We Go Deep with the Unlikeliest of Performance-Enhancing Drugs: Smooth Jazz

Forget hold music and Kenny G. Move over Michael Jordan and HGH. Smooth jazz — yes, smooth jazz — is the "stimulax" you've been sleeping on. From geriatric hotel ballrooms to the moneymaker-shaking high seas, correspondent Mickey Duzyj fights off the jazz police to report on the communal power of a comeback genre... then outs a closeted, world-champion super-fan. • Learn more about "Smooth World" https://smoothworldfilm.com/ • Subscribe to PTFO on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@PabloTorreFindsOut • Previously on PTFO: "Bird-Watching Will Blow Your Mind" https://pod.link/1685093486/episode/OTUyYzhmZGMtODRkZC0xMWYwLWFjNDUtODc4MDdhMjVkMzc3 ("A New Day," "Give It Up," "Honey-Dipped," and "Side by Side" by Dave Koz and "Doctor's Orders" by Phillip Doc Martin licensed with permission. Additional music by Jon Natchez for "Smooth World.") Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy https://acast.com/privacy for more information.

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

• 0:00Pablo Torre?

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

• 0:06Speaker 01

  It's like crack cocaine is, although I don't do drugs, it brings me to my happy place.

• 0:15Pablo Torre?

  Right after this.

• 0:18Speaker 02

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• 1:21Pablo Torre?

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• 2:05Pablo Torre?

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• 2:29Pablo Torre?

  I just need to establish for our audience, Mickey, that you represent a challenge to the advertising of this program, which has been billed as a sports show. And yet, when you show up, non-sports things happen.

• 2:45Speaker 04

  That's very true, yes.

• 2:47Pablo Torre?

  One title of an episode you did with us is, quote, "I was a goth jock and nobody could stop me." But your tennis career?

• 2:55Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:55Pablo Torre?

  That was the most sports, I think, that you've done.

• 2:59Speaker 04

  It was very sporty, yeah.

• 3:00Pablo Torre?

  Then, the last time you were here, you did a show that I think presaged a phenomenon that has swept the country since.

• 3:08Speaker 04

  We were ahead of that. We were birdwatching in Central Park, specifically with a man named Birding Jesus.

• 3:15Pablo Torre?

  Who still texts me.

• 3:17Speaker 04

  He's a great guy.

• 3:17Pablo Torre?

  I still want to go to Panama with Birding Jesus.

• 3:20Speaker 04

  It's gonna happen.

• 3:21Pablo Torre?

  And The Atlantic has published an article, this is just last week, by the way. The headline is, quote, "All the cool kids are birding." And yet, I think some would say, this show that claims to be about sports and what things may or may not be cool is neither of those things.

• 3:39Pablo Torre?

  At least when you are here.

• 3:40Speaker 04

  It's a very specific niche.

• 3:42Pablo Torre?

  I feel like we maybe also just need to establish that the birdwatching episode, titled "Birdwatching Will Blow Your Mind", was also, I think, probably the horniest of all the episodes we've done in now 400-plus episodes over almost three years.

• 3:56Speaker 04

  Very proud of that. And we might top it today, though.

• 4:01Pablo Torre?

  So today, the story you're bringing us, the thing you want to take us into the world of, it begins where?

• 4:10Speaker 04

  So I come to you today, Pablo, extremely relaxed and stimulated, having spent a lot of time with yet another intense subculture. This one has maybe the most obsessive fans that I've seen in any of these. And as always, I bring you back an incredible discovery.

• 4:31Pablo Torre?

  So you are an award-winning documentarian and illustrator, and I'm going to warn everybody that we're about to show things on our YouTube channel here, as well as on video on Apple Podcasts that I haven't seen yet. Where are we going?

• 4:44Speaker 04

  So picture this, Pablo. It all started in 2014. I was at an out-of-town wedding in Redding, Pennsylvania. And unbeknownst to all of us guests, the wedding ended up having a dry reception.

• 4:59Pablo Torre?

  Which means ginger ale and soda.

• 5:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, like iced tea and Shirley Temples and stuff. It was a great time. But not like we're alcoholics or anything, but a group of us, after the wedding, we were really looking for a place where we could have a stiff drink.

• 5:16Pablo Torre?

  Can I point out that this is kind of how your birdwatching episode started?

• 5:22Pablo Torre?

  You're in a room full of weirdos.

• 5:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, well, you know, this is just the way that I live, Pablo.

• 5:28Pablo Torre?

  This is your reporting process.

• 5:32Speaker 04

  So my friends and I, we stumble into what ends up being the Crown Plaza Hotel in Redding, Pennsylvania, which just so happens that weekend to be hosting something called the Burkes Jazz Fest.

• 5:51Speaker 04

  As soon as we open the doors, Pablo, we just see an endless sea of elderly people, a full-on geriatric underground music scene.

• 6:03Pablo Torre?

  I'm imagining Zion from The Matrix, but also the exact opposite.

• 6:08Speaker 04

  The exact opposite.

• 6:10Pablo Torre?

  What's the energy level here? Give us these sort of atmospherics.

• 6:14Speaker 04

  Everyone is grooving. They are dressed to the nines. We're talking feathers. We're talking sequins. We're talking high heels. This astonishing scene that I can't quite process.

• 6:31Speaker 04

  So we sit down next to these very friendly, very intense people at a bar. And I should point out, Pablo, that despite what it all sounds like now, this is actually going to be a sports story with this very specific kind of music that was billowing out of every single one of these conference rooms at the Crown Plaza Hotel.

• 6:59Speaker 04

  And that music was smooth jazz.

• 7:08Pablo Torre?

  You're trying to sell our audience on Kenny G being sports, the kind of music that you hear when they're trying to anesthetize you during wisdom teeth removal.

• 7:21Speaker 04

  That's the one, yeah.

• 7:22Pablo Torre?

  The only data point that I really have for the intersection of sports and smooth jazz is the centerfielder from my childhood, Bernie Williams.

• 7:32Speaker 04

  Hell, yeah.

• 7:33Pablo Torre?

  Hell, yeah. In response to Bernie Williams being the smooth jazz guitarist that you seem to be channeling when you're claiming that this is all very, very cool and energetic.

• 7:45Speaker 04

  I mean, Bernie is a real one in the smooth jazz world. He has played with the New York Philharmonic. This guy has closed down shows at Carnegie Hall. He's got cred in this world.

• 7:58Pablo Torre?

  It is dissident, the idea that guy who plays in a stadium that is brought to life by Enter Sandman by Metallica when Mariano Rivera would come out of the bullpen.

• 8:18Pablo Torre?

  Is also doing this.

• 8:21Speaker 04

  I see how you feel that way, but this leads me perfectly to the incredible discovery that I'm here to share with you, which is that in this ever-connected, optimized, metric-obsessed world of sports, smooth jazz might actually be hiding in plain sight as one of the greatest performance-enhancing drugs ever. Based on what I can accurately say is extensive international reporting on this subject.

• 8:50Pablo Torre?

  How long have you spent reporting this episode for us?

• 8:52Speaker 04

  Years, years.

• 8:55Speaker 04

  Since, I could argue, since even before the show was a show. But I can accurately say that, from the reporting, there are even more athletes, like your beloved Bernie Williams, who really enjoy kind of this softer music, but they just might be too embarrassed to say it publicly.

• 9:15Pablo Torre?

  You're saying they're closeted, smooth jazz fans throughout sports?

• 9:19Speaker 04

  Yeah, there are. But I promise you this. On the show today, we will out at least one reigning world champion athlete as a smooth jazz lover.

• 9:32Pablo Torre?

  What I want to do is get out of this segment.

• 9:52Pablo Torre?

  So just to recap what you're attempting to do here, you're trying to prove that smooth jazz, the least pump-up sounding music one can imagine, is secretly a performance-enhancing drug that actually makes athletes better.

• 10:07Speaker 04

  So as much as we fans like to think that our favorite athletes are listening to just like this super hardcore music all the time, playing out loud in the locker rooms or in their headphones before and after games, it turns out that the most hardcore of hardcore players of all time, Michael Jordan, seconds after Jordan hit the shot.

• 10:33Pablo Torre?

  This is the 89 playoffs. It's the Cavs. It's three seconds left.

• 10:41Pablo Torre?

  The Bulls win one of the most dramatic games ever.

• 10:44Speaker 04

  That's the one.

• 10:48Speaker 04

  Jordan literally says in his post-game interview that his pre-game pump-up song was this.

• 11:04Speaker 04

  That's "Giving You the Best That I Got" by Anita Baker.

• 11:08Pablo Torre?

  When Jordan is fist pumping.

• 11:09Speaker 04

  So good.

• 11:10Pablo Torre?

  He's hearing that in his brain.

• 11:13Speaker 04

  So you should know that Anita Baker is not technically smooth jazz.

• 11:17Pablo Torre?

  You're saying that song we just heard is too hardcore for smooth jazz?

• 11:19Speaker 04

  Well, to define smooth jazz is a little bit difficult, but just painting with a broad brush, a nice soft watercolor brush.

• 11:29Speaker 04

  Smooth jazz is largely an instrumental genre, and it's like, kind of a vibe, actually. A radio DJ that I spoke to told me that he privately refers to smooth jazz as quote-unquote "stimulax."

• 11:47Pablo Torre?

  It feels like a pharmaceutical drug that makes you poop.

• 11:51Speaker 04

  Well, stimulax is the perfect mix of stimulating and relaxing, which just so happens to be the ideal formula to have you enter a flow state.

• 12:07Speaker 04

  It was actually a radio format. This was in the late 80s. It was designed to be almost like an uplifting mood service.

• 12:17Pablo Torre?

  Why do I feel like I'm entering some sort of like spiritual ritual now with you?

• 12:22Speaker 04

  It's because you are. So these stations, it was a mix of contemporary jazz. It was world music. It was like spa music with pan flutes.

• 12:37Speaker 04

  And it was all designed to be this sort of uplifting, joyful soundtrack to people's lives.

• 12:44Pablo Torre?

  People who might have been stressed out in the 80s, which I imagine is very cocaine-y. It's like this was the deprivation tank that they got to hang out in.

• 12:54Speaker 04

  This was the counterpoint. So the iconic station that started this was called The Wave. 94.7, The Wave. It was an LA-based station, and The Wave just played banger after banger after banger.

• 13:17Speaker 05

  94.7, KTVV, The Wave, where the music matters.

• 13:23Pablo Torre?

  I think this is where I gotta point out that banger feels like a substantive misrepresentation of whatever verb is happening when you play smooth jazz. What's the opposite of banging?

• 13:36Speaker 04

  Smoothing? I don't know. So The Wave was really a phenomenon, Pablo, and Southern California really could not get enough of this music, especially playing it at work, in the background, at the office.

• 13:50Pablo Torre?

  Wait, this was the ambient noise of corporate America?

• 13:55Speaker 04

  Totally. It lifted the mood. It made everything feel sophisticated and classy and arty and worldly.

• 14:03Pablo Torre?

  So I'm at my desk in the 1980s, typing away on my clickety-clack keyboard.

• 14:08Speaker 04

  I mean, wouldn't you rather be working to music like this?

• 14:16Speaker 04

  Oh, crank it up.

• 14:19Speaker 04

  Come on, are you telling me that's not a banger?

• 14:21Pablo Torre?

  It feels like I'm on hold.

• 14:26Speaker 04

  You know you'd rather be listening to this than whatever podcast you're listening to, interviewing some billionaire. Come on.

• 14:33Pablo Torre?

  You're just like, this is not pumping me up. This is de-pumping. This is de-pump music.

• 14:38Speaker 04

  Deflating?

• 14:39Pablo Torre?

  I mean, dare I say, it's the opposite of the effect that you're arguing.

• 14:45Speaker 04

  One man's pump-up is another's deflate, I guess. But back in those days, people could not get enough of this, and very quickly, in markets large and small, radio stations started to copy this format. And it wasn't just like some suburban, white yuppie thing either. It got to the point where if you were driving across the country, coast to coast, there would not be a single moment where on the radio dial you could not find music from artists like Grover Washington Jr.

• 15:22Speaker 04

  We're talking cities and suburbs, white and black. Smooth jazz was born.

• 15:30Pablo Torre?

  So what I'm not gonna argue with is the data, because the market is speaking, and more and more stations seem to be agreeing with you.

• 15:39Speaker 04

  So if you want some analytics on this, just to give you a baseline, in the 90s, Kenny G's huge album, Breathless, it actually outsold Nirvana's Nevermind album.

• 15:52Pablo Torre?

  You're saying that Kurt Cobain was outrated by...

• 15:57Speaker 04

  This right here.

• 16:04Speaker 04

  Come on, tell me you're not pumped up right now.

• 16:07Pablo Torre?

  I just like how this is just Kenny G crossfading into other versions of Kenny G, in which he's somehow losing more clothes.

• 16:14Speaker 04

  What a legend.

• 16:17Pablo Torre?

  He's on a beach, he's sleeveless. What instrument is that?

• 16:20Speaker 04

  That is a soprano sax.

• 16:22Pablo Torre?

  Of course. In one shot, he's wearing suspenders in like a villa of like an ancient ruin, maybe of some kind, wearing high-top sneakers.

• 16:31Speaker 04

  But I should say, Pablo, that Kenny G himself actually shied away from the smooth jazz label.

• 16:38Pablo Torre?

  How could the guy who seems like the face of smooth jazz reject that?

• 16:44Speaker 04

  So the jazz world really resented that Kenny G, in the ways that we were just talking about with Nirvana, was outselling even like the greatest jazz artists of all time. And this points at another phenomenon, something that the other guy in this photo, actually, a guy named Dave Koz.

• 17:05Speaker 06

  My name is Dave Koz. I'm a professional musician, and I play the saxophone.

• 17:11Speaker 04

  It's what this guy Koz calls the jazz police.

• 17:16Speaker 06

  The word "smooth," not the word "jazz," interestingly enough, but the word "smooth" kind of became a dirty word along the way. And there was such a bias in the jazz community, who looked at smooth jazz artists as kind of lesser than. So it was like an identity crisis for a lot of smooth jazz artists, and even the fans who became like, because it was such a powerful voice of this jazz police saying, "If you're listening to smooth jazz radio, first of all, the artists suck. Your music tastes suck, you know? And you suck." It was so heavy-handed that a lot of us guys and gals that became associated with this radio format,

• 18:01Speaker 06

  we kind of carried this burden. I tried to distance myself, like we all did, from the term "smooth jazz" for a number of years.

• 18:11Pablo Torre?

  So a couple of observations here. One is the jazz police, that sounds to me like a smooth jazz cover band of The Police. And the second thing is, dude's Zoom background appears to be an enormous house. What's his deal?

• 18:29Speaker 04

  Do you hear this music underneath us, Pablo?

• 18:34Speaker 04

  This is why they call Koz "The Sultan of Smooth." People told me that listening to a Dave Koz saxophone solo makes them feel like they're taking drugs.

• 18:48Speaker 04

  This guy was a saxophone player in Arsenio Hall's band. He became like the industry's anointed successor to Kenny G. Capitol Records held this meeting where they decided that for marketing purposes, they're gonna change his name from David Koz to Dave Koz. And then quote-unquote "Dave Koz" becomes this like crazy sex symbol.

• 19:14Pablo Torre?

  It's hard for me to not point out that by dropping the ID, by dropping the "id," he unleashed the "id."

• 19:22Speaker 04

  One newspaper called it sax appeal. And Kathy Lee Gifford simply called Koz "a very hot guy." Dave Koz, great, great jazz performer, a very hot guy.

• 19:36Speaker 04

  There were music videos with these women fawning after him.

• 19:46Speaker 04

  And Koz is just standing among ancient ruins, just squealing gloriously on a saxophone solo, while he seductively looks on.

• 19:59Pablo Torre?

  I just like how at any given moment you could pause one of these music videos, and it's going to be a cross dissolve.

• 20:06Speaker 04

  So at his peak in the 90s.

• 20:08Pablo Torre?

  Atop those ruins.

• 20:09Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 20:11Speaker 04

  Really peaking there. He went platinum as an artist. He was selling like a half million records for each album. He even wrote the theme song to General Hospital.

• 20:30Speaker 04

  This guy, he did cameos on Melrose Place. He was on Family Matters. Dave Koz, ladies and gentlemen, Dave Koz.

• 20:43Pablo Torre?

  As someone who watched a lot of Steve Urkel, I remember that Urkel loved smooth jazz, which feels like a great counterpoint to the case you've been making until this moment.

• 20:58Speaker 04

  Okay, but there's also sports. Dave Koz also played for teams like the Lakers, for the Cowboys, for the Dodgers. He plays this incredible national anthem. And he has actually performed with athletes like your beloved Bernie Williams.

• 21:19Speaker 04

  What we're hearing now is the Koz feature on the track Ritmo de Otoño from Bernie Williams's album Moving Forward.

• 21:29Pablo Torre?

  So just to do my elementary Spanish translation, Ritmo de Otoño is "Rhythm of Autumn."

• 21:34Speaker 04

  And what a great, fitting soundtrack to all of their successes. Koz also played with, do you remember the late, great Wayman Tisdale?

• 21:44Pablo Torre?

  One of the great college basketball players of all time. 6'9", 260, played for the Pacers and some other teams, the Kings and the Suns. Yeah, one of the great power forwards and a gold medalist.

• 21:54Speaker 04

  And "Power Forward" happens to be the name of his debut album as a smooth jazz bassist.

• 22:05Speaker 04

  I mean, look at these guys, Pablo.

• 22:07Pablo Torre?

  That's Dave and Wayman. The Koz and, wow.

• 22:13Speaker 04

  The much larger.

• 22:15Pablo Torre?

  The significantly larger.

• 22:16Speaker 04

  Wayman Tisdale.

• 22:17Pablo Torre?

  Collaborator.

• 22:18Speaker 04

  So Koz told me.

• 22:20Speaker 06

  Whatever it is that like animates a professional athlete, that focus, preparing for the flow state, whatever you need to do. And believe me, Mickey, I am so far from being an athlete. I barely can swing a tennis racket. But I recognized something very distinct with those two experiences with professional athletes, that they approached music in a different way than a regular musician.

• 22:48Speaker 04

  He said that these athletes, as musicians, smooth jazz musicians, were different. Dave Koz says that he absolutely believes that smooth jazz can be a performance-enhancing drug.

• 23:01Speaker 06

  I absolutely do think that smooth jazz can be a performance-enhancing drug used by athletes, doctors. Actually, I've heard a bunch of stories, Mickey, about how my music actually has been used in operating rooms all over America by surgeons.

• 23:22Pablo Torre?

  This is where I have to admit that you've made a persuasive case that sports and smooth jazz actually have a history and that smooth jazz as a market commodity was quite valuable. But when you make the case for performance enhancement, what happened to the performance of smooth jazz since then?

• 23:40Speaker 04

  So, things have been a little bit rough in the smooth jazz world, specifically because of something that happened in 2008, when everything changed.

• 23:50Pablo Torre?

  The Great Financial Crisis.

• 23:52Speaker 04

  So there was that, but the wave that we talked about earlier, the wave crashed, Pablo, because, and I brought a prop today. In 2008, the radio ratings company Arbitron rolled out this futuristic new device called the Portable People Meter.

• 24:11Pablo Torre?

  That looks like a Bieber.

• 24:13Speaker 04

  Totally.

• 24:14Pablo Torre?

  It has a belt clip.

• 24:15Speaker 04

  Absolutely. It was designed to be worn on people's belts. And it was brought in to replace what were these like kind of archaic ratings books that people would have to write down longhand what radio stations they were listening to throughout the day.

• 24:34Pablo Torre?

  This reminds me that Nielsen, the Nielsen rating system for TV, they used to have people input by hand what they were watching.

• 24:40Speaker 04

  So the way that this thing worked is that radio broadcasters would actually embed an inaudible signal within every single one of the radio stations. People meters have a tiny little microphone inside of them that would pick up the signal from the different radio stations and log how much rap music or heavy metal, classic rock, talk radio.

• 25:05Pablo Torre?

  This is like how we think our cellphones are listening to us now. This was actually a device that was designed to openly do that very thing.

• 25:11Speaker 04

  It was listening to everything, Pablo. But these devices had a significant flaw. They really struggled to pick up the signals from stations that were played at a low volume,

• 25:27Speaker 04

  which disproportionately affected the music that we're talking about today.

• 25:32Pablo Torre?

  So the bias was music that was made to be blasted out of a speaker was accurately counted. But the music that was played almost definitionally as background music, that suffered.

• 25:50Speaker 04

  Exactly. So in every market where the people meter was integrated, ratings for smooth jazz just absolutely took a nosedive.

• 26:00Pablo Torre?

  We're looking at a March 2008 headline. It reads, "Smooth Jazz Sinks in Rough Airwaves." It's pretty hard to recover when you're that underwater.

• 26:12Speaker 04

  So it looks that way. But let's go back to this wonderful hotel event that I was telling you about earlier when I'm at a bar drinking with all of these smooth jazz fans, or smoothies, as I like to call them. It was that night that the smooth jazz fans described to me that in the wake of the collapse of smooth jazz radio, that the scene kind of evolved and rebranded as this in-person subculture at small festivals like the Berks Jazz Fest, at wine tastings, and at an even more spectacular venue that was pioneered by the Sultan of Smooth himself, Dave Koz.

• 26:52Speaker 06

  My first cruise was in 2005. And in 2011, we started doing it ourselves, cruising ourselves. And every year, we decided to push the envelope and try new places. The average amount of guests that come on the ship is around, somewhere between 2,000 and 2,500 per cruise. For the next cruise in Japan, I think our waiting list is up to like 10,000 people. It kind of reminds me of like summer camp for, I don't want to say senior citizens, but I might have to. It's really diverse. You've got all different races and religions and different ages.

• 27:34Speaker 06

  You've got gays, straights, and everything in between. And for one week, all the lines that separate everybody in our worlds, they just get erased. And that, to me, is the true power of music.

• 27:50Pablo Torre?

  What I'm finding out here is that there are thousands upon thousands of people that board a cruise ship in which the music that they celebrate is music that, once again, is typically played so softly that electronic devices cannot hear it.

• 28:08Speaker 04

  This is all true. And from here, Pablo, it's really time to step aboard. Things are about to get very haunting.

• 28:24Pablo Torre?

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• 30:10Speaker 04

  I'm PTFO correspondent Mickey Dujie, and I come to you from Rio de Janeiro, where I'm aboard the Dave Koz Smooth Jazz Cruise. This week, thousands of sequined-clad smoothies are packing themselves onto this ship to indulge guilt-free in a massive dose of something that most people think is horrible. What we're here to find out is whether Smooth Jazz, commonly seen as the most corny and loathsome musical genre in history, is actually hiding in plain sight as the key to unlocking peak performance. Let's investigate.

• 30:46Pablo Torre?

  I just need to point out that you were lying horizontally on a deck chair before getting up and beginning to traverse the deck of an actual cruise ship docked off of the coast of Brazil.

• 30:57Speaker 04

  All true.

• 30:58Pablo Torre?

  As you were wearing a nautical-themed shirt.

• 31:01Speaker 04

  That's my cruising shirt, Pablo.

• 31:04Pablo Torre?

  And your journalism, your embedded-on-the-open-seas reporting, brought you to where?

• 31:13Speaker 04

  So my first stop was to stop in at the Lido deck, where a large group of smoothies had already congregated and seemed to be really feeling the effects of Stimulax. I mean, we had smoothies dancing on top of jacuzzis. We had champagne flowing. Everyone was just shaking their money makers in the full Brazilian summer sun.

• 31:38Pablo Torre?

  This is, yes, a rainbow coalition of older people and saxophones, and everyone is loving it. But in terms of the performance enhancement thesis you've brought to us today, this is not quite what I'm looking for.

• 31:55Speaker 04

  I have to agree with you. At first glance, unfortunately, peak performance was not immediately apparent. Not on the ping-pong tables, not in cornhole, and definitely not in the pools.

• 32:12Pablo Torre?

  I'm glad that we are continuing to do sports journalism.

• 32:18Speaker 04

  So for me to learn the true secrets of Smooth, I had to dip my toe further into the water. What I want to know is, how do these people, many of them older people, have so much stamina this week?

• 32:32Speaker 06

  So the stamina comes from your passion. You must know what your passions are. I personally say I know what my crazy is. So my crazy is music.

• 32:44Pablo Torre?

  I just got to say, you are interviewing a woman who is literally now inside the jacuzzi.

• 32:50Speaker 04

  And she's just getting started. How many shows back-to-back-to-back-to-back do you think that you could, you know, take in on a cruise this intense?

• 33:01Speaker 06

  So when I get the schedule, and of course, you have to pace yourself, but there is 24 hours in a day, and the day starts about 10, ends about 2. So 10 a.m. to 2 a.m., and then you can sleep from 3 to 8.

• 33:20Pablo Torre?

  Let's just do the math here. That's 16 hours a day of smoothing for a week straight.

• 33:26Speaker 04

  That's right, Pablo. And these people made me, as a middle-aged guy, think about performance and enhancement in a totally different way.

• 33:35Speaker 06

  I have kids in their 30s and 40s. I'm not quite sure that they could hang if they came onto the ship. As you know, we go from morning to night, and we probably will put some of them to shame.

• 33:48Speaker 01

  It's like crack cocaine is, although I don't do drugs, it brings me to my happy place.

• 33:56Speaker 04

  You're incredibly stoned right now on Smooth Jazz.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I am in my natural high. I mean, I...

• 34:03Pablo Torre?

  What I thought would be a downer is instead proving to be an upper in ways that are scientifically disturbing.

• 34:10Speaker 04

  So you got to understand, Pablo, these 2,000 Smooth Jazz fans on this ship are co-mingling with their favorite artists in very, very close quarters. And again, it's black, white, gay, straight, Democrat, Republican. Everybody's mixed in.

• 34:27Pablo Torre?

  Yes, the bipartisanship of this horniness is becoming also apparent.

• 34:32Speaker 04

  So speaking of that, I don't want to get too explicit on your show here, but there was a moment where, one night, as I was walking along the ship, an elderly woman grabbed my wrist and flirtatiously asked me if I would guess her age. And then, you know, gazing at me with the most seductive look, she said to me, "I'm 80."

• 35:01Speaker 04

  And I was like, "And I'm scared."

• 35:06Pablo Torre?

  Feels like you're getting journalistically compromised, Mickey, by your reporting here.

• 35:11Speaker 04

  So I actually felt the opposite.

• 35:18Speaker 04

  I was in these concerts. I was searching for my own high. And people are wearing these incredible outfits that have flowy fabrics and flashing lights. And I'm there in my stupid cruising shirt.

• 35:32Pablo Torre?

  You're buttoned down.

• 35:33Speaker 04

  Yeah. So rather than feeling like I needed to stay on the sidelines, what I decided to do was totally double down. So I walked over to this onboard store, which is called Glitz. And inside Glitz, I bought myself a new Smooth Jazz shirt.

• 36:00Pablo Torre?

  I mean, it is a button-down, but it is split down the middle by the buttons. The right side on the screen is white and has musical notes. And it's coming out of a saxophone that seems to be blowing smoke out of itself. And on the left side is...

• 36:18Speaker 04

  More giant notes and...

• 36:20Pablo Torre?

  But just like vertical now, shooting vertically, like you are Smooth Jazz Two-Face. You are Smooth Jazz Harvey Dent.

• 36:28Speaker 04

  I should say I was extremely excited for my new uniform to wear on the cruise. And...

• 36:35Pablo Torre?

  This was made of what fabric?

• 36:37Speaker 04

  This was a silk Smooth Jazz shirt.

• 36:39Pablo Torre?

  Why did I even ask?

• 36:41Speaker 04

  They don't sell anything other than silk on that boat.

• 36:45Speaker 04

  And immediately, just from the reactions of the people who, as I'm walking out of the store, this shirt was just a gateway into the unknown.

• 36:57Pablo Torre?

  And so as you are now festooned in silk, where do you go?

• 37:02Speaker 04

  So I'm feeling great with this new second skin.

• 37:08Speaker 04

  I happened to stumble upon an onboard ping-pong tournament that was happening on the Lido deck.

• 37:14Pablo Torre?

  This cruise ship has everything.

• 37:16Speaker 04

  It really does. And I decided to put my newfound Stimulax to the test. The moment that I stepped to the table, Pablo, a wave of calm really came over me.

• 37:28Pablo Torre?

  I mean, it's a wave of calm over the guy who is asleep right behind you, watching this.

• 37:33Speaker 04

  Okay, he might have been more calm than me.

• 37:37Speaker 04

  The ball just danced from my paddle like a bubble in the breeze.

• 37:42Pablo Torre?

  You're biting your lip with a confidence that, I got to say, betrays your Goth tennis background.

• 37:53Speaker 04

  This is, actually, the polar opposite of my Goth tennis days. But I'm out there, and some cracking balls all over the table.

• 38:04Pablo Torre?

  Celebrating.

• 38:05Speaker 04

  Like a Smooth Jazz saxophone solo, Pablo.

• 38:11Pablo Torre?

  Is that the guy you beat?

• 38:12Speaker 04

  Yeah. He had to go down, Pablo. I was really feeling it.

• 38:16Pablo Torre?

  Just like popping your jersey.

• 38:21Speaker 04

  I don't remember any of this. I feel like I was unconscious. But what I do remember is that after I won the tournament, people were coming up to me to take selfies. I had this, like, totally new stature on the ship.

• 38:35Pablo Torre?

  You're grinning so wide that it almost makes me ignore the woman to the bottom right of this frame.

• 38:41Speaker 04

  She's loving it, too.

• 38:45Pablo Torre?

  Oh my God.

• 38:49Speaker 04

  I ended up going to a bar where the bartender, just for no reason, gave me a double pour of Baileys on the house.

• 38:56Pablo Torre?

  A literal flow state at this point.

• 38:59Speaker 04

  Everything I did just felt effortlessly cool. And, you know, heads were turning my way. I had never felt so smooth in my entire life.

• 39:12Speaker 04

  So Pablo, everywhere I was going on the ship, I was suddenly getting love.

• 39:20Speaker 04

  And I was wondering, was this all because of this stupid silk saxophone shirt that I was wearing? Or did the shirt actually unlock something that was deep inside of me? That had been laying dormant? I really needed to go deeper to find the answer. We've arrived to day five of this here Smooth Jazz Cruise, and I've never felt more comfortable in my own skin. Tonight's theme is Brazilian Carnival. Even though it's early in the day, all of my new old friends are already clad in sequins and feathers, ready to dance the night away. Let's check in on the dance floor and see how they're doing.

• 40:02Pablo Torre?

  Feels like you robbed an old person and are now wearing a blue feather boa, a blue Jim Dolan-esque pork pie cap.

• 40:14Pablo Torre?

  And somehow there's enough fabric left over from the hat to make an entire shirt. Also sparkling in the sun.

• 40:21Speaker 04

  It was a set, Pablo. Apparently Glitz had a backroom that I hadn't initially noticed for the serious smoothies. And yeah, I went even harder with the outfits.

• 40:36Speaker 04

  And I have to say that as someone who doesn't typically dress up, tapping into my inner smoothie was really liberating. But even as I was reaching the pinnacle of the smooth world, I just felt myself wanting more. So as night fell on the ship during this Carnival celebration. I'm really feeling this. I think we should move down. I found myself wanting to be up front, like running down the aisle into the front rows of these shows. The music is just washing over me. And I finally felt like I was accepted into this world

• 41:20Speaker 04

  and was communing with everyone's fountain of youth in this way that made me feel whole.

• 41:29Pablo Torre?

  You're doing the Jon Hamm meme from Friends and Neighbors. Does the camera right down barrel to your face, eyes closed as you're gyrating, awash in some sort of moonlight?

• 41:43Speaker 04

  I mean, again, I don't remember any of this.

• 41:47Pablo Torre?

  That tracks.

• 41:48Speaker 04

  I was really living the dream.

• 41:52Speaker 04

  So earlier in the week, a new friend of mine told me that smooth is actually a feeling and that if you let the feeling overtake you on the inside, it'll radiate to the outside.

• 42:06Pablo Torre?

  That is a hell of a pick-up line.

• 42:08Speaker 04

  I really felt that, though. I really felt that. So for one magical week, Pablo, I really forgot all of my troubles and can honestly say I was peaking.

• 42:21Pablo Torre?

  As you're walking down the moonlit Lido deck, with your arms raised like Judd Nelson in The Breakfast Club, I have to wonder now, is your wife aware that you were peaking on this cruise ship?

• 42:35Speaker 04

  What happens on the cruise ship stays on the cruise ship, Pablo. Until today, I guess.

• 42:48Pablo Torre?

  This episode is brought to you by ONNIT. You know those days where it's back-to-back meetings, a deadline you're already behind on, and somehow you still have to be present for family time after work? That's basically every Tuesday for me. And on days like that, I reach for AlphaBrain. AlphaBrain is a daily nootropic formula designed to support cognition, memory, attention, focus, and mental clarity. It's not about some artificial jolt. It's about helping you tune out distractions and actually get into the zone when you're deep in a task, whether that's plowing through emails, finishing a project, or just trying to stay sharp through a packed day. What I've noticed is that it supports flow state,

• 43:32Pablo Torre?

  that feeling when you're locked in, fully engaged, and things just click. Plus, it helps with quicker reaction times and everyday concentration when there's a lot competing for your attention. And on the more stressful days, it supports AlphaBrain wave activity to help take the edge off. If your days look anything like mine, juggling work, workouts, kids, whatever's next, AlphaBrain is built for exactly that kind of day. Shop now at ONNIT.com. That's O-N-N-I-T dot com.

• 44:08Speaker 02

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• 44:38Speaker 03

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• 45:16Pablo Torre?

  So this is where, now that we're back on land, I do feel obligated to disclose that I did not consent to mere sponsored content for Dave Koz's Smooth Jazz Cruise, which clearly you found to be a very transformative experience.

• 45:36Speaker 04

  So I don't feel like Koz, or the cruise, or the smooth world needs any more than they already have. But you should know that my embedding in this world, my experience with this world over six years in 15 countries and interviewing dozens of people, was not just for this episode. I really saw something substantive and beautiful in this world. And all of this footage and all of these people that I've met served the larger purpose of me making a feature-length documentary about smooth jazz, which is called Smooth World. And what the film is really about

• 46:18Speaker 04

  is that despite the ridiculous optics of it, or its history that has been lampooned, that actually peak performance is when you stop trying to be so cool all the time and you give in to community and joy and being silly and being in person with other people. These are the analog virtues of a world like that. And I feel like the world, not just older people, but people our generation and younger, in a world that is becoming rougher and rougher, could be well-served by something that's actually much smoother.

• 47:02Pablo Torre?

  As I consult my notes here, I love that your film will be premiering at the Newport Beach Film Festival in October, where the vibes promise to be exactly as you described them. But what about us?

• 47:17Speaker 04

  Okay, so I did promise, in true PTFO fashion, to out.

• 47:22Pablo Torre?

  To break news.

• 47:24Speaker 04

  To break news and out a reigning world champion of a major American sport as a true lover of smooth jazz. So Dave Koz, legend of this musical genre, he told me about a whole legion of closeters that are not willing to admit it in public, but in private, they got it going on. From his own best friends to the Obamas.

• 47:52Pablo Torre?

  That's a hell of a tease.

• 47:54Speaker 04

  To a guy whom you also might recall from his playing days with the Boston Red Sox and is now the manager of the reigning world champion L.A. Dodgers.

• 48:07Pablo Torre?

  Oh, no.

• 48:08Speaker 04

  And even though I don't play sports, I

• 48:10Speaker 06

  Grew up around sports. My dad was a psycho Dodgers fan and had season tickets, the whole thing. So we went to a lot of Dodger games. So the Dodgers are very much a part of my heart, you know, growing up in LA. And so it was an event that Dave Roberts was at, that I was playing at, and I met him backstage. And he was like, he totally, I hope he's not watching this, but I just want to say that he kind of fanboyed out on me. And of course, when the Dodgers won the pennant, you know, it's like congratulatory messages and immediately, I remember texting Dave right after the Dodgers win the World Series. And I was, I was thinking, this guy's got to be getting hundreds or maybe thousands of congratulatory messages. But I'm just going to be one of those guys because I want him

• 48:55Speaker 06

  to know that I was watching and I was so excited for the team, you know, go Dodgers. And I texted him, literally within three minutes, there was a text saying, thank you so much, Dave. We are so excited. We appreciate your support. I'm like, why are you texting me of all people? Like, what the hell is going on here?

• 49:17Pablo Torre?

  That is also how I feel at this point. What the hell is going on?

• 49:22Speaker 04

  Now, I know that you guys have standards around here, Pablo. You can't just make claims about a four time World Series champion in the same episode that I'm like grinding up an old lady.

• 49:33Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, we need to request comment typically for such allegations.

• 49:38Speaker 04

  So the other day at Dodger Stadium, we had one of your colleagues at The Athletic, Fabian Ardaya, fact checked this and confront Dave Roberts about my theory that keeping it smooth is actually a performance enhancing drug.

• 49:53Speaker 05

  So I think that it just puts my mind in a peaceful place when I listen to jazz music. And it certainly is the contrast from clubhouse music, you know, where you get rap, hardcore rap, you get Bad Bunny, you get some country in there. We don't have as much of rock, rock and roll, or heavy metal, thank goodness. But it's a lot of rap, a lot of Latin stuff. But I do think that, you know, for me, it's like, I can listen to jazz just to kind of keep me grounded.

• 50:24Pablo Torre?

  I just need to stress how utterly serious he was in answering this question of your theory. And with that seriousness, what is now sinking in to, to my life and my brain is the idea that whenever I think now about Dave Roberts, that same guy stealing second base on a guy who loves to come out of the bullpen to Metallica, what I'm really hearing underneath is not, is not heavy metal. It's not the Dropkick Murphys even. It's the Sultan of Smooth haunting me as the Red Sox come back from down 3-0 to beat the Yankees in

• 51:09Pablo Torre?

  the 2004 ALCS.

• 51:11Speaker 04

  Yeah. So I'm sensing your anxiety here, Pablo. And I have

• 51:14Pablo Torre?

  This is a remarkable, practical joke you played.

• 51:17Speaker 04

  I have something to help you. Okay. So one last thing that I'm bringing you as a surprise here, to, to really enhance your own performance, not that it needs enhancement, a smooth jazz rendition of the Pablo Torre Finds Out theme song, the great Bernie Williams. Ladies and gentlemen, Bernie Williams.

• 52:11Speaker 04

  This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Metalark Media production. And we will talk to you next time.

• 52:38Speaker 03

  At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet. Like offering more benefits than you'd get from original Medicare alone and including dental, vision and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is every plan has a $0 or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save too. So this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage HMO and PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.

• 53:12Speaker 05

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