Latest / The Favorites Sports Betting Podcast / The Buffet with Chad and Scooch, Episode 21 - Featuring Ryen Russillo

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The Buffet with Chad and Scooch, Episode 21 - Featuring Ryen Russillo · The Favorites Sports Betting Podcast

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Coming to you from fabulous Las Vegas. The right side
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: is the winning side. The late move is the correct move.
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: Sports betting capital of the world. We all know when
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: a sharp like me weighs in the lines move, it's
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: a party for your ears. This is the buffet with
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: Chad and Scooch. I want to buy that guy at buffet. Hello,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the buffet with Chad and Scooch from the
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: Action Network. I am Chad Millman with the Action Network.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: On the phone with me from the Orleans representing all
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: the board gaming books in the state of Nevada is
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: Bob Scucci, who was going to talk as soon as
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: I'm done with the rundown of what's on the show today,
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: So people can stay tuned and be excited, because after
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: Scooch and I are done talking, Uh, Ryan Russillo of
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: ESPN fe him and now podcast fame and who famously
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: left ESPN earlier this year, is gonna come on. He's
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: gonna play you bet your life talking about the biggest
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: risk he's taken in his life, how much you want
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: to bet? We can figure out what the answer to
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: that one's gonna be. And um, so that'll be interesting
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: Scooch is going to talk to me. We got a
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: lot to talk about. It's Super Bowl is done, but
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: we still got a lot to talk about. How are you, buddy,
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: I'm good. How are you? Wow? That's interesting how you
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: changed the tone in your voice, because literally thirty seconds
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: ago before we started recording, you were like sleepy drunk
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: post celebration of your two year anniversary of your engagement
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: that happens to coincide with Valentine's Day. Yeah, yeah, I
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: made a quick turnaround there. Yeah, there's lots of wine
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: being uh being drunk last night, so it was a
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: little bit uh celebratory evening. Jeez. Like it's like, like
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: the tone in your voice, and like what you were
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: trying to get at with the tone in your voice
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: and like, yeah, celebratory evening. Come on, man, what do
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: you want me to say? Where did you go out?
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: What do you guys do? What? What do you in
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: gen do? Your beautiful bride gen? What do you guys do?
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: Went out to a nice dinner, open up some wine,
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: came back, came back home, open up some more nice wine. Uh,
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: went up to coulda go ahead? No, I just went
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: up to our cigar room. Slash wine room, and uh,
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I guess you could figure the
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: rest out. Hold on, I'm trying to wrap my head
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: around the wine room in the cigar room first and
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: then I can move on to the rest of the visuals.
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: But I didn't realize that it was a wine room
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: and a cigar room in addition to a courtyard in
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: your Italian villa. Yeah. Yeah, well so we we we
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: really did up this this room pretty nicely. I mean,
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: it's all coffered wood ceilings and uh um, you know,
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: big kind of entertainment center in the in the middle
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: with the whole so no sound system and just wood
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: paneling and it really looks nice. But it's separate from
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: the rest of the house. So you know, when I
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: smoked my cigars, there's no smoke that gets in the
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: rest of the house. But as we were doing it,
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: we realized there had to be a lot of wine
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: being drunk there too, so we had to put in
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: the wine cooler, the bar, the whole thing. So uh
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: so she calls it the wine room, and I call
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: it the cigar room. So it's the wine slash cigar room.
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: What do you mean it's separate from the house, Like,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: is it it's separate wing? Does it have its own atmosphere?
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: What is it? It's well, from the courtyard, you just
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: go up the stairs and it's kind of a separate
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: type of a casita that uh you know, has its
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: own h V A C and on air and heat,
• 4:13
  Speaker 1: so it doesn't events aren't connected to the rest of
• 4:16
  Speaker 1: the house. But you get there through the courtyard, so
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: it's it's separate, but it's part of the same property.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: You are living the light. I like, I don't even
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: think I truly understood how like lux your life really was.
• 4:36
  Speaker 1: Come on, I just I like, I don't understand it.
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: I have like water and half my basement I have,
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Like I don't have a cigar room or a wine room.
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: I don't have I don't have that. You don't have that.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: You don't have a little separate room. Do you have
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: a man cave? Do you have Do you have a
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: little place where you can go with you know, alone
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: with your thoughts and anything like that. Yeah, it's called
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: the bathroom. That's oh no, that's what most people who
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: don't have courtyards and casitas do. No wonder like you're
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: so happy in your marriage, you guys are living like
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: in a lap of luxury, and like, you know, Jen's
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: kids are older, so they're not really like, you know,
• 5:29
  Speaker 1: a hassle, and like, yeah, yeah, things are things are good.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: I'm not complaining. I mean, you know, I would have
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: liked to have won the super Bowl, but that you get.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: You take what you can get. I can't decide who's
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: having a better life. Scooch or Mrs Scooch. She's very happy,
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: at least she tells me. So I think we're pretty happy.
• 5:53
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, that's kind of kind of how you said it.
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: You're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, so so three years on
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: the engagement last night, and then it will be two
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: years in April. Nice work, Congratulations on that. You're really
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: really impressive. Right overcame overcame the overcame the odds on
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: that one, didn't I you really did. I mean, I
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: remember talking about in the podcast many years ago when
• 6:26
  Speaker 1: you broke up with a woman who's um, I had
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: a seven year old daughter, and something about like the
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: daughter was interviewing, interfering with you being able to watch
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: a USC football game. Yeah, it was the night that
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: the USC played Fresno, And I remember that Reggie Bush
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: big run that still makes the highlight reels. But sc
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: was like a twenties something point favorite. They were down big,
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: and yeah, she was not letting me watch that game,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: and I knew it kind of wasn't gonna work out.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: Does does Jen know that story? Yes? She does. Did
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: you how early in your relationship? This is a good,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: good parometer. How early in your relationship do you tell
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: her this story? So I think that's what makes our
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: our marriage work is because we talked quite a bit
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: even when, uh, when we were just friends before we
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: actually started dating, So she knew a lot of these
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: stories before we even got together, so it wasn't a big,
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: big surprise. And you know, we we we we met
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: at at work, so we kind of knew a little
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: bit about each other's um, you know, lives before we
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: started dating. So yeah, she knew that story. It's a
• 7:47
  Speaker 1: beautiful Las Vegas casino love story. Yeah right, that really is.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: Oh my god, that's so. I feel like the the
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: risk calculus on um on her marrying you was decreased
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: because she knew all of your challenges and idiosyncrasies before
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: she walked down the aisle, and it was a beautiful
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: aisle by the way, I remember being at the wedding
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: that was That was a wedding that was like you guys,
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: come in her coming in on that boat, and like
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: sunny and beautiful, like that was a day. It was classic.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: And and you're being very kind when you say idiosyncrasies,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: because she calls it my craziness, because she says, yeah,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: not too many people can can put up with all
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: your your little crazy things. I'm pretty particular, and she
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: she puts up with quite a bit. I'll give her that. Yeah,
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: there's a little bit of that too. Hey, you know,
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: just I was just gonna say real quick, I mean,
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: the first day I ever spoke with her before I
• 8:47
  Speaker 1: actually met her, was on the morning of the n
• 8:50
  Speaker 1: Double A tournament. It was that Thursday of March Madness.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: About ten minutes before that the games were tipping off
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: and I was as busy as ever. It was the
• 8:59
  Speaker 1: first year that we had taken over all these new
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: properties at the Coast properties, and bets are flying, the
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: screen is lightening up like crazy, the people are in line,
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: and I get a call it's like nine o'clock in
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: the morning and she was working uh compliance, and said, hey,
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: my name is Jennifer and we need to get together
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: for some Title thirty one training on your staff. And
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: I was so like, I had no idea. I was
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: so mad that like what to say to this person.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: I was like, do you know how busy I am
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: right now? Is it possible just maybe we can kind
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: of put this off, like I don't know, another week
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: or two. And she always I was as nice as
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: can be, So maybe you talk about putting on that
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: other voice, you know. Uh, I was a lot nicer
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: I guess in real life than I was in my
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: own head. I think that's always the case with the
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: scug You probably are like the kind of guy who
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: in your head you're thinking, oh my god, I was
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: such a jerk to this person, and like on the
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: outside they would think, oh my god, that Bob Scucci
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: is the sweetest guy. Yeah, alright, listen, we gotta get
• 10:14
  Speaker 1: to a little action. Don't forget. Ryan Russolo was coming
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: on the podcast after this um and what we're One
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: of the things we're gonna talk about with Ryan is
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: NBA and sort of how you assess the league after
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: all the trade deadline stuff and Scooch. I think that's
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: what I want to talk about with you as well, because, um,
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: the Calves all of a sudden make these trades. They
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: have been a team that had been horrible against the
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: spread all season long, a team who's you know, probably
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: implied odds were significantly lower than even the bookmakers were
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: giving them credit for to win the title, and they
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: make this trade and all of a sudden, you know,
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: for two games at least their world beaters and playing
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: better defense, and um, looking like a much different team.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: So tell me about all your Calves ajustments as soon
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: as the trade happened, and then what you've done in
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: the sort of the weeks since. Yeah, you know, when
• 11:06
  Speaker 1: the when the trades first happened, we knew it was
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: going to be a completely different team, but as far
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: as adjusting, like the futures, we were a little you know,
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: hesitant to to make a big adjustment because we still wondered,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: you know, how the team was going to play together. Uh,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: I mean right out of the gate, I mean they
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: look great, like you said, uh. And that's when we
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: actually started getting the money on the on the futures.
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: It was after the first game, So I think a
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: lot of the betting public were a little skeptical to
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: on whether or not you know, they had enough to
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: to kind of compete with. Uh, you know, teams, teams
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: like the Warriors and and and the Rockets, you know,
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: down the road. So, um, the money came in after
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: the first couple of games, I would say, but initially
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: we were a little hesitant. Well, so what have you
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: adjusted them to now? So we're down to seven to
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: one on them, and you know, at so at one
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: point we were as high as fifteen one, so uh,
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: and then right after, right after the trade, we went
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: down to about twelve to one, and then after the
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: first game we went to ten to one, and now
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: we're down to seven to one. Is that because did you,
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: as they say in the business, move it on air
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: or did you adjust because of liabilities? The first move
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: we made on air, just right off of the trade,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: just to respect the new players a little bit right
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: out of the game before they played. Uh. Then the
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: second move was after the after the game, and then
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: the third move was on some bets that came in.
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: So it was a combination of all three. And uh,
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: I still, I mean, we're still getting pretty decent action
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: on some other teams, So it's not like they're just
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: all coming in on just the Calves right now. Well,
• 12:50
  Speaker 1: who else you getting action on right now? What did
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: the go ahead? Yeah, I was gonna say the Rockets
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: are getting getting quite a bit actually, and uh, we
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: don't do real well on the Rockets, I said of
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: you know, out of some of the other teams, we
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: obviously do the best on the Warriors because they were
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: such a prohibitive favorite throughout the year. The Celtics kind
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: of crept up on us a little bit at the
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: beginning of the year, but we still still do okay. Um,
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: but the Rockets are you know, we're down to four
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: to one on the Rockets and we don't do real
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: well on them. Well you mean because they're just such
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: a huge liability on them right now? Yeah, yeah, exactly,
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: just on the futures. I'm just talking specifically, just with futures.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: Are there certain teams right now where, uh, you feel
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: it's a little bit like the NFL, only it happens
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: at hyper speed. Certain NBA teams where you feel like
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: you haven't made adjustments to their lines quick enough. Um,
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: And I mean after the fact, you know, I'll go back,
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: go back to the Rockets. Yeah, hold on, let me
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: rephrase that question. Yeah, in the NFL, you're very slow
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: to make changes and your power ratings because you don't
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: want to over adjust. So it could be half a
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: season before you've really made a full adjustment on a
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: team like the Rams this past year. Right, So what
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: is the comparison for the NBA. How often and how
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: quickly are you making adjustments on teams in the NBA
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: Because the volume of games is higher, we we hardly
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: make adjustments. Let me let me put it that way,
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: especially if you want to compare it to the NFL.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: The NFL every single week when the games kick off
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: kind of take down the odds. We start watching the games,
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: and then we repost the odds based on how that
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: week's games are going, and then that's going on throughout
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: the entire season. You can't do that game by game
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: with with basketball because there's there's too many games. And
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: with the NBA, especially in the last ten years, it's
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: kind of like you have those six contending teams that
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: are kind of the favorites at the beginning of the year,
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: and they pretty much stay the same and they haven't
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: changed very much. It's very rare in the NBA that
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: we're going to get a team that started the season
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: six one and ended up playing in the finals. I mean,
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: I can't remember the last time I think it happened,
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: and it really doesn't really count because it was when
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: the Celtics got Garnett and Pears and uh, it was
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: a completely different team from the off season. So I
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: don't I don't think the NBA is very comparable to
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: the NFL in terms of how we move the future,
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: so it's rare that we make big adjustments. But I
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: actually I was actually talking about power rating adjustments on
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: the team's game by games, so you know, are you know,
• 15:36
  Speaker 1: from from a spread perspective. Yeah, And a couple of
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: our guys that we use as consultants have a couple
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: of different methods of of adjusting their their power rankings.
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: Like some of them will take the final score, uh,
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: the margin of the final score versus the point spread,
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: so like from one to four points, if they cover
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: the spread from one to four points at it's adjusted
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: by half a point in the power ranking. If they
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: cover the spread by five to ten points, it gets
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: adjusted by a point in the power rankings. And then
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: I have others that actually take you know, statistics up
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: until a certain point of the game and take away
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: a lot of kind of garbage time, and they account
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: for you know, they look at the third quarter scores
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: of the NBA games and then just kind of make
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: an adjustment for the fourth quarter, taking away some of
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: the end of the games that are really noncompetitive. So
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: each one of our consultants has a has a different
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: way of adjusting form, but they don't get adjusted that much.
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, the rankings for the top tier teams are
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: pretty much the same from the beginning of the year, uh,
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: you know, barring any big personnel changes like the calves.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: So that's the NBA is interesting that way. You can
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: pretty much look at the future odds before every season
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: and one of those teams that is the top four
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: or ends up winning the title. Yeah, it's been that
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: way for like the last ten fifteen years. And like
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: I said, and take some of the other sports, you know, hockey, uh, baseball.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: We've had some teams that were two hundred to one
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: the year before the year the Tampa Bay Rays went
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: from last place to first place. They opened up the
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: season at three hundred to one and made it to
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: the World Series before losing to the Phillies. I can't
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: remember the last time we got a basketball an NBA
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: team that went that same way, especially with the same personnel,
• 17:31
  Speaker 1: you know, going from a hundred and fifty to one
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: or two hundred to one before the season and then
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: winning the title. All right, Scarchal, I got a bounce
• 17:38
  Speaker 1: to go, call Ryan Roussilo for the next part of
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: our podcast. But before I go, Um, if you're looking
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: at the NBA and you could tell me one team
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: outside of the four that you think is the most
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: interesting from a value perspective. So let's say the four
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: are Celtics, calvs. Rockets, Warrior. Give me the one team
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: outside the four that a better should look at for value? Uh?
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: I got an answer? I got I'll say Toronto. Oh
• 18:11
  Speaker 1: that's what I was gonna say. No way, yeah, yeah,
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: I think there's some value there. You can get Toronto
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: at about twelve to one right now. I mean they're
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: they're playing well, and they're in first place in the division.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: I think there's a little value there. All right, Bob Scucci,
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: let's tune in next week for more of the Scuoci
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: soap opera. I can't wait to find out what what
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: like February is the anniversary of and to hear how
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: Jen feels about how your relationship is going? Right now? Okay,
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: sounds good? Alright, good talk to you next week. Thank you, enjoying. Hey, listen,
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: happy Valentine's data you and your bride. Hey, same to
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: you and everybody. All right, joining me now on the buffet. Honestly,
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: a guy who is probably the best reader at ESPN,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: who asked the smart questions of every writer whoever came
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: on his radio show, Ryan Rusilo is on his basically
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: first day in l A right now. Uh has a
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: tremendously popular podcast on ESPN. Now he's joining me on
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: the buffet. What's going on, brother? Nothing? Man, I'm I'm
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: hanging out with my new spot here, the Equinox, which
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: is it's funny. I almost joined this when I lived
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: in West Hartford, just because I liked the gym so much.
• 19:23
  Speaker 1: I was gonna drive down to Greenwich like once a month.
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: And I go, Okay, that's that's kind of a loser
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: move to join a gym that cost this much to
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: use it once a day that you have to drive
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: an hour and a half too. But now I don't
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: because it's just up the street and I'm pump Man
• 19:36
  Speaker 1: really happy. So you had to move three thousand miles
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: away to join the equinox. That's essentially what you're saying.
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: That is a very efficient way to put it. Yeah, yeah,
• 19:47
  Speaker 1: but I like the surrounding area a lot too, So well, congratulations.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: So one of the things like I wanted you to
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: come in the podcast is because we have a segment
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: on the podcast called you Bet Your Life, and I
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: basically say to someone, tell me about the biggest risk
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: you've taken um, and then what happened next, and then
• 20:05
  Speaker 1: there's the factors that went into making that decision. And
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: so we were just talking for twenty minutes before we
• 20:12
  Speaker 1: even started really officially recording, and we were talking a
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: lot about this writer Eric Larson, who you're reading right now,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: who I love, who writes these great nonfiction books, and
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: most famously who wrote the book Devil in the White City.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: And you know Grenelle, who's recording, who's like producing the podcast.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: This is like an easy way for him to bring
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: that in right now. So Grannell, you can just drop
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: that in there and then we'll find a way to
• 20:35
  Speaker 1: get out of it. I was reading that Eric larson
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: Us in the Devil's Garden thing about the US ambassador
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: to Germany and its family seting over there prior to
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: the honestly like the Devil in the White City and
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: then and get wake are way better. This is thorough.
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine writing one of these books. Its freaking
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: digs to like everybody's diaries and the lines of the timeline.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: The book itself is kind of boring, but like the
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: lead up to Hitler's Germany is incredible because he just
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: was like, all right, I'm gonna go. First, he started
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: killing other Germans like we're like before we're even talking
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: about the horrific things he did after the fact, and
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: they just started killing out anybody that could challenge him
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: in different factions, and people like, wait a minute, what's
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: this guy doing? And then he had a they had
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: a press conference and he's like, yeah, it was all
• 21:20
  Speaker 1: legally passed a law the day before, so we're good
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: moving on. And I was like, Jesus, this is crazy.
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: But the rest of the book wasn't worth it. So um.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: One of the books that I've written was a book
• 21:32
  Speaker 1: called The Detonators, which I think we talked about, which
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: was about these guys who this like terrorist attack in
• 21:37
  Speaker 1: New York Harbor in nineteen sixteen that blew up downtown
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: Manhattan and it was all pulled off by Germans and
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: by the German army prior to World War One, and
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: so the case itself like extended into World War two.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: Um and sort of the US having to deal with
• 21:55
  Speaker 1: Germany and Hitler and all the subterfuge. The search I
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: did for that book, like how to write a book
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: like that, which you're probably going through a lot of
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: this now, um is was Devil in the White City.
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: And uh. He also wrote another book about like a
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: hurricane that devastated Galvestan. And yes, I think is it
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: No Thunderstruck? Was um something about no Thunderstruck? I think
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: was about electricity? Uh, I know he had another one.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: When you talk about a storm, I just figured, okay,
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: I'll throw thunder because I know he had one other
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: one that I haven't read, or two other ones I
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: haven't read. He's got like six or seven. And I
• 22:35
  Speaker 1: think his first one was about this hurricane in Galveston.
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: I read that too, and they're amazing and he's phenomenal.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: Um the way he doesn't narrative was sort of nonfiction
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: is uh you know, if my book had sold, I'd
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: be doing that instead of this. He's he's like, awesome
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: at it. I just can't fathom being that at but
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: he must love it, like he must the people close
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: to him must go, Okay, he's doing another one, and
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: there's no way to get around this. Uh the detail,
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: you know, the color of the scenery that he's describing,
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: and then it's all real. Like one person I had
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: known who read Devil and what ship he didn't know
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: was non fiction. Yeah, like now no, it's it's real.
• 23:19
  Speaker 1: I can't wait for that movie. And I love that
• 23:21
  Speaker 1: whole book. And I loved it because I actually enjoyed
• 23:25
  Speaker 1: the architectures going, even though everybody felt like when they're
• 23:27
  Speaker 1: reading the architecture chapters they just wanted to turn back
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: to the serial killer stuff. But um, it is funny,
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: though I think after Will shouldn't say funny, but after all,
• 23:36
  Speaker 1: like the Churchill love that after reading dead Weight, like
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: he basically was responsible for getting us involved in the
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: in the First World War because he just was like, yeah,
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: we're gonna let the submarine blow up this ship and
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: we're not gonna warn anybody. We're not gonna warn the ship.
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like that's that's what he's alluding
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: to there. Oh yeah, yeah, where he's just like, Okay,
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: so the way to be the Germans is we're gonna
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: get the Americans involved here, and by getting the Americans involved,
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: we won't tell one of their ships that German subs
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: are all over the place waiting to take these big
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: passenger ships out. And it's just crazy that you're like, oh,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: man like talk about and yet he's a hero, like
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: Churchill's considered a hero and I don't know, I don't
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: know how to play today. We'd have a massive like
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: people would tweet like crazy that he wasn't a hero.
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: I know that part well, if you've seen like The
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: Darkest Hour, which was that movie that just came out
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: of how he managed World War Two, there's that whole
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: scene where he basically goes on the radio and lies
• 24:35
  Speaker 1: to the British public about the status of the war
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: and Hitler and how everything's being responded to, completely bald
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: faced lies about it, and uh, he still goes on
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: to be the hero. Now that's a really good point
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: because I always wonder, like Okay, what what? What are
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: we being told? How much are we being lied to?
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: And do we kind of deserve it? Do we kind
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: of deserve to be lied too? Because if everybody in
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: power told us the truth every single element, every single
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: decision along the way, and we sit here in debate
• 25:03
  Speaker 1: all these things and probably get in the way of
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: any kind of progress. But I'm sure because some people
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: would listen to this and be like, no, we we
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: deserve the truth. We deserve to know every single time.
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: It's almost like a trade. You know, when I gets traded,
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: he always gets really piste off about it and says, oh,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: you know, they were shopping me and they didn't even
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: have they weren't even man enough to tell me, and
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: then they didn't tell me face to face or b
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: and all this stuff. And it's like, if I were
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: a GM, I wouldn't go to every practice and be like,
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: you know, to my second best player or whatever and
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: say to I'm trying to think of a good example,
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: or Daniella Gallinari and be like, hey, Danello, I took
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: a call today. I had a call from another team.
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: They made us a trade offer. I did turn it down,
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: but I will keep you posted because I want you
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: to always be in the loop and us to not
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: like that's not realistic. You know, things don't really work
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: that way. So when I think of like history, and
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: you know, when I read post Obama stuff and the
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: involvement in the Middle East, and I don't know, maybe
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: I'm just too rational about some things, but like i'll
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: listen to or read about some sort of military decision
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: that people after the facts of just crushed the bomb
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: before I'll be like, well, I can see how we
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: get to this kind of crossroads. Instead, I'm kind of
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: screwed either way. So I can arm people or I
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: can not arm people, and if I don't and then
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: there's enough rising that it's my fault. And then when
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: I armed people after I said I don't want to
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: put more guns in this part of the world, that
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: I'm wrong there. So you know what, I'm just not
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: gonna put more guns over there, And I'm reading it going, yeah,
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: maybe it didn't work out, but I can totally understand
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: how he came to that point. So I think it's
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: really funny the way we kind of look at history.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: And I don't know, I because someone was arguing that
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: maybe you don't deserve to be updated on every single
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: thing that's impacting the world. Well, you can't do your
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: job as a diplomat and as a politician and as
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: a world leader if you are trying to constantly figure
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: out how am I going to frame this very nuanced,
• 26:41
  Speaker 1: challenging subject for an audience of you know, hundreds of
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: millions of people, um that don't understand the full context
• 26:52
  Speaker 1: and don't understand the relationships and don't haven't played a
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: game of chess to the point where we know what
• 27:00
  Speaker 1: the next five moves are with either decision and what
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: the calculus is in those risk factors and saying all right,
• 27:07
  Speaker 1: if we go this way, this could happen. This is
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: sort of a a proportional response, or this is a
• 27:18
  Speaker 1: a challenge that we can this is a a now
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: come we can live with even if it's bad, Like
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: you just can't explain that the three hundred million people
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: like you can only do it after the fact, which
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: is why you get this sort of big addresses after
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: you know bin Laden has been killed and why we
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: made the decisions we made, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Yeah, right,
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: and at that point too, you're just going all right,
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: you know despite everything being such a battle, and how
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: people see things and say, well, you should have done
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: it this way, or why did you not think of this,
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: or you should have handled this segment. There's nothing easier
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: in life and after something happened and say, oh no, no no, no,
• 27:50
  Speaker 1: you should have done it, you should have done it
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: all these different ways. Like I never I hate when
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: we have like in sports, we'll have somebody apologize or
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: something right, and God screws up, he does something wrong,
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: going to apologize. Okay, so now we get it just
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: ranking on sincere rank, like in the sincere meter, where
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: are we at one of ten? Okay, okay, well he
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: wasn't super sincere. Then we have the body language expert
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: come on and be like you know, when you turn
• 28:11
  Speaker 1: your shoulders in that means he's lying, and you just
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: go all right, okay, let's keep doing this so you're right.
• 28:16
  Speaker 1: So when something like the ladin happens, you're going, all right,
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: Blond's out. And this is huge for us because now
• 28:23
  Speaker 1: we can go up and we can you know, stick
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: out our chests and like I would hope and this
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: is me speaking as if our politician going I would
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: hope that there wouldn't be a thing after the fact
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: going hey, was this handled the right way? And of
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: course that's actually what happens. And that's why, you know,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: to be a politician. You know, I always kind of
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: think it's funny that people go, oh, I hate how
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: politicians talk, or I want somebody real, or I don't
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: want somebody who's part of the system, part of the machine.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: You know what, politicians talk to us this way because
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: that's the way we have to be talked to. Like
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: this is we sit there and we pick our side
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: and then be completely sell out for the one guy
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: and then rip the other dude who just is in
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: the line with my ideas ideology. You know, that's why
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: I think it's only so funny because I listen to
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: these guys and I can't stand them. You know, I'm
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: not very political at all. I can't stand these guys.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: They insult our intelligence for the most part. But they
• 29:13
  Speaker 1: talked to us this way because if they can bend
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: something in some angle that they're base still supports, They're like, yeah,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: I'll just go on this like this is BS, but
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: at least I know my base is still gonna believe it.
• 29:25
  Speaker 1: So I'll just say it this way, and then everybody
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: complains about the way this stuff is related to us,
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: and I go, yeah, but if they told us the
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: truth all of the time and we're totally frank, we
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: would crush him for that too, the same way we
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: do it with athletes when somebody goes, you know what,
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: I don't think this team is any good, or you
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: know what, I don't think we can win with this quarterback,
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: or I'm not sure that our coach puts the best
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: position to win. Like, we ask for all that sincerity,
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: but as soon as we get it, because I can't
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: believe that guy was so forthcoming absolute truth. Man, you
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: can't win with that. And you are incredibly passionate about writing,
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: and that's one of the reasons you're in l A.
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: So tell me about the biggest risk you've taken in
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: what happened next? Well, this is it, man. I mean,
• 30:03
  Speaker 1: you know when when people talk about getting involved in
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: sports talk and getting the show, I wasn't risking anything.
• 30:10
  Speaker 1: I was a bartender, you know, living above a restaurant
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: that served terrible pasta. Uh. You know, I'm still going
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: to school in the town. Are I still working? Still bartending?
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: In the town that I went to school at. And
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: you know, at first, it's like, hey, this is fun.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: I have a nice little life. I love growing tim Vermont.
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: And then you know, a few years go by and
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: you finished school, and you know, your dad starts asking
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: you a a tougher questions about your plans for the future,
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: and you got classmates coming back up to visit with
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: a fiance or somebody that's about to be a fiance,
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: and I'm pouring and bud lights and I'm going, all right, man,
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: like this is not the plan. This is and there's
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: nothing against that. Like sometimes I wish I could be
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: just more content and more happy with simple things, but
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: because I've never been that way, and I know I'm
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: never gonna be that way. So you know, I got
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: involved in in sports, and you know, you know the
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: story worked for a minor league team, and you know,
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: I don't know, fifteen sixteen years later, I've left to
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: ESPN after after twelve years at ESPN, and you know,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: the cool thing about the ESPN I don't know if
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: this is us taking a break from each other. I
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: can use relationship analogies for everything, but I don't know.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: I just felt like the right time, and and we've
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: been actually really cool about it. This is this has
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: gone much better than maybe I would have imagined. You know,
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: we've had some pretty honest conversations with with people that
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: make decisions over there. They kind of understand why I
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: made the decision I made, and you know, this isn't
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: necessarily done. But you know the reason I needed to
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: do this now is that I feel like, even though
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: this is a much bigger risk, I just wanted to
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: see if I could write TV shows and I had
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: had some ideas that I've been kicking around for a while.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: I took a shot at a couple of years ago.
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: I had an idea I wrote. I would say it's
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: probably an embarrassing script, how bad it was, but I
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: was just trying to figure out how to do it. Like,
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: just because you read a Robert mckeebook and by the
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: updated final draft program doesn't mean you're just gonna bang out,
• 31:57
  Speaker 1: um you know a few good and so uh, I
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: guess you know. It's one of those things where like
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: I kept telling everybody when I was bartending that I
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: wanted to be a talk show host, and then I
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: did it. So some sometimes I feel really stupid about
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: telling anybody what I want to do here and trying
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: to write for television. But if it doesn't work, I'm
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: gonna be like, man, I told everybody what I wanted
• 32:21
  Speaker 1: to do, and now I'm I'm doing sports. Well. I
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: think I would still do some former sports if it's
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: with the ESPN, and if it's not. You know, the
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: podcast is going really really well, so I don't know
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: that that would ever be a door that I would close,
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: but I'm I just didn't really feel all that challenged anymore.
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: You know, I really like doing the daily radio show,
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: but I can't imagine what the feeling would be like
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: to create something and to write it all down and
• 32:43
  Speaker 1: then have somebody go, you know what, we love this
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: and we want to buy it and we want to
• 32:47
  Speaker 1: make this a show and be able to say, like,
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: I I've fucking created that. Man, sorry to swear, like
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: that's just how I feel, and that's what I want
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: to do and that's what I plan on doing. So
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: that's that's I got really a bug a couple of
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: years ago, and and pitching the fourteen networks and going
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: over fourteen, I didn't talk really during the pitch, and
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: that always pissed me off. So I feel like, if
• 33:08
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna do it again, I'm gonna do it more
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: on my terms or align myself with some people that
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: are really pumped to work with me. And you know,
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: that's that's what I'm doing. I wake up every day
• 33:16
  Speaker 1: and I write. I'm like the seventh draft of this
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: pilot right now. And it's really hard some days, and
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: some days it's a lot of fun when you feel
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: like you nailed writing down a scene and then a
• 33:24
  Speaker 1: really established producer writer sends you back notes and sis
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: and he's still not there yet. So I got some time.
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: Well we'll we'll figure this out. At what point you
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: had a radio show for a long time, it's going
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: really well, you have this bug. At what point does
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: the the switch flip and you're like, I just don't
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: want to do the radio show anymore. Like I feel
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: like the the the seesaw has gone to the other direction. Um,
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: you know, I don't, you know. I'm more I think
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: a lot of people like we want to ask me,
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: you know, what were you upset about with the ESPN
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: or what were you mad about? I mean a lot
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: of stuff I already said on the show. O no, no,
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: no, no no, that's that's that's actually not my Q. It's
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: not about like what did the ESPN do. It's like
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: in your head, you were probably very happy and thinking
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: about like doing this for a while. There must have
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: been something wrong before you, even before there was any
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: interaction with the ESPN where you're like, I think it's
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: time for me to do this. That would be the
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: impetus to even have a conversation. Oh yeah, no, I
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: was going to set that up. I know that you
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: weren't like asking me to be like, all right something
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: who you don't like, Um, I don't really feel like
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: I don't really feel like I was growing um and
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: and I don't really know that that's debatable and people
• 34:42
  Speaker 1: there have agreed. I go, yeah, you know, probably right. So, uh,
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: I put so much time into that show, and it
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: was really the only way I knew how to do it.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: And I didn't have any balance, and I was living
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: in Connecticut. I wasn't I wasn't real happy, and I
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: had always had this this bug. The weird thing is
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: is that right before I moved to Boston after working
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: for this minor league baseball team, and that was two
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: thousand two, I was working construction for my father, and
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: part of my deal was they had bought this little
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: beat up cottage and they said, well, let's just live
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: there for free, but you got to do the work
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: on the house in the meantime. So you know, I
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: get up and I would shingle or I would do
• 35:23
  Speaker 1: you know, some of the some of the work around
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: the house. I mean, the thing was kind of beat up,
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: and you know some other jobs, I said, be out there.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: I remember one day I I dug eight dry wells
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: off of this massive house he was building. And that
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: was the worst because you gotta do these trenches off
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: of the rain spouts, and then you get to dig
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: thirty six inches down thirty six across and run these
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: trenches um from the gutters off of the bottom of
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: the house, you know, away from the house, so that
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: you have the water table, you know, all pouring away
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: from the house. And then uh, you gotta fill it
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: with rocks and then cover it all back up. And
• 35:57
  Speaker 1: I had to do eight of those, and it took
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: me like lit intimately an hour to do each one.
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: And I came home and this girl actually had come
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: down from Austin to visit me because she thought like
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: I was having this awesome summer of Vinyard life and
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: I wasn't uh And I came back and I was
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: just covered covered, and I went, all right, you know,
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: I don't mind hard work. I've worked hard, you know,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: for him most of my life. And then I just went,
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: this sucks, like I gotta like, what are you doing?
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: Like I gotta figure something out here. And as I
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: was sending out tapes of my minor league baseball announcing,
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: which wasn't that good. Luckily, I just said a deep voice,
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: but I was, I was writing this script in two
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: thousand two, you know, I was sitting there writing out
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: this whole thing and that I don't know, it's just
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: you know how it is, right, Like you probably right,
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: and then you probably have some other project that you
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: use as a distraction from the thing that you're supposed
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: to get done, Am I right? And stuff like that. Yeah.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: So yeah, for a long time I called it a
• 36:54
  Speaker 1: full time job. So but I mean, like, would you
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: find yourself get stuck on the thing that mattered and
• 37:02
  Speaker 1: going to work on something that didn't matter but it
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: kind of helped you get the priority done? Oh yeah,
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: it completely focuses you like, all of a sudden, you'll
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: be you know, for me, it's when I was editing
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: a desp in the magazine, and um, I was writing
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: books on the side. But like i'd write the book
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: in the morning, i'd go to work, I'd write the
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: book at night, and all of a sudden, you'd be
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: working on something in your mind would be clear of
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: sort of the screen in front of you, and you
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: would immediately get a crystallized idea of what it is
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: you're supposed to do in that segment of the book
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: that you're trying to write that will help you get
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: from what point A to point B? Yeah, because it sucks.
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: It sucks so hard when you're like, okay, I know
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: everything I want to do after this, I just have
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: to get there, Like what's the perfect way to get there?
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: And you know, when it doesn't happen, you just can
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: get stuck and you're like, great, an hour's gone by,
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: my kitchens clean, But okay, I know how I want
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: to end this, but how the hell am I going
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: to get there? Or it actually makes some sense. So
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: I was coming home and you know that was that
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: was only six, that's twenty six, and I would I
• 38:01
  Speaker 1: would work on that at night, like I just needed
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: a distraction. I needed to do something that made me
• 38:05
  Speaker 1: feel like, Okay, things are not great right now. Things
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: are not working out, Um, but you're gonna be okay,
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: and you know, we're gonna swing for the fences here.
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: And as I was writing that, dude, in two thousands
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: two that thing would have been so bad. I can't
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: even imagine how bad it would have been. You know,
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: I didn't really develop any B and Z storylines all
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: that well, Uh, but it was It was fun. I
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: really had fun. And then I ended up getting a
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: job on the air and Boston, so that was it
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: and I didn't touch it again until probably a couple
• 38:32
  Speaker 1: of years ago. It's so funny how those things happened, right.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: I remember when I I wrote this book The Odds,
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: about guys who been in sports for a living, and
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: I got the book deal in At the same time,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: I had written a TV pilot based on the first
• 38:49
  Speaker 1: book I had written about playground Basketball, and UM sent
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: it to a buddy of mine who, with time, was
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: in development at DreamWorks. He ended up becoming the president
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: of Paramount Pictures, and um I sent it to him,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: and like he ended up. He read it and like
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: a month later got back to me and he said,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: you know what, this is really good, Like there's nothing
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: to develop here, but you should come out and try
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: to be a screenwriter and see if, like you can
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: make it. And I did. I just gotten to for
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: the odds and I'm like, you know what, I'm just
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: going to do this book. I'm really excited about I'm
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: gonna do it. I went back and I happened to
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: I like I was cleaning out, honest to god, before
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: I took this job at the Action Network. I was
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: cleaning out like some old box in my basement, and
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: I found the script and I read it and it
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: was fucking terrible, like awful. It was when I was
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: packing up I was reading, I had to put it down.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: I couldn't throw it away. I printed this ship out
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: no too, but I was like, oh my god, dude,
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: like take your title page off at least. Yeah, honest
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: to God, it was. It's it's it's um. You look
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: back and you like, can't believe I actually put that
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: out of the world. Yeah, do you think your friend
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: lied to you? No? I think at the time, like
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: I was twenty six years old, probably and it was
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: probably good for a dude it was twenty six and
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: had never written a TV pilot before, and like it
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: was an area nobody was really addressing at the time,
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: and sort of had cool moments that were very inside
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: that um, you know, would take you into a different world.
• 40:29
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't very good. Like dialogue was crappy and
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: the scene setting was awful, and like the situations were
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: both at the same time clich and entirely unrealistic. Um,
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: it was just bad. Yeah. See, that's that's kind of
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: my fears that you know, when I did the first
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: UM pilot that I heard a couple of years ago,
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: I was still with an agency in my sports contract
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: was coming up with the SPN, so I kind of
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: felt like, you know, hey, when I when I signed
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: with you guys, you know at the time it's been
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: seven years something. I go, I really signed with you
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: because you guys are such big players in the television space,
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: which is a huge word as you know out here, UM,
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: and I go, I really, I really want to try
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: to kick the tires on this thing. You know, my
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: contracts coming up, Like I could see myself maybe we
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: could get something done, you know. I might even take
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: a break from sports, and they were like, yeah, yeah,
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean, look at every every agent
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: has there's a reason they're agents, you know. The Unfortunately,
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: I wish agents just go now, this sucks, total waste
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: of time pre signed with the ESPN. But they never
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: want to do that to you because they're afraid if
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: they say, hey, this sucks, there's gonna be some other
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: agent that's gonna pick you off by saying, now, what
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: do you mean you suck? That pilot's amazing, Like where
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: is it great? There's a need for this in this space.
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: So they told me the first one was okay, but
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: he had to do at all and I agreed to
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: all the changes because I wanted to see like how
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: far we could go with it. And it was cool,
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: you know, sitting there with HBO, Cinemax and pitching it
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: was it was cool. But you know, unfortunate our story
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: was a little too basic. I think that's what kind
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: of gets back to, like when you're writing something, it's
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: it's very challenging now, I think, because you know, the
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: rules are so different. Man. Like one of the examples
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: of some of the used to me was, you know,
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: you look at Breaking Bad and you go, okay, well,
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: how was that pitched? And you go, all right, it's
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: guy chemists, legendary chemists, really smart. Um, you know, it's
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: never smoked at Danny's life terminal lung cancer, gonna die
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: besides to start cooking meth. But he's also motivated and
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: driven by the fact that his other partnership college that
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: we're also really smart, went into this company killed it,
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: and he's always had this jealousy and felt like, Okay,
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: I never went for it, so now I'm gonna go
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: for it. And you're like, wow, you know meth dealing,
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: Keim teach your dad, who's gonna die in six months?
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: You know, that's just not that's just not the way
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: shows were when we were growing up. Like I had
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: a friend who's a really accomplished writer out here who
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: pitched some show about like a coming of age kid
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: in high or high school, junior high, something like that,
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: and then they passed on it. And then all he
• 42:56
  Speaker 1: did was changed the timeline of like it was a
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: jump back and forth timeline deal, and they were like,
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: this is amazing, and they're like picked up a second
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: season and it was the same thing. So sometimes when
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: I write like I think my stuff is very straightforward,
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: and sometimes I wonder, like it's is that kind of lost?
• 43:12
  Speaker 1: Can you just not tell some scare story? Does everybody
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: have to be an alien? Does does something have to be?
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: Like mad Men could have been Madman even if Dom
• 43:20
  Speaker 1: Draper wasn't a war desert like, it still would have worked.
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: But it probably feels like that if they didn't have
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: this little hook that there was some sort of mystery
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: about him, Um, you know, maybe it doesn't sell, and
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: who knows. I think he brought that around and pitching
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: to everybody for years and years. But that's the part
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: that scares me because even when I could go back
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: and read something that's terrible and go, Okay, this sucks. Uh,
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: you know, sometimes you hit sent on something you think
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: is pretty good and then you know, you still feel
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: like you're not there. And that's that's definitely the scary part.
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: And there's definitely gonna be days like I continue to
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: have days where I'll go, man, you did you know
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: what you're doing here? Like are you did you just
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: think this was gonna be cool? And you're gonna move
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: to l A And like, man, I'm gonna make TV
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: shows like, I'm not doing this to tell girls at
• 44:02
  Speaker 1: Starbucks and I'm a TV producer. I'm doing it because,
• 44:06
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm doing it because I want to be
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: good at it, just like you know, I thought I
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: was pretty good at what I did before. You know, Well,
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: that's the risk, that's the that's that's the you bet
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: your life component to all of this, right is you Actually,
• 44:19
  Speaker 1: normally I do this interview with people and they have
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: come out the other side and they get like what works,
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: and they're happy to have taken the risk. You are
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: smack dab in the middle of it. No, So I mean,
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: you know, but I'm not. I'm not freaking out like
• 44:35
  Speaker 1: people have called me. The second week after I had
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: left you know ESPN. You know, that first week is
• 44:41
  Speaker 1: easy because I would have been off ball games, holidays,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: the whole deal in that first week of January. And
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: I'm sitting in front of the laptop and here two
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: pages in you're going they've actually had another paragraph about
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: the temperature. Uh that is the going me. That is
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: the little nest place in the world right there. Yeah,
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: you know, and I live by myself. I'm in Hartford,
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: and I was like, I could guess I could work
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: out again today. Um, and now you get there, I
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: mean you kind of get there, and you know that's
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: the that's the thing is is that now I was
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: pretty close to maybe being a general contractor. I even
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: dabbled and helped insurance consulting. Don't even ask. And I
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: was like, you know, if I don't try to do
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: the sports thing, um, I'll probably divorce my wife at
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: like thirty five and freak out, like move to Cabo.
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: Look at the house, and I go, so I need
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: I need to I need to try this. And so
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: if I just stated at ESPN and maybe you know,
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: settled down with a cute girl from the gym and Hartford,
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: you know, I probably a divorce her fifty and moved
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: out here trying to do so this is really more
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: real estate play where I'm not just gonna lose half. Yeah,
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: I mean I look at this as I'm already I've
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: already recouped the half I was gonna lose in a
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: divorce had i just stayed in Hartford. So really I've
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: already want is a house in Manhattan Beach and in
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: a membership to equinoxed. Yeah right, because my dad did
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: drop that on me, because do you think if you're
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: successful with this that in five years you'll say, you know,
• 46:25
  Speaker 1: I'm just I'm not really happy and I I need
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: to try something new, So I don't. I don't, I
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: don't know. I mean, you know, if I've been killing it,
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: killing it at ESPN, and I mean like a chosen one,
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: a made man, maybe I don't do this and maybe
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: if I had gotten that, then I miss out on
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: all the great things are gonna happen here. Or you know,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just too realistic, Like I can sit
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: here and do like the T shirt, no days off,
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: do your job, you know, shark attack whatever, and say, oh,
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: I'm never I'm never gonna fail. I'm never gonna fail
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: to turn nobody wants as much as me. I'm gonna
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: out work everybody. Like that's all bullshit. I get either
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: going to come up with a great idea and somebody's
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: gonna like me and go, yeah, I want to work
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: with this dude, or I'm not and I'm okay with it. Well,
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: that's also the thing about that job, or writing books
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: or anything in a creative space. You could outwork anybody.
• 47:20
  Speaker 1: You could be twice as talented as somebody else. So
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: much of that is about right book rights, show, right idea,
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: right time, right place. You know. Like look, Game of
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: Thrones was not a hit the first eight episodes it aired.
• 47:40
  Speaker 1: I gave up on it, He gave up, took off.
• 47:43
  Speaker 1: How could put subtitles on? I was like, what the
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: hell did that? Guys say this dude's the Lord too,
• 47:48
  Speaker 1: you know, I was so confused. Anyway, sorry, keep going
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: because that's your guy. What the point is? Like then
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: all of a sudden they chopped the guy's heads off,
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: head off, and it's a game changing television program that
• 47:59
  Speaker 1: complete He changes how people treat the heroes in the show,
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: and treat characters in the show, and treat the relationship
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: with the audience because all of a sudden, it's not
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: an imperative that the hero survive every single element of
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: every single scene, right Because in the eighties and nineties
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: we wouldn't have gotten that. You know, like all that
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: stuff started changing. And Brett Martin, who wrote this unbelievable
• 48:23
  Speaker 1: book on just the evolution of television, I think it's difficult, man. Uh,
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: he's just writer. I think he's down in New Orleans
• 48:29
  Speaker 1: all the time at least I follow on Twitter and
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: he's he's constantly tweeting about food down there, and he's
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: been really nice to me, and we DMed a little bit.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: I told him I was trying to do and he
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: was kind of like a hey man, good luck. It's tough,
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: like okay, okay, thank you, But it's this. If you're
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: interested in this stuff, it's incredible because it just goes
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: through how the rules changed with television that we started
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: rooting for the bad guys and we knew he was
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: the bad guy, like we were okay, like gets into
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: the Shield and you know, it spends a lot of
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: time on the wire and the sopranos and kind of
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: how odd started this thing. But you're so right in
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: pointing out the net Stark thing, because nets dark like
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: growing up Game of Thrones, you go, uh, no, net
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: like the guy from Lord of the Rings. He's a
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: huge star. We have to keep him alive for five seasons,
• 49:13
  Speaker 1: you know. We gotta keep that dude to live. And
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: you know, the same thing with Joffrey, Uh We're gonna
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: keep you know. It's funny because one of the guys
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: that I met up with from HBO Cinemax after we
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: failed our our pitch a couple years ago. He uh,
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: I said, what do we do wrong? Now I'll never
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: get his quote. He's like, hey man, we get shows
• 49:31
  Speaker 1: about like freaking dragons and dudes that disappear, like congrats
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: on your college drama, but yeah you did you see
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: the dragons? Did you see the dragons? And so then
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: you're like, okay, well, what can I come up with?
• 49:47
  Speaker 1: It's so crazy, like all right, I'll start with dragons,
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: but then it will be from the future, but they
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: don't know that it's from the future. And then season
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: two mind blown, we're not even on Earth. And you're like, yeah,
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: that'll work, and it'll take place in high school small
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: West Texas High School. Uh. So you know, um, dude,
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: your story about one of the guys, one of the
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: creators Game of Thrones is so funny when you told
• 50:10
  Speaker 1: me that at dinner that I repeated that to my friends.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: Can you share that because it's so funny that you
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: grew up with one of the dudes. Yeah, Dan Wise
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: dB Weiss, who's one of the creators of Game of Thrones. Um.
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: For those that don't know, like the Andy inside of
• 50:25
  Speaker 1: the episode, he's the guy with the glasses in the
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: beginning so people understand, yeah exactly. Um, yeah, we totally
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: grew up together, you know, really good friends growing up
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: in high school, Like group of ten of us who
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: are really good friends were all still really good friends.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: I just you know, he just got this big Star
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: Wars deal. I was just emailing with him about it, like, um,
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: crazy talented guy. Like uh. In high school, you know,
• 50:48
  Speaker 1: we would all hang out at his house and he
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: was not a huge he's not a sports guy at all,
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: and we would like play basketball in his driveway. Um,
• 51:00
  Speaker 1: and he was up in his room writing novels like
• 51:03
  Speaker 1: he wrote this. You know, I remember reading a novel
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: he wrote when we were in high school about like,
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: you know, kids in suburban town, right. And then he
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: and I actually lived together in New York after college.
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: We both moved to New York and for that summer
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: we lived together, and um, he had written a novel
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: about like werewolves that was just amazing and like my
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: friends like yeah, it's like I'm like, you guys don't
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: get it. He is playing a different game than the
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: rest of us, Like he is out there and super creative,
• 51:36
  Speaker 1: and we all knew like he was he was, you know,
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: a really smart guy in high school obviously, but um,
• 51:43
  Speaker 1: it was you know, he he was just always writing
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: these things that were so beyond the realm of reality.
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: And clearly that has now manifested itself into you know,
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: the most popular television franchise in world history. And boy
• 52:02
  Speaker 1: he's talented and like that's but that's also like welcome
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: to a brother. That's sort of the game that you're
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: trying to play right now. Yeah, I mean that's the
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: kind of thing you look at you just go can
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: you imagine having to sit down and go, okay, you
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: got to write out this script and uh, I mean
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: obviously they had the books to kind of go off
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: there a little bit, but you know that stuff forget it,
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: I mean forget it. Like you know, I'm writing about
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: Martha's Vineyard at the wintertime the world and nobody knows,
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: you know, there's no dragons, but right, but also things
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: do well too, Like there there are plenty of dramas
• 52:33
  Speaker 1: that are not steeped in fantasy that do well. You
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: just if you're going to write a drama about like
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: Martha's Vineyard in the wintertime, you've got to have an
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: anti hero like it can't be some dude who's you know,
• 52:44
  Speaker 1: it's like it's got to be a guy who people
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: might have to hate. Oh no, they're not gonna like them,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: but they're gonna struggle with trying to figure out like, Okay,
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: is this guy truly evil or is he somebody who's
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: trying to get his life together? And that's you know,
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: I started it with some spot and you know, I
• 52:59
  Speaker 1: start in Montana and then you know, the guy that
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: I'm working with was like Sody, an expert on Montana.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: You went there for like three days. It's like, well,
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: uh yeah, that's a good point. So you know, I
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: change it to something I grow up because you know,
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: the funny thing about growing up on MARTA's Vineyard and
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: then meeting people is that they're like, oh, it must
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: be nice, and you go, you know, no one has
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: any idea of what the vineyard is. The vineyard is
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: this self sustained community where all class levels are represented. Um,
• 53:26
  Speaker 1: people don't understand that it's a lot more diverse than
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: you realize. And when you show up, everybody's surprised that
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: you don't have a sweater tried around your neck, and
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: you know, a sloop twenty two ft sloop out back,
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: you know, or multiple sloops, just not the way it works.
• 53:41
  Speaker 1: And you know on the island in the winters Rough,
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: it's depressing. It's weird, you know. And I was I
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: did it. I was in it for a couple of
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: winners when I thought like, oh ship, like this is
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: what I'm gonna do, Like I'm gonna be one of
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: these guys. I'm gonna show up to the job site
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: bitch about the Paths game on Monday. And then I
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: guess I wouldn't have so much from plain about the
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: last decade and a half. But you interesting at the point,
• 54:02
  Speaker 1: so yeah, you know that's that's the funny thing too,
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: is like when I'll watch the Game of Thrones because
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: of rewatching again, now I go, you know, this can
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: be about this mystical world and who's gonna be the
• 54:11
  Speaker 1: king and all this crazy stuff, but the premise is
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: still the same, like everybody wants to be king. So
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: I have to figure out, Okay, what does everybody want?
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: You know, what is what? What's what's the problem and
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: is there a solution? And are any of these people interesting?
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: And I think they are, like I think they are,
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: But I also grew up around it. But I also
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: think it's a world that would surprise a lot of
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: people because it's a real problem on Nantucket. Martha's Vineyard
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: here is like one of the most desirable places in
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: the country, and the people that grew up there are
• 54:41
  Speaker 1: the people that take care of it year round can't
• 54:43
  Speaker 1: really afford to stay there anymore. That's a huge problem.
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: So what happens now today? Uh, well today today, I
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: haven't officially moved out here yet, wating to close on
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: the place, but just gonna keep plugging away. You know,
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: I've given myself I have a time out of my head.
• 55:03
  Speaker 1: I don't want to hold myself to any number here.
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: But I'm not gonna be arrogant enough to be like
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: I'm done with sports, because it's just not like I
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: still think. I talked to the writer the other day
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: and he says, you know, what do you think you'll
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: do with sports? I said, I still think I do
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: a podcast once a week with ESPN or you know
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: if I'm not, And like, why wouldn't I, you know,
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: because I still have these nights where I'm watching so
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: much NBA. I mean, I'm still watching as much NBA
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: as I was before, and I think I'll still prepare
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: for the draft the way I have before because I
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: love the draft, and I'm sure I can do all
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: of these things because I don't have the daily show.
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: That is, you know, I believe, like the most time
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: consuming thing. I'm minn less. You're just a mail and
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: in guide. You don't give a crap and you just go,
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna take calls for four hours to show a
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: fifteen minutes growth show starts. But the way I did
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: the radio show, I could. I could never do it
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: that way. So this is this weird freedom that I
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: don't know. I feel different, I feel happy, and I'm
• 55:54
  Speaker 1: I'm really pumped to uh trying to make this work
• 55:57
  Speaker 1: because I said, I don't know, I just have this
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: weird feeling to keep down. Eventually it's want of work.
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: So I'm not gonna hold myself in some sort of
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: timeline or it's like okay, in one year, if you
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: haven't done anything, you have to leave, Like what if
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: I like it here and I do something else, So
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: I don't worry. You can't do any of these things
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: like the timeline like that, because what happens is, you know,
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: there's a some cost when you do that, and so
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: you you sometimes falsely account for the time you've spent
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: in saying I can't give up this time, but you've
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: already spent the time, so it's gone. Um. You just know,
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: like in that world, the time isn't necessarily the thing,
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: and so you can't say it's going to be a
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: five year thing or a two year thing or a
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: twelve month thing because you don't know what the next
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: day is going to bring in an area where the
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: work doesn't always pay off in sort of a linear equation. Yeah,
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: you're right, you're right, You're totally right. You know, it
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: could be it could be a worse in a year,
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: or I go, wow, you know, I'm further way than
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: I thought. But do I still like waking up every
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: day and trying to think about this stuff? Yeah? And
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: then but if I hate it and I won't do it,
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: you know. Uh, And people always asking about why I'm
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: not married, and I guess, I guess it's kind of
• 57:08
  Speaker 1: weird to be like, I just I'm so happy that
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: I don't have somebody telling me, hey, what are you
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: gonna do if this doesn't work? You know? Or oh
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: you're gonna write agend today you said you're gonna give
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: it a year. I'm in personally the worst wife ever
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: right now, But I was gonna say, like, your impression
• 57:26
  Speaker 1: of marriage is not actually like, my wife has supported
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: me at every single life good idea I've ever taken. Hey, honey,
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: we're gonna I'm gonna be committed chief of the magazine,
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: and we're gonna move from our very happy life in Montclair,
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: New Jersey, to the middle of Connecticut. We don't we
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: don't know anybody. Hey, honey, I'm gonna quit my job
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: and making a ridiculous amount of money at ESPN to
• 57:49
  Speaker 1: go work in this startup. What do you think of that? Oh?
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: And by the way, my job is gonna be in
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: New York. Do we think we should move back or
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: stay in the middle of Connecticut? Um, you can get
• 57:58
  Speaker 1: that kind of support too. Yeah. And the other thing too,
• 58:02
  Speaker 1: is that it's weird is that maybe this was like
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: the mental break and then you know ESPN and I go, hey,
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: you know what, it goes still like each other and
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: there's a role and I go, yeah, I kind of
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: miss it. And you know, that's why it's been really
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: cool that the that the breakup isn't officially yet because
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: the contract still runs and I'm still doing the podcast.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: Look if I'd been herring now and and left the money,
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: you know, that's that would have been a weird conversation
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: with the life. Are you serious really doing this? Yeah?
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: You know, and you know and you're like, yeah, good point.
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: I guess I'll stay pick out something nice are in Hartford, which,
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: by the way, wouldn't have been horrible, Like those are
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: the things, like you know it isn't You're right, yeah,
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: because yeah, you're You're smart to point that out, because
• 58:47
  Speaker 1: you know, a challenging life at ESPN is still a
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: great life. It's just I've never lived outside of New
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: England and I was in this area, the South Bay
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: in l A for so long, just checking it out,
• 59:00
  Speaker 1: and I go, you do, just do it, Just do it?
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: Like what's the worse is gonna happen? You don't like it? Okay,
• 59:07
  Speaker 1: And I just don't see why I'm not gonna like it. Well,
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: the good news is the good news is you're not
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: married or divorced, and so you don't really have anyone
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: to let down except yourself. Yeah, and luckily I got
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: this new house prior to meeting somebody who was my
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: inspiration when I accept some award and award show. You know,
• 59:24
  Speaker 1: unless I stay single, that would be wouldn't that be legendary?
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: Just get up there and be like, I have no
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: one to think because no one, no one was my inspiration,
• 59:33
  Speaker 1: no one guided me. I owe none of you nothing,
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: all I all of you nothing. I am my own man.
• 59:41
  Speaker 1: You can all suck it. Yeah, you can do it
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: on yourself, on your own. Uh, never mind, I lost
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: I lost my I just started thinking about being up
• 59:51
  Speaker 1: there and laughing because I wouldn't I would who would
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: want to be that big of the church. I would
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: have done that maybe at thirty, but I wasn't successful
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: on it. Well, I will tell you when my buddy
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: da And accepted an Emmy, Like he talked about dungeons
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: and dragons and stuff, and I emailed him. I'm like,
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: I'm playing it for my son because my son's a
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: huge Dungeons and Dragons kid, and so like I keep like,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: you know, he's met Dan and like they've talked about
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: the Game of Thrones books together, and and like I
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: love seeing Dan talked about that on television because maybe
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: my kid will get inspired. Just sort of figure out
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: ways to use dungeons and dragons in a way other
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: than sort of just playing the game. Um, Bryan Rusilo,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: you're on in l A. You can go make it
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: as a television writer. Uh, I'm excited for you. I
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: think it's gonna be great. Either way, it's gonna work out.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 1: I really do feel that way. And I don't know
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: that anybody would call me Tony Robbins. Uh that that's
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: spent a lot of time with me, but UM, I
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 1: don't know. Man, every time I was out here, I
• 1:00:56
  Speaker 1: got I got super motivated. And you know, I'll do
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 1: a million fake launches for the on it works. So
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: I can't wait. That is Alex Lesson, a million fake
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: lynches for the one that works.