Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out A New Roadmap for Actual Human Connection, with Roy Wood Jr. About this episode The promise of the internet has failed us. Our politics are breaking us. But the sports world, even in a state of group-hate, provides lessons for a fundamental human need that is currently all too absent: connection. Roy Wood Jr., one of the most prolific road comics in our country, has a million miles of experience at kicking the tires on The Real America. And his rules of the road will surprise you, because they exist less with Obama at the batting cage and somewhere more between Ted Cruz on the sidelines...and the porn gun range. Also: NASCAR, Mr. Wizard, and Sammy Sosa.
• Watch Roy Wood's new special, "Lonely Flowers"
https://www.hulu.com/movie/0bdefff9-def5-4e22-96d9-94fd899f0f83
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Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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2:58 Pablo Torre? I am Pablo Torre and today we're going to find out what this sound is.
3:02 Speaker 02 If you were a man and that AutoZone employee came out there behind you to do anything to your car, you was a [BLEEP]. You was a [BLEEP].
3:13 Pablo Torre? Right after this ad.
3:16 Speaker 03 You're listening to Giraffe Kings Network.
3:32 Speaker 02 The first nine years of my career, I drove half a million miles.
3:37 Pablo Torre? God.
3:37 Speaker 02 Between two different cars, two odometer, total odometers, half a million. And now I'm like, oh. Bro, I used to be white out conditions in Aspen drafting 18-wheelers like NASCAR.
3:53 Pablo Torre? Drafting an 18-wheeler?
3:54 Speaker 02 Drafting an 18-wheeler in a snowstorm.
3:56 Pablo Torre? Waiting for those Mario Kart, uh, what is it like when you see, when you're like right nearby, you got a special boost to pass?
4:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah, shake and bake, engage.
4:07 Speaker 02 Because in my brain, in slushy conditions, I would rather be closer on an 18-wheeler because it's throwing the water in the air, so it's not under my tires. The wipers can handle visibility. Just don't get too close if you jack knives that you don't have range and stuff, but like, that's the calculations I used to make. And now I'm the dude in the right lane. I'm doing five under the limit. I got a podcast going. I'm chilling.
4:36 Pablo Torre? So the reason that Roy Wood Jr. is back in our podcast studio in New York chilling with me is not simply because he is the author of a stand-up special that I love called Lonely Flowers over on Hulu and also the host of Have I Got News For You on CNN. Roy is here because, like me, he finds himself trying to safely navigate the wreckage that is 2025, a year in which every institution in our country, from our economy to our politics to our media, is not simply changing human behavior, but also just crashing into each
5:15 Pablo Torre? other all of the time, which has the effect of disconnecting us and breaking us apart. But to stop going fast and furious on the freeway behind the wheel is also a massive change in personal behavior for Roy Wood Jr. Because Roy, who is an Alabama native, had a way of life as a prolific road comic that obeyed one urgent iron law.
5:44 Speaker 02 If you don't make it, you don't get paid.
5:47 Pablo Torre? I've always thought of you as a guy who is, you're a master of the road. Like, you are, there's a journalistic sensibility to you and your comedy, but it is born of you seeing the country. And now what you're saying is you don't want to see it in the way that you used to see it, at least when it comes to the driving aspect of it.
6:03 Speaker 02 I give you a perfect example. I'm doing a project with MLB Network that'll come out later during baseball season. And so we needed to get to Port St. Lucie to shoot some stuff with, and spring training and whatever. Well, the closest airport is West Palm, and that's a rental car plus 45 minutes. The easier flight is Orlando, but Orlando's a two-hour drive to Port St. Lucie.
6:28 Speaker 02 I said, man, just fly me to West Palm so I can drive forty-five minutes and I'll figure it out. The old me would have flown to Jacksonville, say what up to two of my homeboys who I ain't seen in a while, ran over to Tallahassee, yo, what's up, man? I'm in Tallahassee, alright, I gotta go, I gotta go down to Point, say, look. And then driven for, I'd have had a six-hour day before and then shot. Now, I'm just, alright, I'll land at nine, cameras roll at two, there's two contingency flights after the nine AM flight. I'll still make the shoot on time. Alright, it's a fact, let's do it.
7:00 Pablo Torre? What accounts for that difference in desire? Is it energy? Is it, is it actually fearing the mortality rates of being on the road this often?
7:08 Speaker 02 It's a little bit of that. It's a little bit of that. It's more mortality, but then there's also just, I'm forty-six and I'm not twenty, twenty-six. So there, there's a little bit of that as well, but I, I still love having the freedom to stop and pull over and smell the flowers and go in a Stuckey's and look at stupid trinkets and drift through a Cracker Barrel and play Is This Racist? As you look through certain [BLEEP] on the show, but.
7:38 Pablo Torre? And it's, it's, it's racist pretty often is, is my working hypothesis.
7:43 Speaker 02 It feels, it's not like, they're not like selling swastikas in Cracker Barrel. Like, it's just, it's stuff that you feel like a racist person would also enjoy. Like, non-racists would also enjoy this rocking chair, but I bet you racists really enjoy this rocking chair. So, yeah, for me, man, it's, it's just when I'm out, it's, alright, what are the calculated risks? And I mean, cars are just wild because you can't control. Like, the, the two places where you have to have the utmost of trust in another human being to behave is the freeway and a gun range.
8:23 Speaker 02 It's literally blind trust on this particular day that everybody in this space is having a good day and is sober and is paying attention to what they're doing. And if there aren't, something could go wrong. So, I don't know, my spidey senses tend to be up when I'm in both places. Like, I've gone in gun ranges to shoot guns and just not like the vibe. That dude looks like he's practicing for something. That's not competition. But, yeah, everybody should shoot a gun. At least once. And then you can go, alright, nah, but you know, there's people that just go, well, the gun represents an empowering, it's a death weapon, I don't wanna touch it. But, you know, I don't own a gun, but I go shoot guns.
9:07 Speaker 02 I don't know what that means. I feel like it's like, I don't know, I feel like I'm gonna do the like, goes to a strip club, but doesn't like, own porn.
9:15 Pablo Torre? But, so I was gonna make the parallel, though. I was gonna make the parallel, right? So we're talking, again, your special, Lonely Flowers, is about the loss of connection in human civilization, and particularly in America. And one of the things I think about when it comes to the isolation of people who are like porn addicts, it's like better them in the porn gun range than them out in the street. Is there a substitution effect of like, hey, I'm really into this, I can only get these off? In a very controlled environment?
9:42 Speaker 02 I had a joke that didn't make the special about how there, before you buy a gun, you should be forced to [BLEEP] off.
9:50 Speaker 02 And like, you, like, as part of whatever the federal background check is.
9:55 Pablo Torre? Host nut clarity should be legislated.
9:57 Speaker 02 And then you come back in here and now, like, it's either a three-day wait or [BLEEP] off right now.
10:01 Pablo Torre? Fully agree.
10:03 Speaker 02 At the register.
10:05 Pablo Torre? There's a booth. There's a booth.
10:07 Speaker 02 No, no booth.
10:07 Pablo Torre? There's a blue tent, like, on an NFL sideline.
10:10 Speaker 02 You want this gun or you don't, bro.
10:29 Pablo Torre? So, as I'm watching your special, which is on Hulu, and you've talked about this a bunch, I wanna avoid talking to you about exactly the things you've talked about, with the exception of one joke, which is a classic. It's the unintended consequences of what happens when you eliminate cashiers.
10:44 Speaker 02 Yeah.
10:44 Pablo Torre? And when you insta-dude self-checkout.
10:46 Speaker 02 It's a lot of people that's alone in a basement, just loading a rifle, and once a week, they need a snack.
10:55 Speaker 02 And that cashier was the connection, that's the job of the cashier, to make lonely people feel like they have a connection. She asking him about his dog and [BLEEP].
11:06 Speaker 02 How's Mr. Gibbles?
11:09 Speaker 02 If you live alone and a cashier asks you about your dog, you're that, well, you'll ride that high for two months, you go home. Look at that rifle. Man, I'm tripping. Let me put this rifle back.
11:21 Speaker 02 I got a friend at the grocery store. I can't be out here murdering.
11:25 Pablo Torre? It's, it's, it works because it is brilliant, obvious, and yet, until now, unsaid in this way.
11:33 Speaker 02 You miss the small talk. You miss the small talk and like, if you're lonely, right? And you're just, you live by yourself, you talk to no one. That cashier might be your only human contact this week. And that person might literally be the only person who gives a [BLEEP] about you and makes you feel cared for, which forces you to move in love out in the world and maybe not murder.
12:02 Speaker 02 Maybe you were gonna murder and then this cashier reached out to you. Because how, like the cat food comes down the belt. She go, oh, you're changing the cat food. You're not like the other cat food. That, those little things matter. So when I used to be a server at Golden Corral, bro, we had customers who would come in and just sit alone. And like, yes, but consistently, every week, they would come in and sit like, depending on what the night was, it was always like, if it's steak night or if it's, you know, it's burger bar night, whatever. There were certain people, this is their thing and they come here and they read their paper. Or some people, as they call it now, raw dogging, they would just sit and raw dog a restaurant.
12:44 Speaker 02 It's 97, 98, you're not really getting cell data, like, like you're not cruising the internet the way you can now at a table. So you had to pull out a magazine or just sit there and be alone in your thoughts. And those people, especially the old ones, always appreciated, you know, that, that level of connection. Something that was, that was really cool, man. Like in Los Angeles, they do, um.
13:13 Speaker 02 I can, in Los Angeles then, I don't know what they do now, but in 2014, 15, whatever, a lot of the live multi-camera sitcoms, some of the people in the studio audience are people from nursing homes, people from halfway houses, people that are going through recovery, and like legitimately people who deserve a place to feel connected and laugh and have some degree of optimism about your existence.
13:41 Pablo Torre? I didn't realize that that was part of the dynamic.
13:43 Speaker 02 Yeah, they have like, at least on the Warner Brothers lot where we were shooting Sullivan and Son for TBS, 200, 300 seats, but a certain amount of those seats are blocked off and allocated for groups and homes and whatever, like the, the, the trip to the sitcom is the reward for not relapsing, like, like just something to give you a mile marker. Juveniles, all of that shit, man, like, and they would be in, and just be in the spot and just laughing and just having a good time. And you go over and talk and shoot the shit with them between takes or whatever. And I think that actively figuring out ways to
14:27 Speaker 02 connect with people, man, you know, that's the thing, that's part of why I like traveling with my son is that it creates opportunities for communication. Cause I just think also kids don't talk to their parents. I also think to, to a degree, parents don't ask the right questions.
14:43 Pablo Torre? Do you find that-
14:44 Speaker 02 To activate their kids to talk.
14:46 Pablo Torre? There was a fascinating, uh, study someone was telling me about, or at least it was an MIT professor who was telling me, and maybe this was anecdotal experience. But what he found was that when he was on a road trip and both people were staring out the window and not looking at each other, they just found that conversation was that much easier. There was something about sharing the experience of being next to somebody and not like holding them to any sort of visual account. And I wonder if that's something that you found with your son.
15:17 Speaker 02 Yeah, cause you know, there's some parts of him personality-wise that are a thousand percent me. And I just, I get it. You wanna draw fighter jets shooting fire trucks and you, what if the fire truck had an ice missile and you could just shoot that at the fire and put some liquid hydrogen in a missile and drop it on, and I'm like, no, that's not a bad idea to solve the wildfire issue.
15:43 Pablo Torre? I did have the thought, like, can't we get a bigger helicopter with more water? Isn't that part of some sort of solution we can arrive at here?
15:51 Speaker 02 I know, I know that the aerial attack on forest fires, I know it helps immensely, but watching at home on TV, it just always seems like they just flicked a little bit of water. I think, but then you see the footage, no, it was like 23,000 gallons in that one plane. And it helped a lot.
16:08 Pablo Torre? Yeah, it's just like, you guys got to unlock the better, the better IC missile stuff in the video game. You're still in like, you know, rookie level.
16:15 Speaker 02 Yeah, but like the tank, the, the tank of liquid O2 that froze the T-1000 in Terminator.
16:21 Pablo Torre? That's right.
16:22 Speaker 02 Drop one of them, I wouldn't help. That one, that feels better than water.
16:27 Pablo Torre? It's where, it's where I feel the most like Trump is where I have questions like, what if we nuked the hurricane?
16:36 Speaker 02 It could, maybe we could.
16:40 Pablo Torre? You say the hurricane's a problem.
16:42 Speaker 02 Yeah.
16:42 Pablo Torre? We have an answer.
16:42 Speaker 02 Except for the fact that hurricanes have more kinetic energy than most nuclear bombs. It's just spread out all over the place and happening at the same time. It doesn't all explode at once.
16:51 Pablo Torre? Mr. Wizard's watching ass dad with your science facts.
16:56 Speaker 02 Mr. Wizard straight looked like he was on a watch list.
17:00 Speaker 04 But if I tell you that it smells, you don't want to put your nose right over the top because scientists always do it like this.
17:09 Speaker 04 You smell it?
17:10 Speaker 05 Mm-hmm.
17:11 Speaker 04 What is it?
17:11 Speaker 05 I don't know, but it just smells really strong.
17:13 Speaker 04 Yeah, it's ammonia.
17:18 Speaker 02 None but respect for you, Mr. Wizard. I don't know if you're still alive or not, but just, it just, it had all the makings of he has to report whenever he moves and changes addresses. But he's doing science.
17:31 Pablo Torre? The late, great Mr. Wizard.
17:33 Speaker 02 Oh, he's out of here?
17:34 Pablo Torre? As of 07, um, rest his soul. It, it, it just feels like one of those titles that you read in parentheses and with quote marks in like the deposition document.
17:49 Speaker 02 Yeah.
17:50 Pablo Torre? Mr. Wizard.
17:50 Speaker 02 Yeah, man, but that was my [__] man.
17:53 Pablo Torre? I have noticed, though, in all of this, like, what you're really talking about is the value of, certainly in grocery stores, of small talk. And that's what sports is always.
18:03 Speaker 02 Yeah.
18:03 Pablo Torre? That was always what sports was for me. Was a way to connect with people, whether it's at a wedding reception in Arkansas, or whether it's just friends at school. Like, I also speak your language fluently.
18:16 Speaker 02 To me, the easiest way to connect with any stranger is sports or collective complaining.
18:21 Pablo Torre? Mm-hmm.
18:21 Speaker 02 About whatever's happening in that moment.
18:23 Pablo Torre? Yeah, that's why the weather is always there for you if you don't know [__] about the Mets.
18:27 Speaker 02 Yeah, if the line's too long, what the hell is it, how long it take to make a burger? Yeah, it's a burger. But in that, there's not a bond as much as it is you're both group-hating. It's almost a pile-on. So it becomes like a group of customers versus the cashier. Like, when people get more and more irate at the airplane gate, when they won't tell you why there's a delay. And then people all start kind of barking at the, at the gate attendant. You don't turn and swap numbers at the end of that. That's not someone you're gonna see on a regular basis.
19:00 Pablo Torre? It's like, you know what? We should meet up later to do this again.
19:02 Speaker 02 Yeah, it's like, no, it's like, it's good, say, all right, man, have a good day. Yeah, man, good, good. Yeah, man, glad you got here.
19:08 Pablo Torre? Common cause, though. A common cause, however temporary.
19:12 Speaker 02 Yeah, you know when you really, when I really feel connected? Is when I'm at the DMV or any type of office where there's a long wait. Like, any long wait fluorescent light Neo in the Matrix, act one hellhole.
19:29 Speaker 02 And then when you finally get your number called, and then when you're on your way out, and then you speak to someone who you've been there in the trenches with waiting that whole time. Hey, man, good luck to you, man, if you get it done. It's like getting a COVID test, like, week two of the shutdown, where they make you stand on the, in New York, they make you stand on the sidewalk to go in to get you. So you'd be out there in the cold with a bunch of other just random people trying to get your COVID test, so you could be allowed to go do whatever the [__]. And... I remember bonding with strangers then. There was no politics then. Nobody cared. I was at The Daily Show then.
20:04 Pablo Torre? Oh, absolutely. I mean, again, just not to belabor this, but like New York, early COVID, it was very clear. We were all like living the sci-fi movie and we know what time it was.
20:14 Speaker 02 Yeah, I felt, I never felt more closer to New Yorkers than.
20:20 Pablo Torre? Pots and pans being banged out windows. That was real.
20:23 Speaker 02 Clapping, seven o'clock clap.
20:25 Pablo Torre? On trying, trying to break through the literal walls and windows of the city.
20:33 Speaker 02 Do you still, when you go to sporting events, I don't know how much you go alone, but do you still make small talk with people in the seats around you? When you get to the event or you're on the phone?
20:46 Pablo Torre? Got to. Because by the way, that's the, it's the sign that we're getting our money's worth. Like the biggest experiment that I think people don't reflect on enough, and I say this, but we ran an experiment, a global experiment in which we did something that was previously impossible. We played sports without fans. And everyone [bleep] hated it.
21:12 Pablo Torre? You could watch it on TV, but every player, every coach, every virtual fan, I was a virtual fan.
21:18 Speaker 02 Really?
21:18 Pablo Torre? In the NBA bubble on a screen.
21:22 Pablo Torre? It sucked. It sucked and everybody could articulate.
21:25 Speaker 02 I forgot about that. We really did have [bleep] in the Zoom boxes on a Jumbotron.
21:31 Pablo Torre? It was wild. Yes.
21:33 Speaker 02 Looking like a [bleep] Konami game from 1994.
21:36 Pablo Torre? Yeah, the background character in a, in a Street Fighter level, just like jumping up and down on a loop. They didn't give you anything else to do. We tried it and what we all missed in ways that we could never fully appreciate or understand until we tested it was that there is something so much more profoundly important about people connecting in the same building, watching something together.
21:58 Speaker 02 Yeah, even if I hate you for rooting for that team, there's still something.
22:03 Pablo Torre? Absolutely.
22:04 Speaker 02 Something in it. I went to a NASCAR, I went to my first NASCAR race earlier this year.
22:10 Speaker 03 Green flag is in the air. We are racing at Atlanta.
22:14 Speaker 02 And we went, we went over two days. I went with my son the first day to watch Truck Series, right? We go and we watched Roger Caruth and all the other Blaney and like all these other racers. And it's great. It was good. It was perfectly fine, great sports experience. Like, you know, knee jerk NASCAR, you think one thing and you get there and then you see Big Boy from OutKast and Young Jeezy. And I'm like, okay. And it's just, just regular people. Yes, there's people going, yeah, show your butthole and then like there's that. But by and large, no different than going to a baseball game in a regular season. So I get
22:58 Speaker 02 out in the crowd and the thing that I enjoy when I'm new to a sport is whatever the new tradition thing is. And I didn't know this, but on a race restart, as they're coming back around to the start line to restart the race and the pace car pulls off, everybody stands up and like cheers for the restart. I guess you're cheering for your driver. I guess your driver can see you and go, oh, I'm inspired.
23:27 Pablo Torre? Like you're in the dock watching the Titanic?
23:30 Speaker 02 Yeah, literally. It's literally that. Like it's some sort of like, go get them, boys. Get back up there racing. But everybody stands. Like it's just not even, it's none of, it's just, it's understood. And so that was enough of an endpoint for me to just start talking and chopping it up with people. But NASCAR is interesting in that in terms of the fan chit chat, you really can't do a lot of it. I can't look at you. So to your point of just having this shared experience that's eyes forward of all of the sports that we have in America, NASCAR is a thousand percent, you're in my periphery and I'm talking
24:14 Speaker 02 and we're having a conversation, but the whole time I'm locked in because the split second I turn to you, I'm gonna miss the thing. Be it a wreck, be it a brave move, some shake and bake draft, whatever.
24:25 Pablo Torre? Right.
24:26 Speaker 02 You don't want to miss it. And it's one of the most social, yet antisocial sporting experiences I think I've ever had.
24:34 Pablo Torre? It's funny that politicians are finally realizing that if we're all gonna be fighting in a culture war, maybe you don't want to cede the territory upon which the most people in America are sitting, which is sports. I wonder what you think of it, because you're somebody who is actually a baseball fan. And suddenly, again, in the DNC, there is this prioritization of seemingly the religion that was most popular for the entirety of American history, which is sports.
25:05 Speaker 02 I think that politicians, and this is not just sports. This comes down to eating the stupid rib or whatever. Now is when you should go to a game and just be seen as regular and not be a big production. God bless Ted Cruz.
25:23 Pablo Torre? Man.
25:24 Speaker 02 Ted Cruz.
25:25 Pablo Torre? On this program.
25:26 Speaker 02 Love Astros and don't care if you boo him, and he has no agenda. Ted Cruz would just show up to get booed and there is no vote coming up? No, I'm just here to bathe in the hate and root on my Astros. Good for you, Ted Cruz. I think Democrats overthink everything. I think everything is just, we must measure five times before we decide to do the thing. And then you end up looking like you overthought it, you know? I think the more you can have people see you as just regular, especially when we framed politicians, especially Democrats, as elitists, then you gotta regulate yourself up just a little bit.
26:09 Speaker 02 Like, I know Gavin Newsom just talked with Steve Bannon. And okay, we can assume that if Newsom's positioning himself for a presidential run, that's to try to appeal a little bit to the centrist voter who, whatever, okay, fine.
26:26 Speaker 02 You could have spent that same money on that podcast episode and just went to a rodeo.
26:31 Speaker 02 And just be at a rodeo. And like, no camera, no, just be at a rodeo. And then just let the people with camera phones will do the work for you. And then just go, oh yeah, I go to rodeo sometime. And then don't make anything of it.
26:47 Pablo Torre? I mean, look, there are just so many easy ways to test. Every sports fan knows when someone is pretending to be a sports fan.
26:53 Speaker 02 Yes.
26:53 Pablo Torre? We can all tell.
26:54 Speaker 02 Yes.
26:55 Pablo Torre? Cause there are little linguistic giveaways and references and names and people who can't actually hit the tennis ball back and forth of language.
27:04 Speaker 02 Yeah, I took my senior portrait in a Sammy Sosa Cubs spring training batting practice jersey. My mom has never been more [BLEEP] infuriated with me. And I've never been more proud than that moment to just pack that jersey, hide it, get to the photo, get to the Olin Mills little photos.
27:29 Pablo Torre? You wildcat packed this jersey and put it on.
27:33 Speaker 02 Yeah, buddy. Okay, now you got your tuxedo over there. I'm not wearing no tuxedo. Put me in the Sosa [BLEEP] 2-1.
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31:22 Pablo Torre? The bar is literally, can you plausibly name three players from the team that you say you're a fan of?
31:30 Speaker 02 Yes. I also think that politicians need to pick the one thing they are good at physically, and do that. Because then we'll assume you can do all the other things. You never saw Barack Obama swing a baseball bat.
31:46 Speaker 02 That's not what I do. I hoop. So you will see me hooping. And because you see me hooping all the time, you will assume I know ball. Like, all of these politicians right now, and potential politicians, you've just got to just be yourself and just be... Like, if you like grilling, just grill. Like, if we'd have gotten more time with Tim Walz...
32:07 Pablo Torre? Just one of the big disappointments, by the way. The subtext of all of this is that I thought we had the guy who could do this for the non-Trump sectors of our country, and he was...
32:19 Speaker 02 Tim Walz.
32:19 Pablo Torre? He was not it.
32:21 Speaker 02 Yeah, yeah. But like, on paper, if I told you the Democrats are gonna be paired with a guy that shovels snow, he likes state fair food, and he used to coach football, and he can talk X's and O's, I would have put Tim Walz on every... First place I'd have sent him is Paul Feinbaum.
32:41 Pablo Torre? Yes, yes.
32:43 Speaker 04 You know, Paul, going from coast saving to coast to bore, it's like going to bed, bed to the yard.
32:50 Speaker 02 And waking up with Whoopi Goldberg laying next to you, brother. If I'm the DNC and I'm running the playbook on how to introduce a candidate.
32:58 Pablo Torre? Run the damn ball.
33:00 Speaker 02 Yeah.
33:00 Pablo Torre? Have him do interviews with sports people.
33:04 Speaker 02 And if he, but only talks ball, just be the regular dude, just be a guest on a thing on a regular basis. Cause the, the thing about a lot of these shows as well, like, I also think politicians are intimidated by programs like this because they feel like they're gonna get exposed for not knowing. So it, it, I don't, I don't know if this is the playbook for, for midterms or for next year. But as much as you can try and just be a regular person, do that and let people see that. And I hate to say it, but that's the type of stupid [BLEEP] that connects with voters.
33:42 Pablo Torre? Well, again, connection, right? Like what is it, what does it mean? It means that someone else sees a bit of themselves in you. And it's not that hard, actually. It's kind of the whole glue that kept a grocery store functioning. Although we never appreciated it until we took that out.
34:00 Speaker 02 Yeah. Yeah. It's like, oh, wow. She is just like me, even though you don't look like me. Oh, you have a cat too? Or you have a dog? Oh. You know another place where men used to bond?
34:11 Speaker 02 Autozone. I don't know what kind of car you had.
34:15 Pablo Torre? I, I, I, I am born and raised in this city, which means that these are foreign
34:19 Speaker 02 Oh.
34:20 Pablo Torre? lands to me. So please explain what I've missed at Autozone.
34:24 Speaker 02 Autozone and I guess advanced auto parts. We didn't have those growing up in Birmingham, but Birmingham was an Autozone city. This is before O'Reilly's and all Autozone.
34:33 Pablo Torre? I know the jingles.
34:38 Pablo Torre? More than I know the places.
34:40 Speaker 02 Autozone was like Circuit City.
34:43 Speaker 02 Of that era of car repair. And you would pull into an AutoZone in a middle-class neighborhood. And it would just be a dude fixing his [BLEEP] in the parking lot. His [BLEEP] is on bricks. And he's going inside, part by part. Yeah, I need that. I need that. And, and you would just turn to him. Hey, man, how long you been working on it? What's the thing? Man, I tell you, man, this [BLEEP]. I ain't trying to get this thing started. But the starter and the manifold. And then another person behind him. Well, you know, the problem with that manifold, they had a call. They had a recall on that one, man. What you got to do is get it in there. Man, did you put this in? Man, let me go get this [BLEEP]. And they'll go down an aisle and come back with some [BLEEP]. You need to put in the car on top of what you're on. Just bonding. Like, it's what, like.
35:25 Pablo Torre? It became a group project.
35:26 Speaker 02 Like, I'm thinking of like legitimate places where men just immediately just start talking to each other.
35:34 Pablo Torre? Specifically, and most importantly, lately, with people who they otherwise are not agreeing with or talking to or any of them.
35:42 Speaker 02 I would never talk to you outside of this building. But in this space, I know we have the same interests and the same struggle. Because most everybody that's at AutoZone, it's because you got a check engine light on. You're in a, you're in a pinch. Or you're waiting on a part or you're a do-it-yourselfer, you know? Home Depot a little bit, but it's more aisle by aisle at Home Depot more than the store as a whole. Like, if you and a dude are looking at the same rack of [BLEEP], then you will discuss what dude thing you're doing today with whatever's on this rack. But AutoZone, man, I remember going there many a time to get a new belt or to do something with my radiator for my first car in high school. And there would just be men in the parking lot, just to the point where
36:28 Speaker 02 when they used to offer at these car repair shops, they would offer, we'll change the battery for you. We'll change your windshield wiper. If you buy your wipers here, we'll come out. Then if you were a man and that AutoZone employee came out there behind you to do anything to your car, you was a [BLEEP]. He was a [BLEEP]. And so it was like the pressure to just... And I'm like 17, bro. I'm putting fan belts on and [BLEEP] in the parking lot. Because I just want to feel like a man. Like, that's for women. Go check the woman's battery when she get to... And so I remember like just doing stuff under the hood and tinkering with the car in the parking lot.
37:12 Speaker 02 And strangers come over. "You good, young blood? What's going on with it? Get in there, start it up for me real quick. Let me listen to it." Like, that type of [BLEEP]. I remember that distinctly, man. And I don't know where that went.
37:26 Pablo Torre? It's... You've described the feeling that, again, as a young person, I imagine part of it is like, oh, and I also fit in.
37:35 Speaker 02 Yeah.
37:36 Pablo Torre? Like, there's this larger community of people with some interests that I also share. And they see me.
37:44 Speaker 02 There's a sense of belonging. And I think that's where we are now. And I think that's why a lot of people, it's very easy to entrench in things that have harmful or dangerous premises or rhetorics. Even if you don't condone it, they've accepted you. And they've taken you into their fold. And that's enough. If you've been alone, it's no different than joining a gang. If you're talking about the idea of family and the need for connection and need to feel provided for and to be shoulder to shoulder with people that you feel like you have some sort of shared struggle with as well or a common enemy as well. So I think that's where a lot of the online connection comes from.
38:29 Speaker 02 And to me, that's the issue is that to find that tribe and those groups of people back in the day, you used to have to leave the house. Now you can be in a message board and be in a group with a bunch of other dudes and y'all all talk. But you never meet... Y'all never go show up to the Dungeons and Dragons live tournament. Like, it's... Whatever you're doing online is the only thing you do. So you're in your Twitch stream and you got five people and you play Call of Duty together. You run missions for some first-person shooter together. And that's good to a degree. But the moment you turn that headset off and go back out into the real world, who are you? And what are you... How are you connecting? You're still lacking something.
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42:42 Speaker 02 Are you scared of AI at all? Or is it like 3D televisions to you? Remember when that was the future?
42:47 Pablo Torre? Oh, yeah.
42:49 Speaker 06 Smart is simple control. Smart is 3D videos on demand. Smart is LG Cinema 3D Smart TV. So, how smart is your 3D?
43:02 Speaker 02 Everything was gonna be 3D. You're gonna have a 3D experience at the house. Then it was gonna be VR, and VR is gonna be the future. And then it was Metaverse.
43:11 Pablo Torre? I accidentally went to what has been labeled a 4D movie. Are you familiar with what the fourth dimension is?
43:17 Speaker 02 Is that the one where the [BLEEP] shakes, the chair shakes? I know they got those.
43:21 Pablo Torre? Yes, and they will also like shoot gusts of like compressed air at you.
43:27 Speaker 02 Pass.
43:29 Pablo Torre? It was a horrible.
43:31 Speaker 02 Is it smells too, like in a car chase, can you smell like rubber and all of that? Some smell vision?
43:36 Pablo Torre? Smell.
43:37 Speaker 02 I heard that's coming.
43:38 Pablo Torre? The burning flesh that they won't otherwise want to show you in the news, you can smell.
43:43 Speaker 02 There's a ride at Universal Studios in Orlando, Spider-Man, the ride. I can't remember what it, what it's called, but the Spider-Man ride at Universal.
43:51 Pablo Torre? Yes.
43:52 Speaker 02 And you're essentially, you're in a chair from Spider-Man's POV. And you fly all around and you know, whatever. And the Green Goblin, there's a part where the Green Goblin throws one of those firebombs at you. And flames shoot out. And then a mist of water comes across your face as you go down under the Brooklyn Bridge. I don't need all of that.
44:17 Speaker 02 Just show me the movie, man. Just show me the people fighting. I'm cool with the seat vibrating a little bit for action films. Like I thought that was a neat effect depending on the film. I think I saw one of the, one of the more recent Fast and Furious movies.
44:34 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
44:34 Speaker 02 Couple of years ago, like that was a lot of.
44:36 Pablo Torre? I saw Fast and Furious in 4D. And my only, my main critique was that I wasn't prepared for how herky and jerky that seat was gonna be.
44:46 Speaker 02 Yeah, and then there's also a subwoofer under the seat as well. So you can feel the music and the score and all of that. But they, they gotta, I, I, I'll give, I'll give the theaters credit. They, they doing, they trying to do whatever they can to stay up. But the first thing they need to do is cut the amount of screens. Like if the theater industry's failing and struggling, we don't need 20, you don't need an AMC 30 anymore. Or come to the Starlight Cinema, 27 screen. Why?
45:14 Speaker 02 There's only four movies out this week, bro, and only two of them are really legitimately worth leaving the house for right now.
45:20 Pablo Torre? What, what are you doing with those screens? What are you doing with those rooms?
45:23 Speaker 02 I don't know, leasing, Airbnb it, I don't know. But the idea of having 20 screens to show six movies feels odd. I know when you get, you know, it's gangbusters when you get like a, a tent pole, like say, all right, when the new Mission: Impala, like when Top Gun came out, Top Gun was like one third of all the screens at every movie theater. Yeah, AMC 14, 10 of them are Top Gun. As it should be, that's the blockbuster. But more often than not, I think we need to go back to the six and the eight. Ten screen max type spaces, you know, but you know, the theaters are trying, man. The food has gotten better-ish.
46:04 Pablo Torre? Well, there's a whole debate about whether movie theaters should be serving dinner in the way that now.
46:10 Speaker 02 What's the debate? Why not? Like, is it the clinking? Is it, you're talking about table service like draft house, Alamo draft house?
46:15 Pablo Torre? Yeah, like the Alamo draft house model.
46:17 Speaker 02 I'm not, I'm not crazy about somebody just walking in and going, okay, what else do you want?
46:21 Pablo Torre? Right, right. Ordering avocado toast.
46:25 Speaker 02 Yeah, but if you, if avocado toast is out in the lobby, you wanna go get it. Like, I'm fine with that. I think the popcorn and the burgers and dogs is played out. So, I mean, adding something to try and get people to the theater, I get it, you know?
46:41 Pablo Torre? Hot dogs and burgers being played out is the most un-American thing you've said this entire time.
46:46 Speaker 02 It's not enough to get me to go see a movie. Like, that alone is not, like, the food actually has to be part of the re, like, the film is cool, but you have to, what else you got? Like, that's what it's gotta be. So, that's why you're getting sprayed in the face with god knows what chemical that hasn't been checked by this government.
47:21 Pablo Torre? At the end here, I, uh, we have found, we have found footage of Barack Obama swinging a baseball bat.
47:28 Speaker 02 Wow.
47:29 Pablo Torre? And I'd like to show it to you. And I'd like you to describe what you're seeing.
47:33 Speaker 02 Wow.
47:34 Pablo Torre? And as, as a scout, let me, let me just turn it around for the right moment. There you go. Okay.
47:41 Speaker 02 Not bad. Didn't step into it, but he's got a good follow-through. He must play golf.
47:46 Pablo Torre? That is a, I was gonna say, that is.
47:48 Speaker 02 It's a golf backswing.
47:49 Pablo Torre? It's, it's, it's.
47:50 Speaker 02 That's reapplied for baseball.
47:52 Pablo Torre? His shirt is tucked into his jeans.
47:55 Speaker 02 He hit that b**** out the infield, though. On the fly. Didn't hit no weak grounder. He could play in a celebrity softball game and be okay.
48:03 Pablo Torre? Oh, god. Have you seen the footage of, you've seen the footage of Ted Cruz playing basketball?
48:07 Speaker 02 No.
48:15 Speaker 02 See, and that's what happens. And then they laugh at you. And then they go, ha, ha, ha, you can't govern because you have no dribble. You have to just do the one thing you're good at in public for a long time. And then people will trust and assume that you can do other things good. That's the simplicity of the American voter. If we see you do good one thing, then we think you do good everything. Everybody talking about Stephen A. Smith running for president, but I'm just saying, the bar is low.
48:46 Pablo Torre? I'm just saying that.
48:48 Speaker 02 The prerequisites for the resume of president have changed.
48:53 Speaker 02 We're never going back to some Harvard law.
48:55 Pablo Torre? No, that's over.
48:56 Speaker 02 He was a governor for a while.
48:57 Pablo Torre? That is over.
48:58 Speaker 02 And then he was a senator. No.
49:00 Pablo Torre? Everything we've said in this conversation indicates that that era is over. It just feels, it just feels like when, again, Godzilla is attacking your city and we need our own monster to fight him.
49:12 Speaker 02 Yes. Absolutely.
49:14 Pablo Torre? And I need.
49:15 Speaker 02 You send in your Mothra.
49:17 Pablo Torre? Mothra A. Smith. Go take care of this.
49:20 Speaker 02 Yeah, I, we'll see what happens at midterms. I don't want to speak too much of it into existence because I don't know if he really wants to.
49:29 Pablo Torre? I, I.
49:30 Speaker 02 Wants to do that.
49:31 Pablo Torre? I think, I think he's a.
49:33 Speaker 02 But if it's ever anybody that could, pardon me for those credit cards I stole in 98, it'd be President Stephen A. Smith. So I'm kind of pulling through.
49:42 Speaker 02 Tired of answering them extra questions when I go to Canada. You know, that's what they make you do in Canada when you commit a crime in America. They pull you off to the side and ask you all these extra questions to make sure you're not coming here to do the crimes.
49:54 Pablo Torre? When they, when they Google the New York Times story about you and they say, what is this, quote, youthful indiscretion?
49:59 Speaker 02 Yeah, literally. That's literally what it is. And then they go through NCIC and then they find out, oh, this feels like more than an indiscretion. Oh, my God, was it? It's just credit cards, baby. I was 19. Good times, right? And they go, sit here for four hours while we decide.
50:15 Pablo Torre? That's right. Roy Wood Jr., I appreciate you coming to this studio in person and, you know, doing the thing that I, I love to do with you, which is legitimately and not coincidentally, connect.
50:28 Speaker 02 We have to catch a game.
50:30 Pablo Torre? Oh, man.
50:31 Speaker 02 And I say that with seriousness and sincerity because I don't go to sporting events with everyone. I go with my son and I go with people who legitimately appreciate the game that is being played and not showing up to take a bunch of selfies.
50:50 Pablo Torre? Roy, it would be my honor to stare straight ahead and not have to look at each other and just get mad at stuff with you.
50:59 Speaker 02 You would like NASCAR. I don't know if you've ever gone, bro.
51:01 Pablo Torre? If you want to take me to a NASCAR race.
51:04 Speaker 02 I'm not bull****. Now, it's an all-day thing. It's three out. Depending on which day you go, the race itself is three out, but you gotta go like two hours beforehand and hang and drink.
51:13 Pablo Torre? Oh, yeah.
51:14 Speaker 02 Yeah. I will, dare I say this, I got a NASCAR guy.
51:20 Pablo Torre? Oh, God. You got Roy Wood Jr., what I found out today on this episode of Pablo Torre Finds Out, a show about finding stuff out, is that you're my NASCAR plug.
51:28 Speaker 02 I got a NASCAR plug. Like, all my other friends, like, get invited to Oscar parties and, like, the other day, what was it, Planet Hollywood opened in New York City and they had every A-lister on Earth there.
51:41 Pablo Torre? Planet Hollywood's back?
51:42 Speaker 02 I don't get invited to none of that ****. But I've got a guy right now that can get me into mission control at NASA. And we can talk to people at the space station right now. I got a guy until Elon fires him. I got a guy right now. Those are the type of connects I have. NASCAR, auto racing.
52:07 Pablo Torre? I got it.
52:07 Speaker 02 In space.
52:08 Pablo Torre? I got to imagine.
52:09 Speaker 02 And the Cubs.
52:12 Pablo Torre? Eight-year-old Roy Wood Jr. could not be more thrilled that this is how his life turned out.
52:17 Speaker 02 It's insane. It's absolutely insane.
52:21 Pablo Torre? Thank you for doing this.
52:22 Speaker 02 Man, thank you for having me, brother.
52:31 Pablo Torre? This has been Pablo Torre Finds Out, a Meadowlark Media production, and I'll talk to you next time.
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Previous We Fact-Checked Stephen A.'s LeBron and Kobe Story — and Polled 1,000+ Voters on His Presidential Campaign Next House Call: Why the World's Best Pitchers and Quarterbacks Seek This Man's Advice Page updated November 3, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated