Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out Share & Free Skate & Tell with Katie Nolan and Michael Cruz Kayne About this episode Did the Olympics just restore our faith in humanity? Even though America is still the bad guy? Even though penis injections? And even if we think A. I. might just be 60 Filipino guys? Plus: Greased Lightnin', flop sweat, deposition water bottles, the Waymo of cash registers, the ephemera of pickup basketball... and other dick-related news.
Further content:
• "I Hacked ChatGPT and Google's AI — and It Only Took 20 minutes" https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20260218-i-hacked-chatgpt-and-googles-ai-and-it-only-took-20-minutes (Thomas Germain)
• Previously on PTFO: We Expose a Crotch Conspiracy Rocking the Olympics https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/Njk2ZWJkYzJjOWIxNGFmNWM3ZGI3OTU2
• Subscribe to "Casuals with Katie Nolan" https://pod.link/1788997372
• Listen to "Sorry for Your Loss" by Michael Cruz Kayne https://www.audible.com/pd/Sorry-for-Your-Loss-Audiobook/B0CGJSXSPF
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
0:00 Pablo Torre? Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out, presented by eBay Live. I am Pablo Torre, and today you're gonna find out what this sound is.
0:07 Speaker 01 It's also how you get the hyaluronic acid out of your penis. You just... Just put a pin in that.
0:13 Pablo Torre? Right after this ad.
0:18 Speaker 02 "A perfect crime film," says The Daily Beast. John Turturro gives a career-best performance. Sony Pictures Classics proudly presents the acclaimed new thriller, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. Turturro stars as an aging master pickpocket whose latest score puts him in the crosshairs of a ruthless crime family. Also starring Giancarlo Esposito, Tatiana Maslany, Will Price, and Steve Buscemi. See the film that the LA Times calls "instantly classic." Opens October 23 in New York and Los Angeles. Nationwide, October 30.
0:53 Speaker 03 I've got big news. I switched to Verizon and got the new iPhone 18 Pro. Shh. I can keep my old phone. And I also get the latest iPhone every year. Shh, anything else? Verizon let me choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on them. Everybody, listen up! Shh. Switch to Verizon and get the new iPhone 18 Pro now. No trade-in needed. And the latest iPhone every year with Simplicity Plan. Plus, choose Apple Watch Series 12 or iPad on us. Simplicity Plan with Simplicity Pro required. Plan and device payment purchase are separate agreements with separate terms. Service plan for watch or iPad required. Additional terms apply for all offers.
1:25 Pablo 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,
2:09 Pablo Torre? from small businesses to larger 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.
2:32 Speaker 04 Were we supposed to prepare something for today?
2:34 Speaker 01 Yeah, kind of. You're supposed to pick an Olympic thing you like the most. Good thing is, I'm more prepared for this than I've ever been for anything in my life. And I can help.
2:41 Speaker 04 What I did on the way here was I watched the... Oh, you wanna start? Well-
2:45 Speaker 01 Start the podcast.
2:46 Speaker 04 Are we recording? I watched a clip of Stephen A. Smith talking about running for president, and my [bleep] fell out of my ears.
2:51 Speaker 01 I'm actually not prepared for that specifically.
2:54 Speaker 05 I'm a fiscal conservative. I can't stand high taxes. But I'm a social liberal, in the same breath, because I believe in living and let live. I pay attention to the desolate and the disenfranchised. Yes, I like strong borders. That's absolutely true. We never needed open borders, but we don't need it to be completely closed either. We're a gorgeous mosaic.
3:13 Speaker 04 Sounds like you're getting a stump speech ready, Stephen.
3:15 Speaker 05 No, there's no stump speech. I can give a speech without a note in front of me.
3:18 Pablo Torre? Ah, he's probably gonna be the president.
3:21 Speaker 01 But also, it's like, there wouldn't be a reason not to say you're running for president. If you know anything about Stephen A. Smith, it's like, if you're hyping, hype. He's a... It's like a fight-
3:30 Pablo Torre? He's a reasonable centrist who is socially liberal but fisca- but fiscally conservative.
3:36 Speaker 01 Sure, are we still buying that?
3:38 Speaker 04 You just, you just can't. He can't. He can't. He can't run.
3:42 Speaker 01 He can't? He might, if he does.
3:46 Speaker 04 Watch out.
3:47 Speaker 01 Do you have to maybe vote for him? I don't wanna talk about this. Sports!
3:51 Pablo Torre? These are the vibes I wanted to start with. They're not. We last saw each other in 2025.
3:56 Speaker 04 No way.
3:57 Speaker 01 Ew.
3:58 Speaker 04 That's a long time.
3:59 Speaker 01 Yeah, it's February. You missed my birthday!
4:01 Pablo Torre? I was gonna say, belated happy birthday.
4:03 Speaker 04 Oh my god, 26?
4:05 Speaker 01 39.
4:06 Speaker 04 39?
4:07 Speaker 01 Zoom in. It's really the creasing of the under eye that starts to become a problem.
4:12 Speaker 04 Yeah, 39 is when the creases really start to set in.
4:14 Speaker 01 I'm like, so powder is a no-go, cuz that's just gonna get right in there. But that's otherwise doing fine. Thank you guys for asking.
4:21 Speaker 04 Yeah, of course. Happy birthday, whenever it was.
4:23 Speaker 01 January 28th.
4:24 Speaker 04 Whoa, 20... Do you wanna know a fact about the number 28? Is this the podcast? 28 is a perfect number. Did you know that?
4:31 Speaker 01 Yeah, obviously.
4:31 Speaker 04 Is the sum of all of its factors. Huh, not including itself.
4:35 Speaker 01 Aren't we all? And isn't that a great way to, again, start the podcast?
4:38 Speaker 04 Yes. Another perfect number is the number 1 that comes at the beginning of things like a podcast. What?
4:43 Pablo Torre? You know what? I think that unlike the number 28, the 3 of us, we're greater than the sum of our... Factors.
4:50 Speaker 01 Yeah.
4:50 Speaker 04 Well, factors don't... Okay, yeah.
4:52 Speaker 01 Yes.
4:54 Speaker 04 Thank you.
4:55 Pablo Torre? The factors are...
4:56 Speaker 01 Oh god. A 4.9 rating on WikiFeet.
5:00 Speaker 04 Is that true? Do you have a 4.9?
5:02 Speaker 01 Last I checked, and it was yesterday.
5:04 Speaker 04 Last I checked, it was this morning.
5:05 Speaker 01 Unless that picture of my giant clown shoes got out that I sent to you guys. I sent them a picture of my feet kicked up on the desk to show that I was here before anyone else.
5:14 Speaker 04 Shoes on.
5:15 Speaker 01 I wore very, very big shoes today, and so they look gigantic.
5:19 Speaker 04 Yeah.
5:19 Pablo Torre? A lug sole.
5:20 Speaker 04 I don't know what that is.
5:21 Speaker 01 Me neither.
5:22 Pablo Torre? 4.97.
5:24 Speaker 04 Holy shit!
5:25 Speaker 01 I didn't know we were going to two decimal points.
5:27 Speaker 04 That's huge!
5:28 Speaker 01 That's a 4.9. It might as well just be... I'd be fine with rounding it up to 5.
5:32 Speaker 04 Yeah, does that mean somebody, like, is that one, one person? I was gonna say guy, but you know what?
5:36 Speaker 01 It tells you how many ratings. How many people have given me a rating?
5:39 Speaker 04 How many ratings?
5:39 Pablo Torre? Uh... 655.
5:42 Speaker 01 No way! Oh my god, I thought you were gonna say 68.
5:44 Pablo Torre? Is that more or less?
5:45 Speaker 01 I haven't retained the number. I didn't think it was gonna be that.
5:48 Speaker 04 We're doing free product placement for WikiFeet right now.
5:51 Speaker 01 That's upsetting.
5:52 Pablo Torre? Here's the promoted content rail. I'm gonna screenshot this and show it in the episode. It is...
5:57 Speaker 01 Oh god.
5:58 Pablo Torre? 10 awesome 80's TV characters that have been forgotten to time.
6:01 Speaker 04 Okay.
6:02 Pablo Torre? And it's a gif of Alf.
6:03 Speaker 04 Great, that's actually great.
6:04 Pablo Torre? The next one is...
6:05 Speaker 01 Nobody's forgetting Alf, though.
6:06 Pablo Torre? Ukrainian malls destroyed by Russia, comma, images will break your heart.
6:10 Speaker 04 Okay, interesting combo.
6:12 Pablo Torre? Top 9 rarest and most valuable items in the world.
6:15 Speaker 04 Okay.
6:16 Pablo Torre? Gonna open that as a new tab.
6:17 Speaker 01 Katie Nolan's feet.
6:18 Pablo Torre? And then, can we interact with physical objects using only our thoughts? Question mark.
6:23 Speaker 04 Answer: yes, period.
6:25 Speaker 01 Probably.
6:25 Pablo Torre? And it's a photo of a person who, at a distance, kinda looks like Katie, but she has her hands wrapped around her neck and is screaming as loudly as she can. I have a privacy screen now.
6:35 Speaker 04 Oh, Jesus.
6:36 Pablo Torre? Cause I'm just, I don't know.
6:37 Speaker 01 You're just out here moving in scary ways. You're pissing off powerful people.
6:41 Pablo Torre? Cause I'm on, I'm on, I'm on planes and stuff, and at coffee shops.
6:45 Speaker 01 Did you see Mark Cuban try to defend tanking on Twitter?
6:49 Pablo Torre? Of course I did.
6:49 Speaker 01 Yeah, I just, it's like, what are we talking?
6:52 Pablo Torre? I don't wanna start there either, though.
6:53 Speaker 01 Okay, sorry, go, go, go.
6:53 Pablo Torre? All these people, all these people...
6:55 Speaker 01 Welcome to Pablo Torre Finds Out!
6:56 Speaker 04 Welcome to Pablo Torre's, he's Pablo Torre.
6:59 Speaker 01 He's Finds Out.
6:59 Speaker 04 I'm me, and that's Feet. Here we go!
7:22 Pablo Torre? So you were in San Francisco for the Super Bowl.
7:25 Speaker 01 Yeah, and I ran into Waymo Waymos and I was interested in seeing.
7:28 Pablo Torre? Holy sh**.
7:29 Speaker 01 I do not like, I do not like it. Put a driver in the car.
7:33 Speaker 04 I want a person. I want a person all the time.
7:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
7:35 Speaker 04 I'm not doing self-checkout. I want a person.
7:37 Speaker 01 Oh, then I am doing, I am aligning with the robots.
7:41 Speaker 04 That's the Waymo of cash registers.
7:42 Speaker 01 I know. Okay. I'm not like fully anti having a human help me out. It's just usually easier if I just go boop, boop, boop, boop.
7:49 Pablo Torre? Have you been in one?
7:50 Speaker 01 Never.
7:50 Speaker 04 Nor have I.
7:51 Speaker 01 Have you not met me? I'm not doing that.
7:53 Pablo Torre? I went in one for the first time. I was in LA for All-Star Weekend.
7:55 Speaker 01 Great.
7:56 Pablo Torre? And it made me think to Michael, everything you just said of this clip that I saw recently.
8:03 Speaker 04 Okay.
8:03 Pablo Torre? Because this is a video of the chief safety officer.
8:07 Speaker 01 Oh, no.
8:08 Pablo Torre? Of Waymo.
8:08 Speaker 01 Oh, great.
8:09 Pablo Torre? A man named Mauricio Peña. He's been called to Capitol Hill to answer some pressing questions.
8:16 Speaker 04 Yes or no, does Waymo employ humans located remotely to help its vehicles navigate difficult driving scenarios?
8:26 Speaker 05 Senator, they provide guidance. They do not remotely drive the vehicles. As you stated, Waymo asks for guidance in certain situations and gets an input. But the Waymo vehicle is always in charge of the dynamic driving task. So that is just one additional input.
8:47 Speaker 04 But the human being, the human being helps the vehicle to navigate those difficult driving scenarios. Is that correct?
8:53 Speaker 05 Yes.
8:54 Speaker 04 Okay. So are all of these human operators located in the United States? Are they all here?
9:01 Speaker 05 No, we have some in the US and some abroad.
9:03 Speaker 04 For me, that's fairly shocking. Waymo has critical safety employees who may need to intervene in a split second if a Waymo encounters an unknown dangerous situation located, uh, located in the United States. But they are outside the United States. In what countries are these employees located?
9:27 Speaker 02 Jimmy.
9:28 Speaker 05 The Philippines.
9:29 Speaker 02 So they're in the Philippines.
9:31 Speaker 05 Yeah.
9:32 Speaker 02 Mr. Pena, that is completely unacceptable.
9:35 Pablo Torre? We're too good at driving.
9:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:37 Speaker 04 Have you ever, I mean, have you ever seen driving in the Philippines, by the way? It is fucking psycho.
9:42 Speaker 01 Is it like a nightmare of like everything happening at once?
9:45 Speaker 04 I haven't been to Philippines in 10 years, so maybe things are different, but anytime I have been there, I would describe the feeling of being in the passenger seat of any vehicle as harrowing.
9:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
9:54 Speaker 04 It is.
9:55 Speaker 01 It's terrifying.
9:55 Speaker 04 And the person driving has extreme confidence and you're like going up a mountain and your van is like half, well, half the van is on the mountainside.
10:05 Speaker 01 Uh.
10:05 Speaker 04 And the person is just like gunning it along and listening to fucking Duran Duran.
10:10 Pablo Torre? Air supply tends to be the last sound you hear at an intersection in Metro Manila. This is, of course, the story of what AI actually is.
10:20 Speaker 01 It's just people pretending to be computers.
10:21 Pablo Torre? What you think is artificial intelligence and robot drivers is a bunch of Filipino guys.
10:28 Pablo Torre? And I love that. I love that.
10:31 Speaker 04 Me too.
10:31 Pablo Torre? The chief safety officer went on to say that the actual problems were, of course, you're hiring foreign workers instead of US workers. Do they even have licenses in America? There are safety concerns fundamentally of like remotely, like Katie, this is like playing crazy taxi, but you're driving someone in a car that you're not in.
10:50 Speaker 04 What I don't fully understand is.
10:51 Speaker 01 He said it helps with guidance in difficult situations.
10:54 Speaker 04 Because he says that the car itself is always doing the dynamic driving task.
10:58 Speaker 01 Yes.
10:58 Speaker 04 So I actually don't understand what the Filipino is doing.
11:02 Pablo Torre? I think it's a big brown and increasingly tan to beige zone.
11:08 Speaker 04 There's like a laundry robot that's kind of a similar thing. It's like a, an in-house assistant, a humanoid robot, but then it's also like, there's a guy. There's a guy someplace else operating this and it's like, is that AI?
11:20 Speaker 01 In your house?
11:21 Speaker 04 Like, is it just Charles just in another house doing it?
11:24 Speaker 01 This all depresses me because then I think about how much of our economy is tied up in these AI companies and the fact that like if we admit that it's just a bunch of guys in the Philippines, it all kind of comes crashing down. So it's like we half have to pretend that the AI is so good it can do this and then other half have to pretend it's not that talented and skilled because if it is, then it's going to take everything over and no one's going to have any jobs anymore. So we're just in this really fun place where it's like, ah, either way, pretty bad. And so what I'd like to focus on is can we be done with those tiny water bottles? Those tiny water bottles?
11:53 Pablo Torre? The deposition water bottles?
11:54 Speaker 01 That guy had the driest mouth and I can tell he was rationing that tiny little water bottle. And I think the reason we did that is because we were trying to reduce, reuse, whatever. At this point, nobody's supposed to be drinking water out of the bottle anyway.
12:06 Pablo Torre? Right.
12:07 Speaker 01 Now, the little ones, you have to drink eight of them to get through a deposition. Can we just give the guy a full-size bottle of water?
12:12 Pablo Torre? This was the Marco Rubio problem.
12:14 Speaker 01 Yes, the little...
12:15 Pablo Torre? Death by a thousand tiny sips.
12:17 Speaker 01 Yeah, so enough of that. Then how's he doing?
12:21 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
12:22 Speaker 01 That ended him, right?
12:24 Speaker 04 I think AI is trash. I mean, I think there are some things that it's good for, obviously. Like, it's a better, it's a better Google than Google. You know what I mean?
12:34 Speaker 01 Sometimes, sometimes, barely, not in sports. It gets the numbers wrong all the time in sports.
12:39 Pablo Torre? Did you guys, okay, did you guys, did you guys, there's another story. I'm actually bringing topics as I've been...
12:43 Speaker 01 Yeah, I thought we were going to do Olympics. I'm ready. We'll get to that, I think. We'll fly through everything. ADD episode, speed round.
12:49 Pablo Torre? So the BBC, the headline is, "I hacked ChatGPT and Google's AI dash and it only took 20 minutes." And it's about a guy who, a tech journalist...
12:56 Speaker 01 Oh!
12:57 Pablo Torre? Who established himself as, here's the superlative, I want to get this correct, "the best tech journalist at eating hot dogs." And everything he wrote was fake.
13:08 Speaker 01 An oddly close competition. It was really tight.
13:12 Pablo Torre? I don't know if that's what I would have personally faked for myself if I could invent any superlative.
13:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
13:17 Pablo Torre? But he successfully became, according to, yeah, search engines and ChatGPT, Google and ChatGPT, this superlative because he wrote about it and then just did enough with the search terms.
13:27 Speaker 04 I think I've seen people do stuff like this where they create a press release for themselves. He's now hosting the best podcasts in the world. And because it's in the text of a document that's on the internet, AI will go, oh, this is the best podcast in the world.
13:41 Speaker 01 A friend of mine got scammed this way, and I pointed that out to her, and we don't talk anymore.
13:45 Pablo Torre? Oh, no.
13:46 Speaker 01 This is like an exact, this is hitting close to home.
13:48 Pablo Torre? What was the scam's outline?
13:50 Speaker 01 Somebody was pretending to be someone who had made millions of dollars off of YouTube by automating content and basically posting it. So it'd make passive income, basically. You're leaving money on the table because you can AI generate content that will post itself, will get a ton of views, and you just sit there and let it rake in the cash. And he, like, paid for himself to be written about in a thing that looked like a newspaper. And if you got all the way to the bottom, it was like, this is not editorial content by the newspaper. This was paid for by this person. And so I just sort of was like, this doesn't feel, it also is like, you're calling me to tell me that you're gonna start a YouTube slot page as I'm, like, relaunching my own YouTube. It's like, I know a little bit about how it works. And like, what you're basically saying is like, kind of messed up morally,
14:34 Speaker 01 but I also think this guy might be scamming you. And I have not heard from her. She was like, I have to go. I won't be continuing this conversation anymore.
14:41 Pablo Torre? Wow.
14:42 Speaker 01 Best friend.
14:43 Pablo Torre? Damn.
14:44 Speaker 01 The effects of AI and the way people are able to just invent their own reality now is like, really, it's terrifying to me. So I would like to talk about the Olympics, please!
14:52 Pablo Torre? Well, before we do that, before we do that, there is the other aspect of the story, which is, where has it worked well? And it's like, oh, self-checkout, right?
15:00 Speaker 04 Yeah.
15:01 Pablo Torre? Do you guys remember the Amazon Go stores?
15:03 Speaker 01 Yeah. Are those not around anymore?
15:05 Speaker 04 So, more like Amazon gone.
15:07 Speaker 01 Amazon went away?
15:08 Speaker 04 Yes. Did you want this?
15:10 Speaker 01 Kind of.
15:12 Pablo Torre? They had this just-walk-out technology in which you just walked out.
15:16 Speaker 04 Oh, yeah, this I remember. They had this at the airport, too. They still have it?
15:20 Pablo Torre? So some places have experimented, piloted this. I don't know if it still exists anywhere. One of the reasons why Amazon Go, apparently, no longer does it, according to this reporting, and was first broken by The Information, it's that, like the Waymo car, there was not some super futuristic technology that already eliminated humans. What there was, in fact, was...
15:43 Pablo Torre? People in India who were watching you shop on a camera and ringing up the items to make sure that they got it, right?
15:50 Speaker 04 It's Zoom cashiers. Like supposedly it's the robot that's taking your job, but it's really the Indians who are taking the job of the robot, or like the Filipinos. Honestly, more power to them. I say more power to them. But I'd rather just eliminate the artifice and just be like, instead of you having to ring out, just so you know, 60 Filipino guys are watching you shop right now. They're checking to see everything. There are 600 cameras in here and it's 10 Filipino, 10 per Filipino, and they're watching every angle of the store.
16:17 Speaker 01 You know what else has a just walk out policy? The ocean. You can just walk out into it and this will all be over. And you don't have to worry about any of this anymore.
16:25 Pablo Torre? I regret to inform you that the ocean is now also 60 Filipino guys.
16:28 Speaker 01 Aw, come on!
16:31 Speaker 04 I would love it. I would love if that's all the ocean was. What used to be the ocean is now 60 Filipinos.
16:36 Speaker 01 I'm diving in.
16:37 Speaker 04 All your titos and titas are in the ocean.
16:47 Pablo Torre? This message is brought to you by Apple Card. With Apple Card, you earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases like groceries, or merch, or tickets to the game. Plus, it can be used anywhere MasterCard is accepted. No matter your team, no matter where you shop, Apple Card is here to help you tackle game day. Apply in the Wallet app on your iPhone today. Subject to credit approval. Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank, USA, Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at applecard.com.
17:20 Speaker 06 A perfect crime film, says The Daily Beast. John Turturro gives a career-best performance. Sony Pictures Classics proudly presents the acclaimed new thriller, The Only Living Pickpocket in New York. Turturro stars as an aging master pickpocket whose latest score puts him in the crosshairs of a ruthless crime family. Also starring Giancarlo Esposito, Tatiana Maslany, Will Price, and Steve Buscemi. See the film that the LA Times calls "instantly classic." Opens October 23 in New York and Los Angeles. Nationwide, October 30. OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps,
18:02 Speaker 06 OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau.
18:08 Speaker 07 Earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
18:31 Pablo Torre? Speaking of...
18:33 Speaker 01 What?
18:34 Pablo Torre? Diving, which is a sport.
18:36 Speaker 01 In the Summer Olympics.
18:37 Pablo Torre? Speaking of oceans of foreigners.
18:40 Speaker 04 OK, that's good.
18:42 Pablo Torre? We're getting closer. Bodies of water.
18:43 Speaker 04 Yep, keep going. You're almost there.
18:45 Pablo Torre? Uh, let's talk about the Olympics.
18:47 Speaker 04 Perfect.
18:48 Speaker 01 What an Olympics we've had.
18:50 Pablo Torre? Katie Nolan came in revved in a way that has almost never been witnessed
18:56 Speaker 01 What?
18:57 Pablo Torre? in this studio.
18:58 Speaker 01 I'm always revved.
18:59 Speaker 04 Yeah, she's revved.
19:00 Pablo Torre? But this is a sports... This is...
19:02 Speaker 04 Rum, rum!
19:02 Pablo Torre? Oh, OK.
19:02 Speaker 01 Oh, by the actual sport.
19:04 Pablo Torre? For the YouTube audience, Katie Nolan is revving.
19:06 Speaker 01 Yeah, I think they knew. They could tell.
19:08 Speaker 04 I don't know. They could feel it through the microphone.
19:11 Speaker 01 Can we start by talking about Alyssa Lu?
19:13 Pablo Torre? This is an episode about Asian people.
19:16 Speaker 01 Sure.
19:16 Pablo Torre? And I would love for you to do that.
19:18 Speaker 01 Sure. Alyssa Lu, are you familiar at all?
19:20 Speaker 04 Yes, she won the gold medal.
19:21 Speaker 01 Yes. Is that how much more do you know about her?
19:24 Speaker 04 OK, I'm gonna tell you everything I know about her. She has cool hair.
19:26 Speaker 01 Yeah, definitely.
19:26 Speaker 04 I think she pierced the inside of herself.
19:29 Speaker 01 Uh huh.
19:29 Speaker 04 And then she was skating. And then she was like, "I'm actually having fun skating." She pieced out.
19:35 Speaker 01 Yeah.
19:35 Speaker 04 She came back. She's like, "You know what? I'm doing this for myself. This one's for me." And then she won the gold.
19:39 Speaker 01 She brought a gold medal to the United States for the first... Women's figure skating for the first time in 24 years. It's our first medal in 20 years. We've been desperate for a woman to get out there and skate for us and bring home some hardware. And she did. And that in itself is revolutionary. And I know just enough to sell this woman and her story to you and why it matters so much. She was the youngest woman ever to win Nationals, I believe, US Nationals. She was 13 years old. Wow. She then became, I think, the youngest woman to win it twice. She was 14. Then she went to an Olympics. She, at 16 years old, think of how hard you would have to like focus only on this thing to get to be that good at it by the time you're that age, that young.
20:24 Speaker 01 So at 16, she was just like, I'm not gonna have a childhood. I don't have any friends. I don't know how to interact with people. I eat, sleep, breathe figure skating. And so she retired. She goes and travels the world. She like does not pick up her figure skates. She goes on trips with friends. She went to like base camp at Mount Everest. Yes. She's snowboarding on a trip with her friends two years after retiring, maybe a year and a half. And she's like having fun competing. She feels like this pull of competition. And she was like, could this be what figure skating is? Could I do this with what I'm really, really good at? Instead of being so stressed that any mistake I make is gonna cost me every dream I've ever had?
21:08 Speaker 01 Can I instead go into it like, oh, I'm actually really good at this? Watch what I can do and let's see if I can get gold with that? And so she came back to figure skating. Her coaches were like, uh, I don't know if this is a good idea. She said, I'm coming back on my own terms. I pick my music. I wanna say in what I get to wear. No one's gonna tell me what I can and can't eat. When I tell you I wanna push, let's push. When I tell you I need to take a break, we take a break. I'm in charge. Let's go do this. And her coaches were like, okay. She comes back. She wins, I believe, Worlds this last year, cuz that's when she got on my radar. I saw her short program. And I was like, it moved me.
21:53 Speaker 01 Seeing the way she moved to the music, I believe, is it Worlds? That she won 2020?
21:58 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 2025, she became the first US woman to win the world title.
22:02 Speaker 01 Yeah.
22:02 Pablo Torre? Since Kimi Meisner in 2006.
22:05 Speaker 01 That's right. I was like, this is gorgeous. This is, this woman is connected to that music in a way that it looks like I'm watching how that music would look if it could figure skate. Beautiful, gorgeous, stunning, she wins. Coming into this Olympics, we had three women who could potentially win. And a lot of it was riding on this woman, Amber Glenn. Short program first, free skate. And it's like the combination of those two decides the winner. So they do the, the short program. Amber Glenn skates, makes one tiny mistake, but it costs her a lot. She goes to like 13th or 15th or something at the end of the short program. So everyone's like, oh, she blew it. Which like, I'm like, those people don't get it. She still has a chance for redemption. And she comes out and she skates and she skates so well, almost perfect. She ends up finishing in fifth. So a huge redemption story for her. Love that. Then we have Isabelle. She's younger.
22:50 Speaker 01 This is her first Olympics. She had a shaky skate, which is really uncharacteristic for her, but it's also part of her story and it shows that she can grow from that, come back next Olympics and maybe also have a shot at the medal. Nobody was really talking about Alyssa Lu. She had finished in third after the short program. The short program is the one I love. I love this song. Because the song is about a romantic love. It's about somebody that you, it's, uh, the chorus is, um...
23:16 Speaker 04 Shake that thing.
23:21 Speaker 01 I believe it's shake that thing, Miss Joanna. Um, no, the chorus is like, it hurts trying to love you, but I've actually tried not loving you and that hurts worse. And then when you put it in the context of figure skating, that she tried to walk away from it and returns to it. Um, that, I, I don't know, I've cried so much about this girl. So she comes into the free skate. And it's to Donna Summers, uh, uh, uh, MacArthur Park.
23:49 Pablo Torre? The MacArthur Park suite, yes.
23:51 Speaker 01 Yes. It is, which is perfect, because if you know anything about free skate, after watching the short program, you're like, I get why they named that. That, and this one's long. This is a long, a lot of people use like, three different parts of songs usually, and they'll mix them together. One girl used like, a song from a movie, but included lines of dialogue from the movie. And I just gotta say.
24:10 Pablo Torre? I love that.
24:11 Speaker 04 Yeah, weird.
24:13 Speaker 01 I hate it.
24:13 Pablo Torre? I want the opposite of when you're doing karaoke and it's instrumental. I want a bunch of dialogue.
24:18 Speaker 04 But it's just that long bar that fills up.
24:20 Speaker 01 That is the worst part of karaoke.
24:22 Speaker 04 No, that's when you're fellowshipping.
24:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, true.
24:24 Speaker 04 Okay, well, you're not done though. Keep going.
24:25 Speaker 01 So she, she skates to a song that on its own, starts out sounding like a ballad, and then it builds to, by the end, there's space sounds in that song. It's going like, pew, pew. It's like joyful and triumphant and jubilant. And she has these moves in her routine that like, you don't think, you know, you think of figure skating, you think of like, perfect, and she has perfect lines. She won the gold. But she also gets on her knees and is like,
24:49 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's different.
24:49 Speaker 01 skating around and like, showing, she's having so much fun. And then she won the gold medal. And it's like,
25:00 Speaker 01 what? Every, every interview, she's like, I don't feel pressure. I don't feel pressure. I'm excited. I'm excited to get out there and skate and show everybody. Then when she finds out she wins gold, she runs over to the young girl from Japan who won, just found out that she got bronze, and she's like hyping her up. Like, I think a lot of women are bringing up Alyssa Liu to their therapists this week. It's a theory I have, because it's just, I don't know, guys, after the, women's gymnastics Larry Nassar of it all, like, that was a fucking gut punch to, I think a lot of people, I'm not saying this is just a uniquely, uh, female problem or a woman thing, but they had to go through that guy to achieve their dream. He was the team doctor for the Olympic team.
25:44 Speaker 01 It was, there, there was no like, I would do this if I didn't have to deal with, you don't have that much power. So to see her and that performance, the one who won is the one who was like, when I wanna stop, we stop. When I wanna push it, we push it. You can't tell me what I can eat. An empowered woman.
26:03 Speaker 01 Just went out there and like, she won gold in like the most pure way. It was so, and like, even if none of that's speaking to you, the mental fortitude to not let the competition, or the stage, or the pressure touch you in any way.
26:18 Pablo Torre? That, that's so...
26:20 Speaker 01 She's amazing. And also, I want to stop talking about her so she doesn't, nobody, I don't want anyone to ruin this, or make her do anything she doesn't want to do. I want us all to leave her alone.
26:28 Pablo Torre? I've started investigating her already, in the last five minutes of you talking.
26:31 Speaker 01 I just love her, and I love what she means for the sport.
26:34 Pablo Torre? This is the context that is making me...
26:37 Speaker 04 You were very inspired.
26:39 Pablo Torre? The context that has connected all these dots for me, because I didn't totally understand until you just said all of that, why this has been so affecting and why it's gone so viral, is that in sports, there has been this ongoing movement towards total cynicism. And I get why. I'm investigating often reasons to be cynical about all of this. I'm maybe part of the problem in that regard, but...
27:07 Speaker 01 We'll get to that some other episode.
27:09 Pablo Torre? But, but it... The drought of women, American women, not winning, the way that would increase the pressure and cause any normal person to just [bleep] flop sweat and choke, to have someone who overcomes all of that...
27:27 Pablo Torre? I mean, the reason why sports are awesome is because sports are hard. It's supposed to be difficult, you're supposed to fail, you're supposed to choke, you're supposed to go insane, often, sometimes clinically, because it's so difficult. And so, the idea that you could surpass that while being legitimately joyful and happy, and like, self-directed, is so rare in any aspect of sports anymore.
27:51 Speaker 01 Yeah.
27:51 Pablo Torre? Because it's also optimized now, it's also pressurized and strategized, and now I'm about to accidentally quote Grease Lightning, it's electrifying!
28:00 Speaker 01 It is.
28:01 Speaker 04 It's also that the athletes who are so special in a lot of ways, like when... In moments where I've been like extremely high pressure and felt super stressed out, you have that like attenuating of your focus where like everything is blacked out and you're into like actual tunnel vision. And then there are some people who, when you watch them, you have the experience of being like, oh, I think this person can still see everything somehow. And they like are fully living in the experience of excelling at the thing that they were meant to do. And that is really like, I, I watched the US Women's Olympic Hockey Team and it's that same kind of feeling of like, man, they are like purely in like raw joy right now and it's so fucking fun to watch.
28:42 Speaker 01 That goal was sick, by the way.
28:43 Speaker 04 Incredible.
28:44 Speaker 01 And Hillary Knight being the one who scored it, the, the, to take them to overtime, Hillary Knight scored at like three minutes left and she set a record. She's now the record holder for goals and points for the United States. Just like, and she's retiring, so it's like, that game was also crazy. Um, and the best.
29:10 Speaker 06 OnDeck is built to back small businesses like yours. Whether you're buying equipment, expanding your team, or bridging cash flow gaps, OnDeck's loans up to $400,000 help make it happen fast. Rated A+ by the Better Business Bureau and earning thousands of five-star TrustPilot reviews, OnDeck delivers funding you can count on. Apply in minutes at ondeck.com. Depending on certain loan attributes, your business loan may be issued by OnDeck or Celtic Bank. OnDeck does not lend in North Dakota. All loans and amounts subject to lender approval.
29:48 Speaker 04 There's also a weird feeling that I have watching the Olympics now where there's a little bit of, are we the bad guys?
29:56 Speaker 01 I know.
29:56 Speaker 04 Do you know what I mean? So you're watching it?
29:57 Speaker 01 It's why a USA, Canada matchup isn't, I mean, look, I've been letting, I've been giving myself this for the Olympics. I root for America. I root for America in everything. I'm not thrilled with America. I've got notes. I've got notes for America. But we get two weeks of the Olympics. If I root against America, I'm what my critics think I am. They think I'm an anti-American. They think I hate this country and I'm ashamed of it. I love this country. I'm having a hard time believing in it. And so I'm believing in them for these two weeks. I know everybody's got their own line with where they draw the line on where politics or whatever of it all, and I know it's more than politics at this point. But my reasoning and my explanation is I need these two weeks of joy. I need to believe in this country and I need to root for these athletes who don't have
30:42 Speaker 01 anything really to do with what's going on. And they're, they are one of us. They are our brethren.
30:47 Speaker 04 Whenever there's any kind of global competition, I'm proud to be American and I always have been, but I'm not like waving a flag outside my house, etc.
30:55 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, I'm not like abusing people over it.
30:57 Speaker 04 During the Olympics or the World Cup or the [bleep] world baseball classic or what's the golf one?
31:01 Pablo Torre? The Ryder Cup?
31:02 Speaker 04 The Ryder Cup, thank you. Whenever any kind of global competition happens, I find myself becoming a rabid jingoist. Like all of a sudden, I'm like, "To hell with Liechtenstein," or whatever. Do you know what I mean? It rises up through me from the center of the earth.
31:19 Speaker 01 Yes.
31:20 Speaker 04 But just because of the way things are now, I am like, "Oh, no."
31:24 Speaker 01 But, but, but, but.
31:25 Speaker 04 Am I, who, what?
31:27 Speaker 01 In the, you zoom out and you go, "We're the bad guys in this book."
31:30 Speaker 04 Yes, exactly. Every single athlete, I'm rooting for them. Every single one.
31:34 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:34 Pablo Torre? But in the Winter Olympics especially, and this goes to the figure skating drought, this goes to the fact that we can't ski jump for [bleep].
31:41 Speaker 01 Yeah, dude, what?
31:41 Speaker 04 America, we're-
31:42 Speaker 01 We also can't do the shooting sport? I'm sorry, we can't medal in the shooting sport?
31:46 Speaker 04 Yeah.
31:46 Speaker 01 What about that Second Amendment?
31:48 Speaker 04 Yeah, we got, we got kids over here who could do that.
31:51 Pablo Torre? We're underdogs. We're underdogs.
31:54 Speaker 04 Yeah.
31:55 Pablo Torre? Often.
31:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:56 Pablo Torre? Often.
31:57 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:57 Pablo Torre? Not in all the things.
31:58 Speaker 01 Yeah.
31:59 Pablo Torre? But in a lot of, I mean, part of what I love is realizing how much these other countries desperately, desperately want any edge they can get. Like my favorite Olympic story was the dudes injecting [bleep] into their penises.
32:11 Speaker 01 It wasn't [bleep]. It was hyaluronic acid.
32:14 Speaker 04 Which people are, people are putting it here.
32:15 Speaker 01 Yeah. If there's actually a commercial where Eva Longoria was trying to help people understand how to pronounce that.
32:21 Speaker 03 Hyaluronic acid.
32:24 Speaker 04 Oh, good. I hope, I wasn't sure from the way you phrased it before, if she was looking dead into camera and going, "It's pronounced penis."
32:33 Pablo Torre? Oh my god.
32:33 Speaker 04 It's the way, going back to the thing, it's the way I feel about being a Yankees fan, where like, there's some seasons where it's like, and we bought all the players. We have everybody, it's like harder to root.
32:43 Speaker 01 I forgot this about you.
32:44 Speaker 04 Sorry.
32:45 Speaker 01 And you.
32:45 Speaker 04 Sorry.
32:46 Speaker 01 I'm in enemy territory, and I forget.
32:49 Pablo Torre? Sorry, sorry you're allergic to greatness.
32:50 Speaker 01 Huh?
32:52 Pablo Torre? Hyaluronic acid.
32:54 Speaker 01 Yeah.
32:55 Pablo Torre? So we've covered ski jumping on this show, and the scandal around ski jumping that looked prophetic in ways I never dreamed, was around Crotch Gate, was what it was called before, because Norway, which cares the most about ski jumping.
33:06 Speaker 04 And Norway's first, right? Norway's first?
33:09 Speaker 01 Yes, yes.
33:09 Pablo Torre? They're the Yankees of ski jumping.
33:10 Speaker 01 This is their Super Bowl.
33:11 Speaker 04 But there's like, I think that's great, but we should, aren't there like seven people in Norway? What's the population?
33:18 Speaker 01 It's enough that if you were to win bronze and use your platform to point out your girlfriend that you cheated on, it's enough that you go, that's too, it's too much.
33:26 Speaker 04 There's so many good, okay, I cut you off. There's so many good ones, but you were in the penis.
33:30 Pablo Torre? The very short and long of it is that
33:32 Speaker 04 Nice.
33:33 Speaker 01 Damn.
33:33 Pablo Torre? The suit, the ski jumping suit, is so aerodynamically calibrated that there are significant competitive edges in what is effectively a penis
33:43 Speaker 04 Edging, nice.
33:44 Pablo Torre? A penis parachute.
33:45 Speaker 01 Yes.
33:45 Pablo Torre? So if you can get your suit to be bigger anywhere, you get an edge because of the drag and the way physics works.
33:52 Speaker 04 Okay.
33:53 Pablo Torre? And so what they do in this sport is that they will strip you down to your underwear, to like spandex underwear, and they will 3D effectively like scan you like a TSA, and measure your suit to your body specifications. And so, in the Crotch Gate scandal with Norway, what they did was, they had a sewing machine, we have video, a sewing machine which they will just, after you get measured, they will edit the suit. In this scandal, in Penis Gate, as it's been called in various spots, they were injecting hyaluronic acid.
34:24 Speaker 04 To make your penis bigger.
34:25 Pablo Torre? So that when you get measured-
34:27 Speaker 01 So that when their penis went back to regular size, because I assume it does, because it's probably biodegradable in your body, probably each-
34:32 Pablo Torre? Because it's not a miracle product.
34:34 Speaker 01 Right, it doesn't stay forever.
34:35 Speaker 04 And it doesn't stay forever.
34:36 Speaker 01 Their penis will go back to regular size.
34:38 Pablo Torre? Circumference temporarily increases.
34:41 Speaker 01 Girth.
34:42 Pablo Torre? Is taken on that girth.
34:44 Speaker 04 I see.
34:44 Pablo Torre? And then you become.
34:46 Speaker 01 Then you have extra fabric when your penis goes back to being tiny.
34:48 Pablo Torre? When you go back to whatever is smaller than a pumpkin in the character metaphor, I was gonna attempt.
34:52 Speaker 04 Okay, and it doesn't, like, so there'd be no reason for anybody to like to buy a bunch of this stuff, say, after this episode and then like go and shoot it in there.
34:59 Speaker 01 You can put it in your penis. The reason that's what they're using and putting in their penis is because they're putting that in penises elsewhere in the world. If you want to get your penis to look a little girthier, you're well within your rights to go to a doctor and they put hyaluronic acid into your.
35:11 Speaker 04 I don't feel like acid should be inside of my penis.
35:14 Speaker 01 I don't think it's acid. It doesn't burn like that. I put it on my face.
35:17 Speaker 04 Okay.
35:17 Speaker 01 Again, and I'd like to move on very quickly from any comparison of those two.
35:21 Speaker 04 And so I just, it is a, I checked, they don't go through the tip.
35:26 Speaker 04 I never would have once thought they went through the tip.
35:28 Pablo Torre? Where are they going?
35:30 Speaker 01 I think they go at the base of the shaft. Please can we move on?
35:33 Speaker 04 You would never put it, put the needle into your tip.
35:37 Pablo Torre? My dad is a urologist. LeBron James is a philippine urologist.
35:42 Speaker 04 Even thinking about it is really heroic to me.
35:44 Speaker 01 I know, I'm really sorry. We can move on.
35:45 Speaker 04 Boy, something else I want to say about this.
35:47 Speaker 01 But it gets them nine feet of, when I saw the number, I was like, nine, seven to nine feet, not their penis.
35:51 Pablo Torre? It's math.
35:51 Speaker 01 The, uh, the, uh.
35:53 Speaker 04 Because I'm like, that'd be really easy to catch.
35:54 Speaker 01 Advantage of like, of in the air when they're like, you know, ski jumping is where they're like, you know.
35:59 Speaker 04 Like little flying squirrels, kind of.
36:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, kind of.
36:00 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
36:01 Speaker 01 And it just gives them, it can give them up to seven to nine feet of.
36:04 Speaker 04 A nine-foot penis would be very noticeable. It'd be hard to pass that off.
36:07 Speaker 01 Yeah.
36:08 Speaker 04 Uh, today, your penis appears to be taller than your whole body.
36:12 Speaker 01 Something, did you get a haircut?
36:13 Speaker 04 Some, some, some different.
36:14 Pablo Torre? Are you doing pole vault now? No.
36:16 Speaker 01 Something's different.
36:17 Speaker 04 But what you're telling me about this sport, also, oh, no, I guess, never mind. I was gonna say that you have a natural advantage if your penis is bigger, but you don't, because your penis is always that size.
36:24 Pablo Torre? Measured to.
36:25 Speaker 01 No, you don't.
36:26 Speaker 04 Because I was gonna say, the big penis people have enough already.
36:28 Speaker 01 Don't they?
36:29 Speaker 04 Don't they?
36:29 Speaker 01 They don't need another.
36:30 Speaker 04 Yeah.
36:30 Pablo Torre? Well, hold on, here's the update on this story.
36:33 Speaker 04 Oh, ding ding ding.
36:37 Pablo Torre? Yeah, Norway won.
36:38 Speaker 04 Norway won?
36:39 Pablo Torre? Yeah, Norway did great. Norway did great.
36:40 Speaker 04 God damn it.
36:40 Speaker 01 Norway won at what?
36:41 Pablo Torre? Ski jumping.
36:42 Speaker 01 Oh, okay, yeah. There's just so many different types of ski jumping.
36:44 Pablo Torre? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
36:45 Speaker 01 Have you seen Ski Mo, the new sport? Ski Mo?
36:47 Speaker 04 Is that a waymo that skis for you?
36:49 Speaker 01 I wish. It's ski mountaineering. It's, I still don't really fully understand it. I haven't dived in. I've been fully into Alyssa Lou. I've watched that routine 16 times. The only song I'm listening to when I walk anywhere is the song that she dances to. I'm obsessed!
37:01 Speaker 04 Shake that, shake that thing.
37:02 Speaker 01 That's right. Sean Paul. Tony Gonsolin. Um, the, uh, what was I saying? What was I?
37:08 Speaker 04 Ski mountaineering.
37:09 Speaker 01 You have to, uh, ski up the mountain.
37:11 Speaker 04 Tony Gonsolin is the pitcher?
37:12 Speaker 01 He used to be a pitcher, yeah. He still is, but he used to be on the Dodgers. I don't know where he is now.
37:16 Speaker 04 Ski, so you ski, you ski up the mountain?
37:20 Speaker 01 Then you've gotta take your skis off. You gotta use the stairs, okay? Stairs in an Olympic sport had me very confused because I've watched a lot of slippery stairs on ESPN The Ocho that airs at like 2 a.m. They put soap on stairs and you have to try to get your way to the top. These, they have to then go up these stairs and then I think ski down the mountain.
37:35 Speaker 04 Boy, you ski up the, is it anybody when you get to the bottom of the mountain and start skiing up? Is there no one there to be like, "Uh, buddy, you're going, you're going the wrong way"?
37:43 Speaker 01 I think going the wrong way is the whole point.
37:45 Speaker 04 That's crazy.
37:45 Speaker 01 I know, and that's a new sport this year, so they...
37:48 Speaker 04 Ski-mo.
37:48 Speaker 01 And then the dual moguls is also new. That was really fun.
37:51 Speaker 04 Is that this one?
37:52 Speaker 01 Yes, it's exactly that. But it's two people at a time, which I love. They do that in some of the speed skating stuff too because then you get to hear those two stories and they can really tell you a story as they make their way down the mountain or around the track. So it's two people against each other. They've got a little jump, right, on their skis? And then they land and have to keep going on moguls. My knees could never. And then they do another big jump at the end. One guy crossed the finish line backwards.
38:16 Speaker 04 Yeah, the Japanese guy.
38:17 Speaker 01 It was sick, sick.
38:19 Speaker 04 But I like that one because he, it gives the appearance of kinda like gelatinous knees.
38:23 Speaker 01 You're like, "Oh, oh, oh, oh." Yeah, it's very pliability, uh, necessary.
38:28 Speaker 04 What was, what was the sport? Oh, slalom, where the guy walked into the forest.
38:32 Speaker 01 Yeah.
38:33 Speaker 04 I loved that.
38:34 Speaker 01 I know, it was, did you see when somebody put the, um, Werner Herzog voiceover over it?
38:39 Speaker 04 So good.
38:39 Speaker 01 He, so this guy...
38:40 Speaker 04 So Norway, again, Norway.
38:41 Speaker 01 Norwegian, he was skiing in the, uh, slalom.
38:45 Speaker 04 He was like a favorite for the gold medal. Slalom is this one.
38:47 Speaker 01 Yep, and it's the skinny poles that you have to get on the right side.
38:50 Speaker 04 Oh, one guy got hit in the [BLEEP], right? One guy got hit in the [BLEEP] real good?
38:53 Speaker 01 I don't know, I'm not following all the [BLEEP] related news, but I believe...
38:56 Speaker 04 But you, but you are. I saw that clip.
38:58 Speaker 01 Yeah, there was, uh, and so he was skiing, he was the favorite. His ski, I mean, you see, it's just like, it's actively snowing, I believe, when this happens. Maybe not, but it happened for a couple of the cross-country women's races. It was like the Sweden one was nuts. But his ski goes a little the wrong way and it goes to the wrong side of a pole. And just like that, he's done. It's over. The guy who happened to be right in his eyesight, eye line when it happened was the coach of the guy who now was gonna win because this guy is out. This guy also, he had found out his grandpa died.
39:26 Speaker 04 The skier?
39:27 Speaker 01 The skier, the Norwegian skier. During the opening ceremonies. And so he was like, I'm gonna keep going because it's what my grandpa would have wanted. And then this happens. This is how it happens. This stupid little mistake is why he can't. And so he like throws his poles out into the snow, gets underneath the netting, basically walks out into the ocean. He just like skis off over into the woods, collapses on the ground and you just see him like fold his hands on his chest and just like look up at the sky. And it's just like, yeah, dude, I get it. Yeah, that would suck. And you just watch him like sit in it.
40:06 Speaker 04 Obviously on some level I get it, but the way in which I will never get it is you were this far from being the best in like, indisputably, the best in the world.
40:16 Speaker 01 And it's part of your story. It, you know, use it as a redemption. Michaela Shiffrin, another great example. She was, who had three did not finishes last, DNFs, last Olympics, 2022. She was like, the one going in, all the commercials were about Michaela Shiffrin. All the commercials were like, Michaela Shiffrin goes for gold. We saw her win gold when she was like 18 or something, really early in her Olympic career. She didn't finish three of her races last Olympics. People were like, what's going on with Michaela Shiffrin?
40:43 Speaker 04 She's just, she's wiping out?
40:44 Speaker 01 A number of different things that just went wrong. She was just.
40:46 Pablo Torre? There's an actual like psychological story.
40:49 Speaker 01 Right.
40:50 Speaker 04 Like the twisties kind of.
40:51 Speaker 01 2020, she lost her dad who was like her, you know, he was at all of her races. She was trying to deal with grief, learning that it's doesn't, it's not linear. It's kind of hits you when it hits you. And then this Olympics, she won and she won by a margin of victory that's so big that if you added up the margin of victory that this race has been won by in the last like eight Olympics, it equals what she won by in this Olympics. And she said after the race that like, some part of me was resisting this because I don't want to win a gold medal without my dad. It's not something I wanted. She's like, and today I sort of just accepted that this is what it is and I let myself win this. And it was like, what a profound perspective to have discovered.
41:31 Speaker 04 Frickin' beautiful.
41:32 Speaker 01 I know. It's awesome. The Olympics, fucking rule. I love them so much.
41:37 Pablo Torre? I went in admittedly being like, oh, I don't care.
41:40 Speaker 01 I know, grumpy. And it's probably the cool, it's probably.
41:43 Pablo Torre? Overlapping with the Super Bowl, there's a lot going on. I am always underestimating what it is when sports gets to be bigger than just like the main things that everybody knows.
41:55 Speaker 01 Yeah.
41:57 Pablo Torre? Sports is this high school in which, yeah, there are a lot of weird clubs.
42:01 Speaker 04 Well, it also is an antidote to the thing, the AI of it all that we were talking about before. This is like, oh, it's the one thing that might be left.
42:07 Speaker 01 Dude, I have to read you this tweet that I saw from a guy who was like, "I'm not a sports guy, but it seems to me that this kind of genuine, unbridled, emotional joy generated by actual human achievement and not data centers is something we really need to see these days." And I said, "Sounds like you're a sports guy."
42:27 Speaker 04 It's true.
42:28 Speaker 01 That's what sports is.
42:29 Speaker 04 There are really, obviously, vanishingly few things that are like, we can assert our humanity in, and sports is one of them. And that's like, obviously at the Olympics, but it's also at the [bleep] Y on the weekend with your boys playing B-ball. It's like, one of the few times that you're not plugged into something.
42:47 Speaker 01 "We're in a couple of guys who are up to no good." Sorry, you said playing B-ball and it triggered me.
42:51 Speaker 04 Your ADD went bing.
42:52 Speaker 01 I got activated.
42:53 Pablo Torre? I will watch Michael Cruz Kane play pickup basketball on Instagram.
42:56 Speaker 01 I would. Wait, I can? You're telling me it's available to me?
42:59 Speaker 04 Sometimes, sometimes you can.
43:00 Pablo Torre? And very much unlike NBC's Olympics video policy, we could use them on the show right now.
43:06 Speaker 04 I think all those clips are in stories, so I don't think, even looking at them as hard as they can, I don't think they'll find it.
43:12 Speaker 01 No, ephemera.
43:13 Speaker 04 Exactly, and that's the beauty of it.
43:14 Speaker 01 They aren't meant for this world. They're not supposed to stay forever. Everything has to live in the...
43:18 Speaker 04 If you want a video...
43:19 Speaker 01 That's why the rights to his Instagram story are so hard to get, because you gotta watch him live.
43:22 Speaker 04 If you want to see a video of me quote-unquote "jumping,"
43:25 Speaker 01 Yes.
43:26 Speaker 04 Maybe one centimeter off the ground.
43:28 Speaker 01 Very much so.
43:29 Speaker 04 You're gonna have to be following me on Instagram.
43:32 Pablo Torre? So, what did we find out today?
43:34 Speaker 01 Oh, so much.
43:35 Speaker 04 God, where to begin? Don't both look at me. You, what did you find out?
43:38 Speaker 01 That you're a Yankees fan, I don't know if I knew that. Actually, I really don't know if I knew that.
43:41 Speaker 04 I mean, honestly, this, I'm like, we're going back like 20 years. When the Yankees started to like, just collect all the most expensive players, I kind of dropped off. At that point, I was like...
43:51 Speaker 01 I thought you were just gonna say that that's when he got in on it.
43:53 Speaker 04 No, that's when I got out.
43:54 Speaker 01 I was like, wow, I'm learning more even now.
43:55 Speaker 04 The end of the like, the Hideki Matsui time, I was like, I'm kind of done now. You know what I mean?
43:59 Pablo Torre? I'm doing a Hideki Matsui in a story.
44:02 Speaker 04 You're just right about his porn collection?
44:04 Speaker 01 You're doing more on the porn collection?
44:05 Pablo Torre? We're gonna put a pin in that. We're gonna pin in that.
44:06 Speaker 01 Okay, sorry. We're gonna, we're gonna pin in that.
44:08 Pablo Torre? We're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna absolutely use the verb correctly.
44:11 Speaker 01 We have to put a pin in the porn collection.
44:13 Speaker 04 Put a pin in that is one of the pornos that he owns, probably.
44:16 Speaker 01 It's also how you get the hyaluronic acid out of your penis.
44:19 Speaker 04 You just...
44:21 Speaker 01 Just put a pin in that.
44:22 Speaker 04 Okay, what did we learn today? Today, oh god, so many things. Well, I learned a lot about Alyssa Lu.
44:29 Speaker 01 Yeah.
44:29 Speaker 04 And I think that's fantastic.
44:31 Speaker 01 Yeah.
44:31 Speaker 04 And the ability-
44:32 Speaker 01 You should show her routines to your daughter, if you can.
44:34 Speaker 04 I will, and also her interviews, too, because that feels like something.
44:37 Speaker 01 Mm-hmm.
44:38 Speaker 04 Yeah, absolutely. That feels like something.
44:40 Speaker 01 It is. It's definitely something. What did you find out today, Pablo?
44:43 Pablo Torre? I found out while scrolling Wikipedia furiously during your extensive, uh, research. She also skated to Les Miserables, which I love.
44:51 Speaker 04 Oh, [bleep] yeah. Alyssa Lu did? What song?
44:54 Speaker 01 Or is that gonna be in the gala? Because, oh, and again, this will be out on Tuesday.
44:58 Pablo Torre? In 2017, 18, her freeskate program.
44:59 Speaker 01 Oh, okay, yeah. Yeah, it's old, old Lu. Back when she was still, you know...
45:03 Speaker 04 But Les Miserables is a three and a half hour thing. What specifically? You can't just say she skated to a song from...
45:10 Speaker 01 I would guess it's, um...
45:12 Pablo Torre? Well, let's guess.
45:14 Speaker 01 What's the one I'm thinking? What's the one?
45:15 Speaker 04 "I Dreamed a Dream" or something, maybe?
45:17 Pablo Torre? The confrontation.
45:18 Speaker 04 No way. Uh, that would be incredible, but no way.
45:21 Speaker 01 "Sing the Pretty One."
45:23 Speaker 04 "I dreamed a dream in days gone by..."
45:25 Speaker 01 That's not it.
45:25 Speaker 04 Okay, um...
45:26 Speaker 01 "Sing the Pretty One."
45:27 Speaker 04 "On my own..."
45:28 Speaker 01 That one.
45:28 Speaker 04 That one. Could be that one. Uh, okay, wait, do you know who won, who was the last person to win a gold medal for the United States in women's figure skating?
45:36 Speaker 01 Yes. But I, but I, but this is mean, because I don't remember her name right now. Because it was right, it was the woman after Terry Lipinski.
45:45 Speaker 04 Yes. I found this out, because I, in my mind, I had made it Michelle Kwan, but it wasn't.
45:49 Speaker 01 No, not even, no.
45:50 Speaker 04 It was, I think her name was Sarah Hughes?
45:52 Speaker 01 Sarah Hughes. That's exactly right. Sarah Hughes.
45:54 Pablo Torre? Think she went to Yale?
45:55 Speaker 04 She did go to Yale.
45:56 Speaker 01 How is that what you found out on this podcast, when we've just had to look it up?
45:58 Speaker 04 No, I found that, that's not what I found out on this podcast. That's something I, that's something I knew coming in here, today. Because what I keep up on, always, I'm always up on who the last woman was to win a gold medal in, uh...
46:07 Speaker 01 Really?
46:08 Speaker 04 US figure skating.
46:10 Speaker 01 Nice.
46:10 Speaker 04 Yeah, and now it's Alyssa Lu, but before that it was Sarah Hughes, and before that it was, uh, you know...
46:13 Speaker 01 Terry Lipinski.
46:14 Speaker 04 Terry Lipinski.
46:15 Pablo Torre? I think that's the show.
46:16 Speaker 01 Yeah.
46:17 Pablo Torre? And much like artificial intelligence, much like any Waymo, much like any number of technologies that I want to split open now, just to see what's inside the Boston Dynamics robot.
46:26 Speaker 01 Ugh.
46:27 Pablo Torre? This program, I'm proud to say, is also largely a bunch of Filipino dudes and their friend.
46:33 Speaker 01 Yeah.
46:33 Speaker 04 That's right.
46:34 Speaker 01 Sick. Happy to be the friend.
46:35 Speaker 04 As it should be.
46:36 Speaker 01 Yeah.
46:39 Pablo Torre? I think we have to stop.
46:40 Speaker 01 I like to end by looking directly into the camera.
46:52 Pablo Torre? This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production. And I'll talk to you next time.
47:19 Speaker 06 Guessing is for game shows, not your business. Workday is the enterprise AI platform for HR, finance, and IT. With AI grounded in your context to get work done and done right. It's a new workday. Network freedom and flexibility, that's what you want in a healthcare plan. With a Humana Medicare Advantage PPO plan, you can see any doctor in the country who accepts Medicare, including specialists. No referrals, no kidding. Learn more at gethumana.com. See any doctor who accepts Medicare and is willing to build Humana. Humana PPOs may not be available in all areas. Benefits and costs share may vary. Humana is a Medicare Advantage PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.
Previous The Sporting Class: Corrupt Union Bosses, the Dark Arts of Ownership & NBA Draft Abolition Next Co-Conspirator 1: We Investigated the NBA Betting Scandal's "Original Sin" Page updated October 31, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated