, which is an insecurity that I need to get over because I believe that people should be interested in a show that they don't know, even if I am the host and they don't really give a about me.

• 13:10Pablo Torre?

  The point being that I end up talking about how I use my curiosity to solve mysteries. I use journalism to answer questions that I'm authentically engaged by.

• 13:22Speaker 03

  Considering.

• 13:23Pablo Torre?

  And then I hear boos.

• 13:25Speaker 03

  Considering from whence this came and like you have a podcast, you're thinking about the theme of the podcast, how best to sort of use this opportunity that you had, like in all seriousness, because I do think this has been a rousing, if not raging, success. You are very good at your job, but this idea of like Pablo Torre finds out, has this sort of fulfilled your vision for what you hope this would be?

• 13:49Pablo Torre?

  So I think a lot of my insecurity around answering the question in an efficient way is because I actually love it so much and I am deeply proud of it. And being given a blank piece of paper on which I've written this, in which I can do this and be like, that was work today. I looked forward to doing this today. I've created a show where every episode we do, I actually am super interested in. I look forward to it. And so I'm working all the time and it's very tiring and all of that. But the answer of like standard of success, do you, again, not to sound like now a coaching cliche, do I love the process?

• 14:24Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 14:25Pablo Torre?

  And I do, and I'm proud of it. And I zoom out to like larger things about how in sports podcasting and podcasting in general, there are not a lot of shows that do what we try to do.

• 14:37Speaker 02

  I was actually going to ask how, if you view yourself as a sports podcast.

• 14:40Pablo Torre?

  We are a technically sports podcast. Sports ends up being the thing I love and I'm still interested in, and so we do a lot of it.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:48Pablo Torre?

  But we don't feel bounded by that. As both of you maybe have experienced in terms of what I want to ask you guys about.

• 14:56Speaker 03

  Do you ever feel any less sure-footed when you're doing podcasts that are not based in the world of sports?

• 15:01Pablo Torre?

  No, no. Because as I think you guys know, like, I pride myself on mostly.

• 15:09Pablo Torre?

  I pride myself on using sports to talk about other things. And also, like, I really love talking to people who don't actually care about sports. And I think you have some of that, too. Like, you don't go to your show because I wanna... And you do this. You break down sports and games and stuff. But mostly, you're there because you want to hang out with that person. For me, my whole thing is I'm gonna make something that people who don't give a [BLEEP] about sports, as you might conventionally understand them.

• 15:38Pablo Torre?

  Something that you might still love. And that's maybe like also born of an insecurity. You know, like, I'm not, I'm not a Hall of Fame athlete. Like, what do I bring to the table? I mostly bring to the table the possibility that there's a good story, or angle, or curiosity, or a person I have persuaded to entrust me with their own insecurities that I'm then gonna invite you to hang out with.

• 16:06Speaker 03

  So, based on what this podcast is called, Pablo Torre Finds Out, based on sort of your grandiose vision for what you hope to do with certain episodes.

• 16:16Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 16:17Speaker 03

  Does what's happening right now, like, qualify as a complete failure? You're just sitting here talking to your friends. Like, what are you doing? This isn't a real podcast.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  For someone who, like, didn't want to come in the booth...

• 16:27Pablo Torre?

  For someone who hates podcasting, has a lot of questions about podcasting.

• 16:30Speaker 02

  You're really taking over here.

• 16:32Speaker 03

  Well, I mean...

• 16:32Speaker 02

  Or is it just so we don't ask him questions?

• 16:34Pablo Torre?

  It's definitely that.

• 16:35Speaker 03

  Absolutely. It's classic.

• 16:37Pablo Torre?

  It's called filibustering.

• 16:40Pablo Torre?

  Filibustering with Ezra Edelman.

• 16:42Speaker 03

  By the way, speaking of which...

• 16:43Pablo Torre?

  Ezra filibusters.

• 16:44Speaker 03

  What's your current one-word title professionally?

• 16:47Speaker 02

  Oh, God, yeah. And I don't know.

• 16:49Pablo Torre?

  Icon.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Living. Yeah, I don't have one. Entrepreneur.

• 16:57Speaker 03

  Wow, okay.

• 16:58Speaker 02

  Is that a good one?

• 16:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 16:59Pablo Torre?

  I mean, that's...

• 17:00Speaker 03

  Global citizen.

• 17:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, it doesn't really fit. But to actually answer your question, before you get to your point, I still start with, like, either retired or former athlete. Or depending on the room, retired WNBA player.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  Do you aspire to get to a point where that is not what you say anymore?

• 17:15Speaker 02

  Not really.

• 17:15Speaker 03

  Or think?

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Why?

• 17:18Speaker 03

  I'm not saying you should. I'm not, no judgment.

• 17:19Speaker 02

  No, I don't think so.

• 17:21Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  I haven't given it much, I haven't given it deep thought, but no.

• 17:23Speaker 03

  I mean, look, you're an incredibly curious person. The fact that you like, sort of, take into retirement like with gusto and you try different things, you're like, sort of between, again, you are an entrepreneur and you are a podcaster and you are a, I don't know, cultural ambassador for your sport and you are a team owner and you are all these [bleep] things.

• 17:43Speaker 02

  Reporting for duty.

• 17:44Speaker 03

  It's like, it's like, it's like, how many jobs do you got? I'd say you got a lot of jobs. So all I'm saying is like, there's a level to which you could be like, oh, it'd be amazing that in five years, without thinking about it, of course, you're always gonna be a Hall of Fame athlete, but you're like, oh, I'm this. And you can believe it, think it. I would just think that might be an amazing thing to be able to, I mean, it's never gonna happen with me.

• 18:05Pablo Torre?

  What is your one word answer? Ezra?

• 18:09Speaker 03

  Uh, documentary filmmaker? That's two words, but who doesn't make many documentaries?

• 18:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I was like waiting for the

• 18:17Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, waiting for the rest of the, rest of the business card. Yeah. But you guys are both in, by the way, documentaries, uh, women's sports, these are boom times.

• 18:29Speaker 03

  Uh, I don't know. Actually, that's not true.

• 18:30Pablo Torre?

  Is that not true anymore?

• 18:31Speaker 03

  No.

• 18:32Speaker 02

  For documentaries?

• 18:33Speaker 03

  For documentaries.

• 18:33Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 18:34Speaker 03

  For women's sports, yes. Because you know why? Everybody watches women's sports.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 18:40Pablo Torre?

  I've seen that. I've seen you guys wear that, actually.

• 18:51Pablo Torre?

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• 19:22Pablo Torre?

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• 20:06Pablo Torre?

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• 20:29Pablo Torre?

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• 21:13Pablo Torre?

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• 21:52Speaker 04

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• 22:23Pablo Torre?

  I do want to get to the idea that women's basketball specifically is now cool in a capitalistically verified way.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:33Pablo Torre?

  It is not a guilt trip. It is not a thing I want you to enjoy because I like it. There's just real money in this. And that must be profoundly fun? On some level for you to enjoy now?

• 22:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. I think there's 1,000 positive things to say about it. Really, everything we're already talking about, the businesses that are going to grow, the sport itself, all the things. The only negative for me personally is like, it would have been much easier to capitalize on all this as a player. I can tell you that.

• 23:05Pablo Torre?

  I was going to ask, how much of that is like, really, we had to wait till now till I'm done for this?

• 23:10Speaker 02

  It is what it is. It's not, what are you going to do? You can't change it. It's like classic. You just have to move on, let go. But I do, I do have moments where, even though the podcast doesn't feel like a grind, it's still not playing basketball. Still not going to play a game. Even though having companies or doing speaking engagements or commercials don't feel like grinds, every now and then they do. It's still not playing basketball. So yeah, it would have been wonderful to be able to capitalize on all this as a player just because that's what I was born to do. That's why I don't think I want to let go of it.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  And also, you could have enjoyed the sort of at the height of, you know? What's the right word? The boom of player salaries, that would have been nice. I mean, it's nice, by the way, to do what I do. And like now, weirdly, I never thought, you know, and like, oh, do OK financially, doing something that I didn't.

• 23:57Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 23:57Speaker 03

  No one thinks traditionally is like, oh, documentary filmmaking.

• 24:00Pablo Torre?

  Me too, same, yes.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  So what if you, what if for some reason you could no longer make documentaries? I don't even know what the reason would be.

• 24:07Speaker 03

  It is totally not comparable.

• 24:09Speaker 02

  I know it's not, I'm trying to make it.

• 24:10Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  And there was a boom. And now, whatever you made on your last film, people are on a regular, on average, are making 10 times that. You wouldn't be like, oh dang, I was born in the wrong year.

• 24:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  That's what I'm, that's all I'm saying.

• 24:22Speaker 03

  That's fair.

• 24:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's not, but it's like, you can't go back. There had to have been all of us before in order to get to this point. So there's something, you know, there. The Billie Jean King of it all. So there's that. But yeah, would I love to play basketball and get compensated? Absolutely.

• 24:36Speaker 03

  So when I'm being a total, like, obnoxious child, being like, I completely understand. That's, that's a given, you're right.

• 24:42Speaker 02

  OK.

• 24:43Speaker 03

  But you're also doing OK.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm not complaining. It just would have been, it would have been a lot easier. Because the hard's not as hard when you're doing the thing you were meant to be doing.

• 24:51Speaker 03

  That is true.

• 24:52Speaker 02

  Even when it's hard.

• 24:52Speaker 03

  That's fair.

• 24:53Pablo Torre?

  So the thing about documentary, that's what, no, I, I concur. And also, appreciate, appreciate what you have now, Sue. Appreciate your commercial that runs endlessly. No, the thing about documentaries being cool now is that they're certainly cooler than when I was growing up. The idea that people want to make documentaries, even if the economy in this current phase of filmmaking has shifted from the boom time, which was before, it's different now.

• 25:19Speaker 03

  I agree.

• 25:20Pablo Torre?

  And how do you feel about that? That lots of people want to do the thing that you are as fastidious about in terms of craft and effort and standards.

• 25:31Speaker 02

  Great question.

• 25:31Pablo Torre?

  In the way that Sue is not just, you know, welcoming anybody into. Calling themselves basketball players at that level.

• 25:39Speaker 03

  I think it's great that documentary filmmaking as an art is something that is popular. I do think the idea that younger people could inspire to be nonfiction storytellers is great. I do think in terms of what, how you're characterizing the popularity of documentary filmmaking, you might be conflating what it is that makes it popular with what I would sort of term real documentary filmmaking. So I would.

• 26:05Pablo Torre?

  I'd like, I'd like you to un-conflate it.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  Yes, please.

• 26:07Pablo Torre?

  Can you de-conflate it?

• 26:09Speaker 03

  I could.

• 26:09Speaker 02

  Walk right into that one.

• 26:12Speaker 03

  But like, look, yes, I think it's great. Do I, do I think that there would have ever been a time in my life that I could have imagined growing up and making a living as a documentary filmmaker? No, just like, I'm guessing, could you have imagined that as a young child that you would, could have been a professional podcaster? Well, needless to say, podcasting didn't exist.

• 26:28Pablo Torre?

  Or even just guy who talks about sports at a level with people who actually did this professionally is ridiculous in retrospect.

• 26:34Speaker 03

  But I mean, the, the, the bigger answer to your question, or the, to me, what I more think about is the type of documentaries that are sort of more popular and more prevalent are increasingly things that are shown by streamers that are sometimes about famous people, artists, singers, whomever, and that are sort of like bordering a little bit on branded content because they're done in, in sort of connection with the subjects themselves who often are producers. And the sort of idea of documentary filmmaking as journalism is, is being sort of pushed by the wayside a little bit. And so it's not like there aren't tons of films that qualify in terms of what documentary filmmaking is, I desire to make them and see them.

• 27:17Speaker 03

  It's just that those aren't the ones that are typically compensated in the same way. So if you're saying, oh, look at this, the spooch in documentaries, I'm like, yes, but right now I feel like, like to me culturally, there seems to be less of an emphasis on art. You know, sort of in how sort of even like.

• 27:35Pablo Torre?

  Yes.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  You know, politically, in terms of like what we, what we focus on, what we finance, what we appreciate, all these different things. And I think that sort of has seeped into the art of filmmaking too, in terms of like what gets made, what we value, because it's still a commercial exercise. We are, you know, after all, a capitalist society. And when it comes to narrative filmmaking, it comes to documentary filmmaking, I see the same issues. And that's what is more of a concern for me. So I do think there is an ability. To make money as a nonfiction filmmaker. Maybe more than that ever before, because I do think the boom was a few years ago. And hopefully, something this cycle will sort of get back to a point where you can make really good things for, but like what I've seen is the stuff that is valued are the things

• 28:20Speaker 03

  that I happen to devalue slightly in terms of the content.

• 28:24Pablo Torre?

  So I should say that all of us have been adjacent to participated in, judged on a jury, or merely just as a consumer, films that you would consider not the type of doc that you yourself want to make.

• 28:40Speaker 03

  But this sounds super pretentious. I don't mean to say that because first of all, like, every documentary is hard to make. Every sort of documentary has value, and I really am trying to be like vague specifically.

• 28:52Pablo Torre?

  I'm trying to un-vague you.

• 28:53Speaker 03

  I know, but like it doesn't-

• 28:54Pablo Torre?

  But the reason I'm saying that is because I, the whole wind up to what I was trying to do was to say, and I have enjoyed personally many of those films. What we are, I think circling though, for me at least, is a curiosity around, do you think we should call them something else? Because I think it's cool to enjoy both yes and, right? It's cool. I, I have enjoyed many of those same films that you would not want to make. Do you think they should be called something else?

• 29:22Speaker 02

  Is it, to add to that, is it just when the subject is involved? Is that like the hard line?

• 29:28Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, what's the threshold?

• 29:29Speaker 03

  Well, I do think that's a line that I don't think is-

• 29:32Speaker 02

  Right, but is that the only one, when you, when you, in your mind, when you're thinking of, I forget the exact word you use, but-

• 29:38Speaker 03

  No, I mean, I, look, first of all, I do think there happens to be a glut of documentaries that are now being done in participation with the subject. If a subject has any creative control, I have a problem.

• 29:51Pablo Torre?

  Now, I want to clarify, how would you characterize- Yourself as a hardliner relative to other people in this field.

• 29:57Speaker 03

  I can't speak for other people. I can just speak for the fact that a lot of these things get made by people.

• 30:02Pablo Torre?

  Right.

• 30:03Speaker 03

  That's my answer to that question. So some people clearly are, look, by the way, I should also say, based on what we're saying, we all have to make a living. And also, everyone doesn't have a background as a journalist. And so if you come to something as more of an artistic filmmaker, or as something, whatever you're trying to do, or you just love the person, oh, my God, I love you so much, Sue, I want to make a film about you. Oh, you don't like this? Sure, we can just take that out. Because it's like, the world needs to enjoy Sue Bird for 90 minutes. It's like, okay, I can't do that. That is not what I want to watch.

• 30:37Pablo Torre?

  We're gonna clip as we're saying that, though, and circulate that.

• 30:39Speaker 03

  And a documentary about you. But I do think there is plenty of people who take on assignments, projects, and films, whether, by the way, even for the check, that are like totally valid. I'm starting to regret doing it.

• 30:53Speaker 02

  You came in hot.

• 30:54Pablo Torre?

  How the table has turned. Um, part of the reason why, though, I wanted to hang out with both of you at this table is because, we have enjoyed you two, um, to a degree that has made me jealous. What I consider the greatest seat in all of entertainment, which is a courtside seat at a basketball game. And watching basketball games with Sue courtside is, it's so fun for so many reasons. One of which is that Sue must behave like the Queen of England.

• 31:25Speaker 03

  I was literally about to say that. It's like watching with the Queen. The camera comes over and she's just like.

• 31:30Speaker 02

  Only at the Liberty games, when they're not playing the Storm.

• 31:35Pablo Torre?

  But I feel like there is, you are acutely aware. Okay, so Sue is also a part owner of the Seattle Storm, the franchise that she led.

• 31:42Speaker 03

  Wait, hold on a second. When you're sitting courtside at a Storm game in Seattle, are you like up yelling and like yelling at the refs?

• 31:48Speaker 02

  No, that would never be me regardless. Maybe in a playoff game. I also am just like so. I'm just so immune to the regular season. It's like, it's really hard to-

• 31:59Speaker 03

  You're indifferent to the regular season?

• 32:01Speaker 02

  No, I'm just like, it's a game-

• 32:02Pablo Torre?

  Not impressed by the regular season?

• 32:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. Playoffs though, like, it was, I'll say this. Game five, really all the playoff games I went to this year in New York, game five especially. It was very difficult to stay in my seat. And I don't even mean that from like an excitement cheering for one team or another. Both teams had big plays at different moments. Both teams had, you know, big calls, go for them, against them. It was hard not to like, do anything.

• 32:27Speaker 03

  What did you think of the quality of basketball in game five?

• 32:31Speaker 02

  Looking back now, I don't, that's not really the right question. Looking back now, when you look at the schedule, they were tired.

• 32:38Pablo Torre?

  This guy sucks at questions.

• 32:39Speaker 02

  They were tired, and so-

• 32:41Pablo Torre?

  Is that the, did you know that when you were watching it?

• 32:44Speaker 02

  Um, I didn't-

• 32:46Pablo Torre?

  Because the game was criticized broadly, we should say.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 32:48Pablo Torre?

  For being messy and not the best advertisement for the sport that now people were praising.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  I actually put a lot of that on the refs. So that, I was up close and personal, obviously we know I've been to a lot of WNBA games. I basically have that same seat to all the games I've been to prior.

• 33:01Pablo Torre?

  It's a remarkable-

• 33:01Speaker 02

  For 20 years.

• 33:02Pablo Torre?

  Remarkable throne you have.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  That was the like, loosest I've ever seen a WNBA game. And WNBA games are very physical. And that was like another level, where the off-ball actions that were happening, some of the banging, some of the holding, the referees were letting that go. And you guys know, any sport, when a referee lets something go early in the game, it just builds and builds and builds, it gets worse and worse and worse. So I think you had two very tired teams, just naturally, from the excitement, from the emotion of playoffs, from the travel, and then they basically played every other day. I think there was like, two games that had two days in between, or something like that. So I think it was just exhaustion, combined with both teams beating the crap out of each other because the referees allowed for that. And that led to a very sloppy, messy game.

• 33:47Speaker 02

  It led to, I think, all the missed shots. I mean, I don't remember what the percentages were, but they weren't great.

• 33:52Pablo Torre?

  It was horrible.

• 33:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:53Pablo Torre?

  I wanna, the other-

• 33:55Speaker 02

  It was a grindout game, for sure. It was a Euroleague game, I actually said this on our own pod. That is what the Euroleague is like.

• 34:00Pablo Torre?

  Physical, slow whistle.

• 34:02Speaker 02

  Grind, grind.

• 34:03Speaker 03

  Can I, slight digression about referees and like, so I assume you were the captain of the storm for their-

• 34:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, we do captains.

• 34:10Speaker 03

  I mean, I know it's not.

• 34:11Pablo Torre?

  It's a good one word answer. What are you?

• 34:12Speaker 02

  It's like, not that serious.

• 34:13Pablo Torre?

  I'm the captain.

• 34:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm the captain.

• 34:15Speaker 03

  What's the best way, and I know every referee is a person, human being, you have relationships, I'm sure, with all of them. But what was your mode of conveying frustration, if not contempt, for a call? Or how a game was being wrapped? And in terms of not only knowing that you're trying to get a point across, but you're trying to actually be effective?

• 34:39Speaker 02

  So I don't think there is a way to talk to a ref. There's no magic way to talk to a ref that you're gonna get them to see something or change how they call something immediately. That just like, I don't know that that exists. I don't know that anyone can sit in here and if they're being truthful, be like, oh, yeah, I know. When I go up to ref X, if I say it like this, they're gonna respond to that. It's just not gonna happen that way. It's just not. Or they might not, like, they might not call something purposely just so it doesn't happen in that way. And I'm not even saying that to be shady. It's all like a mind game. But what I can say over the course of my career, and I really wish Diana were here right now because she'd be laughing.

• 35:18Pablo Torre?

  I'd also draft her over Ezra, just for the record.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, just for the record. Next time she's in New York. I do think there's something to being consistent. But it doesn't mean I never got loud and in refs' faces. I definitely have. It doesn't mean that there weren't times where, even if the call was against our team and I saw that it was a good call, I didn't just go like, oh, yeah. It sucked for us, but it probably was the right call. So there was like, I think I was consistent. And I think what that brought was like a little bit of good faith and trust. And so if I did have a really big reaction to something, I think referees understood that I wasn't doing that just to be like demonstrative and because I was pissed. But that's like the course of years and time.

• 35:59Speaker 03

  Was there ever any dynamic that happened during the course of a game where?

• 36:06Speaker 03

  It wasn't, basically, it wasn't left on such good terms to a point where you had to have a conversation before the next time that person refereed a game to clear the air.

• 36:14Speaker 02

  No, no, never.

• 36:16Pablo Torre?

  Disgusted and even almost.

• 36:18Speaker 02

  Where I had, where I did something, where I had to go to the ref and like.

• 36:21Speaker 03

  Where you guys got into it a little bit, you were pissed off and/or they made that call and you were stewing to a point where it's like you had to go the next time you saw him, like, look, like, before a game, just be like, hey, can we talk this out, like?

• 36:31Speaker 02

  No, never. In fact, I've, the opposite. I've had referees come up to me before games numerous times, numerous, like, a handful in the course of 20 years, so, where they were like, hey, remember that call that X, Y, and Z happened? I went and watched it. By the way, I'm, I'm talking like, the next time I saw that ref. So they could have ref'd me on a Monday, I might not see them for three weeks. The next time I saw them, them be like, oh, actually, that call, I went and watched it, I see what you're saying. Or, and/or, you were right. I've had that happen.

• 37:01Speaker 03

  And you say, I told you so?

• 37:02Speaker 02

  No. Thank, like, thank you. Obviously, it sucks. I'm like, oh, I can't go back.

• 37:06Speaker 03

  And so, and do you then have increased regard for that person for having done that?

• 37:10Speaker 02

  Yes, absolutely. Yeah, it's all, the refs and players, it's relationships, especially in the WNBA. Very small league, it's not that many refs, we all know their names.

• 37:18Pablo Torre?

  It was so funny, sitting next to you for one of those playoff games, uh, because you were basically giving me, like, the pop-up video, like, there's that ref, there's that player, they have this history together, she does, it was a remarkable, just like, knowledge of all of these.

• 37:34Speaker 02

  Oh, there's some refs I know not to go up to. It's, you're not gonna get an answer.

• 37:38Pablo Torre?

  So.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  You're gonna get a lot of defense. So it's just, don't waste your breath.

• 37:42Pablo Torre?

  The small town that is the WNBA, um, part of what, also, the second thing that I was amused by, um, sitting courtside next to you, was how unempathetic you are towards bad basketball, or even to the messes that we saw in the playoffs of just like, can you tell, can you, can you, can you tell the butthole story?

• 38:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can.

• 38:16Pablo Torre?

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• 39:00Pablo Torre?

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• 39:45Pablo Torre?

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• 40:29Pablo Torre?

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• 41:13Pablo Torre?

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• 41:37Pablo Torre?

  When I am watching basketball, I will sometimes text Sue a photo of what is not literally a butthole, but does demand that you tell the story so that I stop looking like even more of a perv than I have already established myself to be.

• 41:52Speaker 02

  So, in college, Coach Ariema is known for his humor, his wit, and he can be, um, yeah. He can just, he can be really cutthroat, so...

• 42:05Pablo Torre?

  A bit of an Ezra.

• 42:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, a bit of an Ezra.

• 42:08Pablo Torre?

  Leave me out of this, man.

• 42:09Speaker 02

  I think he might be funner.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's saying a lot.

• 42:16Speaker 02

  Okay, so we're playing, I want to say it was Tennessee, I'm like, pretty sure. We're playing Tennessee, not going well in the first half. Like, just not going well. Like, super tentative, kind of nervous, probably, whatever. We go into halftime. I don't even remember what the score was. We go into halftime. He comes into the locker room. And he just looks around. And the man is prolific at storytelling in general. And in these moments of like, building up. He's just, and he knows when to just like, drop the bomb on us. So anyways, he comes in and he just looks around. You know, makes eye contact and he goes,

• 42:53Speaker 02

  "Do you know what this is?

• 42:56Speaker 02

  Do you know what this is? This is all your buttholes right now." He's [BLEEP] though. "This is all your [BLEEP]." And we were all, because, and by the way, when he goes, "Do you know what this is?", all of us are like, "Oh, what is that?"

• 43:08Pablo Torre?

  Right. Doing the three fingers up.

• 43:10Speaker 02

  What could this be?

• 43:11Pablo Torre?

  Clenched.

• 43:12Speaker 02

  Clenched.

• 43:12Pablo Torre?

  Index and thumb.

• 43:13Speaker 03

  Like, we're playing okay?

• 43:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, what is?

• 43:14Pablo Torre?

  Okay, but just real.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  Can I zoom in on that?

• 43:17Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 43:18Speaker 02

  He goes, "This is all your [BLEEP] right now." And we're like, [BLEEP]. And then he goes on to tell us, yeah, just how tight we were playing. "This is all your [BLEEP] right now." So I told, I shared that with Pablo.

• 43:31Pablo Torre?

  And it's just a thing that I not only will photograph my own fingers doing that all the time, but also...

• 43:39Speaker 03

  Oh, I have a question for you. What is the most that your [BLEEP] has been like, interviewing somebody?

• 43:47Speaker 03

  Who has made you feel the tightest?

• 43:49Speaker 02

  You get tight booty hole and [BLEEP]?

• 43:50Pablo Torre?

  Been the tightest?

• 43:51Speaker 02

  I'm trying to think of what that scenario would be.

• 43:53Speaker 03

  So that's why I'm gonna like...

• 43:55Pablo Torre?

  Oh.

• 43:55Speaker 02

  For you?

• 43:56Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 43:56Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 43:56Pablo Torre?

  Oh, okay.

• 43:57Speaker 03

  Easy.

• 43:58Pablo Torre?

  Give me yours, because I'm gonna think about. Larry Bird.

• 44:01Speaker 02

  So like, you were just nervous, because you were in the presence of Larry Bird?

• 44:03Speaker 03

  Well, like, it was like, but it's like...

• 44:04Speaker 02

  He didn't like...

• 44:06Speaker 03

  No, but it was like, all things, which is like, I was making a documentary about him and Magic. He had no interest in this. It was like, he was basically the last person to get the interview. It was like, oh, he's got to wait till we have to go to the end, wait till the end of the season. He's like this mythical figure of like, I think there was a point where like, I showed up. He was like, you can come and like, go to French Lick and go like, talk to somebody. He's like, you can talk to my brother. I might have even literally been in his presence in an elevator like, three months before. And I was like, too afraid to say anything. It was just like, he's just, so he comes in and you've been around him. I forgot we're talking about your uncle.

• 44:43Speaker 03

  And he's ginormous. And he already, by the way, he's someone, this was, this was happening, this must've been 2009. I was interviewing him. And he doesn't talk about himself. He's really, never really talked. And so the whole thing is like, you have one guy over there who won't shut the up. And then another guy, it's like, that's part of the story. And he just sits down and the whole, it was like, it actually was informative in some ways of how to do interviews. Cause I had a finite amount of time with him. And he sits down, he just is like.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  Get to it.

• 45:14Speaker 03

  And then it's like, okay. And I remember just like, even before I'm being like, I gotta remember every single thing. I can't like do, and it was, he's so intimidating because he's not gonna sit there and smile and make you feel comfortable. And it was so, that was the easily. And he was just like, a lot of things, he's like, I don't know. I don't care. I don't want to answer that. I was like, cool. But in the end.

• 45:40Speaker 02

  Ambition right there.

• 45:41Speaker 03

  It worked out. I don't know, that was a very like, and he did talk more than I thought.

• 45:44Pablo Torre?

  It did, it did work out.

• 45:45Speaker 03

  No, he, it, he did talk more than I thought.

• 45:47Pablo Torre?

  So why did, why did he?

• 45:49Speaker 03

  I don't.

• 45:49Pablo Torre?

  Why did he open up while you were very, very glad?

• 45:53Speaker 03

  Why did he, I can't speak to why he opened up, but I could tell you that like anything, this would go for you doing a podcast, you doing a podcast. It's like, I was prepared. I was very respectful.

• 46:02Pablo Torre?

  The thing.

• 46:03Speaker 03

  I would, I knew, you know what I mean? Like, I was not there to like, I was there to do a job. And I also think he is a responsible individual, so he agreed to do something. He was not gonna do any more than what he agreed to though. That was very clear. He's like, I said I would do this, so I'm gonna do this.

• 46:18Pablo Torre?

  You know, I, I speak to, I have the, I've been mistaken for somebody who should be speaking to journalism classes. And so I'm asked sometimes, like, how do I get better interviews? And all I have is what Ezra just articulated, which is. Demonstrate that you really put time into your preparation for this thing.

• 46:38Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 46:39Pablo Torre?

  Demonstrate that you care. It tends to be the skeleton key that unlocks so many people.

• 46:46Pablo Torre?

  And Ezra, by the way, is the most extreme version of that for those who are unfamiliar with his work. That is, you overindex on having that credibility, I would say.

• 46:54Speaker 03

  I think it's the most respect or the respectful thing to do. Still, in front of whom has your butthole been most clenched?

• 47:03Pablo Torre?

  So the answer to this is embarrassing because I thought I was too cool. And it was not even a deep dive, sit down interview. But I talked to LeBron for a magazine piece, one on one, after a practice. And what LeBron did was render me like the anonymous journalist character in a movie scene about LeBron doing an interview. Because he, this is not an exaggeration. He literally throws the basketball off the wall of the practice facility, maybe like 40 feet in the air. It caroms off, bounces back, bounces. He takes it, tomahawk dunks it to finish practice and then walks over to me.

• 47:48Pablo Torre?

  And I, I would need to, the jaws of life couldn't have opened up my butthole at that moment.

• 47:55Speaker 03

  How'd the interview go?

• 47:56Pablo Torre?

  It was fine.

• 47:59Speaker 03

  Can we bring this back to WNBA for a second? Which is, we, you know, it's been a lot, you know, one of the storylines, as you like to say, of the season.

• 48:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:09Speaker 03

  Was of Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese and sort of the special treatment that Caitlin perceived, rough treatment, that she got from players.

• 48:17Speaker 02

  The targeting.

• 48:17Speaker 03

  The targeting.

• 48:18Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 48:18Speaker 03

  The target. Anyway, this is all leap to say that when you were a player,

• 48:24Speaker 03

  what's the most offensive question you got?

• 48:26Speaker 02

  Honestly, the only thing I can pull right now is somebody was doing, I don't even remember who it was, doing just like a basic, it wasn't even a thing on me. It might've been on our team, it might've been on the playoff run, I know it was during the playoffs. And he just continued to get facts wrong.

• 48:42Speaker 03

  Were you silently judging or did you actually say something?

• 48:45Speaker 02

  Um, I was passive aggressive at the end and I got my little dig in. And that was it.

• 48:51Speaker 03

  It is true that like the idea that unlike Pablo and I, you have been the subject.

• 48:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:58Speaker 03

  Thousands of times. And so that's a whole different lens through which you, and so that must inform how you're talking to people because you know how you like to be talked to.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  A little bit, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's in the back of my head for sure. I like it when it's more conversational. I think most people do.

• 49:15Speaker 03

  Of course.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 49:16Pablo Torre?

  So, but that, but even that premise, right? Like, I think that part of what Ezra does as a questioner is do both somehow. Where there is, there is the sense of this guy could conduct an inquisition. But somehow, shockingly, he has disarmed and charmed me into just talking him about the things that I don't actually want to talk about.

• 49:44Speaker 02

  Yes. And I actually would struggle with that.

• 49:47Speaker 03

  What do you mean?

• 49:48Speaker 02

  Every now and then, I have this thought of like, oh, what if I had an athlete and there was some sort of controversial thing that I would love for them to share on my show. But like, that feels icky to try to get that out of them. I struggle with that.

• 50:04Pablo Torre?

  I don't have that feeling at all.

• 50:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. I would assume both, neither of you do. But I think as an athlete or somebody who got interviewed a lot, I don't want to be that person.

• 50:14Speaker 03

  But, but this-

• 50:15Speaker 02

  And it feels like you're, ah.

• 50:17Speaker 03

  But this is the medium.

• 50:18Speaker 02

  You're exploiting a friendship or a relationship, maybe? I don't like that thought.

• 50:23Speaker 03

  But this is the medium.

• 50:24Speaker 02

  I know, but that doesn't mean I have to be that.

• 50:26Speaker 03

  No, what I'm saying, but this is the idea of like, if you're doing a podcast, why does one have a podcast? You have a podcast to talk to people important. I have like-

• 50:32Speaker 02

  But why do you have to get the controversial thing out? Why is that the goal?

• 50:35Pablo Torre?

  I think Ezra and I have different sort of maybe thresholds on that. I imagine that Sue and the two of us, Ezra, probably have a bigger gap in terms of like, the ickiness of feeling like-

• 50:50Pablo Torre?

  I didn't want you to do that. The whole point, in fact, is that we have sort of worked to earn a trust that you then implicitly

• 50:59Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 50:59Pablo Torre?

  don't complain about when we decide to tell a story that isn't the one that you want to tell.

• 51:04Speaker 02

  Well, when people talk to you, they also probably go into it understanding they might get asked. If I'm going into an interview,

• 51:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 51:12Speaker 02

  I understand with certain people, I understand like I'm likely going to get asked X.

• 51:16Pablo Torre?

  Right, right.

• 51:16Speaker 02

  I'm trying to think of an example. I'm just gonna use this random one, but I think it's best. Let's say, I don't know how familiar you are, Diana's name is top of mind since I just brought it up. She had a fight with a teammate two years ago, Skylar Diggins, on the bench. Everybody saw it, whatever.

• 51:32Speaker 05

  8:32 with under three to play here in the quarter and a little extra testiness on the Mercury bench between Skylar Diggins-Smith and Diana Taurasi. Oh, to be a fly on Turner's shoulder to hear that conversation.

• 51:48Speaker 06

  Well, Diggins-Smith, she's got two points. She's one of four.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  Let's say Dee was set to come on my podcast and she's sitting there. I would feel icky being like, so what happened? Whereas I feel like a lot of people are like, Dee, recently this happened. Can you talk us through it? Or whatever you would say. That moment feels like eh, even though I'm curious.

• 52:10Pablo Torre?

  There is such immense power in what the journalist chooses to include and leave out. Omission is a wildly impactful thing. Because it is not merely, I'm going to twist your words. It's, I am deciding what is relevant.

• 52:44Speaker 02

  So when we were at the Olympics, we did a live show and we had Dawn Staley on. We had Carl Lewis on and then Mia Hamm came on. And it was in the conversation with Mia, I wasn't even involved, so this is more of a Meghan thing. Meghan just knew what question to ask, and it wasn't because of preparation, it wasn't because she knew the answer. She just like stumbled onto it as the conversation happened. And eventually, I don't remember the exact question, but eventually they got to a moment where Mia shared that Emma Hayes, who's the current national team coach, actually brought back that 1999 World Cup winning team to like be with the current players. Right? Bridging a gap, bringing, I mean, the fact that coaches don't do this all the time, actually,

• 53:29Speaker 02

  where the previous coaches hadn't done that, actually shocked me. And for Mia, in that moment, as she's answering, she gets emotional. It wasn't like a boo hoo cry session, but you could see, eyes start to well up. She's getting like emotional at the fact that other coaches hadn't done it. She felt a little, these are my words, maybe a little disconnected from it all. And now Emma was bringing that all back together and how meaningful that was for Mia. And that's something that we didn't, like I said, prepare for, think about, just stumbled upon it. But really, only Meghan probably could have gotten that.

• 54:00Speaker 03

  So how did you react to, I assume that's the first time someone teared up on your podcast?

• 54:04Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 54:05Speaker 03

  How did you react when you're seeing someone feel that emotional in a genuine exchange?

• 54:10Speaker 02

  Um, I loved it. I thought because it was real, it was, um, I could like feel what she was saying through my own experience. So I, I mean, I wasn't feeling the emotion build by any means, but I could definitely in that moment connect to what she was saying. I think when you retire and time goes on, you do just naturally feel disconnected from it.

• 54:31Pablo Torre?

  I think you answer in a way that reveals the disconnect. Because you're feeling the feelings as if you are the person. I would be feeling the feelings of somebody who just got a great interview.

• 54:43Speaker 03

  Has anyone, has anyone teared up sitting, uh, doing this show with you?

• 54:46Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 54:47Speaker 03

  How did you react when they teared up?

• 54:49Pablo Torre?

  With the craven enthusiasm of someone who's like, that's gonna be a good clip.

• 54:54Speaker 03

  See, you know what you just did there, right? You answered that sarcastically and disingenuously when in fact, that's kind of true.

• 55:01Pablo Torre?

  Well, Ezra, I believe it's time to end this interview.

• 55:05Pablo Torre?

  But that is, by the way, but that is the tension in me. Constantly trying to make a show to answer the elevator pitch question that is not every other show while needing to compete with shows that are in fact thinking clip first. Like if you listen to or watch the show we make, this is not a show that's engineered to produce viral clips. If it happens, it happens so incidentally that it makes me truly like thankful that it happened and also recognize the metric upside of this thing. But I'm not going for that. So my enjoyment and my sarcasm is yeah, both true and a lie.

• 55:49Pablo Torre?

  I want it, but I don't aim for it.

• 55:52Speaker 03

  But what was your level of anxiety when you're thinking, so when you did the ESPN Daily, right? I assume you're Pablo Torre, you're a journalist, you're doing this every day. And so you are not as Pablo prominent in that dynamic. Is that correct?

• 56:06Pablo Torre?

  My name wasn't in the show. Okay. In the show title.

• 56:08Speaker 03

  And so like, what is your, the idea that you have a show that your name is in and you're willing to talk about yourself and make fun of yourself and like, what's the balance between your comfort in terms of focusing on your own psychology and focusing on your own profile when at the same time, you're a journalist talking to other people? So you're both personality and star of your own show, but you're clearly are trying to tell other people's stories.

• 56:34Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I do feel like I am constantly testing the tolerance of people. Like right now, as you're asking me the question, I'm like, I think it's probably time to be done. Like, I don't think people want to know that much more about my psychology. My radar and my compass is in finding you guys exploiting your introspection. And for me, like, I, I am always gonna bet on my ability to discern what is interesting about someone else. I am far less confident in what people actually might agree with me about when it comes to my own [BLEEP].

• 57:14Speaker 02

  What about butter you?

• 57:16Pablo Torre?

  Butter me?

• 57:18Speaker 03

  What is that?

• 57:19Pablo Torre?

  Oh, I hate you. Look at this.

• 57:21Speaker 02

  You just told on yourself.

• 57:23Pablo Torre?

  Sue Bird, actual PTFO listener.

• 57:25Speaker 02

  You just told on yourself.

• 57:26Pablo Torre?

  Ezra Edelman, just exploiter, exploiter of friendships.

• 57:31Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 57:32Speaker 03

  Yeah, you're ahead.

• 57:33Speaker 02

  It is a more recent episode, though, so.

• 57:34Pablo Torre?

  It is. It is.

• 57:36Speaker 03

  What's the, well, anyway, go ahead. Sorry, I answered the question and now can be cut out.

• 57:39Speaker 02

  Because butter me looked confident.

• 57:40Pablo Torre?

  Butter me.

• 57:41Speaker 02

  Butter you looked confident.

• 57:43Pablo Torre?

  Butter me, um, we had a sculpture of me made out of butter.

• 57:51Pablo Torre?

  That we presented to Jerry Saltz Pulitzer Prize-winning art critic in an episode.

• 57:56Speaker 02

  He was tough.

• 57:57Pablo Torre?

  He was great.

• 57:58Speaker 02

  He was a tough critic.

• 57:59Pablo Torre?

  He was a tough critic.

• 58:01Speaker 03

  I missed this one, I'm sorry.

• 58:02Pablo Torre?

  You would appreciate it, actually, because of his.

• 58:05Speaker 02

  You would. You would actually love it.

• 58:08Speaker 03

  Okay, but he sent me, I mean, he sometimes sends me podcasts that he's proud of and wants me to listen to. So the last one he sent me was his conversation with Connie Chung.

• 58:16Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 58:17Speaker 03

  Which I enjoyed.

• 58:17Speaker 02

  Can't miss all the clips of that one.

• 58:18Pablo Torre?

  Which I did, and I appreciate that because I am, again, thirsting for all sorts of engagement.

• 58:23Speaker 02

  I did see the clips.

• 58:24Pablo Torre?

  Metric and otherwise. Um, the point with the butter me thing being that, um, I think it churned out great.

• 58:42Pablo Torre?

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

• 58:48Pablo Torre?

  And I'll talk to you next time.

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