The Ryen Russillo Podcast - Annual NFL QB–NBA Star Comps, Bryan Curtis on Brady’s Broadcast Debut and Debate Coverage, Plus Author Erik Larson

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

Russillo starts the show with his annual NFL QB–NBA star comparisons (0:31). Then he welcomes in Bryan Curtis to discuss Tom Brady’s broadcast debut and the best current broadcast team, and to break down the coverage of the presidential debate (23:27). Next, ‘The Demon of Unrest’ author Erik Larson joins the show to explain what led to the Civil War and share how he picks stories for his books (61:25). Plus, Life Advice with Kyle and Ceruti (96:58)! My pregnant wife is angry I bought Oasis tickets in London ... am I wrong? Check us out on YouTube for exclusive clips, live streams, and more at https://www.youtube.com/@RyenRussilloPodcast The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please visit www.rg-help.com to learn more about the resources and helplines available. Host: Ryen Russillo Guests: Bryan Curtis and Erik Larson Producers: Steve Ceruti, Kyle Crichton, and Mike Wargon Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We're doing it early this year, but I'm excited. Our annual NFL quarterbacks is NBA players comp, and we went back and revisited some from last year as well. We've got Brian Curtis on Tom Brady's debut and we did it. We went into the debate stuff, the reaction. He's just awesome to talk about all this stuff and we've got life advice. It's the Ryan Rosilla podcast presented by FanDuel.

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Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Little earlier this year, but we're gonna do it. It's our annual NFL quarterbacks as NBA players. Some are perfect, some are not. We'll open it up to discussion. We'll go back and look at the ones we did last year with Surrity at the end and see how many mistakes we made.

Lamar's still Embiid. I think we have some obvious ones here off the top, but the Embiid approval rating is probably going to take a bit of a dip unless he's just great this season and who knows, maybe they get to the Eastern Conference Finals. If they just got to the Eastern Conference Finals, I think that would be a win for the franchise considering we know Embiid's playoff problems. And the same thing for Lamar, great regular seasons, more so on Lamar, I think for the team, both and statistically. But the stats just drop off in the playoffs. It's a very real thing. Lamar's completion percentage goes down. The QB

ratings from 98 to 76, his touchdown interception ratio is 126.45 in the regular season, six to six in the postseason. Embiid, all the numbers go down except for rebounding. It's about the same. All the metrics go down. Lamar's two and four of the playoffs. I do wonder if Lamar and Embiid will suffer from voter fatigue. If Lamar had an even better statistical season than he did last year, again, you didn't have the Mahomes part of it. Maybe Allen is the momentum guy here with feeling

like they don't have as many weapons, but again, it's week one, so we don't really know that any of this is necessarily true. But the way MB got off to such an incredible start last season, Last season, I mean, statistically, he was off the charts and you were wondering, like, is it going to be so impressive that you're just going to have to vote for him for MVP again? I always felt like there's voter fatigue in both leagues, depending on what that post-season moment and then the voters will spend all next year going, okay, I know what the stats are, but how come this guy's a little bit better? I think Lamar's overall approval rating is probably higher than Embiid's as far as populator.

I know Embiid kind of hammers home that message that he's the most hated player in league. I don't think that's true necessarily at all, but it's probably going in the other direction because in basketball and with quarterbacks, if you're awesome and you don't win, we start to ask questions. What else? Rogers, I had to work through this one. LeBron's just too easy and LeBron's better at his thing than Rogers is at his. How about most important ring? Yanis. imagine if Rogers didn't have a ring How we would talk about him I'd argue Janus's ring Well, maybe it's I don't know if it's more important than yokich's

That's open for debate too if you're gonna win all these MVPs, but he didn't have the ring But Janus I mean they were kind of right there neck-and-neck all the time the MVP stuff But I just think Janus would be looked at. The packaging of Janus would be completely different. And the packaging for Rogers, if we get to the end of this thing, if it was without a ring, we just would talk about them differently. Kyrie's probably another lazy cop.

What about Durant? I went with this one, Rogers-Durant. You can build both up because they're awesome at what they do. You could also kind of tear them down. You can try to discredit the ring for Durant. The ring count on that side because of Golden State. You can't really do it with Green Bay, but if you're looking at Rogers saying,

well, he's just as good, if not more talented physically than Brady and Manning and all these other contemporaries, but then you just go, yeah, but like, we're not allowed to do that. I think the best exercise is what would you tell your kids? A little tougher for me, but you say like, all right, Cypher, come over here. Dad, tell me about Aaron Rodgers and Kevin Durant. I was at recess today, dot, dot, dot.

You go, look, both are two of the best to ever do it at the positions. I think that's the fairest way to go about it. Tua, Trey Young. Both fan bases hate when you don't like their guy. This could have been Justin Fields, but Trey Young is a thousand times better than what Justin Fields has done on the field, right? The home team fan base defends both guys to the death. Both really, really good, but something is wrong. Everything is built around both players, which is actually good and gets you the best out of Tua,

where I think on the other side for Atlanta, it's become a negative. Mahomes, there is no Mahomes. As great as Jokic is, he's not Mahomes. There's no, there is right now, you hear somebody else do this, there is no Mahomes in the NBA. Russell Wilson is Grant Williams. Pause for applause. Caleb Williams, little early. It's only been a week, but let's make this one personal. It doesn't work out. Let's just say he has a disappointing rookie year, which again, some of these

quarterbacks, they can have terrible starts statistically. We know the stories and then it clicks. Okay. But let's just say Caleb Williams is a bad rookie year You know, they end up going six and eleven doesn't win rookie of the year all that kind of stuff and we're left this off season Go. Hmm. This wouldn't be would be I'd say personally similar to scoot Henderson. It'd be my own little scoot Henderson deal Love Caleb love scoot But the great thing about rookies is they get to play other seasons

It's incredible. You look it up. It happens all the time. Play as a rookie. Then that next year's called your sophomore season. Anthony Richardson. I'm going to bring Giannis back into the mix, but I'm going to go early Giannis. I'm going to go vine Giannis where there were these moments in games with Giannis where you couldn't believe what you were seeing.

But the overall game, if you watch it start to finish, now look, I think everything worked out for him as one of the best players in the world. But it felt, I would say, if you go back to that first season with Giannis, it wasn't like he had the expectations of a number one pick or some of these other guys, but it was like, does he know what he's doing? Like, I don't think he does, but man, when it is good, it is incredible. And when it's not, but we're not gonna post those plays

because who cares? He's this freak from overseas. Richardson in the clips is absurd. We're still watching that first throw from Sunday. We can't believe he got that much on the football, but he did, but he also completed nine passes in a football game. Daniel Jones, Jordan Pool, anybody? This is our guy. Cool. Washington, it's not really their guy.

They have other guys. It's not the same commitment to Jordan Poole. Jordan Poole is not dictating the future of the Wizards the way Daniel Jones is while the incumbent quarterback. But throws the ball to the other team. Poole cost another 95 million. Jones cost another 110 million. But he doesn't really cost another 110 million. So I'm not being

totally fair. A lesser podcast host would just ignore the reality that giants can get out of this deal after the after this year if they want to after get out of this contract. So that's not it's not 95 to 110 million, but it would have sounded good if I want to be less thorough. CJ Stroud, Anthony Edwards, both young guys. Oh, cool. Glad you're here.

No, but the hope and excitement that you get to feel when you have a guy that can really be like, do we have a guy? Plenty of teams have guys. Let's say, I think our guy's pretty good. But what if you have, what are you, what if you are on the cusp of something incredibly special that is going to change your mood every season

for the next decade? The anticipation of that is something I'm actually jealous of, all right? And I think there's some similarities there. Because is it ahead of schedule? I mean, it's been around for a couple of years. It certainly was ahead of schedule with Stroud for last season.

But I think when you think of the face of the franchise and the hope behind it, there are some similarities. Now, the only thing I would say post-Olympics, but I don't know how much we really care about the Olympics when it's not the Olympics. Could there be any lingering Q rating ding for Ant? He talked a lot, wasn't really involved if they were to lose in the playoffs earlier than expected.

I mean, it just, I don't even think that has anything to do with the Olympics. I think it is the natural course of things. Like I'm telling you right now in three years, if San Antonio isn't doing anything in playoffs, there will be someone on your favorite TV or radio show or podcast saying, Wemby, I thought this guy was supposed to be good.

Like what's the deal? So Stroud is not in danger of the potential approval rating ding that Ant could be looking at. But again, doesn't really have anything to do with the player as much as it has to do with us. Jalen Hurts, Jimmy Butler. One Super Bowl, one finals appearance. Oh wait, two finals appearance for Jimmy Butler.

Poor notes. Post their championship appearances, we probably are rounding up a bit on who they are. In comparison to other players. Hertz going into 23, it was understood he was the best quarterback in the NFC was like he's already the best quarterback in the NFC. I guess he is. Everybody else is saying it. I gotta go along with it.

The Hertz one not as ridiculous. Butler we had a very hard time with because of these incredible playoff runs in series from him. We should probably say series because there were times where he would slow down but he was so incredible what against Milwaukee he was so good against Boston when they ended up playing Denver in the finals two years ago or two seasons ago that then you're you're like well he's not really ever thought of as a top 10 guy though. I don't think Jimmy Butler is, but then when you say it while he's in the finals again,

you're thinking. Yeah, but I keep saying this guy's not a top 10 guy in my wrong note. Well, the other thing too is that Jimmy doesn't play in the regular season. I would say that Jimmy Butler is a challenging guy to have your team built around and I've never heard that about Jalen Hurts. So I actually am going to say no on this one. Bryce Young, Marvin Bagley. Bryce went one, Bagley went two. But early on you're like, fuck. And then somebody might be like, hey, how's the other guy doing that we didn't take?

Speaking of Luca, Trent Dilfer, thick, white, fiery? No, also a reach. We're not gonna allow that one. Make sure that's not in the breakout video. Brock Purdy has signed the white side. How did you come up with that one? Well, there's this lingering doubt.

But then when you look at the numbers with Brock, you go, these numbers are nuts. Pat Riley, Eric Spolstra, Kyle Shanahan. Whiteside actually wasn't good. The numbers were. The advanced metrics were off the charts, but Whiteside wasn't good. Brock Purdy is better than the son Whiteside. good. The numbers were the advanced metrics were off the charts but white side wasn't good. Rock Purdy is better than the sun white side. I thought about Go Bear. Somebody who's pretty good but just at the same time it's like why do you keep telling me this guy's good. I don't know that either of those worked. Here's one that does work. Trevor Lawrence, Cade Cunningham. Trevor Lawrence, Cade Cunningham.

High profile, the money, the expectations, but littered with moments of, could this actually not be the guy? Cade, I thought, had a good year, despite how atrocious everything was. So I still feel better about Cade. Actually, I think I still feel good about Trevor Lawrence, but maybe if I had to pick one of the two, I'm fine with Cade.

But if you look at the profile and the conversation around the two, actually some similarities. All right, last one. Josh Allen, Caitlin Clark. I think that's my best one. All right, let's bring in Saruti.

Recap a bit from last year. No one thought they were getting a Brock Purdy to sign a Whiteside one today, but I think I've retracted it a bit. No, can I give you an ultra? I actually wrote down a Brock Purdy one that I think is decent. What about Jalen Brunson?

Later pick. That might be the winner. Improbable rise, both smaller dudes. I mean, Purdy almost won the MVP last year. And I think some people were, you know, I mean, Brunson had an incredible year. I think that's the comp. I think that's the winner. All right, we've all agreed.

You have changed. That's really good. No, no, I don't want to beat that. I just, I'm just set with myself that I didn't see it. No, it's okay. I got all the angles. Yeah. Well, I think I was trying to be funny with the son of Whiteside because he doesn't look like Brock Purdy. I like to change him up so it's not just visual, visual.

Yeah, yeah. But I love the later pick coming out. But I think there's still doubt about Purdy in a way that like, I don't know who's left on the doubt train with Brunson. You're right. I mean, maybe, maybe can he be the number one guy to win an NBA championship?

Like if you want to play that doubt game, like I would still, if that conversation happened, I'd allow it, you know, I wouldn't go, no way. Absolutely Brunson can be the one for NBA title team. That's a very short list. I say it all the time. I don't know if he could be, but I love the comp. It's one of my favorite ones,

and I didn't even do it, so well done. I enjoy the Lawrence Cade one, because I feel like both guys I still really like, but there's a little bit of why aren't you better? But there's also these external factors, I feel like for both guys, there's built-in excuses that are fair, unfair, but I still like both guys. That's that. I think that was my favorite one. Interestingly you pivoted if we want to go back to some of the other ones. So yeah last year you had

Jokic and Mahomes. You said nobody's Mahomes. I think it's correct. You had the Lamar and Bede one. You changed Josh out. Last year Josh Allen you had Luka Doncic which is kind of interesting. I was listening back to the segment this morning and you said if either win a title we'd kind of have to talk about theić, which is kind of interesting. I was listening back to the segment this morning and you said if either win a title, we'd kind of have to talk about the belt conversation, which is interesting because that was pre-Dodžić and the Mavs making the finals. So, little interesting there.

Yeah, I like that one. I think it still works. My Josh Allen, Caitlin Clark thing is probably based on the Caitlin Clark Rookie of the Year discussion. The discourse, yeah. The discourse, yeah. Yeah, I love the discourse. I love when that, I love how narrative became like the new definition of

narrative should be things that people say about the thing I care about that are probably right, but I don't want to believe that they're true. Yeah. Uh, I saw some Josh Allen discussions last year going into the playoffs that were atrocious on television. And I think the Caitlin Clark rookieookie of the Year debates that were happening when it was still actually like you could, I can't wait to see, I'm going to go look up how that boat broke down.

Um, like when I got hit with standings, they're going to play a part in it. I just went, this is so moving on, but standing's like 10 games in this season too, it wasn't just like, you know, we're not even halfway through. It's like, oh, by the way, both teams, both teams were under 500 and I think the fever were like a half a game behind. Correct. Correct. Anyway, good times. You had Kyrie Aaron Rogers last year.

I do like, I think the Katie one is better cause I, you know, I just don't carry as good as he is. I don't think he's on Rogers level last year. I also think it's like the whole thing, right? You know, it's, it's complicated dudes, the step back. Yeah, but I mean like the step back and look at like an almost two decade long awareness of two guys that really at the end of the day, like if you want to be mean, fine. But if you want to be right, you're you're probably

going to explain both players is like, yeah, those guys were were nasty, which is correct. You had Bryce Young, you talked about K, but then you landed on Scoot last year. So that actually does hold up pretty well. Oh, wait, wait. Okay, so if you had to buy shares of Scoot or Bryce Young right now, what would you tell your advisor to do?

The correct answer is Scoot. Maybe I'm just gonna be stubborn, but I don't know man. Because I, McShea on the Monday pod was talking about like you know him in a different situation and like who knows if he goes to Houston he's not CJ Stroud. I just refuse to believe that Bryce is the worst quarterback I've ever seen and that's what he is like that's what the tape shows but like I just yeah maybe I'll just be incredibly wrong. He he's he seems smarter than that in college and just like exactly I would agree. Yeah, that's yeah

Yeah, the worst quarterback you've ever seen is not something I think many people had on the scouting report for him So yeah, I I kind of in the line with you even if I don't want to talk about it anymore Yeah, so scoot is the right answer, but I don't know I'll pass on that you had CJ Stroud So this year would you have for him you had ant which I think is the right answer last year yet, Chet Okay, I don't know. I feel like you think it's disrespectful of who of CJ CJ CJ is a whole nother stratosphere than chat. Did I make any good points? Yeah, I mean, you know, I think this was also we did this in December and Yeah, I mean, you know, I think this was also we did this in December. And you know, you kind of talked about like, you know, he's contributing to winning, which

CJ did right off the bat to obviously as a rookie. But I don't know, to me, to me, CJ is like a one a future superstar. I think Chet is a really, really good player, but he's not that level, which I think you'd agree with. Right. Well, I mean, look, just going to get to keep playing for a while. But as far as his importance to his franchise versus CJ's, there's no, no, there's no point in even

discussing it. Yeah. What's the next one you had Justin Fields, you had Joe and green, which I think actually flatters fields now, maybe because of the way Joe and greed added last season. I don't know. Yeah, it doesn't work anymore anymore but it was two top picks potential face of the franchise not off to great starts and Jalen had much better moments and fields is on another team so it doesn't work anymore. You had Mac Jones James Boknight last year. Yeah which is not not, I don't know, anybody with that scenario?

Yeah, I think that one still holds. Wish I'd brought it back. And the last one you had, you couldn't find a Herbert Comp and you just said Prime CP3 tentatively, which was great. Which, you know, I don't know. Still works. Could I offer up a, I have two more really quickly for you. Yeah, you're so good on the party one. Absolutely. What about Dak and Tatum? The case being like, obviously the title for Tatum complicates it, but both guys, great numbers, win a lot of games, but they just kind of feel like they're lacking something to

be in that elite, elite category. Like I'm not a, I'm not a Dak sucks guy. I think he's a really good quarterback. I think it's not even controversial. And I think Tatum's really good, but there's just something about both of their games. I feel like that's, they're just right below that elite level and I don't think they're ever really going to get to that elite, elite spot. So that's why I had the Dax Tatum.

All you're really asking though is, Hey, Dak, could you be the second best quarterback in the NFL, which is a huge ask. And for Tatum, who's got all these all NBA first team finishes and you look at the MVP voting and where it could go. Like if Tatum were fourth or fifth next year in the MVP voting, you wouldn't be surprised by any of that.

So now you're asking Tatum, can you be at the level of Jokic, Giannis, and Luka? It's a pretty big add. So even if you, as you say it, you push back on it, I think it's a really good comp based on the universal hesitation in the NFL and NBA fan worlds of non Celtics people or non-Cab or non-haters of both teams to just go like, all right, Tate them, give me your quickest response on like who you think he is.

And it's probably, but yeah, you know, he's really, really good, but he's not, he's not that guy. Which I don't think. Yeah, but guys. Yeah, but against the highest possible grading standard you could have. Which then feels like it becomes unfair.

And I didn't even add in use that you mentioned both marquee franchise guys. Last one I had, I think this one's fun too. I had Kyler and Donovan Mitchell. Small guys, some drama around them, and when they're freaking nasty, they are nasty. But I don't know that I get that for the entire season all the time.

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Okay, we are running through, it's called couch research money. All right. And we're trying to figure out three different ways to attack the NFL board. Uh, one and two last week, the only one that won was fading the public. So if I go early looks at this, it looks like Brown's plus three and a half are a very public team at Jacksonville. That number's three, three and a half. I'm looking at, I think I like the Packers plus three and a half, plus four and a half at open,

plus three and a half at home, even without Jordan Love. So I think everybody's gonna be betting Colts. And then we'll get our Sharp and our, we'll just put it together. We'll package it together for you, a year long standings, we'll see how we go. I've never before wanted to be in second place as bad as I want for this.

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Restrictions apply including token expiration. See terms for both offers at sportsbook.fanDuel.com. Gambling problem call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. When you're working out at Planet Fitness, it's a judgment-free zone, so you can really step up your workout. That's why we've got treadmills. And our team members are here to help, so you can be carefree with the free weights. They're also balance balls, bikes, cables, kettlebells, and T-Rex equipment, but like,

no pressure. Get started at Planet Fitness by September 13th for $1 down and then only $15 a month. Hurry, you don't want to miss this $1 down sale that ends September 13th. $49 annual fee applies. See Home Club for details. I'm in a good mood and I'm in a good mood because Brian Curtis is joining us. From the Ringer, you can check out his podcast on Brady, the debate, press box, I was listening to this morning, preparing, and he's

just a great dude to talk to. So what is up my friend? It's good to see you, Ryan. It's been a while. Yeah, it has. Um, anybody that knows me knows that if I don't talk to you that often when I call, you're probably going to get a three minute segment off the top of the call.

I'm aware of it, but I know it's not the greatest attribute. that if I don't talk to you that often when I call, you're probably gonna get a three minute segment off the top of the call. I'm aware of it, but I know it's not the greatest attribute, you know, things I'm trying to work on. But Curtis gets those calls and be like, okay, hold on. And then you know you just have to lay out for like the first three minutes. So I'm gonna let you go here first. I wanna get to Brady, I wanna start there.

The simplest way to ask is what did you think? And then we'll go from there. The thing I was most disappointed in was that for most of that game, he sounded like Tom Brady, the quarterback standing behind a podium, answering a question from the beat guy at the Herald. It never got into that level of analysis. We were promised, which is looking inside Tom Brady's brain. And it really started, I'm sure you're watching this game, Texas, Michigan on Saturday, he comes on at halftime with Joel Clatt and Clatt asked him about Micah Parsons and Miles Garrett,

two guys Brady played against. Micah Parsons sacked Brady in his very last game as a quarterback. And Brady had this very, very generic answer that again, he could have given during a press conference when he was a player. It was almost like he was trying to be unquotable, which is not the job of being an announcer. And that to me was the biggest disappointment that the performance stuff fitting in those little 10 second windows, I can deal with that. But I was a little surprised that he didn't get deeper and he wasn't more

interesting during the broadcast. Would you agree that he almost, I thought he was nervous. I mean, it was weird to think of Tom Brady, but you're in a different element. Everybody's watching. There's been this, we've never had a buildup for a color commentator like this. I mean, we've known about this for such a long time.

So there's a lot of anticipation. He's probably feeling that and then it's real and it's just about reps. And so somebody that was the opposite of that as a player to see him in the setting where, and I would like to think that I have a little bit more of a read on it only because of doing the job where you can kind of tell where somebody's just off a little in the beginning. That's where it started. And it was funny listening to you on the podcast where you can kind of tell where somebody's just off a little in the beginning. Uh, that's where it started. And it was funny listening to you on the podcast, you were talking about him as an announcer as if he was the quarterback.

It was like third series, you know, kind of got into a rhythm, settled in a bit. And I was thinking of the parallels of like, we're talking about him as the broadcaster, however, I don't think it was as bad as maybe it's being made out to be. And the fact that I would imagine he's just going to get better at it because he's a really smart person. It's not as bad as it's being made out to be. It was fine. You know, we do this with announcers, right? You are the

best announcer in the history of the world, or you're the worst announcer in the history of the world. And Tony Romo has actually visited both of those places within a period of five years. So I start to get suspicious when we say you're the best of the worst. And like, to me, it was, again, to go back to the football thing, it was like rookie quarterback, it was first game,

it was looking around the defense with big wide eyes, except he's looking into his telestrator and being like, I have 10 seconds to talk, is that right? Uh, am I going to have to just stop this thought midstream and let KB go and call this play? You know, that's what it felt like. I think, you know, you get to week like three or four. That's when you should really start to see something like what they wanted. I mean, that's that to me. If I didn't see it by that point, if it was like this, then I would start to get nervous.

As somebody that, you know, in the building, like I had at ESPN, where the high profile former athlete comes in, and everybody's really excited. It's like, okay, we've got a Hall of famer here and he's going to be at the desk. And then you watch the pregame show and you go, oh my God, like this is, this is a disaster. Okay. Now there are some people that get better. But there's also people like it's a, it's a weird job because I think it's, I think it's hard to be great. And I think it's really easy to be awful. And this is a little different because you're the number one

broadcast team immediately on Fox. I'm convinced half the guys that wanted to come into Bristol to do some studio stuff, we're just thrilled to kind of get out of the house and then still be on TV. So I don't know that they cared about the job as much as we're all led to believe that Brady cares about the job. Cause I could just tell with certain people, I would really go, this guy doesn't care, like he, he just doesn't care. He doesn't want to get better. about the job as much as we're all led to believe that Brady cares about the job. Cause I could just tell with certain people, I would really go, this guy doesn't care.

Like he just doesn't care. He doesn't want to get better. He doesn't want to do it. He's just thrilled to kind of be in the mix here a little bit. But there is this rush to assume because you're this amazing player with this great resume that that's going to translate immediately to television. And I think that's just a, a huge assumption that television is that

easy, that it's, it's that seamless. But I guess maybe we've seen it a few times. Maybe Romo is the example of where it felt seamless. Now you're right. It seems like his approval rating is completely different from where it was at the beginning, which is a really hard thing to do. It is, you know, the, the skill to me was there's two things. One is like, do you have interesting things

to say about football? We can probably assume that the answer is yes for Tom Brady. Some athletes just don't, you know, they were awesome. They're brilliant at the game. And they just don't have it in them to talk brilliantly about the game. And I think the second skill is, Ian, can you watch a play

and in that 10 second window, get that brilliant thought out of your head and out of your mouth. That's the hardest thing. You know, like Troy Aikman, again, we love to pretend all these guys are exactly as they've always been. Troy Aikman's gotten a lot better at that over the course of 20 plus years in the broadcast booth. You know, I remember sitting in a booth with Joe and Troy

and the striking thing is Joe is still calling the play and Aikman's already rewinding on his screen in front of him to figure out what happened. Like he's already doing that and the ball carrier has not been tackled. But he's going back, back, back to figure out what happened. What can I say? That's just like a hard mechanical act to do.

So just imagine Tom Brady in there. He doesn't have what Aikman had, which was Brady in there. He doesn't have, you know, what Aikman had, which was games in Europe. He doesn't have what Olson had. Olson called games when he was still a player, called a bunch of XFL games that we've now completely forgotten. He's basically in there for the first time

minus a few practice games. And he's got to go and go, huh, huh, huh, go back, go back, figure it out, and then get it out of his mouth. And that's why you heard Kevin Burkhart that whole game, just trying to pull it out of him, right? Set him up, set him up, set him up. It wasn't quite to Rico with Drew Brees of that playoff game where he had the shock paddles and he was trying to like bring Drew Brees to life during the game. But Burkhart was like, I just got to ask him, right?

Is zone defense or man defense? What did you prefer? I'm just going to pull the material out of him while he gets used to the speed of the game. Yeah, the man's zone thing was a really like instinctive thing from Burkhardt. Like I remember hearing that, be explaining and thinking, okay, you know, I know what he's trying to do here.

Because Brady, like nobody's going to feel bad for Tom Brady. You walk, but he does walk into kind of a perfect storm of events here. It's a massive contract. It's a 10 years, 375 million. I don't know if that's one of those weird NFL contracts. I don't think those, I think they're a little different from television. You're replacing Greg Olson who immediately became kind of everybody's favorite.

And then I think Olson got a bump because of all of us being aware that he was then going to get replaced, be like, how great is this guy? He's terrific. We've had him on. And then I think Olsen got a bump because of all of us being aware that he was then going to get replaced. We're like, how great is this guy? He's terrific. We've had him on. He's great on the Super Bowl. He has a rawness to him too that works.

And then he's just on top of everything as well. And then there was, I don't know that I've ever seen this before. When the Brady commercial started with all the different versions of Brady talking to present day Brady and then young Brady looking at Tom Brady, I was expecting like, and at Goldman Sachs, you know, like what, which ad is this? And I, and it was like, this is an ad for him, the broadcaster. And let's face it. People just don't like that. People don't like to add all of these things together into the equation. And if he wasn't brilliant, it was going to be rough for him.

So the thing that producers say sometimes they say we get a new guy in the booth and he's just talking. Greg Olson, when he got in the booth, he was just talking, just talking. Tony Romo 2017, like he didn't know the rules. Remember he's like talking. Greg Olson, when he got in the booth, he was just talking. Just talking. Tony Romo 2017, like he didn't know the rules. Remember he's like, am I supposed to stop talking when the snap happens? Am I supposed to hand it over to Nance? And producers love that because there's like a natural quality to it.

You're not repeating the cliches that you've heard your whole life. Cause some of these guys get in there and they're like, Oh, I'm supposed to talk like an announcer. Let me give you like the 10 dumbest things that an announcer has ever said. The question with Tom Brady, that's so fascinating to me is he, has he ever been just talking in his life for 20 plus years? Has he ever had a moment outside of like with his family or with Don Yee or somebody where he can be like, I'm just speaking and I'm doing it loosely.

And I don't care what people think. and I'm not too worried about it. Like, you know, he just may not have had that in his life in a way that Olson and even Romo as quarterback of the Cowboys did. So that's an interesting question too. Can he tap that? Does that exist within Tom Brady? And I don't know the answer to that.

Well, there was something that happened a few months ago that makes me think it could happen. Cause when it was announced, I'm like, okay, you know, maybe, but it's probably a mistake to just assume the way we've assumed the past, the way television programmers, the highest level executives have made big bets on people that are just famous and they're superstars. And I think television decisions default to the player resume. And then they just hope they can figure it out.

Right. Would you agree with that? That it's, it's, it's not a Fox. Yeah. Yeah. Fox is like Derek Jeter is a famous Yankee. Derek Jeter needs to be on Fox and we'll figure out the announcing part. Yeah. But I mean, yes, Ben did it with Jason Witten.

As well. I mean, I think Fox is just another level. It's big copy. It's Jeter. It's Brady. It's Akeman back in the day, right? They're just like Whitten as well. I mean, I think Fox is just another level. It's big copy. It's Jeter, it's Brady, it's Akeman back in the day, right? They're just like, they're hunting the biggest of big stars.

A-Rod, there you go. Yeah, okay. But he was on with Cowherd, and I think this was a couple months ago, and Cowherd was trying to get him to say something about the relationship with Bill, Okay. And I knew what Cowherd was doing. He wanted the sound bite of like Brady made him like, yeah, some days it was tough. And Brady took it and pivoted, but then explain the working relationship and that here's

what I did. And he was incredibly specific. And he told this story about I would not go into a game where if we lined up against the defense and they gave us a look where I knew pre-snap, we didn't have an answer. And some other coaches would just go, hey, credit to the defense on that one. They get the win. And he'd be like, no, I'm not conceding the play

because of the look ahead of time. We need some kind of adjustment. So let's go through every potential look here and let's make sure we're ready to have some sort of adjustment. So what he did was one, he wasn't going to criticize Bill on Cowhert's show, but in pivoting, he told this incredible story that was like really interesting and gave you this depth and also gave you another example of why Brady is so good at what he had done as a quarterback. I was like, okay, that's really good. Now you can't do that for three hours on a game broadcast, but if you can give me like two, maybe three of those, that's where I think like the mechanics of the plays, I assume he'll figure that out. But if you can give me a couple stories in that dead period, something like he did with cowherd that day,

like when I saw that clip, I went, all right, that's really in depth, that's really interesting that this proves perhaps maybe he doesn't just wanna be the vanilla guy, because at some point you're gonna have to say some stuff. And it's fascinating because the great thing about New England is that everybody was on the same pitch because no one wanted to say anything. I totally agree.

And if we go back to the quarterback metaphor one more time, the easiest plays you could call for Brady are half dozen times a game, dozen times a game, start a sentence with when I was playing, comma, just do it. And look, it can be an in-depth story like that. Like he could have told during the second half of that Cowboys Browns game, which was pretty terrible. He would have had some time, right? He had some room.

He would have had some time. He could have let that story go. But there were also moments, like you remember there was a little moment where Deshaun Watson air mailed a pass out of the end zone. And Brady said something like, you know what, every time I did that, my receivers and coaches would get on me and say,

just throw it up there and give me a chance. And I was like, nope, I'm airmailing this thing. I'm not, you know, going to introduce that 5% chance. Something weird is going to happen and get the ball picked off. He didn't totally explain it fully, but there can be little moments like that where you're just like, Oh, that's an interesting insight about playing quarterback. I didn't think about that.

And I think that would make the whole thing a lot better on the, the famous part and, and the number, like I was looking up his career earnings, 530 million. So, I mean, it's still more because he played as long as he did. Then what this deal is and we're seeing high-end deals just take off in a way that no one could have ever predicted. And I don't know if it's a rising tides thing. Well, if the TV rights are this, then the agents fight.

Well, my guy is part of your product. The same way you look at coaches' salaries in college football, where you just go through any timeline. You think this many guys make $5 million a year now. Well, if the value of the property is this and everybody's working on the property, they finally let the players take a cut of all of this stuff. Does it mean that the networks, well, I know the answer, can the networks do whatever they want?

The simple answer is yes. But do the networks look at a signing of a Tom Brady the same way a billionaire looks at the purchase of a sports franchise where sure we can get into what the numbers can mean and look those franchises whoever sells one of the loss let me know but there's there's something to just being associated with it where if Brady is associated with your brand and you're bringing them to the up front the value isn't just the 375 million to do games it's the value of being in business with the greatest potentially football you know arguably the greatest football player

of all time. Yeah. And having him hobnob with advertisers, like really big advertisers, you can probably bring him out a couple of times a year and that's gotta be part of the Fox deal. I think to your point about everything getting bigger, I think that is accurate,

but I also think there's a notion that networks have gotten smaller at the same time. You know, when Fox signed Madden and Summerall in 94, you could say that they were two of the biggest stars on Fox, but you could also probably say that like Barton Homer Simpson were the biggest stars on Fox. You know, there were these big sitcom guys, Jerry Seinfeld and NBC, I mean, we could name them all, right?

Who is the second biggest star on Fox now? Who is the biggest non-sport star on the Fox network? Like somebody wearing the Masked Singer outfit on a weekly basis? I mean, that might be the actual answer to the question. Yeah, right. I'm not even laughing because I I'm trying to come up with an answer. I think that's it. So these guys are not just getting paid more money, but sports is has eaten so much of the networks of television of streaming that they are just bigger stars by comparison.

So yeah, they're going to get more money because they are the they are not just some of the faces of the network. They are the faces of the network. What's your favorite broadcast team right now for an NFL game? Buck and Eggman. Because I was thinking about this during the Jets Niners game, in fact, texting with the fantasy about this book sounded so good during that game. Nobody, nobody has seen someone in real time have a good block better than Joe Buck. And you know, he's like 50s right now. And I was just sitting there thinking,

it's like, if he has 10 years at this level, and there's no reason to think he's not unless he just gets bored and doesn't want to be a broadcaster anymore. Like he is probably gonna be the best ever to do this. You know, like it's always, I think Al's kind of always been in that slot for very good reason, but I'm like,

Joe does this for 10 years at that level. And you're just watching it seems so effortless and it seems so good. And he seems so comfortable with his partner. I'm like, damn, that was just that to me was, it was a fun game for a while, but it was really fun to watch him call that game. So that's why I say that. Yeah, he was great. Both of the guys were great on Monday night.

And, you know, it's a bit like thing I'd said earlier, where, you know, you can show up and then probably do a decent job. But, you know, if you if you really want to be bad, it's not like, oh, you actually don't want to do this job. Oh, you know, wish we had known about this before, which we've done this in August. Uh, but we are, the depth chart is very deep, I think on great broadcast teams in football. I think it's incredibly deep. And when I listen to Joe, there's a trust level with him, which I also have with Toreco too. You know, I can, again, I'm, I'm friendly with Toreco. So I'm a little biased, but I pick up on things with him that are just so good for somebody that's live on television for as long as a game is, but with Buck and Toreco, and I know I don't mean to leave other people out that I think are

great, but like, if something happens, I know to trust their explanation of it. It's crazy. And you're right about Buck. Like he'll have moments where I wonder, could he actually do color commentary? Like he's just onto, you would think you'd pick up a few things, even if you never played football at a high level.

You'd like to think you'd pick up a few things observing the stuff, but there's, there's a trust that I want to have with the announcers of the biggest games. And ESPN has that with, with, with Buck and Aikman. Yeah. Trust is such a good word because there's like trust that you will know the new rules of the kickoff, which we know every broadcaster is not going to clear that

level of trust. Then there's a second layer, which is like, there's going to be a play happening. It's going to be kind of wild and chaotic and you will have it under control. You will know what to do. You will call it correctly. It's not going to blow your mind. You know, I remember that game. It was a Trico playoff game. Couple of years ago, it was a Bengals game, maybe Bengals Ravens and the Bengals guy was returning a touchdown. Remember that for like 97 yards.

That was the Ravens were about to score them. I'm I'm I'm botching all this up. And I'm just following along. I think it was Sam Hubbard at the Bengals somehow gets a ball in his hands and starts running the other way. And like mid run, Torey Co has a note about where Sam Hubbard went to high school or college. Like he had the note in the middle of the return.

I'm like, Mike Turico is on this. Like Mike is locked in on this and he is absolutely ready to call this game. It's what you're talking about. Like I trust that you're gonna call this play beautifully and cleanly. And also that you just know everything about these guys coming in.

Yeah. And Turariqa wanted rules. As soon as something's happening and he'll go, well, no, no, no, it's, it's, it's, this is, and I'll think, God, like he doesn't even have to necessarily do that. Like you could argue that Chris is supposed to know that. And Tariqa's just not. Yeah, right. Tariq Rico's just going to decide that I actually, I'm going to learn the rule book inside and out. And there's a very short list of announcers where if I'm confused at home, we're all go, well, to Rico just explained it to me. And there you go. Okay. Did you have more on that? I don't want to cut you off because I, there's no, just the other last Rico moment, Tuesday night or Thursday night,

the opener, he was, he gets the two minute warning and he goes, you know, we call it the two minute warning here. It's not the two minute timeout like it is in college. And again, it was just another one of those moments because we'd all just gone through a college football Saturday where everybody messed it up or everybody was sort of confused in a moment. And he just acknowledged, I was like, you just said exactly what I was thinking in that moment. It was acknowledged it. I was like, you just said exactly what I was thinking in that moment. It was, it was really uncanny. I just would love to know the meeting to be like, okay, we're putting this time out in by the way, so they can put in more ads. Um,

and I'm all, I'm fine. I'm fine with anything that happens in a game that gives an offense a little bit more of a chance at the end. Like I liked that the NBA, you can advance the basketball with a timeout because your last second shot has a better chance of going in. I just think that's more entertaining. I think it's more fun. Yes, I know all the rules favor the offense already, but I love the two minute warning. But to suggest that it's anything other than like, I'm convinced some days that they add to replay because the television partner is like, is there any way we can get more stoppage?

Is there any way we can find new ways to stop the flow of the game and then we'll break out to commercial? Because remember too, like with replay, sometimes they would stay with the replay. And I'm not saying it happens all the time, but I'll watch enough where it's like, well, yeah, while we're replaying this, we'll let you know. And it actually not saying it happens all the time, but I'll watch enough where it's like, well, you know, while we're

replaying this, we'll, we'll let you know. And it actually makes a little bit of sense. Like we don't have to sit there the whole time. Okay. Um, let's talk a little debate because I was listening to the pod this morning. You are fascinated with free debate, free game shows. It sounds like is that is it is this a new guilty pleasure of yours? Yeah. And the reporting because it, it's just like reporting before the Super bowl where you do game plans on both sides and you do a little nugget about prep and then the New York times even had a thing that Kamala Harris was going

to have to shake the rust off because she hadn't debated since 2020, which sounded like we had, we held her out the entire preseason because we didn't want her to get injured week one. Now we're throwing her in. We all lines not ready. Yeah. Yeah. It's not a little familiar. All right.

I'll leave this one open ended. What did you think? I thought Kamala Harris came in. I'm just, I just feel like I'm just sounding like football coach. Now you're in my head because I I talked about Brady, like a player, and I'm going to say Kamala Harris game plan, execute the plan. She took some shots, some deep shots, aggressive. We're talking about this on the pod this morning, but it was amazing.

Like when you have one of those game plans where you're like, here's what we're going to do. We're going to come out and we're going to try to throw some bait out. That's going to get Trump distracted. This is what we're going to do. We're going to come out and we're going to try to throw some bait out. That's going to get Trump distracted. This is what we're going to do. Like this is, this is every pundit show, every one of those articles that would have been in the article. And then she came out last night and she was like, okay, Ooh,

immigration, tough issue for me. Let me just start talking about Trump's rallies and people walking out of his rallies because he's going to come back. And instead of talking about one of his most biggest and most successful issues, according to every poll, he'll just, he'll just jump on that. And it was one of those cases, Ryan, where you're like, the game plan was announced, you know, it's almost like you would, you would just call the plays publicly in advance and then, and it all works.

So that, that to me was, was almost the most startling thing of the whole night. I thought she did better. That to me was almost the most startling thing of the whole night. I thought she did better. I thought you could tell that he was a bit rattled and prepared though when he, like he wanted to go to that line, her line of like, I'm talking now.

And the way he used it, it just wasn't timed right. But in that moment, you're like, he's been thinking about this. It was part of his prep. He was going to say it to try to kind of shut her down a little bit and his use of it. Now, I don't know, I thought she kind of started off a little shaky and then I think she just handled herself

better throughout the entire time. Now, the complaints about the moderators, fact checking in real time, your thoughts? Did have a problem with the fact checks? Because the stuff that was fact checked was outlandish things. These were not like, hey, actually your tax plan would not return X billions of dollars to the US Treasury.

It would return this many. It was not that kind of stuff. It was like the election was stolen, level fact checks. I think there's a complaint about the moderators that was valid is they didn't force her or try to force her to answer questions in the same way they did with Donald Trump. A few times with Trump, they asked a question,

he talked about something else and they came back and said, no, actually what we asked was this. There were a couple of times where she did, again, this is what politicians do in a debate, right? You asked me a question, I answer the question I wish you had asked me, or I talk about what I wanna talk about. They didn't really come back to her that many times

and just be like, so for the record, so if I thought there was any complaint about the debate, about the mods, that was it. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a fair criticism. I noted like on the first one, I went, whoa, like I think it was Lindsay who came back at Trump and was just like, no. And it was, it was like a jarring thing at one point. And you thought, okay, that's, that's a little bit different. I think the frustration for anybody, you know,

anyone that's a voter is that you're right. It's always kind of been like this, right? It is always been, well, you can ask me whatever you want, but I'm just going to pivot and avoid and then hammer my talking points. And, um, you know, you'd like to think that if it's two people that are supposed to be serving the citizens of the country, that would be the moment to try to convince people which way they want to go, right? And I wonder if you're a former president Trump, a vice president in Harris, it's like, I don't care who you put at that desk. There's going to be no one at that desk that I'm going to respect so much that you're

going to get me off of my game plan. And so when you're home and you're watching it and it's not so much that people are lying left and right. Um, it's just that I can't, it kind of gets back to my Sam Hinky thing. Or when Sam Hinky was tanking, he was so unapologetic about it that it cost him his job. Where he probably could have signed a Carlos Boozer. You know, he could have pretended a little bit more, even though all of us know what he was actually doing, we have a hard time with someone being just blunt about it.

So I would love, because as much as I could try to read anything that has nothing to do with sports, like I'm more confused now than I've ever been because I was like, Oh, that doesn't make any sense. Like I'll look up crime rates. Like I'll just be randomly going, is it really up? And then I'll find five or six different things. And I'm more confused than when I started the process. I remember reading and I'm going on a bit of a tangent here, but I remember seeing this stat where there was some crime, this specific

act of crime and it had increased by 300% like the last year. I'm like, that's an astonishing number. And I'd heard someone say it and I was like, is that possibly true? So I dug into it and then I looked and whatever this act of crime was, it was eight instances opposed to two the year before. And I thought, all right, well, that 300% increase number is far more impactful than from two to eight, which is what the real number was. And again, I know the math doesn't even match up because it doesn't really matter. So when you're sitting there as somebody that would like to be knowledgeable about things,

it's really hard to keep up. And yet when you dig for the research, you don't even know if anybody's leading you in the right direction. And it'll kind of get back to like, what would happen if a candidate just said, you know what, I don't know. I don't even know if we can, I don't know if we

can solve this Ukraine thing, you know, they don't listen to us. I just don't, I don't think we could do it. Would that be the end of a candidate instead of like, Hey, instead of Ukraine, I'll just blame them. And it gets incredibly frustrating 90 minutes to think of this is where we're at. But I'll finish here.

If we got what we say we want, would we actually be way worse? If that makes sense. Yeah, I threw a lot at you there, you know, so it's just me kind of talking here. It's maybe one of those cases where what we say we want, if we got it, we would be unsatisfied and be like, well, why didn't they just, you know, go through the talking points? I mean, I think the point you raised at the beginning of that is something I was thinking about last night. It's like we reward politicians for executing talking points. You know, we reward them a lot of the time. And I'm saying we as in the media, not, not voters so much, but you, you, you say,

well, they stayed on message. They did what they were supposed to do. And again, remember all everybody is thinking about Kamala Harris in the, in the light of the, what Joe Biden was unable to do a couple of months ago, he wasn't able to just come out and be like, here is what I believe one, two, three, four, five, so her coming out and doing that last night, everybody's like, Oh, wow. She, she, she showed that she's on message. She can drive a message.

I saw that phrase on Twitter last night. That's weird, right? I mean, you're already going away from the idea of like, she's coming out and giving us her heat, because I don't wanna spare Trump from this, coming out and giving us an accurate picture of what they're gonna do as president, or what's possible for them to do as president.

But that's the way the media works when it comes to politics. That's just the way it is, right? You're scoring them on their ability to perform things rather than an answer that is, oh, that's a great answer. That is a great honest answer about this very difficult issue in front of us. I don't know what his prep was. Um, but even if he had a strategy or if he had a plan, you would have thought, cause like, you know, again, I'm, I'm getting way off the topic here.

I'm reading packs finishing it up right now. Right. It's the latest from Holland first 300 pages of the book or so. I think they go through like four different rulers in the span of less than two years and every regime change, every transition is met with celebration. And by like the fourth one that I've read, I go, are you guys sensing any kind of pattern here? Are you, are you sensing anything? And I think as far as like Trump on strategy, he's not going to listen to anybody.

They can come up with a strategy. He's not going to follow it. He's just going to go with his gut. I think he's probably impossible to follow it. He's just going to go with his gut. Um, I think he's probably impossible to prep with. And the fact that his closing message was probably the message you thought like, well, that's the easiest thing. This is you, you're, you're debating a candidate who's talking about change. Who was already there.

Like this is, this is a really simple playbook and he wasn't capable. He just, he just couldn't figure that part of it out. And it, it made me wonder if again, I'm not trying to relate the Roman empire to today, but then no matter who is in power, do we always think. It's getting worse. It certainly seems like that recently. And this is after we had three presidents in a row serve two terms and we're able to sell that. But you know, that was, that was actually the most fascinating

part of the debate or one of the most last night was when they were both casting each other as the incumbent president. That's such a good point. Yeah. You said Trump at the end finally gets to, Hey, you've been in office for three and a half years. Why haven't you? Why don't you just go do this stuff? Whereas you heard Harris, the whole debate, turn the page. We got to do something that we can't go back to this. Right. You, you, no, no, no, Mr.

Trump, you are the president. You're, you're the guy we're trying to move on from. And it was like this battle to see who wasn't the incumbent. Do you watch all the post debate stuff? Oh, I did last night. Absolutely. Okay. Let me offer up and up. Go ahead. Go, go, go. No, just go. And then then I'll, I'll have something to add to it. I mean, my first nugget is I thought of bill immediately because we had like the

Anderson Cooper 15 person set that looked like a football preseason team photo. Like, like where's David Axelrod? Is he in there somewhere on the left hand side? that looked like a football preseason team photo. Where's David Axelrod? Is he in there somewhere on the left-hand side? Oh, there he is. Let's go. I mean, talk about something. We were talking about Kevin Burkhardt and Mike Dorico. How do you manage a panel with 15 people?

I mean, that's something. I tried to do it. I tried to do it. It was a disaster. It was the college football seminars up in Connecticut before the season would start. And obviously I still remember this today because it pissed me off so bad. They put 12 people in front of me. So I started, I asked Herb Street a question and I think Herb Street kind of jumped in on the second answer. And this, this programming guy from college football like stood

up in front of the entire theater. It was like 200 people in there and like went, Hey, you know, don't leave. You gotta get to some of these other guys too. Like scolded me in front of the room of all of my colleagues. And I was, I'll tell you right now, I've never forgotten that. Fuck that guy forever. See, these are the calls I usually get offline

on a Saturday morning or Sunday morning. I'm sitting there going, you gave me 12 people, man. Yeah. I'm seven minutes in. Herb street. There's a thoughtful cat. Like, what do you, what do you want me to do? So, um, here's, here's what I would offer up.

I'm not offended politically. I'm offended as a content person to To recap. Whatever happened last night. And just say. Your team won. Is not impressive content to me. OK, LeBron James are to lose in the NBA finals and Nick Wright starts his first show going. Let me tell you why this is actually better for LeBron's legacy. That is not impressive to me. I already know what you're

going to do. You're going to figure out a way to execute it. So whether it's last night's debate or any of this stuff, when I look at the reaction, I'm offended by how impressed so many political commentators are with their ability to execute the fucking summary I already knew was coming. What is wrong with those people? And when will they come to the conclusion that they are not that good at what they do. Totally agree. Also a lot of monologuing, did you notice after the debate?

I hadn't, I couldn't, I just say, it wasn't a type 20. If you're listening to this thinking you're getting a lean, the lean is against unimpressive content. That's the lean. It was weird, CNN went to it and it was just Jake Tapper looking into a camera. Like, you know, one of us would record some content

for social, just kind of doing a riff in on the debate. I'm like, what is happening right now? And eventually they pulled out and there were people around him. That was jarring for me. But yeah, I agree. I mean, it's not a great time. Like, do they think they're killing it? That's where I'm offended.

Yes. Like, when I have a bad show, I'm like, you suck. Bad interview. Terrible. Okay? When I think I do something well, I'm like, hey, that was good. That's why you lift all those weights.

That's why you get up every day. That's why you got legal pads all over the house. But when I see this predictable stuff, and I think, like, do you think it's the end again, maybe it gets back to it. Is that the job? Is that the job? I think it is. And I think just like sports TV, it's kind of the grammar of political TV of cable news. And we're all just so ingrained into it that we don't even notice like, oh, you know, somebody's looking at their phone and reading quotes

from the, from the transcript. This is good. Really good stuff. All right. Last question. Immigration was a topic last night. Would dabble Sweeney be the best college football coach to fix the immigration thing right now?

football coach to fix the immigration thing right now. I was so so curious where you were going with the second half of that question. See the only dabble just gets up there is like we're not taking anybody. Deal with it. You're the only person who went in IL with immigration last night. Transfer report. transfer report, excuse me. But that's, that's connected. Right. You got to buy it. You're not getting for free Ryan, through the transfer portal. I didn't mean to fact check you. That was a, that was an instant fact check right there for Curtis. Got a jar. Yeah, I know. I might even take it out. I didn't like what happened. I don't know.

I feel like I'm going to have to call you later this afternoon to make sure we're cool. Where can we see the rest of your stuff and when's the next episode of the Press Box coming out? There's one out this morning, which is an instant react pod to the debate with Semaphores Benji Sarlin, their Washington bureau chief over there. We had a great time getting up this morning and doing that and more. That's every Monday and Thursday and then more to come. Article wise, I got a piece of about Brady now more to come in that front, the ringer.com. You're the best. Thanks Brian. You're the best.

Thanks Ryan. Looking for a path to accelerate your career, clear direction for next level success in a place that is innovative and practical? A path to stay current and connected to industry? A place where you can be yourself? You will find it at York University School of Continuing Studies, where we offer career programs purpose-built for you. Visit continue.yorku.ca. He's been one of my favorite authors for a long time. I imagine many of you as well have enjoyed his work, his latest book, The Demon of Unrest,

how recently just went through it. We're going to talk with the author, Eric Larson. Eric, thanks so much for doing this. Like I had said in the intro here, it's just been years of getting through your work. This is a real thrill for us. Thanks. Thank you. All right, so I don't wanna make it simplistic, right?

Because the story is almost a story about a fort, but there's obviously a lot of moving pieces around that. I know reading some of the stuff afterwards, I think the best way to describe maybe the goal was how did the Civil War actually start? Is that fair, an assessment of trying to get through the story? Well, yeah. Basically, the fundamental schematic of the book is it's the five months between Lincoln's election, which of course was a crucial event, and the start of the Civil

War five months later in April of 1861. But as you mentioned, there's an awful lot of moving parts, a lot more than I actually anticipated when I got into this project. And that's what made me stick with it because it's just a lot of revelations that I had no idea about. Charleston's kind of the starting point of this story. What was the city like at this time? So Charleston was the main city in South Carolina, which was the leader in the secession movement of this era. Charleston was, and remains, a very, very beautiful city. It was a very, very off-scale urban place.

It was also the home, Charleston Bay, of a significant federal presence. There was a fort called, a sea fortress called Fort Moultrie. There was Castle Pinckney. There was an old Revolutionary War era fort. There was an arsenal. And there was Fort Sumter, which at this point, it had been under construction since 1828. It was not done yet. We're talking about 1860. Guns weren't mounted. It was really pretty much in disarray, but it existed in Charleston Harbor.

Charlestonians hated the fact that there was this federal presence, because they already had seen themselves as basically an independent entity and they just needed to make it formal by seceding. Fort Sumter was, among all the forts in Charleston Harbor, was the fort that really drove them nuts, because it was, if it was ever completed, it would have commanded control of Charles and Harper. You know, looking at it through this timeline is really interesting because it's really easy to have the answers once you know the results at anything. And in this case, it felt like, and it goes really back to Buchanan's administration, where it's this real hands-off attitude to the entire momentum of everything that's going around.

How important do you think the lack of action played into ultimately a civil war being started? Well, I think it was, I think it was a big part of it. Although that question also begs another question is had there been more action, could the civil war have been averted? And that is a question I can't even begin to deal with. But the fact of the matter was that Buchanan who was the president prior to Lincoln was a very passive, inert president. His cabinet was pretty much self-favoring. In fact, his secretary of war, before the Civil War began, actually fled Washington and joined the Confederacy. But the bottom line was that all Buchanan wanted was to get out of his administration

without a war occurring on his time. He did everything he could to make sure that nothing happened. In fact, there was a very significant speech he gave to Congress in which he said, basically, he threw up his hands. He said, there's nothing I can do. I can't influence events. It's up to Congress.

He basically washed his hands of the whole thing. Now what's equally important though at the same time is that, okay, Buchanan was not doing much of anything. It was a vacuum of leadership on his part. At the same time, Lincoln, who had been elected in November, 1860, would not be inaugurated until March 4th. Lincoln had decided that until he was officially president, he should just

keep his mouth shut, not throw further fuel onto the secessionist fire. And he more or less kept to that. He did seed the clouds with his opinions through newspaper editors and friendly politicians and so forth. But he didn't speak out either. So what you basically have is a complete vacuum, including the new president-elect. You know what I loved is where Buchanan is the only president who was never married and some of that's hurting the imaging. It's just funny to think of like PR and, and the imaging and the messaging of today, especially with politicians and that they were trying to use that as, as a

positive essentially to be like, this guy's so determined to serve the country. He doesn't even have time for a family. I just, I thought that was really, it just reminded me of like 2024 PR of like taking something and making it actually a positive just to try to approve the, you know, hire the approval rate. Right. Like one newspaper, you know, people were really trying to get around the fact that he was not married. It's just, this is just something that eluded the public.

It was like, what is up with Buchanan? One newspaper said, you know what it is? It's because he's married to the Constitution. So that's how they got past that. But he was a very interesting character. I liked reading about Buchanan. He was very lonely. He was really isolated in the White House during this last period.

And again, all he wanted to do was get back to his country estate in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and get out of being president. So Lincoln's going to win. That's going to set off all sorts of reaction in the South. This is another one of those things where I thought it was very telling of the way the media works today. So Lincoln has to make it to DC. There's a lot of threats against his life.

And I know that, you know, kind of open it up for you to go wherever you want. There's maybe some debate historically over whether or not his primary, almost the version of the secret service back then was, was more dramatic about everything that was happening so that he looked good historically, but Lincoln has to basically sneak into DC for his own safety and then in doing so is criticized because it's not becoming of a president to move into the state capital, the nation's capital the way that he did, completely overlooking the fact that he was worried about his own safety.

Yeah. It wasn't manly to sneak into Washington. Here's the story with Lincoln in that period. He had resolved that he was going to take a train journey from Springfield, Illinois to Washington to literally let the Americans who had voted for him see this president in the flesh who they had supported. And so he made numerous speeches along the way, again, being very careful not to throw fuel on the fire. And in a couple of places, he actually let himself go in extemporary speeches. But he, for the most part, just kept things down to basic nice things to say to people.

He said, here I am. Now you can see my beautiful countenance. It's been nice talking to you. Now I must leave, that kind of thing along the way. But as he was traveling, word arrived of what seemed to be a credible threat, seemingly rising in Baltimore, a threat against his life. There were those who were alleged to be plotting to assassinate him when his train arrived in Baltimore, which was particularly delicate period in his travels because his train car would have to be detached from one train and moved across town to another train. And that was thought to be a real sensitive point where an assassination could happen. Now, he was skeptical.

He needed to be persuaded and ultimately, he realized that, you know, it was the judicious thing to take this seriously. And so he changed plans and that's what caused him to arrive, you know, before dawn in Washington, DC, much to the delight of political cartoonists who sketched him in all manner of clothing and secretly fleeing from even scared of a black cat, that kind of thing. So he arrives in Washington safe and sound. Interestingly, talking about parallels to today, the two moments of gravest national concern in 1861 prior to the start of the Civil War was would the electoral

count occur as planned and hoped, and would the inauguration occur? Now, during his train journey, much to everybody's relief, the electoral count does come off. Interestingly, unlike in our experience of 2021, the American commanding general, General Winfield Scott, sort of at the very much at the end of his career, six foot four, 350 pounds, every ailment he could possibly have spent much of his day and his feet in an ice bath. But one thing about this guy was his military instincts were very good, and he was loyal to, I also might say, to a fault. And he had resolved that this electoral count was going to come off if he had anything to do with it. And so he flooded Washington with troops, cavalry, cannon, and he vowed that if anybody tried to interfere with the electoral count, he was going to

strap that person to the front, to the muzzle of a cannon and blow them to smithereens. And as he put it, maneuver the hillsides of Arlington, Virginia with the guy's body. And indeed, the electoral count came off, not necessarily without a hitch. There was a mob that clamored to get into the Capitol, but it didn't work. So anyway, so Lincoln arrives in Washington, he arrives, you know, early in the morning, and yes, people make fun of him for this. But you know, at this point, he's already clearly been affirmed as president because the electoral count, he just has to do the get to the get to the inauguration, and then he can get down to business. What I really enjoyed about the book is the emphasis

on the North completely underestimating the South and their anger. And you have this fourth that I want to get back to, which is kind of the symbol of inactivity because Lincoln is incredibly careful and it's just so great reading about him, like just how much he cared about every sentence structure, how every word was placed and

knowing that he was dealing this, certainly this extremely flammable situation. Um, and it feels like as he's getting closer and closer to taking over, it's like, okay, I'm not going to be as delicate because now they're realizing the South, but it just felt like as you point out The North did not understand the South at all. Yeah. Yeah Well, I can't can't speak to the situation of the entire North

But it is very clear that Lincoln had only a limited grasp of what was happening in terms of the South and how they felt about him Lincoln, you know, God bless him, felt that the things that he said in his speeches, that he should be taken at his word. And he had tried to reassure the South throughout this period that he had no intention of interfering with slavery

in those states where it currently existed. He would even support the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which abolitionists in the North absolutely reviled. This is the bill that allowed southern planners to come north to recapture escaped slaves and required federal authorities to help them. So he was very open about the fact that he was not going to disrupt slavery. In the South, however, they had come to talk about echo chambers, they had come to believe that Lincoln basically was the Antichrist. No matter what he would say, no matter what other publications would say,

the South Southern planters, the planting elite, the so-called chivalry had come to believe that he had one goal and that was to abolish slavery. As soon as he got into office, he would abolish slavery, which for Southerners was an existential fear to abolish slavery would have been to absolutely destroy Southern culture as they know it, wipe out their capital structure overnight. Lincoln didn't really get that. He didn't understand this existential nature of this fear.

He eventually came to understand it, but not at this point. So now we're talking about secession and it is where you have already this southern government, you know, they're just like, hey, all right, we're set up here in Alabama and this is this guy's job and this is this guy's job and they're just they're just moving along as if okay this in again It's just to read the timeline of okay this states out now this states out and they're good You know They're sending all these loyal Southerners to like rally the states that haven't made a decision How how quickly is this part of this happening?

We're gonna it feels like the North is kind of ignoring it. The critical element is South Carolina. South Carolina declared, signed its secession ordinance as they put it in December of 1860. Other southern states were watching this very closely. It's funny that while many southern states actually shared this desire to separate from the union, nobody was quite as ardent about it as South Carolina. And in fact, other states were actually concerned about South Carolina leading the charge because it had always been sort of a cantankerous state, had always been at the forefront of the sort of rebellious activity.

And other southern states actually were a little bit embarrassed by South Carolina. They weren't sure that they wanted South Carolina to lead. That didn't matter to South Carolina. They went ahead and declared their secession, I think it was December 22nd, 1860, which prompted a sequence of events in Charleston Harbor. It was absolutely crucial to the ultimate outcome. So, what are some of the characters involved in the South putting this momentum together? Also, some of the arguments, the Cottonist King stuff was really, really interesting.

Almost the South was like, hey, we have this most important textile and ultimately everybody's gonna fall in line and England is gonna take our side and all this stuff. What was that almost campaigning post Lincoln? Yeah, well, you know, well, you talk about characters. So there are two, I'm gonna say excellent villains only because who doesn't love a good villain? I mean, these guys are the kind of people

who if you were to good villain? I mean, these guys are the kind of people who, if you were to write about them in fiction, the irony is nobody would believe how awful they were. One was a Senator, James Henry Hammond, South Carolina, a US Senator, who was a leader in the so-called... It was a movement that tried to make slavery among slave owners seem like a positive. There was this positive drive to make slavery seem like the best of all possible worlds. He was a leader in that campaign. He was also a leader in the idea that enslaved blacks, that they were living in the best of all possible worlds, thatvery actually benefited them just as much as war than people who were working in the North who were free, ostensibly free. But according to James Henry Hennig,

they were basically wage slaves. They worked on the whim of their employers. But he was also very much a classic planter, just sort of a rotten guy. His plantation manual for his overseers includes at the very end explicit directions for how to beat his enslaved blacks. But this guy was a leader in shaping Southern opinion about slavery and shaping Southern opinion about secession and so forth. There was another gentleman, Edmund Ruffin, who also an absolute villain and was the guy who ultimately fired the first shot at Fort Sumter. But his self-assigned role was to go throughout the South, trying to drum up support for secession.

Various states were having secession conventions, and his goal was to go to those conventions and try to get them to vote for secession, with more success in some places than others. And so these guys were in the mix. And one of the things that appealed to me about this is that, you know, sometimes we overlook the role of personal characteristics in historical events. And this really struck me in the case of these guys. And we think these guys were absolutely influential in shaping Southern attitudes. And they were just sort of awful people who thought they were absolutely in the right. And you have someone like Lincoln, who I

really came to... I went into this, it was a show me attitude. I wasn't going to buy into the hagiography of Lincoln. I'd read about Lincoln, of course, but I said, look, show me in this period, show me what we should think about you. And very quickly saw that he was just the soul of integrity in this period. And he just could not understand why all this was happening on his watch. I also loved, by the way, his sense of humor, and I loved his failings. In fact, he could not spell inauguration.

He couldn't spell Sumter, the name of the fort. But there were all these personal characteristics of the people involved that were mixing in this conflict. And that ultimately led to what happened in April of 1861. So let's go to something because you've got the federal army in theory, you know, surrounded by all these other forts that have been building up their own defenses now. So like this waiting period is happening. They're like, what do we do? What do we do? What are the orders? And it's like, all right, well, the guy in charge can't abandon something. But while he's watching everything around him, he's like, this is going to be a disaster if this thing ever starts.

Well, what's happening is precisely that. Buchanan has utterly abandoned the major who was assigned in early November to be the commander of federal forces in Charleston Harbor, which included, of course, Fort Sumter. He was left virtually without any orders as this national cataclysm was rapidly gaining speed. So on his own, in December, right after the secession ordinance was passed in South Carolina, pretty much right after, he concocts a plan to move his men from Fort Moultrie in Charleston Harbor. And let me just...so it stays here a little bit more there too.

He only had 75 men under him. Fort Sumter, as designed, was built to house 650 men. But anyway, he's at Fort Waltry, which is an active fort. Fort Sumter is not yet an active fort. Anderson decides he's going to move his people secretly to Fort Sumter, and he chooses Christmas night. Doesn't work out on Christmas night because of bad weather, but the next night he likes the distraction of Christmas and succeeds in moving his people to Fort Sumter, which

only increases the outrage in Charleston because, you know, here's this, you know, U.S. Army major who has now occupied this most hated symbol of Northern tyranny, Fort Sumter. The first sign they have of this is after the occupation of the fort. The next morning, Charlestonians wake up and see flames and smoke coming out of Fort Moultrie, the mainland fort that he has just left, because he has left guys behind to burn the gun carriages and so forth. So now Charleston knows that this fort, which can be made to be virtually impregnable, is now in federal hands. They immediately moved to occupy Fort Moultrie, Cassop-Pinkney, the federal arsenal, and so forth. And so the stage

is set for this cataclysm to occur. anything can happen at that point. And again, Anderson is still left all on his own. Totally. I mean, you do a terrific job emphasizing it because you're just trying to figure out you're reading these correspondents. And it's like Lincoln, because they probably realize and all the people in charge of the military under him realize that any correspondence is probably going to be spied on. So they can't really give directions, but he's just kind of left to figure it out while he knows if this actually goes down, they have no chance. I didn't think I- Yeah, he's left on his own, left absolutely on his own. And he is warning Washington that

he's running out of food and he's going to basically have to surrender. The question comes down to this then for Lincoln is, does Lincoln send a resupply mission to Fort Sumter or not? This required first for Lincoln to spend a lot of time trying to figure out, well, what exactly is the degree of pro-union sentiment in South Carolina? He quickly realized there's none. And then he decides, okay, it is time to send a relief mission. He does something very clever. He notifies South Carolina's governor ahead of time.

He says, we are going to send, you know, what we today call humanitarian aid, we are going to send supplies, non-military, to Fort Sumter. So this voyage is not molested. If this expedition is not molested, that's all they'll do and then they'll depart. If molested, he says that they will respond. And so this expedition sets out and they're all little wrinkles there too, which were fascinating to me. But this expedition sets out and that's the thing that sets South Carolina on this irrevocable march toward actually starting a violent conflict. First of all, once again, the echo chamber,

they're convinced that this expedition is actually a military expedition designed to seize control of Charleston Harbor. It was not. But as this expedition nears, they realize if these supplies get into Fort Sumter, it's basically game over. And so then they step up and issue an ultimatum to Anderson. And surely after that, the bombardment begins. I love the expedition story that you share with us because I remember, I don't know when it first dawned on me, the absurdity that when you became president, you had to actually engage with anyone that wanted to meet you. Um, I forget, I forget when it's finally stopped, just how pointless and how much

time was wasted on having to have an audience for anyone that wanted to visit the president. And usually it was always something that benefited the person. People just try to figure out like, how do I capitalize on having this time and relationship? And actually the person that's in charge of this expedition is just somebody that has an in with Lincoln and then puts together this naval plan and there's massive disconnects. And it's yet another guy at this stage of, you go through all these different periods of time,

and we're not even talking about the 1800s, it's like, how do I make a name for myself? And he's like, hey, let's get a bunch of boats, we'll go down, I'm your guy. And Lincoln kind of blindly is like, all right, I guess so, I guess it'll work. Yeah, it was all about glory for those guys, you know? And then the ultimate though was that, here's Lincoln, he's being bombarded by office seekers.

I mean, literally people are lining up in the White House. You're allowed to go into the White House. Anybody can just walk into the White House. And then so they were actually lining up on stairs and their hallways and so forth. And Lincoln initially is trying to deal with this himself. He's got all this stuff coming at him. He has these orders for the disposition of naval ships are put before him. And inadvertently, he assigns the same very powerful modern warship to the two different expeditions. One is going to Sumpter, one's going to Fort Pickens down off the coast of

Pensacola, Florida. And that adds a further element of chaos to the whole saga. Okay. So Sunder gets just bombed and they really have no chance. And there's this really symbolic turn that kind of starts there and can kind of end there where I felt the momentum in the book. I felt the momentum of the South feeling like, hey, this symbolic thing and they've had to surrender it and it held up actually pretty well. And oddly enough, no one's killed until they're leaving, which is its own kind of weird, unfortunate element is they're kind of celebrating their removal from the fort.

And it almost feels like the South in that moment, in this very mild victory, is they feel justified, they're encouraged, they basically, that win was massively overstated as far as what they felt about their cause and their chances long-term, obviously. Well, yeah, I mean, they were, the leaders of the secession movement,

they were convinced that they were absolutely in the right. And they were also equally convinced that once the dust settled, there would be no civil war. The only violent conflict would yield, as the expression popular at the time, would yield only enough blood to fill a lady's thimble. This is the extent to which they just did not, each side did not get what was happening. What changed things radically was after the bombardment, after Anderson Marxists went out to a waiting steamboat

for a return to the north. Lincoln, who is not going to let the union collapse because of this whole secession movement, he's a big believer in the power and the strength and the need for the union. He uses the proclamation calling for troops, militia and so forth, to deal with whatever comes next. And he even issues this proclamation calling on the seceded states to also contribute troops. That's the extent at which he sort of felt like he was going to honor the sense of the union as a 34 state union and not acknowledge yet that these people had left the Union. That's the thing that really galvanized the South. Soon afterwards, you have the first Battle of Boran and the incredible tragedy of the Civil War is thus fully engaged.

You mentioned it in the book and I'm glad that you did because I remember the first moment that I wondered where there have been, I don't know, if you would say it was colleagues or other historians say, well, the real motivation of the Civil War was not slavery. It was all these other things. And it's brought up a lot. And like I said, I remember the first time reading about it, I thought, okay, could this be another example of learning later in life that everything you learned earlier was wrong? How do you feel when you hear that argument? Well, you're referring, I think, to the states' rights argument.

Back in the early 20th century, there was a body of historiography and apologetics about the start of the Civil War that tried to contend that really was not about slavery. It was all about states' rights. If you read into the materials from the era, this idea of states' rights, this idea that slavery had nothing to do with it, you can't even for a moment hold to that view. I mean, all you have to do is read Mississippi's Declaration of Secession entirely, entirely about slavery. It's fascinating that even to this day, even to this day, there are those who will say,

oh no, no, it's not about slavery. It was not about slavery. It's about states' rights. And nothing is more laughable to anybody who reads back to that material. Lincoln's role in this, and I'm glad we touch on Buchanan, because it's just he's inheriting this just ridiculous, okay, hey, did you hear the latest? All right, we'll see what happens.

I'll see what happens. But yeah, specific to the wording and some of the speeches. And when it gets into kind of property and you can kind of go through it and think, well, what would have happened if Lincoln allowed kind of the status quo? would have happened if Lincoln allowed kind of the status quo? Like how it just, it's crazy to think if everyone could agree that, all right, at its, if we take this at its word, that maybe Lincoln lets us continue to be operating how we're operating with slavery, but as long as we're a union, I guess we're going to be okay. I mean, I know I'm, I'm being for,

I'm being vague on purpose because I just, there were moments in there. I was, I was just wondering as I read, I go, I wonder what would have happened. You know, if, if, if this was just allowed to play out. Yeah. Yeah. I don't, I don't like to engage in speculative history, but there are lots of little nodes where you just have to ask yourself, that's part of the fun of doing something like this, where you, when suddenly you realize it's a lot more involved than you would have imagined. I mean, you look at a high school timeline, it's okay, Fort Sumter, Civil War begins. But who thinks about all these machinations that occurred before Fort Sumter actually

happened? But, you know, like, you raise an interesting point about what if the South had taken Lincoln at his word? What if they had accepted that he really had no plan to disrupt slavery in the states where it currently existed? What would have happened then? Maybe the status quo could have been preserved, but the dynamics of the time ensure that that would not happen. That the south of the southern planting aristocracy, referred to by one historian as the slaveocracy,

had convinced themselves that that was not Lincoln's intention, that his goal was to abolish slavery and that to them was an existential threat. Before we let you go, what motivates you to want to do a book on a story? On this? You know. Just go in general, you know, I've read, I've read everything you've done and I've enjoyed it and you've, you've just picked different points in the timeline. And yeah, you know,

you know, I wish I could isolate any, any one thing. Well, basically what it comes down to is, you know, I, I, I'm, I'm starting to look for a new idea. Um, and sometimes it takes, it takes a year between the time I finish a prior book and the time I start the next one. In this case, it was very important that I'm just going to use this as an example of how these story ideas come up.

I had actually been in mid-book tour for my previous book, Smudden and the Vile, about Churchill. When the pandemic intensified, halfway through my book tour, I was on my way home, actually on my wife's birthday. I found myself with a lot of extra time on my hands that I had not planned to have. And I thought, I'm going to be productive. Here we are, the pandemic, lockdown, I'm going to look for my next book idea. I had a bunch of ideas.

But if you recall at that time, there's a lot of political discord in this country. People were muttering about secession and civil war even today, right? And so, I just, at that point, started thinking, well, what actually happened? Why did the civil war actually start? And I just started looking into that kind of casually. I had other ideas still perky. Then came the events of January 6, 2021, and I realized, wait a minute, this is a very contemporary story. Some of the stuff that I'd been reading about that took place in 1860, 61, you could have just transposed those documents and changed some names and you'd have that in in in 2000-2021. You know, so so it was fascinating to me. And I got more and more interested and then realized there was also the

potential for him always into suspense. There's the potential for telling a real sort of suspense. This is a historical thriller, I feel. And so that's how I got into this with this one. But it always comes down to a question. A question, what was that like? I have to ask on the way out. So I have no idea. I didn't prep you on this one. But for those of us that have loved your entire catalog, Devil in White City is just, you know, all time storytelling.

And it's just so much fun the way you set it up. And I know that there's fans everywhere, always wondering, where is it now? Because of all the rumors, you might be like, oh, this again? You mean the movie? The movie. The movie. Yeah, 20 years later, where are we?

I have no idea. Honestly, God, I mean, I have really tried to step back from thinking about a lot of my stuff is under option, and nothing's ever happening. My friends have films being made left and right. I don't know. I mean, what's wrong with me, Chuck Webber? I stepped back from thinking about a lot of my stuff is under option and nothing's ever happening. My friends have films being made left and right. I don't know. I mean, what's wrong with me, Chuck Weber?

But no, I really can't tell you where it is. I let myself briefly believe that something was going to happen. When last year, Keanu Reeves signed a compensation package to play Burnham in Devil in White City. And I thought, wow, this is really happening. I even went so far as to send the agent who had actually arranged that option, no longer my agent, but who had arranged that option. I sent her a very expensive bottle of champagne, $360 bottle of champagne, church's favorite champagne, even though we're talking about Civil War here. I mean, we're talking about the Devil in White City. And like three or four days later, I got a call from my current agent and

permanent agent, I hope, who says, well, counter reuse has dropped out, the director of the thing has dropped out. I was actually allowed myself to get depressed for one night. And then I was up, that's never going to happen again. So I can't help And then I was up, that's never gonna happen again. So I can't help you. I don't know what's going on. Well, we got it from you though. At least we know now and I can stop updating it like once a year going, oh, DiCaprio's on it.

Oh, Scorsese's on it. This is great. I can't wait for this. This is gonna be great. Well, it's a story that deserves to be on film. It certainly does. It was that great. And like I said, I've read everything you've ever done.

I've enjoyed it thoroughly just like this one. So congrats on another great book. So thanks, Eric. Thank you. Thank you very much. This episode is brought to you by Nespresso. Elevate your morning coffee ritual from the first sip of coffee in the morning to the on-the-go cup.

Make every morning unforgettable with Nespresso. Discover a world of possibilities, with or without milk. Visit nespresso.ca to learn more or an espresso boutique near you. You want details? Fine. I drive a Ferrari, 355 Cabriolet. What's up? I have a ridiculous

house in the South Fork. I have every toy you can possibly imagine. And best of all, kids, I am liquid. So now you know what's possible. Let me tell you what's required. The email address is lifeadvice.rri.gmail.com. We had a bunch of follow ups. Again, we're going to do a Friday feedback. I think we're just going to throw it on the YouTube deal. Is that the plan, Saruti? Yep. Yeah, maybe next week, week after.

Right. There's community notes the hell out of everything we're doing. Couple things. Cat people upset. Yeah, I got some texts. It's a single, it's a one bedroom apartment in New York City. Cat people upset. Yeah, I got some texts. It's a single, it's a one bedroom apartment in New York City.

Doesn't, you know, just stop being so sensitive about stuff. You gotta think about square footage. I thought this was debate stuff for a second. Now I remember, okay. Oh, okay. Yeah, we're not touching that one. It's like, was that part of your open today? All right.

I didn't even think about that. Well, cat people, yeah, no, it's a good point. Maybe we're getting some like flow off from that. Yeah, yeah, maybe, maybe. That's a great point, Kyle. Thanks. See, Kyle's always on it, current event Kyle. We also had a ton of dudes, a ton of dudes trying to explain

why the phone thing wasn't bad. You're like, I don't want to hear from fucking any of you guys. Okay. If you're living with your girlfriend and you've been together for three years, like, sure, maybe there's a good ending. Okay. Maybe there's somebody wrote in, it was like, maybe he has pictures of an engagement ring that he bought for, I'm like, yeah, maybe there's a good ending. Okay. Maybe there's somebody wrote in, it was like, maybe he has pictures of an engagement ring that he bought for, I'm like, yeah, maybe, please.

Yeah, maybe. Ruin the big Hawaii trip he was planning. That was a surprise. Right. So anyway, um, let's get to one here. We have one that is so long and I normally wouldn't do it. I wouldn't do it, but I'm not doing it. It's so funny.

Really? It's a suspense right there. Was it good? I don't even know. I don't even know. It's just so fucking long, but the guy put so much work into it. And I think everybody's gonna end up wishing we didn't do it

because he's basically juggling like four different women and explains this whole thing to us. And those are people's favorites. Right, you know how that went the last time. Yeah, right. Because you got all these dudes. Yeah. People won't stop banging me Because you got all these dudes. Yeah. People won't stop banging me. I don't know what to do. All right. How about a little quicker one here? All right,

guys, measurements and gym stats not important basketball comp early 2000s Malik Rose complete with entering the dog house like Rose did with Greg Pavlovich. Not relevant to the story, but I work at a four letter television network based in the Northeast that serves a certain segment of the population anytime, anywhere. All right. Sure want to email us, dude? Okay. Anyway, a few weeks ago, I entered the online lottery to win a code and get access to the presale for Oasis tickets. Surprisingly, I was selected to receive a code and told my wife, excuse me, quote, I got a code for this ticket presale, but there's no way I end up with the tickets, end quote.

Predictably, I now have two tickets to see the lads at Wembley in July. Okay. Hell yeah. My wife, pregnant, he paused for dramatic effect, with our second child, was not thrilled when I told her I'd committed thousands of dollars to a London trip four months after she's due to give birth. I made a little headway so far convincing her how awesome the concert trip will be,

but there's still work to be done. How do I convince her this concert is a big deal, the trip is worth taking and she should let me out of the dog house call back. Like what you you doing here? Um, okay. I guess he's, I'm assuming here correctly. He's bringing her cause the way I looked at it originally, like, yeah, me and Connor are out of here just for, just for a long weekend. I don't know what she's so bad about. This is pretty straight. Uh, I don't know. I mean, how much is she like Oasis?

I know this. I know this. I know this thing's a huge deal. I have a feeling like you're not going to Oasis, dude. Can I can I ask, Sruti, what's month four? Like, what's that like? Is it like we can't do anything? Great instincts, Kyle. What is month four?

Did he say this was the first kid or second? I thought he said. But I guess I just wanted like general guidelines. I just want to know like general guidelines for four months in. Yeah, but like. The math is what? One kid is one kid and two kids are 300 kids?

I will say that I have heard from many parents and I do think this is probably true based on my own experience of having one so far that going from one to two having a kid is hard but like going from one to two is a total different ball game where like you're now like you're playing man to man and where you can take turns if she throws a tantrum like you're both kind of having to deal with all that stuff so I've heard from multiple parents that the second one is really where shit hits the fan so I would say if this is your second kid and you're four months in, so you're dealing with probably like a toddler and basically a baby who's not going to be sleeping super well.

Now, if you have family close by like I do, maybe you make a trip of it. They can come over, the grandparents, everybody's happy. Sell your wife on this being like a getaway, a vacation-type thing. We're going to think about ourselves and have fun and get away from all the drama. But it's going to be hard. Like that, that, that time period is pretty hard. But like at four months, you wouldn't be like, we're just going to drop, drop her off at my mom's and we'll, we'll be back after the weekend. Okay.

All right. You can do that. Yeah. I think I flew with my daughter at four months. Yeah. We went to Florida for a wedding. Um, cause I was wondering if you could be like, this is our second kid. Like we're, we, we're over the hump.

We're great at this, but you're saying the, I don't think you could sell it that way. I guess that if you got parents around it or people around it could help, but if it's just you too, and you're having to like figure out a babysitter situation, something, it could be a disaster. Yeah. It's definitely not like a long car ride to New Jersey, right? We're talking about Wembley, right? Okay.

Well, I mean, look, um, it's a lot of money too. So there's that element. So is this about money? Is this about time? I mean, just there's, there's mothers and fathers that are just built differently. Some are going to think what a great opportunity, be an awesome break, jolly old London town, right? A nice break four months after kid number two, we've got somebody to watch him.

Where I'm assuming this is what you're pitching here is that you're going to get a break, you're going to go to London, whole deal. Obviously how much she likes Oasis. If you're already telling us that she's not thrilled about this, I don't know if it's because it's Oasis, I don't know if it's because of London, I don't know if it's because of the money, or if she is, and there's zero criticism here, some people when they have children they hand in their life card. They just go, I'm out. They batten down the hatches and yeah.

I don't want this account active anymore. Don't direct debit me every month. I am done. I've opted out of stuff. And other people, I'm not gonna let that happen to me. I don't know, I don't think you should completely shut it down, but nobody wants to hear from me on this thing from the whole point.

So you've got to figure out a way to pitch her if she is open to the idea of still having a life post number two, you have to figure out a way to pitch her this whole thing as an escape from what's going to be a challenging few years here running around wiping stuff up. Yeah. If Oasis isn't putting it over the goal line, maybe like we're going to be a challenging few years here running around wiping stuff up. Yeah. If Oasis isn't putting it over the goal line, maybe like we're going to be in London, maybe you come out with some other things. I think- Which band would?

Miles Davis? Like, isn't he dead? That's the reason why we're going. New hologram just dropped. I think the thing that sucks when you zoom out, it's like, this guy won a lottery. How many people just like, like my guess my guess rate on an Oasis lottery, whatever. Hey, I mean, who, who knows how much he loves Oasis, but like, oh, like if I win that master's lottery, it would really suck if the next thing that comes, like I

put my name in, I think that's good for four years of master's tickets and you know, I don't know how big that pool is, but it's probably big enough where I'm not going to get a, get a shot at it. But like, yeah. And I heard it's probably big enough where I'm not going to get a shot at it. But like, yeah. And I heard it's not even the tickets. It's really finding a place to stay. That's going to break the bank. So that's what's going to suck if I actually get it and I have to say, cost though.

I cost great. But I just think it's like a lot of people don't win and this guy won. And the first thing he's thinking is like, God, this is not going to happen for me. This is, I won this one in a million chance, probably not one in a million, but a long shot thing. And like he doesn't, that bliss lasted for like two seconds. So sorry about that. Here's the thing too, is your wife needs to calm down

a little bit because you're gonna get your money back or more on this thing, right? Like is the money- Yeah, calm down, tell her to calm down. Yeah, that'll work out. That'll work out super well. But like, seriously, like the money thing, like all right, if you don't want to,

she can't really be mad at you because you'll easily just be able to pawn these off for definitely the same price or if not, I don't know how the system works. Maybe they limit people, but for more money. So the money thing is whatever. If you can't, if you're, if she's, if you can't get over the hump of like affording it

and you want to sell them, you're going to be fine. So you should just let her know that to begin with, but it's convincing her that you should go. Well, then she'll just be like, great, let's do that. They're like, Oh wait, that's it. Maybe, but, uh, this, this is kind of how, so like when I went to Taylor Swift concert, my sister did the same thing. She like basically put her name in, she got tickets and she asked us to go. And I'm like, and they weren't even that expensive, which is the crazy thing.

Um, and I was like, yeah, I have to go to this like she won this lottery like am I not gonna go, you know? I like Taylor Swift. I'm the biggest Taylor Swift fan in the world And I feel like if you win the Oasis lottery like I'm with I'm with our guy here Like you have there's like an obligation that I won this this was this is like fate and destiny You're gonna line destiny. Yeah, I'm supposed to be at this thing. Like I have we have to go So I don't know maybe sell that too. Okay. I to mess with destiny. Yeah, I'm supposed to be at this thing. Like I have, we have to go. So I don't know, maybe sell that too. Okay. I think we got it. Yeah.

I think we got it. All right. Um, parking dispute, no impressive gym stats. So I won't waste your time. This is kind of petty. Part of me is wondering if I'm letting this bother me too much, but at the time I think it's part of getting older and owning a home. I have a parking dispute with my neighbor that they don't know about.

I live in a neighborhood with townhouses. Each building is six houses long. Each house has one or two cars, single lane driveway, depending on the house position in the building. Because of this, more than half the houses park one of their cars on the street. It's a terrible design. The neighborhood has banks of parking spots throughout the neighborhood, usually eight spots or so.

I live in the N unit and have a parking bank right next to my house that has two spots. Here's where my neighbor comes in. They moved in about three months ago. I said hello when I first saw them, but I've probably seen them five times total. We haven't interacted beyond that. They own three cars and have a two car driveway.

Since they've moved in, they've taken over the two parking spots next to my house. I three cars and have a two-car driveway since they've moved in They've taken over the two parking spots next to my house I live alone and have one car so it's only an issue when I have people over but it's the principle of it that bothers me Fucking principles man. I'm with you The neighbor has taken ownership of the community spots and no one can use except for my neighbor One of the cars hasn't moved in over a month. The other two rotate between their driveway and the spot. Every time they leave the spot, they take a car out of their driveway and park it there. Oh, wow.

They're so they know what they're doing. Yeah, of course. They've done this twice in the last two days. They have an empty garage, a two car driveway that they have a car they never use, but insist on taking two community spots for themselves when parking is already limited. Part of me says I would be doing something similar if I live with someone who had another car, but I feel like what they're doing is excessive.

Am I making a big deal out of this or should I try and talk to my neighbor or the HOA? Well, they'll help. I'm sure they'll help you. Probably send you an invoice. As of now, the only thing I've done is passively aggressively parked there for three days when I happen to find the spot open. I've listened since the SVP days.

Yeah, man, this is one of those things where it's this floating theory of ownership where no one really owns it. But we all understand like what you're supposed to do. But then if you're the person that it's convenient for, then you're saying, meaning the neighbor, well, fuck the community spots. And if we're on top of it, then what's your issue with it? But you, especially since you've been there longer, which doesn't mean anything, it's a neighborhood.

I mean, whenever you start getting to this whole idea of pin number with neighbors, be like, well, I've been here six years. Cool. Like, what does that mean? I have to cut your lawn. Um, but I get your annoyance because you feel like they're working the system here quite a bit.

Um, and the fact that they are making sure they maneuver everything around to keep the spots open for themselves so they can also have the freedom of an empty garage and to have the driveway open on the other side. I am on your side, but it may be something you're going to invest way too much time in trying to park block them. You'll probably start doing it at times you don't even want to just to mess with them. And then if you add up all the time that you're going to waste thinking about this and maneuvering it, because you feel like you're getting back at them.

I mean, this is one of those, like five years later, will you feel good about the time you spent thinking about this and maneuvering? Is there a win there? And if you're emailing this show and you've been listening since college, that means or you've been listening since SVP when you were in college, that means that you are now like 30. Do this when you're 70. This isn't a 30 something hobby. It's gonna be a whole fun bag of shit you open up like, Oh,

I'm doing this stuff now. Yeah, no, I'm telling you, you are right. I am on your side. I'm not into the, the other end of this. Like, you know, the, one of my default settings here, like if everybody just did all the stuff that you want to do for yourself, we would be fucked. Okay. But definitely spend time on something else at this age. You're 70 lawn sharing it out there, still hard copy

newspaper, you know, making sure people are picking up, you know, share it for the neighborhood. You want to be in control of the parking lots, get pissed about it. Get pissed about it. That's a 70 year old hobby, not a 30 year old hobby. Yeah. I kind of view this as I've been flying, you know,

more in the last couple of years than I had and, you know, what kind of status you at? Uh, working on that. Delta, I think Delta changed their mile thing right when I got the credit card and I was really excited about it. And I told a couple of people are like bad news. They just, they totally revamped how they're doing points and it's not in guys like yours favor.

So, but I'm working on it. I think I'll be silver soon. Uh, this Philly trip helps shout out, but like I've noted, like I'm 6'2", some reports say 6'3". That was a frolic measurement and we tried it again and they lost the measuring tape. So I don't know, I'll stay with 6'2", cause I've been 6'2' the whole time.

Either way, planes are fun when you're in row 30 or whatever. So I sit down and my knees touch the seat, right? Everyone's seats goes back, they do. And it's kind of annoying when someone puts their seat back, but I'm not gonna say, hey, dude, can you please not? You'd be annoyed, but silently. Yeah, but I do a little something, dude, I'm not gonna call the stewardess and be like,

come on, isn't this a little ridiculous that, you know, I gotta sit like this? But what I do is I push my fucking knees into the back of that thing for a little while. Oh, you do do something. I do do something, but I'm not getting other people involved and I'm not like tapping them on the shoulder like,

hey, how do you sleep at night knowing you're doing this to me? This is a six hour flight. But I do throw the knees and sometimes I'll rock a little bit if they do put the seat back. And it's just kind of me, but like I don't bring it to another level.

It's, you know, everyone's seat should be allowed to go back. It's community seats, sort of like the parking lot. But I can do certain things to make it seem like this is... You have to think about it for a second. Why is he pushing out my seat? I don't know what the equivalent of that is, but I would go somewhere in that vein instead of having a neighbor war of you pointing fingers. Because as soon as you point your finger at a neighbor,

they're gonna find something to point their finger at you about. And I wouldn't go to some sort of management company, HOA, because I don't know, that doesn't feel good. But I just find a way to put your knees into that guy's seat somehow. I don't know. I think you're right.

Like if you're in a petty war situation with a fellow man, like it has to be little things. Like it can't be like this, like if you're setting alarms to move your car, to screw this guy, that's just, that's just not helping you out in any way in life. And you're just, you're thinking about this way too much. I'm with you, Kyle, like little things, like keeping the plane thing going.

If, you know, somebody gets a middle seat and they just think, oh, I have the middle seat, so I'm just going to extend my arms and go over both of the arm rests, like I'm you best believe like I'm going to put my arm on that arm rest halfway through and we are, you're not getting an extra inch Of anything because this is what you paid for. Okay, you paid for the middle seat You're not getting the extra arm room here and that's like what to arm rest though, right? No But you don't get to extend it beyond both armrests. Some people just They have the middle that they're gonna get like some oh you have sympathy for me like no you you chose the seat

This is what you're sitting at. But that's what I I only say that, say that's a one-off situation. Like, that's not, there's not like multiple days of planning that goes into this. It's not affecting my mood long-term. And this situation, the upside, like, it's the classic is that you're just worth the squeeze for you, and the answer seems to be like, clearly no. I know it pisses you off.

Maybe there's like little things that you can do, but I'm with, like what Kyle said, there's probably like little things that you can do that aren't gonna be like massive changes to your day. But I wouldn't like go planning a parking schedule for weeks and months based on screwing this guy over. Cause what does that get you? Kind of nothing.

Yeah. I think we have it covered. Good luck. Yeah. Don't involve the HOA cause they'll have seven meetings and then something will happen and then the HOA will just be like, actually, no one can park anywhere now. That's our solution. To park, you have to park in a garage two miles away. We're going to run a shuttle. Okay. That'll do it for the show. Thanks to Oregon. Thanks to Kyle. Thanks to Saruti.

sure you check out our YouTube page and present in DC gambling problem. Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit rg-help.com. Call 888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org forward slash chat in Connecticut or visit mdgamblinghelp.org in Maryland. Hope is here. Visit gamblinghelplinema.org or call 800-327-5050 for 24-7 support in Massachusetts or call 1-877-8-HOPE-NY or text HOPENY in New York.