Pod Insights Pablo Torre Finds Out The Sporting Class: Welcome to the Spinoff Era About this episode Who's to blame for the conscious uncoupling of Warner Bros. Discovery? How would Disney survive without ESPN? And when did so many 20-something grifters come to stand in for spineless management? David Samson and John Skipper are back to discuss this month's biggest sports-business stories — and their credit scores.
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2:05 Speaker 03 When you're getting high with your friends, you talk about credit scores?
2:08 Pablo Torre? Right after this ad.
2:16 Pablo Torre? Are we rolling? Oh, sweet. Okay. David got a haircut.
2:22 Speaker 03 David got a haircut?
2:23 Speaker 04 This just came up on Dan's show. And they put a picture of Cameron Diaz from There's Something About Mary. And I was annoyed because days one through six post haircut, I'm able to do this with my hair. Days seven through 21, it combs to the side.
2:37 Speaker 03 It's a fine part. I think that's why people are noticing, the part.
2:40 Pablo Torre? Do we call it a widow's peak?
2:41 Speaker 03 Very strong, very strong. No, it's not a widow's peak. I'm talking about the line.
2:45 Speaker 04 Something totally different.
2:46 Pablo Torre? Are you sure?
2:46 Speaker 03 I think the line that goes back here.
2:48 Speaker 04 The widow's peak is this, is my receding hairline. Thank you, Pablo. Believe me, you'll be there one day.
2:52 Pablo Torre? This is the peak. I will not be there one day genetically speaking.
2:56 Speaker 04 It is a guarantee. You're gonna have a full head of hair exactly as you are when you're 57?
3:01 Pablo Torre? That's right.
3:02 Speaker 04 Okay. We'll know each other, still be together.
3:06 Pablo Torre? At the next boarding class. In what year will that be? I'm 39 right now.
3:11 Speaker 04 It's just 18 years from now.
3:12 Pablo Torre? 18 years.
3:13 Speaker 04 It's really not that long. If you think about it, 2043 is the same as 2007.
3:18 Pablo Torre? This hairline's not going anywhere.
3:19 Speaker 03 Yeah.
3:20 Pablo Torre? You got the Carolina, I was gonna say Carolina coastline. You have the California coastline and I got the Carolinas.
3:25 Speaker 04 Go look at yourself in 2007 and see if you have the same everything from '07.
3:31 Pablo Torre? I don't wanna do that.
3:32 Speaker 04 I'd like a side by side if you have enough staff.
3:35 Pablo Torre? John?
3:36 Speaker 03 I don't actually think it will do you any good. So I wouldn't do it.
3:41 Speaker 04 I agree. Time beats everyone.
3:44 Pablo Torre? Uh, John's haircut strategy, I feel like is different from David's and mine.
3:49 Speaker 03 Yeah, I would like the least to do when I take a shower. I put a towel on it and rub it, rub it down and I'm done.
3:56 Speaker 04 You look healthy and tan and happy because everyone's doing what you wish, according to your schedule.
4:02 Speaker 03 Yeah.
4:03 Speaker 04 Just like the old days.
4:04 Speaker 03 Yeah.
4:05 Pablo Torre? David is literally twiddling his thumbs, which is...
4:08 Speaker 04 It's been a stressful moment to make sure. Now, to get to a place exactly at the moment you said in New York City, not as easy as people may think.
4:16 Speaker 03 No, I know. New York City.
4:19 Pablo Torre? Greatest city in the world.
4:21 Speaker 03 You take the subway?
4:23 Speaker 04 Not here because my deal with you thankfully is that I get to Uber one way so I don't schwitz before a show, but subway home. Cause it doesn't matter if I look terrible when I get home, I'd like to not look like I just got off the subway to do a show with you.
4:37 Speaker 03 Schwitz?
4:38 Speaker 04 That was your last gift or negotiation?
4:40 Speaker 03 Already before you got here, I used the word hondled.
4:43 Speaker 04 Ooh, that's, that's got pejorative connotations.
4:47 Speaker 03 Well, it was meant to.
4:49 Speaker 04 Oh, it was. Nice. I don't think you meant it in the way that I'm saying it's pejorative. People who say hondle, it can be viewed as anti-Semitic, which I know you don't mean to be.
4:58 Pablo Torre? This is another, it's rooted in, uh, another name for han shu, which is the largest of the islands forming Japan.
5:09 Speaker 04 That's not what hondle is.
5:11 Speaker 03 No, no, no. At least as, as it used to be defined in Lee Roy, Leo Rosten's joys of Yiddish, it was to be manipulated, right? It was.
5:25 Speaker 04 It's to be scammed.
5:26 Speaker 03 Yeah.
5:27 Speaker 04 Yes.
5:28 Pablo Torre? Okay, here it is. There's a whole Esquire article about the word hondle.
5:33 Speaker 04 Why were you talking about being hondled? Were you referring to me specifically?
5:36 Pablo Torre? Because we're talking about sports business, David.
5:37 Speaker 04 Ah, I internalized that.
5:40 Speaker 03 It would need a little more context and we have time or would be helpful to the audience, but we can probably move on.
5:48 Pablo Torre? Well, now that we've been scared off by David's claims, which I believe, I believe we have full, uh, now context to establish the innocence of us citing a word, um, that was cited in the OED in 1965, earliest known usage in the sixties, um, Esquire magazine. Um, I think we're all right. I think we're all right.
6:12 Speaker 04 It's not a great word.
6:13 Pablo Torre? It's a, okay. Well, urban dictionary.com has it as a conjunction of fondle and handle, which maybe is a modern etymology.
6:21 Speaker 03 I don't think so. It's Yiddish, it's Yiddish.
6:24 Speaker 04 There is nothing to do with fondling.
6:27 Pablo Torre? Agree to disagree.
6:28 Speaker 04 Okay.
6:48 Pablo Torre? So I want to get, though, to, I suppose, conscious uncoupling to a separation of bodies, of entities, because we are in the season of spincoats. And WBD, which I guess has another meaning before my time, but currently it's Warner Brothers Discovery. Isn't there another thing? WD-40? WD-40?
7:12 Speaker 03 Yes.
7:13 Speaker 04 That's the thing that makes things stop squeaking. No, WD-40 is what you use to stop the squeak of a hinge.
7:19 Pablo Torre? Very good.
7:20 Speaker 04 That has nothing to do with WBD.
7:21 Pablo Torre? While that may be possibly another metaphor I could see as the final, I will just keep it moving. Warner Brothers Discovery, the parent company to cable channels such as CNN, TBS, TNT, they announced Monday that it's splitting into Twain, two publicly traded companies. Funny enough, we have spent a lot of time talking about David Zaslove, the head of this entity, the larger entity, showing up at Knicks games, wearing his very, very new Knicks cap, courtside. But now, the two companies are WBD Streaming and Studios, which he will run, that's HBO, Warner Brothers Pictures, DC Studios.
8:03 Pablo Torre? WBD Global Networks will be CNN, TNT Sports, US, and Discovery. And Zaslove will be the former Gunner Weidenfels, I believe, will be the latter.
8:15 Speaker 04 Former CFO of the larger company. CFOs can do business.
8:19 Pablo Torre? It seems. So what is, John, I want to start with you, what is the big picture thing that is happening here? Was this surprising to learn?
8:29 Speaker 03 No, it wasn't surprising to learn, because what they're doing is taking the...
8:36 Speaker 03 I don't know what you'd call them declining assets, but you would call them not high-growth assets and put them in one company. And they've taken the new streaming services and what people would regard as a future and put into another company.
8:53 Speaker 04 The library.
8:54 Speaker 03 Yes. They loaded the debt primarily into the old company, almost ensuring that it will not grow as fast. So I assume, David, you probably understand this better than I do. I assume that that's the general reason they did this.
9:14 Speaker 04 So you have to go back a little bit. Let's go back to the merger of how Warner Brothers Discovery came to be. It was not, there's people in the audience who may not realize Warner Brothers Discovery was already a merged entity. And there was a huge amount of debt that happened in that merger. And the thought was, much like with CBS and Viacom, which hasn't happened. And now CBS is trying it again with Skydance. The thought is that if you put two companies together, that together they will be a greater company. You'll get better earnings. You will be able to have positive cash flow and you will be able to have economies of scale. So instead of two different news departments or sports departments, sales departments, combine them, fire people.
9:58 Speaker 04 So that is the form of layoffs, not pleasant, but always part of post-merger life.
10:03 Pablo Torre? Yep.
10:03 Speaker 04 And then you have a healthier company. Well, Warner Brothers Discovery never got to that point, never got to the panacea of health. Their debt actually kept increasing after the merger and it's become choking. Let's explain why. When you borrow money, you have to pay it back. And it comes with interest.
10:23 Speaker 03 Wow, there's an insight.
10:24 Speaker 04 Well, listen, there are people who believe, like with the national debt, hey, that never has to be paid back. Why do we care if it's a trillion dollars debt? Why do we care about refinancing costs for national debt? These are major economic issues that people just don't want to think about because what you're doing, Pablo, it's, you don't, you're not interested.
10:45 Pablo Torre? Well, but I want to distinguish between the kicking the can down the road on the national debt versus the pressures that force a decision like this, which is, to my view, as the layman, relatively speaking, on the panel here, is embarrassing.
11:02 Pablo Torre? Is it embarrassing to you that WBD had this grand vision? And of course, this was, we're gonna make HBO Max, we're gonna undo that. And this merger, which you just characterized, is now being split in a way that feels like, okay, the strategy clearly has adjusted yet again.
11:19 Speaker 04 Yeah, it happens in business all the time. So I'm not as gobsmacked as you are, where companies get together or people get together with an idea and they put money behind it and resources and it just doesn't work. It's sort of like research and development and science. You're not gonna get a cure for everything, but you're gonna spend a lot of money trying. So what happens is the debt increases. And then what happens when you have too much debt is that you're using too much of your open cash flow to actually pay interest on all the debt you have. So instead of that cash flow as earnings or dividends or for growth of the company, you're just paying someone back. So you're earning money to do nothing with because you're using it to pay back money. So that's not very helpful.
12:01 Pablo Torre? But why didn't it work, though, fundamentally? Why could they not figure this equation out?
12:06 Speaker 04 Well, John, I'd like to hear you, but I'll tell you, my view is that when that merger happened, there was not a thought that the decline in cable revenue and in what we call, just for fun, cord cutting, no one had in their pro forma projections during that merger that it was gonna be so quick and so significant and cause such a dilapidation in their earnings.
12:28 Speaker 03 When was that merger?
12:29 Speaker 04 Oh, I think you're going on, is it 15 years? It's in the 2000s? What year was, there's several of them, but you can go back to the AT&T merger if you want and get a date on that, Coco. You can go back.
12:44 Pablo Torre? WBD was formed from Warner Media's spinoff by AT&T and merger with Discovery, Inc. on April 8th, 2022.
12:53 Speaker 04 Three years only?
12:54 Speaker 03 Yeah.
12:55 Speaker 04 What's, when was the AT&T merger?
12:59 Pablo Torre? Discovery and AT&T acquired Scripps Networks Interactive and Time Warner renamed it to Discovery Inc. and Warner Media respectively in 2018.
13:08 Speaker 04 And there was a merger earlier than that, I thought, back in 2016 or so.
13:12 Pablo Torre? Time Warner, then known as Time Warner Entertainment, acquired Turner Broadcasting System in 1996, AOL, that merger was '01, Time Warner, because that previous one, the AOL one was disastrous, they went back to Time Warner in '03, they spun off its cable division in AOL in '09, Time Inc., where I used to work, they owned Sports Illustrated, was 2013, that was that spinoff, they got sold to Meredith. There's a [bleep] lot.
13:36 Speaker 04 Lost track.
13:37 Pablo Torre? There's a lot here.
13:39 Speaker 03 Look, I would suggest that it is often the case that high-powered executives think that they need to accumulate more scale, they really want to accumulate more power also, they want to be in other businesses, they have a certain kind of business hubris that they've figured out things so far, so they'll figure out things later, and they then end up with a bunch of MBAs and Mackenzie.
14:10 Pablo Torre? Lot of Mackenzie.
14:10 Speaker 03 Folks who come in and say, here's how we'll make it work, and they make a bunch of assumptions, the person who has hired them wants them to figure out how to do it, and they made some bad assumptions, they believed that things would happen that didn't happen, they did probably run into the cable TV, but they should have, '22, they should have known what was going on by that point, so I don't think that's it, I think they just thought, all those other mergers you've talked about, they didn't work either, it was the hubris of AT&T thinking, we can figure out how to be in the entertainment business, remember that?
14:52 Speaker 04 I do, but they were using their cable money, they were using subscriber money to power all of these thoughts, you need money to do everything they were doing, and when the mergers happen, it turns out that the person in charge, so I want to think about David and this merger, we're saying he's now part of the company, which is keeping the debt, which is a major thing, it's getting rid of sports, it's keeping the old guard.
15:14 Speaker 03 Wait, I thought it was the opposite, I thought that... The other companies took on most of the debt.
15:21 Speaker 04 No, the, no, I believe, I am 99.9, John. That the company with the debt is the company that David's got.
15:30 Pablo Torre? John is breaking out the glasses, Coca is fact checking for me. And while we do that, I have a question that was sparked by John's reference of McKinsey. Cause in college for me, you know, consulting gigs. Out of school, you get my friends showing up at Bain and McKinsey and BCG. Um, and they would walk into these corporations. That would hire these very high powered, very historic consulting firms to change things. And my question always, and my question for you guys is. How much of that is them actually asking the consulting firm, please tell us what to do? And how much of it is them telling these 20 something year olds and more, but like often young people.
16:15 Pablo Torre? We need you to be the reason and the cover for the thing we've already decided.
16:21 Speaker 04 The justification.
16:22 Pablo Torre? The, the excuse for us doing a million things and then undoing them and then doing them back again. And it being embarrassing, except for the fact that whoa, whoa, whoa, this was the consulting firm. We keep on hiring.
16:34 Speaker 04 You know, you say, we say embarrassing and I would say that the people who are running these companies. When their comp is, you know, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 million dollars. There was a great story that happened this week where the shareholders of WBD got together. And it was reported and, and commented on mistakenly. That the shareholders got together and said that they did not approve of David Zasloff's salary. I don't know if you saw that, John.
17:00 Speaker 03 Wait, who did not approve of it?
17:01 Speaker 04 Shareholders got together and they were asked as part of compensation committee process. Where do you stand on compensation for David?
17:12 Pablo Torre? Which was 51.9 million in 2024.
17:15 Speaker 04 And they came out with a, hey, we don't like that. That seems too high. And it was reported that that had some sort of impact on David's compensation. Here's a shocker for you, zero impact. It does not matter what the shareholders thought, felt, said, whatever the PR was. David Zasloff's compensation is set and agreed to by the compensation committee of the board. And the shareholders have zero say over it. And I found it interesting that shareholders were spreading the rumors like, hey, we've got the power here.
17:48 Speaker 03 Well, I have a different reaction, which is it's a shockingly high salary for what cannot be viewed as a successful performance to date, can it?
17:59 Speaker 04 Their shares, WBD shares are not outperforming the market. As a matter of fact, they're underperforming the market. So if that is the correlation, he is quite overpaid.
18:09 Pablo Torre? So John, speaking about David Samson, slid a piece of paper across the desk and tinted his hands because bullet point H in the doc, David Samson, is a correction. Because, do you want to read the quote?
18:24 Speaker 04 "It's safe to assume the majority of WBD's roughly $37 billion in debt will exist with the spun-off global networks, the new company's new president said. The not insignificant portion will remain with streaming and studios." But DBD, so David Zasloff is with streaming and studios?
18:44 Pablo Torre? Yes.
18:45 Speaker 04 So not insignificant portion, are we assigning that to be a dollar?
18:50 Speaker 03 Well, no, no, I'm assuming it's $37 billion. The gunner, and I do not know if that's the way his name is pronounced, I'm sorry.
18:59 Pablo Torre? I believe it.
18:59 Speaker 03 But he is taking the substantial majority. Now, a substantial majority would be 25?
19:06 Speaker 04 So majority to me is just 50 plus one.
19:10 Speaker 03 Well, it could be, but why would you call that a substantial majority? That's not a substantial majority.
19:17 Speaker 04 So it says it's safe to assume the majority, it didn't say substantial, fact check, and it says a not insignificant portion will stay, will remain with David.
19:25 Pablo Torre? All of this is kind of the point, by the way.
19:27 Speaker 04 Do you know why we're fighting about this?
19:28 Pablo Torre? Well, it's because nobody can say a clear sentence, either you guys or the people writing this stupid press release.
19:33 Speaker 04 The debt is a major thing. If you are splitting into two public companies, and David Zaslove is running one of them, and it is saddled with a disproportionate amount of debt, you are consigning that company to failure.
19:45 Speaker 03 But he's not saddled with a disproportionate, he's saddled with a minority portion of the debt.
19:51 Speaker 04 But he's also, it could be argued, getting a minority portion of the assets.
19:56 Speaker 03 Well, he's getting the assets that the future's based on.
19:59 Pablo Torre? I love it when a negotiation breaks out about a negotiation on this show.
20:03 Speaker 04 You're saying you'd rather be Zaslove in this, or Gunner?
20:06 Pablo Torre? Great question. Who'd you rather be? Who you got?
20:10 Speaker 03 Zaslove.
20:14 Speaker 04 I'd rather be Gunner.
20:15 Speaker 03 Because?
20:16 Speaker 04 Because Gunner has an opportunity, it's a new company, you get a benefit of the doubt, it's SpinCo. And the reason why you do SpinCo's is that there's a story that you tell that may not end up being true, but you've got the support of the board, you've got the support of the shareholders, saying, "Hey, we're gonna get a percentage of something that has an opportunity not to be burdened by the existing debt, and we can be free and fly."
20:41 Speaker 03 It is burdened by the existing debt. They take the majority. I don't know why you would think 50.1 and 49.9. If Gunner is saying, "We're taking the majority, but a not insubstantial portion," that's even a negative. He doesn't say, "They're taking a substantial portion," they're taking a not insubstantial portion. Right? Would you say-
21:07 Speaker 04 A not insignificant portion is two negatives, that makes it significant.
21:10 Pablo Torre? But hold on, but this is, but this is, but this is the stupidity of this entire conversation. So it is safe to assume that the majority of the 37 billion in debt load will exist with global networks, which are the Zaslove, sports rights and news stuff, CNN and others. A not insignificant portion feels like a very clear attempt to be unclear because it's going to be something that is, you know, uncomfortable, but also not nearly as much as the majority that the news and sports side of it is going to be, that Zaslav's side is going to be.
21:49 Speaker 03 No, no, that's it's the other way.
21:51 Speaker 04 Yeah, I don't, I had it the other way, but I could totally.
21:54 Speaker 03 No, no, and it's counterintuitive because you would think you would not attach the most debt to the company unlikely to grow.
22:07 Speaker 04 And I think that's what they did.
22:08 Speaker 03 Well, and it's because David is, I believe Gunner reported to David. So there's no way that Gunner is going to get a better deal than David.
22:19 Pablo Torre? Well, yes, so the whole idea is that Gunner is taking on more debt. David Zaslav is getting less debt. That is the very simple takeaway amid all of the mealy mouthedness of the statements, mine now included.
22:33 Speaker 04 Well, it's not that it's mealy mouthed, it's that these are complicated transactions. And by the way, these aren't done. It should be pointed out that what was announced was not a completed approved transaction. Much like when the merger was announced with CBS and Skydance. There's so many things that have happened, including an announcement this week that there are going to be further layoffs at CBS Paramount because they're not exactly sure when the deal is going to close, it was supposed to close by the end of June, and what it's all going to look like after. So these were complicated issues dealing with billions of dollars and millions of people.
23:07 Speaker 03 Uh, no disagreement, but I'll read you a little bit of gobble goo. By operating as two distinct and optimized companies in the future, we're empowering those iconic brands with a sharper focus and strategic flexibility they need to compete most effectively in today's evolving media landscape.
23:27 Speaker 04 Inspiring, that's a great quote.
23:29 Speaker 03 That, that's right up there with fourscore in seven years.
23:34 Speaker 04 Except that one really meant eighty seven years ago.
23:37 Speaker 03 But.
23:38 Pablo Torre? Also reminds you a bit of call me Ishmael.
23:40 Speaker 03 They just put two companies together, but in order to optimize them in the future, they must break them back apart. So why do they put them together to start with?
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24:32 Speaker 05 Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.
24:46 Speaker 06 People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.
24:57 Speaker 05 And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.
25:02 Speaker 07 One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.
25:08 Speaker 05 So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast, on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.
25:28 Speaker 00 With a Discover Cash Back Card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5% cash back at different categories each quarter on up to $1,500 in purchases. That's 5% cash back at different places each quarter, like grocery stores, on gas, and at restaurants. It pays to discover. Terms apply. See discover.com/five for details.
25:59 Pablo Torre? So this is, this brings me back to the consulting question, guys. Can I just return to that for a second? Because like how and why are very interesting questions to me. And I just want to know, when it comes to, John, I presume at some point you had to deal with like a consulting firm in some regard?
26:15 Speaker 03 Almost, almost never.
26:17 Speaker 04 Well, you personally?
26:18 Speaker 03 Me personally, I-
26:19 Speaker 04 Disney does-
26:21 Speaker 03 Disney does. I, I probably will be, um, forgetful. I did hire a few consulting companies. By the way, I hired somebody to help diversify the company.
26:33 Speaker 04 Great.
26:33 Speaker 03 I'd probably go to jail now for doing that, but I did.
26:38 Speaker 04 You were doing DEI before DEI.
26:40 Pablo Torre? You need a consulting firm to tell you, Dan Levitard. All right, fine.
26:44 Speaker 03 But what I, I never get it. I don't, well, I do know why. I never understood why people hire consultants.
26:55 Speaker 03 To me, it's like hiring somebody to do your media rights. Who knows your company better than you? Why is it, I realize you, and by the way, I read the book on McKinsey. I don't know, you read the book on McKinsey?
27:05 Speaker 04 No, but I-
27:06 Speaker 03 It is really, really awful.
27:09 Pablo Torre? The book or McKinsey?
27:10 Speaker 03 Both. I mean, well, the book is about how awful they are, right? They tell everybody the same damn thing, which is, yeah, we're going to come in and help you, and we're going to help you cut costs. And by the way, that's why they're hired. They're hired because the current management doesn't have the backbone to actually make these decisions themselves, face their own employees and say, sorry, uh, but we have to, we have to get leaner. So they bring McKin-
27:38 Speaker 04 Are you surprised by that? Most executives don't want to be delivering bad news. They don't, I mean, we're a little different in that way. I'm totally fine with being straightforward and honest with people.
27:50 Speaker 04 I understand that layoffs are hard. But the thing about McKinsey- And all consultants, you're talking to a person who's been blackballed because I built the stadium and bought and sold the team without consultants.
28:04 Pablo Torre? Hmm.
28:05 Speaker 04 And that doesn't happen. Everyone hires Allen and Company.
28:08 Pablo Torre? Right, another one. Who blackballed you?
28:11 Speaker 04 Uh, the groups of people who are consultants were very angry lobbyists. I did all public financing without lobbyists. We had one group called Poole and McKinley, but they didn't do much.
28:22 Speaker 03 So wait, what does blackball mean in this?
28:25 Speaker 04 It means they do not speak nicely of me and they tell other owners, hey, if you're selling your team, don't do it the way Sampson did it because you'll only get 1.2 billion. You have to do it the way we'll do it. And by the way, those deals fall apart, they don't happen. And you've got the Nationals, the Twins, the Angels, who can't sell at any price because these consultants have no way of putting a deal together that is reasonable or rational. So, the amount of money that's spent, it gets budgeted in a big company's budget. Disney has a huge budget line item for consulting and you bring them in and what they do, as John specifically stated, it's staggering what a grift it actually is.
29:06 Speaker 04 They come in and have a PowerPoint presentation of what they will do for you.
29:11 Pablo Torre? Oh, love a deck.
29:11 Speaker 04 It's the same deck.
29:12 Speaker 03 Full of gobbledygook.
29:14 Speaker 04 All they do is change the name. It's the most amazing thing.
29:18 Speaker 03 The, the other things in the book is that they work for competing companies, which strikes me and strikes the authors of the book as a bit of a conflict. Now, I want to go back. I thought you were suggesting that because you didn't use the consulting companies, they blackballed you from using them.
29:36 Speaker 04 No.
29:37 Speaker 03 Which would be interesting.
29:38 Speaker 04 No, they would, of course, like CAA has a whole department where they want to help with media rights deals.
29:44 Speaker 03 Right.
29:45 Speaker 04 And we negotiated our media rights deals without them. We didn't want to pay them a percentage. We wanted the money. We didn't want to, the whole thing about consulting.
29:51 Pablo Torre? Percentages, yes, you're paying fees.
29:53 Speaker 04 You're paying fees, you're paying monthly fees, then you're paying success fees. We, we would get offers all the time while negotiating with Cablevision and then negotiating with Fox, saying, hey, we think that you could get 30 million a year, but we'll only take money above 30 million that we'll deliver to you. So if we get 50 million, we want a percentage of that incremental 20. And I was like, forget it, I'll get the 50 million.
30:17 Pablo Torre? There is something fascinating to hearing this side of the conversation because as I say, a lot of my friends became consultants out of college. And what I admired was that they are trained in like rigorous, quantitatively oriented, data-driven, strategic thinking. And that is real. But it's also funny because it's like, those are the guys I'm getting high with. And you guys deal with them and they either tell you what to do or are the, again, face of a decision that you just don't want to have your fingerprints on. And both of those scenarios is very funny to me.
30:48 Speaker 04 Do you remember the Blue Ribbon Panel? Was a committee put together by Bud Selig and baseball to deal with steroids.
30:55 Speaker 03 Oh, my gosh.
30:56 Speaker 04 It had Rick Levin in it. It had Senator George Mitchell.
30:59 Speaker 03 Yeah.
31:00 Speaker 04 It was a pretty famous committee and it gave a report soon after I got into baseball. So I want to say the report was done in 2000, 2001, 2002, somewhere in there called the Blue Ribbon Report. No one's ever heard of that.
31:11 Pablo Torre? Wait, this is different from the Mitchell Report?
31:14 Speaker 04 This is, it was a blue ribbon.
31:16 Pablo Torre? Okay.
31:17 Speaker 04 You search it as blue ribbon and name names, but you did not get suspended.
31:20 Pablo Torre? The Commissioners Blue Ribbon Panel on Baseball Economics.
31:23 Speaker 04 That's what we called it, but it was really just about steroids. It was about figuring out who's doing steroids and why. It was 2000, so it was right when I got into the game, Koka. And what you do there, much like an economic benefit analysis for your ballpark, is you hire a company, you tell them exactly what you want the results to be, and then they go through their special Dr. Seuss machine and out comes a report that says what you want it to say. And I don't want to say, I don't want to be the one, I guess I'll be the face of selling these reports and these consultants, but you can bet that no report ever is released by Disney by consultant that is consultant-driven that Disney didn't approve.
32:05 Speaker 03 I would assume that's correct.
32:08 Speaker 04 Again, so you're not neutral in that.
32:11 Pablo Torre? Well, this is the whole idea of you've hired someone to independently. Oh, do they even claim independence in this case?
32:17 Speaker 04 Big time. NFL teams do it right now. They hire these people.
32:20 Pablo Torre? Law firms, they hire consulting firms.
32:22 Speaker 04 Please investigate my company for harassment. Dan Snyder had more people hired on the side to tell him about his front office, which is always funny to me.
32:32 Speaker 03 Just gave you more people to harass.
32:35 Pablo Torre? Allegedly, or in this case.
32:37 Speaker 04 Corn Ferry is a great one.
32:38 Pablo Torre? Corn Ferry, search firm.
32:40 Speaker 04 Do you know what Corn Ferry did? And I don't want to yuck on them, but okay, here we go. They were hired by baseball for Bud Selig's replacement as commissioner. And they were paid a ton of money to run quote unquote "the search", and it was Rob Manfred. Because they, it's not like, what you need to help with is if you can't identify people to do a job for you, and a search firm can find someone in the semiconductor business that works for a firm that you don't know about to help you how to split the atom. When you're doing a commissioner's search or a GM's search, Corn Ferry's hired to do GMs? Oh my god. It's so funny to me.
33:18 Pablo Torre? You're saying, you're saying that they're also Googling stuff. They're also using LinkedIn. They're also watching games, maybe.
33:27 Speaker 04 They can't do anything that we can't do as presidents or front office people.
33:31 Pablo Torre? But again, not to be maximum cynical about this, but it's hard not to be. It's also helpful when you, I presume, know who you want to hire and need to say, "We did an exhaustive search conducted by this reputable thing that is clearly reputable because you know them."
33:48 Speaker 04 That's what you do. That's what you're paying for.
33:50 Speaker 03 Remember in The Big Short where they discover that the rating agencies are
33:57 Speaker 04 This is big.
33:58 Speaker 03 paid to rate the company.
34:01 Speaker 04 That they rate.
34:02 Speaker 03 And of course, those companies pay them. So they have zero incentive. Remember there's a, there's a woman.
34:08 Speaker 04 They would just lose business. "Hey, you're a triple B minus. You're fired."
34:11 Speaker 03 There was, I forget, there was a woman in the, in the film who I think Steve Carell or somebody went to see, and he says, "Tell me how this works." And she's like, "Well, if we don't give them a good rating, they'll just go across the street." And get the other company. I forget what the names of those companies were, the bond.
34:28 Speaker 04 Standard and Poor's, Fitch. And what's funny is it gets press in all of the trade newspapers, et cetera. Hey, MLB's debt is now triple A minus, or the Mets are now a triple B plus. And everyone's looking like, oh, it means health. No, it means Stevie wants a casino.
34:48 Speaker 03 I'm gonna get my debt rated. See what, see if I got triple A.
34:53 Speaker 04 You do have it rated. You do have your debt rated. It's called your credit score.
34:59 Pablo Torre? That's what that is?
35:00 Speaker 04 Do you know what, do you know your credit score?
35:02 Pablo Torre? I, I know that sometimes I have to freeze my credit score because I've been hacked by various.
35:06 Speaker 04 She, like off the top of your head, you can't name your credit score?
35:09 Pablo Torre? I just know that.
35:09 Speaker 04 Am I the only one who can do that?
35:10 Pablo Torre? Of course you are.
35:11 Speaker 04 That's so weird.
35:12 Speaker 03 I have not the slightest idea what my credit score is.
35:16 Pablo Torre? It's excellent. I just know that it's excellent.
35:18 Speaker 03 By the way, I have no debt.
35:20 Pablo Torre? John just spread his arms out wide for those not watching on YouTube. The proudest I've seen him doing this show. He is debtless, undebted.
35:28 Speaker 03 No mortgage, no car loan, no nothing.
35:30 Pablo Torre? Cannot say the same.
35:34 Pablo Torre? Very different position to my life.
35:36 Speaker 04 Your credit score can still be excellent with mortgage and debt.
35:38 Pablo Torre? Oh, and again, for those listening, it is excellent.
35:40 Speaker 04 Cause people are listening.
35:42 Pablo Torre? And they absolutely are. And please don't hack me or downgrade my rating. But it is excellent and I am also carrying a mortgage, which was thankfully, sign pre pandemic, pretty good, pretty good rate. I digress.
35:58 Speaker 04 I'm still blown away that people don't know their credit score. It's one of those things, do you know your social security?
36:02 Speaker 03 Why would you need to know your?
36:04 Speaker 04 Eight oh seven.
36:05 Pablo Torre? Eight oh seven.
36:06 Speaker 03 Is that good?
36:07 Speaker 04 It works for me.
36:09 Speaker 03 But, but there must be a scale. How, where does the scale go from and do?
36:13 Speaker 04 There are people who have no credit score.
36:15 Pablo Torre? Okay.
36:16 Speaker 04 Does it go to nine hundred? I don't know what it goes to.
36:18 Pablo Torre? Highest achievable credit score is eight fifty.
36:21 Speaker 04 Okay, so I'm not where I need to be.
36:23 Pablo Torre? I'm in the eight hundreds. I know that. Cause I had to unfreeze my credit score.
36:27 Speaker 04 So now you know.
36:28 Pablo Torre? To disclose on this podcast recently.
36:30 Speaker 04 Didn't remember, but now you remember because you have to have a higher credit score than I do.
36:34 Pablo Torre? Definitely higher than eight oh six.
36:37 Speaker 03 What is the advantage? What is the advantage of knowing your score?
36:41 Speaker 04 What's the advantage of knowing your social security number? It could come up in conversation.
36:47 Speaker 03 I've never had it come up in conversation before this.
36:50 Pablo Torre? Are you the one who's hacking me?
36:52 Speaker 03 And by the way.
36:52 Pablo Torre? Is David Samson hacking me?
36:54 Speaker 03 Your social security number, you have to know because it gets cited many, many times. So if you, when you, you want to sign into your bank account.
37:03 Pablo Torre? Suddenly flee the country.
37:04 Speaker 03 I'm not putting in my credit score to get anything.
37:07 Speaker 04 I, I flash my credit score around from time to time. Like it did at a bar, at a bar. When you're meeting people, that's not like a subject of conversation.
37:18 Pablo Torre? I feel safe to say that that has never been a subject of any conversation, except for the conversations you have.
37:22 Speaker 03 When, when you're getting high with your friends, you talk about credit scores?
37:25 Pablo Torre? Oh, yeah. All the time. All the time.
37:27 Speaker 03 Because it's funny, right? I, I can see you guys giggling.
37:30 Pablo Torre? What is?
37:31 Speaker 03 Giggling. I'm 807.
37:34 Pablo Torre? But also like, how does?
37:35 Speaker 04 I love you guys.
37:36 Pablo Torre? I presume it's calculated in a very rigorous way and not the thing that it makes me think of, which is that like, you know, you get statistics.
37:43 Speaker 04 No, it's, it has to do with.
37:45 Pablo Torre? I want my statistical personal game log.
37:47 Speaker 04 You should, you should.
37:49 Pablo Torre? That's what I want.
37:49 Speaker 03 By the way, who?
37:50 Pablo Torre? I want to get stoned and think about my credit score.
37:52 Speaker 03 Who is the arbiter of credit scores?
37:54 Speaker 04 What? There are different companies who do it.
37:56 Pablo Torre? Exactly.
37:56 Speaker 03 Excellent. I could probably get 808. I'm going to go find me a company.
38:00 Pablo Torre? 808.
38:00 Speaker 03 That I'm not paying unless they give me 808.
38:03 Speaker 04 So the reason why you pay a monthly fee to these companies is that in case of a hack or in case of a theft identity, these people are on the case and you are protected. I strongly suggest the $19 a month or a year, I don't remember which, uh, to have that. Do you have that service?
38:21 Pablo Torre? You're paying for premium credit score rating?
38:23 Speaker 04 Well, no, um, no, no. Um, although I do have it at my fingertips whenever I want it, but no. And I, I may check it like email, but no. Because that's how you know if you're getting hacked or if somebody's.
38:35 Pablo Torre? This is why I had to freeze and unfreeze multiple agencies ratings.
38:39 Speaker 04 So this is real. You're making a joke of it, but people tend to get into your bank account or get your information.
38:45 Pablo Torre? In 2017, Equifax, if we recall that, major data breach exposed the personal information of approximately, and this is a fun number, 147.9 million Americans.
38:56 Speaker 04 I can't be the only one then, can I?
38:58 Speaker 03 I think, isn't that the number of people that Kristi Noem said whose lives were saved by the president's seizure of fentanyl?
39:08 Speaker 04 That would be purely a coincidence, but yes.
39:11 Speaker 03 Two, that's more than two thirds of every person in this country. It's, he's gonna get elected for a third term if he has saved the lives of 265 or 280.
39:23 Speaker 04 One zillion people, I believe, is the number.
39:26 Speaker 03 By the way, he's, he's sent the Marines to LA and they got the violent stop before they even got there.
39:33 Speaker 04 That is a much bigger discussion which we could have.
39:36 Pablo Torre? I feel so safe now.
39:37 Speaker 04 It's not ideal, what's happening. And it's scary if you have people, loved ones in LA. Cause they're not making it better and my daughter is there and it's not pleasant.
39:49 Speaker 03 I don't wanna see tanks on the streets of American cities.
39:52 Pablo Torre? We aggregate those two quotes. It's not pleasant, I don't wanna see tanks.
39:57 Speaker 03 No, it's, it's, there's no, anyway.
39:59 Pablo Torre? Not a high bar. I mean, like, I have so much to say about this that it's probably preemptively annoying to everybody listening.
40:06 Speaker 03 The last time troops were sent in was when the troops were sent in by the Kennedy administration to enforce the Civil Rights Act. I mean, think about that. It's like that Obama tape when he killed Bin Laden in the tape. When Trump announced that they'd killed somebody else who died like a dog. You'd think they'd go in through the front door.
40:27 Speaker 04 They didn't go in through the front door. Brought in for Kent State?
40:30 Speaker 03 That was National Guard brought in by the state. Right? That's what Newsom is saying is this is the governor's prerogative. The president is not getting.
40:39 Pablo Torre? Well, this is why my old classmate, by the way, speaking of my college years, Vivek Ramaswamy, gubernatorial candidate in the state of Ohio, has compared, uh, this week, Gavin Newsom, governor of California, to, wait for it, Alabama Governor George Wallace.
40:57 Pablo Torre? Because of this parallel of God has sent the tanks in and they're resisting. So, you know, not a, not a great economic indicator of the health of the larger enterprise that is the United States.
41:12 Speaker 04 It, it brings you back to the merger because when you have a part of your business that you know you have no path to profitability, and I don't want to be a doomsday person because I'm not in general, but there are those who think there's no path to improvement over the next three years. And much like with the company, if you know that you just can't see the path forward, you have to do something different or else you will be letting your shareholders down and putting your own comfort risk. And so what WBD did is it's something. And what shareholders want, what analysts want on Wall Street, they need something. They need a story to tell their institutional investors like, hey, this is no longer a sell, not even a hold, we're going to do a modest buy rating on this new split company
41:57 Speaker 04 in order to give them the benefit of the doubt that they're doing something right. That's how Wall Street works.
42:13 Speaker 05 Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.
42:27 Speaker 06 People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.
42:38 Speaker 05 And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.
42:43 Speaker 07 One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.
42:49 Speaker 05 So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeartRadio app today.
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44:11 Pablo Torre? So Spin Co.'s, right, now continue into the world of media and sports media and sports business. Obviously, what Comcast, NBC Universal has done, they spun off CNBC and MSNBC and Golf Channel into their own sports and news division called Versant. That's what that thing is now. The rest of it remains in that very parallel way, right? News and sports stuff, but in this case, actually, NBC News proper is still with. Anyway, it's getting more complicated than it needs to be. But the point is, this is a thing. It's a thing, and John, I've been sort of attuned to this ever since it was mentioned to me, what ESPN, when you were in charge of it, would be if it was spun off from Disney.
44:55 Pablo Torre? Which is to say, to restate what I always have to remind people, which is that you have said, when ESPN was at its peak, under you, it made more than the rest of Disney combined.
45:07 Speaker 03 I think what I'm saying or meant to say was it's bigger than the next two businesses combined. The parks and the studio.
45:18 Speaker 03 I'm not sure it was bigger than the rest of the companies. I may have misspoke.
45:22 Speaker 04 I think the interesting about spinning off ESPN is a story about franchises. So picture a business that has different franchise locations. And one of your franchise locations is not making money, but two of them are. Do you want to take the money you make from the two locations that are profitable? And support the one that is not profitable? Or do you just shut it down? Or do you spin it off so you don't have to support it and let it stand on its own or die on its own? And that's how franchisees think about life. And I am totally fine with, I don't want to take money. That's good money and throw it after bad money. Bad money is throwing money into a project that loses money no matter what you do. Why does that get supported? There are reasons.
46:07 Speaker 04 People want to be certain locations. They want to say they're in certain countries or certain cities. What Warner Brothers is saying and what the media companies are saying is. We can't really say that. Growing and the conglomerate that we've built has worked. So let's try it this way. It's the same assets, by the way. We're going to split it and we're going to have two share prices now. Because remember, two public companies. Now we have two measuring sticks. And the next step after that is if one of them is flailing. It's going to go bye bye. I think that is the reality of what all these mergers will end with. Which is a further consolidation, if not eradication of some of these businesses.
46:47 Speaker 03 I have no disagreement with that.
46:50 Pablo Torre? Well, that's why the rumors already are that the aforementioned less. No, more. The sports and news part of WBD. There is rumor, of course, that the natural partner would be another merger with Versant.
47:10 Speaker 04 In what you're doing there, think about it, you're taking two sides of two big companies that have become four companies. And what you're doing is a merger where it's now, so it's a, you're splitting and then you're reforming.
47:23 Pablo Torre? It's a real island of Dr. Moreau stuff.
47:25 Speaker 04 It's something. Because what happens is when those merge, someone has to be the one in charge, someone has to be the daddy. And you've got the, the level of ego, when you are doing mergers like this on who stays in charge, it's not as plain and simple as when it's David Zasloff and his CFO. When you've got two CEOs going at it, uh, who gets the power becomes the biggest point of negotiation, actually.
47:50 Pablo Torre? Right.
47:51 Speaker 03 The, it does strike me that NBC buying the sports assets of this new SpinCo might be a good idea.
48:02 Pablo Torre? Which is to say, Versant's assets, NBC's spun-off company, buying the global networks, WBD, SpinCo.
48:12 Speaker 03 Yes.
48:14 Speaker 04 The Justice Department, the government, the commissions would start to get involved because when you see consolidation at that level, the theory is it's bad for consumers. And that's the threshold they use when they decide what mergers. By the way, CBS Skydance may not be approved. Forget that it may not happen. It may not be approved by the government because of the lawsuit with Trump and CBS, et cetera.
48:37 Pablo Torre? I was gonna say, which brings us back to the government and the standard of, I mean, do we have an episode coming up about the neo-brand dicey in school of just like, of, of, you know, antitrust? Which is a whole other McGilla, to quote David Samson, but it also-
48:50 Speaker 04 That's Yiddish.
48:51 Speaker 03 McGill?
48:52 Speaker 04 McGilla.
48:53 Speaker 03 It is.
48:54 Pablo Torre? Ron McGilla. Um, all of this, though, makes me wonder if our, is the arc of justice bending towards venue sports? Are we just back, are we, is that what we're doing? Have we accidentally remade venue, the thing that we were making fun of 9,000 shows ago?
49:13 Speaker 03 No.
49:15 Pablo Torre? Are you sure?
49:15 Speaker 04 Hold on. What he's, I think if I could translate, what you're saying is that Venue was a combination of enemies coming together in an effort to be friends because the sum will be greater than the parts.
49:29 Pablo Torre? A skinny bundle.
49:30 Speaker 04 And so what really is happening is what you said, which is all of these streaming services, if you add up, we're back to this, and it matters for the consumer. If you're paying more, have you really saved anything by quote-unquote "cutting the cord"? Why wouldn't you replug in the cord? And is there a possibility that we will end back at that? And what these companies are betting with these mergers is no. That we are past cords, meaning we're past cable, and we will go knee-deep into streaming even if people are spending more money monthly.
50:03 Speaker 03 I believe that's what they've decided. I mean, you clearly burden the company that's not going to grow with more debt. They're going to be engaged in layoffs, cost cuts, and that's why there's some discussion about maybe TNT Sports gets sold. And remember, NBC was not in Venue.
50:27 Speaker 04 They were not.
50:28 Speaker 03 They were not in Venue.
50:29 Speaker 04 They didn't have an agreement.
50:30 Pablo Torre? Another key fact-checking clarification.
50:32 Speaker 03 And, and look, generally NBC runs very, it's a very well-run company.
50:41 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
50:42 Speaker 03 And their sports has always been well-run. And my guess is taking those assets would give them more scale to continue to matter more. It actually might be slightly good for consumers. I know that generally when things were consolidated, but since now you have too many companies that people won't, if they want to get all the sports, they won't. If you had less companies, you probably could be good for consumers.
51:23 Pablo Torre? As I remember, though, that the Olympics are staying with NBC proper, and Golf Channel is being spun off into Versant, and I have already lost track of what is where as I'm trying to fact check and correct myself. I just know that with certainty, maybe what I found out today is that there will be more consultants, and that it will not be easier to find where the hell sports are when I'm trying to watch them.
51:53 Speaker 04 Are we at the end?
51:55 Pablo Torre? Almost.
51:55 Speaker 04 That's why you're saying found, that's my trigger when you say what you found out that we're at the end of the show.
52:00 Pablo Torre? We got a couple of minutes.
52:02 Speaker 04 I want to tell you what I found out during the show. There's still time left.
52:05 Pablo Torre? Okay, well.
52:06 Speaker 04 It was a very premature.
52:08 Pablo Torre? Premature find outification?
52:09 Speaker 04 Yes.
52:12 Pablo Torre? I have a passage here that has been brought to my attention, speaking of finding stuff out. I want to give you a quote.
52:21 Pablo Torre? "I explored the idea of being a consultant and actually formed an LLC and spent a little time talking to people. Got several clients and resigned all of those clients in the first week because it took me about three days." There's at least a couple of people who laugh when they hear this. "It took me about three days to realize I'm not a consultant." End quote. Who said that quote?
52:42 Speaker 03 I said it one time.
52:43 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
52:45 Speaker 04 That's you?
52:46 Speaker 03 Yeah.
52:48 Speaker 04 God, we have good research. Way to go.
52:51 Speaker 03 No, no, I figured out.
52:52 Speaker 04 Did that sound familiar to you?
52:54 Speaker 03 Yeah, once you actually have spent as much time as I have running something, mostly consultant free, you don't want to go tell other people but have no power to actually.
53:11 Speaker 03 Have them do it. So I didn't want to tell other people what to do. First of all, it's not interesting to me. What's interesting to me is the holistic practice of
53:22 Pablo Torre? Bidding one more dollar than the richest
53:24 Speaker 04 Did you do the resume trick? You know the resume trick, right?
53:27 Speaker 03 No.
53:27 Speaker 04 So you don't have a gap in your resume? You start a consulting firm and you name it after your own initials. So it's JS Consulting. And coincidentally, it's open for business the day after you leave a place and closes for business the day you get to your next place.
53:42 Speaker 03 Well, it won't surprise you to know. I've never, I haven't had, I've never had a resume.
53:50 Speaker 03 No, I never had a resume.
53:51 Speaker 04 See, there's no difference. My resume is updated.
53:54 Pablo Torre? The greatest trick John Skipper ever pulled.
53:57 Speaker 03 Why would you update your resume?
53:59 Speaker 04 My resume is ready to go at any second since I was in high school.
54:03 Speaker 03 But at this point, you're gonna be trying to get a job that you don't have a resume for. You have a reputation and a track record for.
54:13 Speaker 04 So the reason I have a resume
54:14 Pablo Torre? You update your resume today.
54:16 Speaker 04 My resume has the most recent, nothing personal, it's two hours.
54:19 Pablo Torre? Yeah.
54:20 Speaker 04 It's ready to go. So here, the reason why is that
54:23 Speaker 03 You know, you're wasting a lot of time. Credit scores, updating your resume.
54:27 Speaker 04 I couldn't disagree more. I literally couldn't disagree more. Here's the wasted time when you don't do this stuff and then all of a sudden you have to start from scratch.
54:34 Speaker 03 Wait, let me tell you. I've never had a resume. I got
54:37 Speaker 04 You're gonna be sorry.
54:40 Speaker 03 It's kind of too late. I'm gonna be 70 years old this year. I, I, I got my first job
54:46 Speaker 04 I'm just getting going, baby.
54:47 Speaker 03 As an intern. And, um, and I stayed 11 years. And then I got the other job by calling a few people. And then I got recruited. They might have asked me to, maybe they did a resume for me and they asked me questions and filled it out, but what's the point?
55:08 Speaker 04 Okay. I'm not gonna argue with you because no one who's listening to this can possibly relate to what you're saying. I think more people relate to what I'm saying than what he's saying, and maybe that's just my blind spot.
55:21 Pablo Torre? What I, I have an updated, uh, conclusion for today's show. What I have found out today, what I found out today is that, um, as much as I thought that "I have no debt" was going to be the tagline for Rich Guys OnlyFans, I've never had a resume. I was just taking the top spot.
55:40 Speaker 04 It's not relatable in any way. So, I, it, it, there, everyone should have a resume. It's a bio. Do you have a bio?
55:50 Speaker 03 No.
55:51 Speaker 04 Wow.
55:52 Speaker 03 Well, the companies, some of the companies I've worked for have had bios.
55:55 Speaker 04 And you didn't approve it? And you don't update your bio? I have my bio ready to go too.
56:00 Pablo Torre? Sounds like a genuine confusion.
56:02 Speaker 03 If I had, I, I would embellish mine, I think, if I had approval.
56:07 Speaker 04 You get, you actually lose jobs that way. We would check, so...
56:10 Speaker 03 I didn't say I was gonna lie. I said I might embellish it.
56:13 Speaker 04 Yeah, but we'll check that.
56:14 Pablo Torre? Now we're back to etymology.
56:15 Speaker 03 Yeah.
56:16 Speaker 04 It's a major issue.
56:18 Pablo Torre? David, John, we've officially talked too much. Thank you both for doing this.
56:24 Speaker 03 We specialize in that.
56:25 Pablo Torre? Put that on a resume.
56:39 Pablo Torre? Pablo Torre Finds Out is produced by Walter Avaroma, Ryan Cortez, Sam Daywig, Juan Galindo, Patrick Kim, Neely Lohman, Rob McCray, Carl Scott, Matt Sullivan, Claire Taylor, Chris Tumanello. Our studio engineering by RG Systems. Our sound design by NGW Post. Our theme song, as always, is by John Bravo. And we will talk to you next time.
57:15 Speaker 00 With a Discover Cash Back Card, it's payback time when you earn cash back on everyday purchases. Activate and earn 5% cash back at different categories each quarter on up to $1,500 in purchases. That's 5% cash back at different places each quarter, like grocery stores, on gas, and at restaurants. It pays to discover. Terms apply. See discover.com/five for details.
57:39 Speaker 01 At Humana, our Medicare Advantage plans are easy to understand and easy on your wallet. Like offering more benefits than you'd get from original Medicare alone. And including dental, vision, and hearing coverage in every plan. And the best part is, every plan has a $0 or low monthly plan premium, which makes it easier to save, too. So this Medicare planning season, plan well with Humana. Learn more at gethumana.com. Humana is a Medicare Advantage HMO and PPO organization with a Medicare contract. Enrollment in any Humana plan depends on contract renewal.
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