Share & Rot & Tell with Mina Kimes

How do football and social media combust into the mainstreaming of old-school racism? Is sports media worse for women than ever? And should our brains go on strike? Plus: woke Karl Rove, MrBeast as Scorsese, a plea to Aaron Rodgers, sympathy for Vivek... and the Disney tour-guide celebrity draft board. • Subscribe to "The Mina Kimes Show featuring Lenny" https://pod.link/1437647915 • "I've Been an American My Entire Life" https://www.dallasnews.com/news/politics/article/students-speak-after-bo-french-attack-22431674.php (The Dallas Morning News) • "Did Arch Manning, Steve Sarkisian and Cackling Reporters Act This Way? It Can't Be Real" https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7598081/2026/09/16/arch-manning-holly-rowe-reporters-steve-sarkisian-ai/ (The Athletic) • "The Truth About Brain Rot: It's a Cry for Help" https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/08/opinion/gen-z-tiktok-ig-reels.html (The New York Times) 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

  And no kid ever got a Playboy as a result.

• 0:10Pablo Torre?

  Right after this.

• 0:14Speaker 02

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• 1:10Pablo Torre?

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• 1:53Pablo Torre?

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• 2:17Speaker 01

  My kid is at Disneyland today.

• 2:21Pablo Torre?

  How did you, how are you not there?

• 2:22Speaker 01

  It's like a joint birthday celebration for my son and then his best friend, whose birthday is this week, Benji. But it's unfortunate because like last year, after the Super Bowl, I took them, they all came, because we were NFL Live, was at the Disneyland after to do the MVP parade. And I hooked them up with like the VIP tour guide. Yeah, I was like, can we have the tour guide today? I was like, unfortunately, we cannot have the $10,000 tour guide every time. I have to like space out my ass.

• 2:54Pablo Torre?

  There's like, in the back, there's a draft, basically, where all of the tour guides get to put claims on celebrities. So if they show up, you get to escort them.

• 3:07Speaker 01

  That's crazy. Who would be, if you were a Disney tour guide, who would be your number one celebrity draft pick that you'd want to give a tour of Disneyland to?

• 3:15Pablo Torre?

  Hmm.

• 3:18Pablo Torre?

  Wow.

• 3:20Pablo Torre?

  Such a hard question.

• 3:21Speaker 01

  Right, because it's not just like, who do you like the best?

• 3:24Pablo Torre?

  Who do you want to be on a line? Because they're with you, they're hanging out with you.

• 3:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:28Pablo Torre?

  They spend all day with you.

• 3:29Speaker 01

  My go-to answer for this kind of question is always Marshawn Lynch, but...

• 3:34Pablo Torre?

  That's a good one.

• 3:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, who also, you can just imagine. You want to be with someone who you know is gonna have fun.

• 3:39Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Scary. It's somebody, but you know he'd have fun there.

• 3:43Pablo Torre?

  Oh, my God.

• 3:44Speaker 01

  With the blast.

• 3:45Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I would, I mean, there's a whole New York Times Magazine article, which is incredible, by John Jeremiah Sullivan also, about like where you go and get stoned at Disneyland and Disney World. I would like want someone who was, in fact. Um, hmm.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  I put you on the spot.

• 4:01Pablo Torre?

  Steve Ballmer.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  Can you imagine pulling up, getting stuck? He pulls up. His family. They take you, you know, behind the scenes, through other, like the secret hideaway. He gets out, he's just, I gotta just cool off, spend a day with my family.

• 4:20Pablo Torre?

  Happiest place on earth.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  And it's frickin' Pablo Torre, his Disney tour guide, wearing one of those little vests.

• 4:26Pablo Torre?

  With a pin.

• 4:44Speaker 01

  What do you want to talk about today?

• 4:46Pablo Torre?

  There's so much that I could talk to you about. I want to talk to you about whether Aaron Rodgers would come on this podcast.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  I think he would.

• 4:53Pablo Torre?

  I would like to make a plea for a second here. I know that you and Mina, I know, Aaron.

• 4:58Speaker 01

  Don't, keep me out of...

• 4:59Pablo Torre?

  I know, I know that you and Mina have a thing. I'm not, I'm not, I'm not...

• 5:03Speaker 01

  No, that barely counts, guys.

• 5:05Pablo Torre?

  I'm not a part of that. Whatever that is, you and I have never talked.

• 5:10Speaker 04

  Mina Kimes, you know, had me to her house for a feature that I did. You know, like, all these people were my friends in the media.

• 5:18Pablo Torre?

  And I would love to have you in the chair just to ask questions. It seems like you're in an answering mode.

• 5:26Pablo Torre?

  And pitch.

• 5:27Speaker 01

  That's your pitch.

• 5:28Pablo Torre?

  That's my pitch. Open-minded, not here to, I'm not gonna show up with like a bunch of files, I promise that, just that I have questions.

• 5:37Speaker 01

  He would probably want to get into some of the...

• 5:39Pablo Torre?

  He can bring, he can bring his documents.

• 5:41Speaker 01

  He'll say...

• 5:42Pablo Torre?

  He can bring documents. I mean, look, he's, he's, he's one of us. He loves podcasting.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  He does love podcasting. I think that's, that's a safe thing to say.

• 5:53Pablo Torre?

  Has takes.

• 5:54Speaker 01

  A lot of takes.

• 5:55Pablo Torre?

  He has thoughts about where we are as a country. I have questions about where we are as a country. I do want to start, though, I think, with football, with the internet.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 6:06Pablo Torre?

  And the state of Texas. I think we need to get back into what happened at Texas-Ohio State.

• 6:14Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 6:14Pablo Torre?

  And this is something that I think...

• 6:16Speaker 01

  Incredible comeback.

• 6:17Pablo Torre?

  Incredible comeback. Arch Manning redeemed, all that stuff. And I think this feels chewed over, perhaps because the, because Twitter has processed it. But that's sort of what I want to talk about, is the amount of content that came out of this.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  Out of this one game.

• 6:33Pablo Torre?

  Out of this one game? Out of stuff that wasn't even happening technically in the game.

• 6:37Speaker 01

  Which was a wild game. It wasn't, it was like an amazing football game.

• 6:41Pablo Torre?

  24-23, unbelievable comeback.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:44Pablo Torre?

  And the culture war. I mean, this is sort of what it says about how popular football is, I guess.

• 6:51Speaker 01

  100%. Yeah, like, I think we're gonna continue seeing more hot-button, culture-war-type stories, reactions, disputes, whatever, come out of sports events. I mean, precisely because of what you said, which is, sports events are the most popular thing to watch in America, right? And the way the internet now works is, these algorithms will latch on to what is the thing that everyone is talking about, a football game, and it'll be, again, other sports events. Okay, cool. And then what are the things we can spin out of that that make everyone the angriest? So it's just like, marriage of incredible popularity, mass appeal, and then divisive

• 7:36Speaker 01

  takes, reactions coming out of it.

• 7:37Pablo Torre?

  I want to start, actually, chronologically, I guess, because part of what hap, and this is all about, effectively, Texas winning and things are happening as fans of Texas and the head coach are celebrating or trying to celebrate. And the dude who posts this, I had never heard of, I don't know if you had heard of @BeauFrench, who is the Republican nominee to lead Texas's state railroad commission?

• 8:03Speaker 01

  Yes. I had never heard of him, but I have learned, that's like a pretty big job in Texas. You regulate like the oil and gas industry, it's a big deal.

• 8:11Pablo Torre?

  But his focus on this thing was this photo that, I think, brings it to our doorstep as, I guess, broadly speaking, members of the Asian-American community, votes around all of that, but also people who are wondering, like, oh, wait, sports was meant to be a thing that allowed people to blend in? And here was Beau French tweeting, quote, "I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn't believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined." And the photo, which, if you haven't seen it, is a bunch of kids who are generally of South Asian descent, wearing UT stuff. One kid's wearing a cowboy hat, as we have pointed out, another one has a backwards cap.

• 8:54Pablo Torre?

  They are in this crowd, like, celebrating, so inoffensively...

• 8:59Speaker 01

  Joyfully.

• 9:00Pablo Torre?

  And inoffensively? It is like what you'd see, I guess, and this is his problem, it's what you might see in like the brochure.

• 9:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:07Pablo Torre?

  And this was immediately, "Look at all these brown people." I, I found myself saying, "Wow," and I felt naive immediately after I said, "Wow."

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Is the "wow" part, obviously, it's repulsive, and his reaction is repulsive, and we'll get to that, but is the "wow" part more that an ostensibly, like, public-facing official, you know, somebody, like a, like a legit person? This isn't anonymous account on the internet hiding behind a statue avi or whatever. This is like a, a public person putting his name on this, and then you see it, you see people respond and say, "This is disgusting," but then you also see it either minimized or cosigned, because it's on the platform where hate propagates the fastest and is the most encouraged. Is that the "wow" part to you? That like, it's not what is being said, but that it's being said so nakedly and that

• 9:58Speaker 01

  his own statement isn't being roundly just criticized?

• 10:02Pablo Torre?

  Well, it was also the, I thought, "This is what you guys, people who wanted assimilation, wanted."

• 10:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:09Pablo Torre?

  "Wearing a cowboy hat." I mean, I just can't get over it. They are wearing the thing that it looks like when they are, they're following your playbook. And that's the part where I was like, "Wow." And then I remembered, and this is where, the reason I was like, "I gotta talk to Mina about this," it emerged because not only is this like an Asian thing and all that stuff, do you remember the Jeopardy guy? The, this is the, uh, the South Asian dude who thanked Alex Trebek for helping him learn English?

• 10:41Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, yes.

• 10:42Pablo Torre?

  Okay, I want to play this clip.

• 10:43Speaker 01

  I do love this.

• 10:44Pablo Torre?

  Because this actually figures in in ways that made me say, "Wow."

• 10:52Speaker 05

  Any family members back home cheering you on?

• 10:55Speaker 06

  You know, here's a true story, man. I grew up, I learned English because of you. And so, my grandfather, who, who raised me, I'm gonna get tears right now, he, we, I used to sit on his lap and watch you every day. So, it's a pretty special moment for me, man.

• 11:10Speaker 06

  Thank you very much.

• 11:11Pablo Torre?

  So I don't just bring this up because you're a Jeopardy! Tournament of Celebrity Champion's Champion. Michael Mooney, a PTFO correspondent in Texas, amazing magazine writer, reminded me of this. Burt Thacker, you know what he does now?

• 11:25Speaker 01

  No.

• 11:25Pablo Torre?

  He is a Frisco Councilman in Texas, in one of these places that is apparently dealing with this very same strand of constant political argument about all of the Indians that are here. But the thing about Burt Thacker is that, incredibly sweet clip, he's a Navy veteran, he is a Trump supporter, he is a councilman on the MAGA side, and The Texas Tribune reported that he has been sitting through council meetings where all of these speakers are just constantly warning about, quote, "an Indian takeover." And it just makes me think about, like, you think you're wearing the right outfit,

• 12:09Pablo Torre?

  you're saying the right things, you're voting the right way, you are literally campaigning for the party that you think would accept you if you do all the things they are asking. And in fact, you are propagating whatever it is your personal philosophy is on that side of the aisle. And instead, you're like reminded, you're never actually gonna be welcome here.

• 12:31Speaker 01

  The Post, and it wasn't the only Post, by the way, I saw some other posts. That was the one that got the most virality because of the guy being a public figure. But I saw a lot of posts circulating on Twitter, shots of the student body with similar racist complaints. It's awful that it's out there. And I read an article in the UT student newspaper where they interviewed some of the kids in the photo and talked about how devastated they were because they were like, "Oh, it's so cool. UT's posting me. I'm at the game. This is amazing." And then you get returned to the internet, Twitter, whatever, and you see that. And these students were like, "This is a reminder of, like, it plays into my fears about never being welcome." It was just horrifying and awful.

• 13:15Pablo Torre?

  Sucks.

• 13:15Speaker 01

  But it's also, as you said, somewhat useful to have, like, the actual animus laid so bare. Like, The Post gives the game away, right? Which is, this was never, the anti-immigrant, anti-Brown people sentiment is never about assimilation, as it purports to be, this, like, lack of assimilation. It's about just pure racism on its face and saying, "It's not just that you, it's not that you actually, you won't integrate here, it's that you never should have been here in the first place."

• 13:46Pablo Torre?

  Well, it's the thing that, I mean, look, I, one of the things I love doing on this show, of course, is making fun of a fake Rumswami, my classmate. And there are many reasons to do so, and I'll continue to do so, frankly. But the thing he's encountered as he runs for governor in Ohio is a version of this. He has tweeted some things that are about, you know, whatever. And I laugh at him for saying, "We don't respect Urkel enough," was one of his takes. And I think that's hilarious. But one of the things that he's facing over and over again in his mentions that he has talked about is just, like, the people that you'd think would be in his base

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:21Pablo Torre?

  are just attacking him constantly. And that part of, like, what it is to be on Twitter these days, Twitter has the Petri dish that unfortunately does influence, like, whatever polling is done, a lot of it effectively is happening on Twitter in your mentions. That's how people are making decisions, certainly at the highest levels. And there's just this, part of the "wow" that I said was just the perpetual, I think, underestimation of how much the South Asian population is used. Though it is not merely like, "My belief is that you should not be here." It's the "I will use you to demonstrate that you should be afraid and therefore you should vote for me." And it's also just like the cynical part of it that's like, it's old school.

• 15:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:06Pablo Torre?

  In a way, where it's like, "Yeah, it is helpful to be just like, like, this is textbook. It is textbook racism, and we're just like, living..."

• 15:12Speaker 01

  It's old school, but people have always had these noxious beliefs. But the mainstreaming of it, the Twitter has a particular platform, but other social platforms as well, amplification of it, and the sense that it's actually more normalized now than it was 10, 20 years ago is kind of shocking. And I think-

• 15:34Pablo Torre?

  That's "wow" to me.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  I think what you're constantly wrestling with is just, is this, are these incidents internet phenomena, or are they indicative of something in broader in society? And it's very easy for me, or it's tempting for me to say, "No, this is just these platforms that have gotten increasingly worse and press their thumb on the scale to maximize bigotry." But the fact that we've got a public figure and then there's this kind of room reaction to the AI clip story makes you feel like this isn't just the internet.

• 16:08Pablo Torre?

  Well, it's also, along those same lines, it's the question of, can we dismiss something that's just happening on the internet?

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, right.

• 16:18Pablo Torre?

  If the internet is the thing that is actually driving real life in ways that we are constantly dealing with because politics and media and sports all live online. And they specifically live on this platform. They live on the Everything app. And so, the whole thing with Holly Rowe, for people who somehow miss this because your algorithm is mercifully different than ours, and God bless if this is how you were discovering this, because this also got chewed up and processed, but in ways that I think are worthy of our inspection here for a second. So Holly Rowe is the ESPN sideline reporter. Steve Sarkisian is the head coach of Texas. And Texas comes back and they win, and Sark basically blows her off.

• 16:59Pablo Torre?

  You know, he's screaming, "Let's go, Texas, blah, blah, blah, blah." Let's out of Hookem, walks away. And Holly Rowe is visibly just like miffed, walks off screen. And in the Post game, this is what Arch Manning, the latest generation of Manning, the star quarterback of Texas, is asked and answered.

• 17:18Speaker 07

  I've seen a few AI edits of stuff, but that's about it. I saw AI edit of Sark's interview. You all seen that one? That's a good one. Of him slapping Holly Rowe.

• 17:34Pablo Torre?

  And look, the video that was AI-generated is obviously AI-generated and not terribly complicated. It is Steve Sarkisian in that clip that played on TV, instead of walking away, like, winding up and slapping Holly Rowe, who falls to the ground. That is the thing that Arch Manning found delightful for a time.

• 17:54Speaker 01

  The laughs in the room are by far the most, to me, noteworthy part of all of this.

• 18:04Pablo Torre?

  Why?

• 18:05Speaker 01

  Because, and I'm not making excuses for him, I'm not calling him a kid, I know he's 22 years old or whatever, but like, does it surprise you that 22-year-old, like, a college football player-

• 18:16Pablo Torre?

  Of course not.

• 18:17Speaker 01

  Not only is, like, consuming, well, I guess it does surprise me that they think slap is funny, because I'm like, this is not, like, anyone who thinks-

• 18:23Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I want to talk to you about that, too.

• 18:24Speaker 01

  That's wild to me. And setting that aside, you know, you see that, you're like, it's a little surprising he's not more media-trained to not say that at this point.

• 18:33Pablo Torre?

  And then to your point, like, this is a family that literally works in media, thrives in media, and has a history of having to deal with scandals around

• 18:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:44Pablo Torre?

  women in college.

• 18:45Speaker 01

  I've just seen a lot of college athlete, football players in particular, give interviews in the draft process or whatever, and they're often not a finished product. I understand his story makes it different, but all of this is to say that, you know, I'm not, I didn't watch that and went, "Oh," like, you know.

• 19:04Pablo Torre?

  Same.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  But the part that really was jarring to me, first of all, why was he asked about clips in the first place? Insane question. Okay.

• 19:16Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  Imagine that clip again with no laughter. He wouldn't have kept going. Imagine, like, him say, "Y'all seen whatever?" Or like, you know, laughing or whatever, like, those are adults. Male laughs predominantly. And like, that cuts to kind of what we were talking about, which is, when we see these things on the internet and we wonder how real they are, when you see, like, a tweet like the one we talked about earlier from a public official, "Oh, my God, that's a real person." When you hear the laughs, you're like, those are real people. And it kind of gives you this feeling that this normalization of sentiments

• 20:00Speaker 01

  that you frankly, you know, are regressive and were not common even 10 years ago, suddenly feel more present than ever.

• 20:07Pablo Torre?

  I am somebody who, like, I went to an all-boys Catholic school. The idea that, like, "We're gonna make jokes," and again, he's 22 and not in high school, "but we're gonna make jokes and we know that, you know, it's naughty"

• 20:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:20Pablo Torre?

  or whatever, right? "We're gonna get away with something that we know our mom doesn't want us to see, our teacher, the oldest thing in the book." I have zero surprise or find that necessarily jarring. But it is, to your point, the difference between, "We're gonna do this quietly over here, and we're gonna do it in a press conference, and we're gonna post about it, and we're gonna put this into a public forum, and we're gonna laugh together about it." And that part, it's hard to be the person who is like, "You shouldn't laugh at the thing that you want to laugh at that you know is wrong," because you just feel like the teacher in the room.

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:58Pablo Torre?

  And you feel like you're scolding someone. And that's, no one wants to feel like they're the fun police or whatever. But I just find myself being like, do we really have to explain why this is a thing that we, why a video, AI-generated or not, of an adult man, like, slapping a woman to the ground was ever a thing we had to, as a society, again, decide, maybe let's not laugh about this in public?

• 21:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think what was also just so crazy is, the second I saw that, it was like, I already know exactly how this is gonna play out. Usual suspects will defend, he'll apologize.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Holly will graciously accept.

• 21:42Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  And then the usual suspects will get angry again that there was an apology in the first place, instead of everyone just saying, hey, gosh, Will Blair made a mistake. He immediately owned up to it. Move on. And it just sucks that we already know how things, these things will go every time. But I keep going back to those laughs, man, like.

• 22:05Pablo Torre?

  Can you, can you, I guess.

• 22:07Speaker 01

  That sound is just so like, I don't know. I think the reason why the laughs are so much more true, I don't want to say, like jarring to me than the actual comment is the laughs are where, like you said, that's kind of the where the sea change has been. College, I, I keep saying college athletes, I don't mean, again, I'm not trying to like juvenileize, you know, infanticize him or whatever, but like, like you said, young dudes have been saying and doing goofy stuff that they were like, it's, this is not new. I genuinely do feel like the norm, like the reaction of adult men think, like trying

• 22:51Speaker 01

  to boy, like bro out on that, that feels like.

• 22:56Pablo Torre?

  It's a political party.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  You feel, well, that's just.

• 22:59Pablo Torre?

  It's a movement.

• 23:00Speaker 01

  That just feels like a pretty good encapsulation of the state of sports media, which is honestly significantly worse. And this is, whatever, I'm saying this, I don't like, almost regret it because I don't want the usual aggregators to latch on to it. And then it spirals into another blowback thing for women, but I, it's worse for women than it's ever been since I started working in this field, which has been over 10 years at this point, which is wild.

• 23:26Pablo Torre?

  And you're not the only one who says that, who believes that. I mean, this is what, if you, again, if you talk to your female colleagues in this industry, this is, again.

• 23:34Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 23:35Pablo Torre?

  Most visible online, but it's also the thing that I keep, I keep on thinking about, like, what are our politics now as a country? And how is it that one party has risen to power on the back of catering to men who feel like they are being told that they can't say what they want to say?

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Like misogyny plays so well on the internet now that everybody's benefiting from it. Not everybody, but.

• 23:58Pablo Torre?

  But I think, I think the logic for a lot of people is like, what's the harm? This is free speech. This is, we get to laugh. You're telling us what's funny or not. You're policing our thoughts. People are at home being like, I want to have fun and I don't feel like I can't. Whether or not that's actually enacted in their real life, that is the feeling from the, uh, from, from, from the hall monitors.

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:22Pablo Torre?

  That they feel like they have to answer to. And that feels un-American.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  And I think it's like, worth also emphasizing when we talk about like, no one's calling for like cancellation here, right?

• 24:37Pablo Torre?

  No.

• 24:38Speaker 01

  If anything, people are like, mm, probably gonna want that one back. Ooh. How dare you, like, it's the, the.

• 24:47Pablo Torre?

  It's a, it's a small ask to be like, can we just be a little ashamed of having done this thing in this way and laughed at it?

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Can't, can't he just apologize and everyone move on? No, that's actually, the apology is worse than anything, you know? It's just so tiresome and it's just endless.

• 25:03Pablo Torre?

  Yes. And meanwhile, uh, meanwhile, suddenly Karl Rove is woke.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  What'd he say?

• 25:12Pablo Torre?

  Karl Rove had called Beau French a bigot at a private lunch event and said he's voting for French's Democratic opponent. And Donald Trump goes on Truth Social and says, this guy's a stone cold loser. And Beau French, incidentally, keeps doubling down since Saturday, defends the Post, goes on radio, all that stuff, favorite Texans over foreigners over and over again. And I'm like, you guys made fucking Karl Rove a part of the resistance.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  It's a great barometer for kind of what we're talking about, which is even the old lines now look quaint.

• 25:47Pablo Torre?

  It's like Karl Rove, like and subscribe, you know?

• 25:51Speaker 01

  Do you have a podcast? See you on TikTok.

• 25:55Pablo Torre?

  Does Karl Rove have a podcast is a question that I need to Google the answer to.

• 25:59Speaker 01

  Share and tell with Aaron Rodgers and Karl Rove.

• 26:11Pablo Torre?

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• 27:45Pablo Torre?

  So you mentioned that what our brains are doing and what we're consuming is of interest and is kind of what we always end up talking about, I realize, when we podcast at this point together. But the reason why this New York Times opinion essay that got published, I think is worth our discussion. The article, by the way, is titled, "The Truth About Brain Rot: It's a Cry for Help." And you sent this to me, is because this also kind of surprised me in terms of how I have always just as a shorthand referred to what it is that we're all watching when it comes to slop, when it comes to nonsense on the internet. And I think it's in part because I, mercifully perhaps, am not watching the exact thing

• 28:30Pablo Torre?

  that Gen Z seems to be very into.

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:34Pablo Torre?

  Like, I underestimated also what the they're consuming.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  So same. Like, when I think of like internet short form video slop, in my mind, so I guess, let's open the kimono.

• 28:53Speaker 01

  Why, every time I say that, I regret it.

• 28:55Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  It's the worst possible phrase, but, uh, especially for me to say it.

• 29:00Pablo Torre?

  I mean, only you really in our cast of characters is maybe even vaguely allowed to say it.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  It would be a hanbo. Okay, so my slop is like, some lady in her apartment saying, here, I bought this ugly sweatshirt, watch me turn it into a prom dress. And like a fast forward, like, like people putting together, like, frankly, the end result is never worth it, but I'm like, I've watched for four minutes anyways because I want to see, I'm like, what is she gonna do with those sleeves? How is this gonna come together? So in my mind, that's my slop. And the algorithm knows, they're like, that, and oh, the other one is like a scene, like a supercut of a Lifetime movie, where they'll be like, you'll never believe what happens to this housewife at home, you know?

• 29:50Speaker 01

  And then I'll go down a rabbit hole of like, watching, like, reading the Wikipedia about the movie, trying to find more clips of the movie, and boom, 10 minutes are gone. So those are the two, like, disgusting things I do on the internet, but that's not what this is about.

• 30:03Pablo Torre?

  And, and so, full disclosure.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, what's your slop?

• 30:06Pablo Torre?

  So I'm also, I also realize that I am consuming what are known as micro dramas.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  Yes, we all are.

• 30:13Pablo Torre?

  I'm like.

• 30:14Speaker 01

  You get so sucked in by them.

• 30:15Pablo Torre?

  I thought I was above it.

• 30:17Speaker 01

  What kind of micro?

• 30:17Pablo Torre?

  And I am not.

• 30:18Speaker 01

  What kind of micro?

• 30:19Pablo Torre?

  It's just, oh, it's just, micro drama is about infidelity. Micro drama is about, it's just like soap, it's soap opera.

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:28Pablo Torre?

  And I realized that it's edited in such a way that has ensnared me. And when I laughed at the concept of micro dramas as like, I would never watch that. I'm like, I'm watching them all the time.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  You're like, well, it's not a real movie or something.

• 30:39Pablo Torre?

  It keeps me hooked. I'm hooked to the next, it's retention editing.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  R.I.P. Quibi, died too soon, because that, that's everywhere now.

• 30:46Pablo Torre?

  So I, by the way, when I was co-hosting Morning Joe the other day, on set was physically, in real life, next to me was Mr. Beast and James Patterson, the author, who timed, who combined for a now, of course, bestselling book that they've co-written together.

• 31:00Speaker 01

  I saw the picture of them standing, it's a really funny picture because Mr. Beast looks insane as usual, and James Patterson is kind of standing next to him like the mom I grew up pose. It makes no sense. Look it up if you haven't seen the picture, it makes you laugh.

• 31:15Pablo Torre?

  But they have this book and it's whatever, you can.

• 31:17Speaker 01

  The Most Dangerous Games.

• 31:19Pablo Torre?

  I love that you know about this.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  I went down a rabbit hole reading about it.

• 31:22Pablo Torre?

  Yes. So The Most Dangerous Games is the book, and I was talking to them on TV and then afterwards, and I kind of realized, like, I, I told Mr. Beast the following sentence, I have read your manifesto. And his manifesto is about, he, there was this whole thing that was leaked and he was very proud to hear, it seemed, and I delighted in this part, that I had read this. It was leaked or published or whatever. And it was just like his thesis about like how to retention edit things. And it's like, here's the graph, here's how you want to keep people not dipping, but like at the very least plateauing, and here's how he's made these things. And I say that because what I complimented him on earnestly was how rigorous his thinking is in terms of how to hold attention.

• 32:05Pablo Torre?

  And now, when I get to the Gen Z version of this, I'm like, compared to what we're about to talk about, Mr. Beast is fucking Martin Scorsese.

• 32:16Pablo Torre?

  Like, the stuff that I'm watching is micro dramas that also, by the way, I'm watching watch content. I don't own a watch.

• 32:22Speaker 01

  A watch content, yeah. All guys get this, yeah.

• 32:25Pablo Torre?

  I, I-

• 32:26Speaker 01

  What is the female equivalent of watch?

• 32:27Pablo Torre?

  But I'm like watching-

• 32:28Speaker 01

  It's like skincare.

• 32:29Pablo Torre?

  I'm watching people rank watches.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  And you'll watch it all the way through?

• 32:33Pablo Torre?

  I, I, and I don't, yes, and then I'm like-

• 32:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:36Pablo Torre?

  I haven't even bought one, I don't plan on buying one, now I'm thinking about it, but like, why am I thinking about? So anyway, that's what I thought we were talking about.

• 32:43Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, what, no, it's, we're watching high art compared to this stuff.

• 32:49Pablo Torre?

  So, I'm gonna play an example. Mina, I wanna have you narrate this because this is largely gonna be, uh, incomprehensible to the audio audience, and arguably even less comprehensible to anybody who gets to see it. But this is an example of Gen Z slop.

• 33:03Speaker 01

  I'm looking. Oh my god. It was a dog drinking a cappuccino out of a woman's head that is the cappuccino. He just, it's a chihuahua. She's crying, she's talking to an animated AI stick? Who comes home from DJing? It's his wife, or, yeah, her wife. Her, her husband, sorry. There's so much happening, I can't keep up with this! Doing play-by-play, this sucks. Uh, the dog's now made a new coffee to pour into the wife's head.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  And the dogs are happy at the end.

• 33:41Pablo Torre?

  What the [__] is this?

• 33:43Speaker 01

  And now the stick is back and he's, he's next to a crying shark.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  Rapping.

• 33:50Pablo Torre?

  This is a rap battle, it says "battle" at the top, it-

• 33:56Pablo Torre?

  So that's what's going on.

• 33:59Speaker 01

  Okay, so the article is really interesting because it suggests that Gen Z, and below, I didn't know what the next one's called.

• 34:11Pablo Torre?

  Gen Alpha?

• 34:13Speaker 01

  Are watching these videos as a form of sort of rebellion because they're so tired of being manipulated by digital content that they would prefer to just watch something mindless, brain rot, as like a, it's almost like a mental sit-in, like a strike, right? Like, I-

• 34:35Pablo Torre?

  Funny way to put it, a mental sit-in.

• 34:37Speaker 01

  Like, I'm just gonna go, my brain's gonna go on strike right now.

• 34:40Pablo Torre?

  Yes!

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Um, which is interesting, I would-

• 34:45Pablo Torre?

  I'd never thought about it like that.

• 34:46Speaker 01

  I'd never thought about, I will say, not to get all like Marshall McLuhan here, but I don't-

• 34:52Pablo Torre?

  Medium is the message, though, is-

• 34:54Speaker 01

  It's still the same medium, and you're not really, they're, they're still making money off of you with this, so I don't quite understand the capital, like, the anti-capitalist part about it, yeah.

• 35:05Pablo Torre?

  So, so I wanna talk about that because the whole notion to even further sort of articulate what the article's pointing out is that nonsense is a response to perpetually being sold things-

• 35:17Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:17Pablo Torre?

  And feeling manipulated in a way that makes you want to, as you put it, just embrace, quote, "being entranced by an infinite stream of nonsensical TikToks and Instagram reels." And that is brain rot, is the idea that I'm going to degrade my brain in order to effectively opt out-

• 35:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:39Pablo Torre?

  -of the economy that I am being subject to, but as you point out, someone's monetizing the cappuccino head lady and the rap battle stick.

• 35:48Speaker 01

  You're also watching it on TikTok reels, whatever. Unless there's some, like, independent slop platform out there I'm not aware of.

• 35:58Pablo Torre?

  Did we, did we just, sharks?

• 36:02Pablo Torre?

  For 50% of my standalone AI slop company, you may.

• 36:06Speaker 01

  Locally grown heritage slop.

• 36:11Pablo Torre?

  But that is, look, the whole thing here is that, and I'll read this part, "The joke is that there is no joke. The meaning is that there is no meaning. And for a generation that grew up with every digital interaction tracked, measured, and monetized, that refusal is experienced as a form of honesty in a dishonest system."

• 36:25Speaker 01

  You know what's another form of rebellion against digital capitalism, attention-seeking algorithms? Touch grass!

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Um, I, the thing, though, I will say, that I also found really interesting in this piece, the art, the authors said that overwhelmingly young people who expressed these feelings about social media and, and slop and the fact that they wanted to opt out and what, overwhelmingly said it should be regulated. That was fascinating to me.

• 36:59Pablo Torre?

  This is where, like, the seeds of an actual revolution are being planted. What if your product is so viscerally and physically misery-making that people were like, I actually think the government should intervene to save us. To save me from myself, to save me from the fact that the delivery vehicle of my protest is actually the thing that needs to be controlled by the government.

• 37:27Speaker 01

  And it seems like young people have a more sophisticated view of what that would take than many lawmakers, not just in the US but internationally, right? Because there's this broader trend, uh, it's really happening around the world where governments are trying to figure out how to crack down on social media for young people. You have outright bans in countries like Australia, some countries in Southeast Asia that are reportedly not really working, unsurprisingly. There's bills, there's one just signed in California aimed at regulating, basically not banning young people off of social media, but eliminating, like, short-form autoplay,

• 38:10Speaker 01

  addictive features, but how actually effective those are is also a matter of dispute, especially when some of the, a lot of the tech companies seem to have a hand in, or at least are very involved in, like, coming up with these rules. So the fox is in the hen house. That's my read on it, at least.

• 38:28Pablo Torre?

  Well, I've talked to people who work at Meta, and I was like, asking them, uh, like, so what about this-

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 38:33Pablo Torre?

  -18 billion dollar settlement with these states, this was last month, implementing strict new age restrictions, time limits, safety controls for minors in particular, you know, speaking to just the general-

• 38:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:44Pablo Torre?

  -psychological predatory aspect of social media. And the people I've talked to who work over there, you know, like, rank-and-file people are like, this company is not worried about that.

• 38:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:54Pablo Torre?

  Like, this is a settlement, it is-

• 38:57Speaker 01

  We will get ya.

• 38:58Pablo Torre?

  It's a give, but they are not threatened by this.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  How do you feel about it as the father of a daughter?

• 39:03Pablo Torre?

  As the father of a daughter!

• 39:05Speaker 01

  Both of our children are too young, so this is not a pressing concern, uh, but it is obviously something I'm sure you've thought about.

• 39:14Pablo Torre?

  I think that my, the two wolves inside of me, right, are like, I love freedom of speech, I want freedom of expression, I am worried when any government entity-

• 39:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:27Pablo Torre?

  -gets to make decisions around editorial decision-making, and that is real, and we see the potential for abuse every day, right now. The other wolf is that there is no more powerful, like, politics transcending entity in our civilization than these tech companies.

• 39:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:47Pablo Torre?

  They will be here longer than any given administration, their products are not going anywhere, and the idea that we need to set a precedent for the will of the people in some form to regulate them, that seems beyond obvious at this point.

• 40:02Speaker 01

  It seems beyond obvious to me as too. I, I, I've re, I've read the other side, which is like, tends to be like, the EFF, and like, there are like, scientists who have done research who are like, actually, social media doesn't make kids depressed, and actually, you know, I just don't buy that.

• 40:19Pablo Torre?

  Electronic Frontier Foundation, the nonprofit that protects digital privacy, expression, and consumer rights.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  I'm sure this is, that will just draw some of the experts, people who study this out of the woodwork and say it's not been confirmed, but like, you, you know, based on my own experience, I really do not want my child to have the same access to addictive social media features that we have right now.

• 40:45Pablo Torre?

  And if you just look about it just logically, what is the prior historical precedent for kids have access to such things?

• 40:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 40:54Pablo Torre?

  We are in uncharted territory.

• 40:56Speaker 01

  Yes, I know, that's the other thing, where it's like, you can't-

• 40:58Pablo Torre?

  We can actually deal with this-

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Well, actually, we stop kids from doing all kinds of stuff, guys!

• 41:02Pablo Torre?

  [__] We put censor bars at the newsstand over Playboy. Like, why are we pretending like age restriction is suddenly a new thing?

• 41:10Speaker 01

  And no kid ever got a Playboy as a result. Um, but I-

• 41:14Pablo Torre?

  My bed is a sovereign state, do not look underneath it. You're smiling the smile of a [__] who is this person? Uh, hold on, is this the name of the [__]? Of Ballerina Cappuccina.

• 41:27Speaker 01

  Oh, that's AI cappuccino cup head? Ballerina Cappuccina?

• 41:33Pablo Torre?

  Ballerina Cappuccina.

• 41:34Speaker 01

  Horrifying.

• 41:44Pablo Torre?

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• 42:29Pablo Torre?

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• 44:03Pablo Torre?

  So, speaking of established favored institutions.

• 44:08Speaker 01

  Always, always curious to see.

• 44:12Pablo Torre?

  In the competitive ecosystem that they were supposed to dominate, I want to talk about the Los Angeles Rams.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  All right, sorry. Do you want to step on the segue there? When you start your segues sometimes, I'm like, all right, how's this gonna go? Is he gonna, it's like watching like a guy line up for like a 62 yard field goal. And you're kind of, your steps look a little nervous.

• 44:33Pablo Torre?

  And the crowd at game day is saying, one more kick, one more kick. Speaking of super teams, let's talk about the Los Angeles Rams. This is your account. You know this team really well. You've been around this team for years. And now this whole thing, the football part of this.

• 44:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:55Pablo Torre?

  Was like, it's supposed to be very easy for me to understand. I'm like, gonna check in, they're gonna be there at the end. I'm excited to have what frankly, the Warriors were in the NBA for a while.

• 45:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the best comp.

• 45:05Pablo Torre?

  Ratings go up, superstars are there, people get mad, they're fun to watch, and we're gonna have all these plot lines that like inviting casuals.

• 45:15Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 45:16Pablo Torre?

  Week two is upon us, and is this over already?

• 45:21Speaker 01

  Uh, there's so many good sports conversations to be had around this, one of which is are super teams actually good for the sport? We, I think we're on around the horn together through the peak of the Warriors dominance. And I feel like we had that conversation a lot on that show and.

• 45:37Pablo Torre?

  Is it unfair? Is it boring?

• 45:39Speaker 01

  Is it good for the sport? Is it bad for the sport? UConn?

• 45:42Pablo Torre?

  Is it basically cheating to have like all these guys want to sign up for something that, yeah.

• 45:47Speaker 01

  I guess they're, people are still having it around the Dodgers, you know, to a lesser degree. But I actually think like the Rams losing in week one and immediately losing their star acquisition, Myles Garrett, to an injury for an undetermined amount of time is a really good case study for why you can't really do this in football like you can in basketball, right? Because.

• 46:11Pablo Torre?

  What was the last time with the Patriots with Randy Moss? Was that like the closest thing?

• 46:16Speaker 01

  To me, I was trying to think of football comps for what the Rams have done. And the Warriors were just a better comp than any NFL thing, right? In terms of like, this isn't just a bunch of good players. This is the best defensive player in football. And then we're gonna bring back the former best defensive player in football. And we also traded for one of the best corners in football and this and that. But in football, certainly it's not the case with baseball, which obviously doesn't have the hard cap. It does come at a cost.

• 46:48Pablo Torre?

  Yeah.

• 46:48Speaker 01

  I think every time teams do this, I'm always like, why are they allowed to, what's going on? Why can't the rest of the league do this? This is so unfair, you know? Well, there's a cost, there's a risk that with this type of strategy. And they're already, the risk just hit a lot earlier than I think than anyone thought it would.

• 47:04Pablo Torre?

  What did the Rams give up to make this happen that now might make this not just, not a super team, but like disastrous?

• 47:12Speaker 01

  Youth and depth is what you give up with this type of approach, right? Traded away a young player, traded away draft picks that could be spent on other young players. You know, in acquiring Garrett, bringing back Donald again is not really any cost at all because they're not paying him that much money or whatever. But these are all snaps that would otherwise go to other players. Giving away draft picks for Trent McDuffie, first round draft pick for him, he's not an old player, but he's not young. And then, by the way, youth, depth, and then future maneuverability. The Rams have a ton of really good players who are gonna be free agents next year. They still have not paid Pukun Nakua, Kobe Turner is a star, Byron Young, Steve Avila.

• 47:56Speaker 01

  These are like the best young players on the team and the bill is coming due. So they're not gonna be able to pay all of them. Now, they will be able to pay some of them because the, the way this has worked out for them is actually not that onerous financially in the future. It's more so that now they do not have a lot of young depth at a few positions. The offensive line is kind of the most notable one, and that hasn't even been affected yet. But so, for example, the draft pick they sent for Trent McDuffie, the draft pick they spent on Tyson, those could have been spent on offensive line depth. If a tackle goes down, they do not have good depth behind them.

• 48:36Speaker 01

  So they're, it's a more fragile build than a team with a lot of young, good players instead of a few older, really great players.

• 48:45Pablo Torre?

  Right. I mean, look, so the GM of the team, Les Snead, you know, his whole thing was [BLEEP] them picks. And that was like on a shirt that they wore and all this stuff. And so, and it's just funny again, like, so let's just compare it to in the NBA stuff, you know, yeah, like the whole reason the Clippers are like in this nuclear winter is because they gave up all the picks for Kawhi. And I'm not saying that Jared versus Shay Gildes Alexander, but like there is something to the, we're going in for right now, we need this superstar, get all, get even our promising young guy out of here, [BLEEP] them picks. You're five first rounders, et cetera. Was this a miscalculation?

• 49:26Speaker 01

  I don't think so. I know it feels like it right now. And obviously, look, if Myles Garrett, if the injury lags, then yes, obviously. But I still think this team is gonna be extremely good. And if I'm the Rams, I still do everything that they did 10 times out of 10 because you really maximized your shot at the Super Bowl.

• 49:51Pablo Torre?

  Here's what I am finding potentially very amusing about this whole experiment, is that this is not just a team that went all in for this season and they got beaten embarrassingly by the Niners in Australia. And it's not just that Myles Garrett, who, you interviewed him, right?

• 50:06Speaker 01

  I've interviewed him a few times.

• 50:08Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, I personally think he seems, super endearing, like.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  I've interviewed him more than I've interviewed Aaron Rodgers. So I guess he's also my close personal friend.

• 50:16Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, exactly. If we're rating friends, Myles Garrett, first stringer, so to speak. It's beyond that. It's the idea that all these guys, I mean, Stafford?

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:30Pablo Torre?

  And Sean McVay, you know, this team's weird. Sean McVay was threatening to retire and now he's not. Matt Stafford also similarly seems to be almost done, but he is so clearly not that it was awkward when they drafted his replacement and Sean McVay had to get in front of everybody and be like, I, I'm on team Matt, team Matt.

• 50:53Speaker 01

  I've never met him.

• 50:54Pablo Torre?

  No, no idea who that other guy is. And then Aaron Donald did retire and unretired.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:00Pablo Torre?

  And I'm like, are all these guys just having mutual midlife crises? Did all of them sync up? Like what, did the moon, what is happening?

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Sync up like their cycles? Is that what you're saying?

• 51:11Pablo Torre?

  You can say that.

• 51:11Speaker 01

  What's the male equivalent of that?

• 51:12Pablo Torre?

  Exactly. The male equivalent of that is threatening retirement and then not.

• 51:16Speaker 01

  I think it's a great, like, as you like list all the crazy stuff that's happened around this team.

• 51:21Pablo Torre?

  And Pukun Nakua's also his own like file of just like controversy and injury and insanity.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. That is something that also kind of got, I've, he, I talked about his pending contract, the fact that Nakua has had, you know, the domestic violence accusation, the incidents off the field, yeah.

• 51:44Pablo Torre?

  Hanging out with streamers all the time, like, he sounds like Neon, and I'm like, he's, Pukun Nakua seems like a ballerina cappuccino guy.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  Definitely does. I've interviewed him as well, and I think that's accurate. But what I would say is this, I think the fact that all of these things kind of are happening at the same time, and this team is operating this way, reflects how in the NFL, it is so rare to like have complete conviction that you can win a Super Bowl. It's a team that coming off of last season firmly believed they should have won the Super Bowl. They didn't. The Seahawks were better, right? And you go into this season now with that continued belief, and that creates, it sets off a cycle of decisions that you would not find with a team that didn't have, because

• 52:34Speaker 01

  you know, every team, not every, every team, a lot of, the NFL knows they're not gonna win at the start of the season.

• 52:42Pablo Torre?

  Are you gonna go all in is a conversation that the public does not hear as bluntly as is being discussed in your actual like war room?

• 52:51Speaker 01

  Totally. And there are other teams that have quote unquote gone all in with moves in the past, making big trades, doing, you know, huge swings, et cetera. Trading up in the draft for a player is a thing you do maybe if you think this is, we can do, he can contribute this year, et cetera. But the level of, I think what it speaks to is like the very unusual degree of confidence that Los Angeles had going into this offseason because of the quarterback, the coach, the existing talent on the team.

• 53:23Pablo Torre?

  But this is the thing about the NFL, this is why Adam Silver says this [BLEEP]. It, I mean, in the end, the league, people will watch the Super Bowl.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, really?

• 53:35Pablo Torre?

  It's like in the NBA, they're like praying, please let the Knicks be in the finals.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:40Pablo Torre?

  Please let this not be Indiana, Oklahoma City. Please, you could throw.

• 53:49Pablo Torre?

  Ballerina cappuccino out there for halftime. You could throw, it doesn't even matter who's in the game. Like, that's the position of strength that allows you to do all this other stuff.

• 53:59Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, the NBA, the NFL does not need the Rams to be a super team or a villain or whatnot.

• 54:07Pablo Torre?

  It's just more fun for fans. It's just more fun for me. It's more fun for people who, perhaps this is, I don't know, this is, this is, this is a through line in this whole thing that we've been talking about today. It's that like, there are some things that I think I feel great about being agitated by. There are like these, there are these things, these topics, these venues where it's like, we should be insane to each other. We should be, make, we should make fun of each other. We should insult each other. We should be rude. We should have offensive memes, all that. And there are some places where there are cries for help.

• 54:49Pablo Torre?

  And I'd like to just make sure that sports remains the fun kind.

• 54:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:55Pablo Torre?

  The fun kind of, you're driving me [bleep] nuts and I hate you.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  A low level of villainy is enjoyable. But what a just like fantastic thing, result for the league to remind people that any given Sunday, and that's why it's the best sport on earth.

• 55:17Pablo Torre?

  Oh, God. Mina is not a fan of, Mina is not a fan of brain rot. She is a fan of concussions. That is the difference.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  How dare you.

• 55:27Pablo Torre?

  That is the difference. And, and, and that is the difference. And Aaron Rodgers, guess what? I draft you as my number one Disney VIP tour pick. I want to hang out with you and go on rides. You and me on the teacups together. Being our own little ballerina cappuccino together.

• 55:48Speaker 01

  Stupid ballerina cappuccino.

• 55:58Pablo Torre?

  Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Avaroma, Maxwell Carney, Ryan Cortez, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Laura Newcomb, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, and Chris Tumanello. Studio engineering by RG Systems, sound design by Andrew Bersick, digital strategy by Bailey Carlin and Andrew Northern. Theme song, as always, by John Bravo. And we'll talk to you next time.

• 56:30Speaker 01

  I just kind of glimpsed myself in the shot for the first time and I had an unfortunate realization, which is I look like you today. By the way.

• 56:41Pablo Torre?

  You're welcome.

• 56:41Speaker 01

  Does this not look like a jacket that you would wear?

• 56:43Pablo Torre?

  It is. It is. You have, oh, you have a work jacket, a blue work jacket.

• 56:47Speaker 01

  It's not a work podcast.

• 56:48Pablo Torre?

  A jacket. You have a work jacket. You have a blue jacket.

• 56:51Speaker 01

  They call, they call these like barn jackets, right?

• 56:54Pablo Torre?

  Yeah, it's like French workwear jackets.

• 56:56Speaker 01

  French workwear.

• 56:57Pablo Torre?

  We don't even have time to talk about this, but I, I love lanterns, obviously. And I'm like, you know who owns Hal Jordan's jacket?

• 57:04Speaker 01

  Is that the jacket that he wears?

• 57:05Pablo Torre?

  I mean, I've been wearing this for years.

• 57:07Speaker 01

  Wow, cops your style.

• 57:09Pablo Torre?

  Man, in brightest day and darkest night, no podcast shall escape my sight.

• 57:15Speaker 01

  It looks just as good on you.

• 57:19Pablo Torre?

  Thank you. End podcast.

• 57:24Speaker 03

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