Colin Cowherd Podcast - Steph Curry The Most Impactful Athlete Ever? ESPN Dumps MLB, WNBA Needs To Embrace Caitlin Clark,

Colin’s joined by Ethan Strauss, sportswriter and host of the “House of Strauss” podcast!

They start by talking about the revival of the Golden State Warriors brand to now being considered one of the top 5 most valuable franchises, debate how much of that valuation can be attributed to Steph Curry and agree he’s the most transformational athlete in American sports history (3:00).  

They discuss Caitlin Clark being the “Steph Curry” of women’s sports and why the WNBA has missed opportunities to capitalize on her popularity (12:00). 

They put on their business executive hats and pick their top sports events/leagues etc that they would choose to buy the broadcasting rights to or make changes to and Ethan identifies college hoops as a huge opportunity (25:45). 

They pivot to ESPN dumping the broadcasting rights to Major League Baseball and question the move happening at a time when baseball has experienced a resurgence with star players on the biggest teams in the biggest markets (31:30). They also recount some of ESPN’s biggest whiffs in the past including passing on signing a rights deal with the UFC, and discuss the importance of avoiding confirmation bias in business, life and politics (39:00).  

They dive into the story that Jeff Bezos is mandating changes to the opinion section at The Washington Post, debate whether that mandate was out of line and talk about why traditional media is severely lacking in self-awareness (1:01:15). 

Finally, they discuss the rapid changes to government being made by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk and whether the media’s hair on fire response is overblown (1:10:00).

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
The volume.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Our conversation is presented by uber eats. You know, I
love them. Get gamed ay deals all season long on
uber eats. Okay, you know he's one of my favorite people.
His name is Ethan Strauss, and he used to be
part of the traditional media and he kicked that dead

(00:24):
end profession of the curve and now he is a
sub stack Maven. He is a podcasting whiz. House of
Strauss to me is my podcast listen of choice, especially
on long walks. I want to talk about the Warriors.
You covered for years, So I looked Sportico had a
list today of the five most valuable franchises in the

(00:47):
United States. Three of them are NBA franchises and one
was the Warriors. Now, if I would have told you
twenty years ago it's going to go Cowboys and Golden
State Warriors, you anybody would have thought, what the hell happened?
They were a mess for twenty years. I mean I
grew up with them with Rick Berry in the seventies.

(01:08):
You know, they had some interesting teams Tim Hardaway, but
it was just kind of a dead brand, which the
Yankees were, by the way, in the eighties. The Don
Mattingly years it was a dead brand. You can look
back and there's a lot of people that can take credit.
But I've thought about this. The Lakers were very big
pre Lebron, and the Cowboys were big before Dak and

(01:32):
most of these organizations that are listed the Celtics have
been big since Bill Russell. Yeah, but you look at
the Warriors and as somebody that covered them, can you
make an argument if they're a eight billion dollar franchise
that seven and a half of that have been driven
by Steph Curry.

Speaker 1 (01:53):
I know it's the number of a B. I'll say
that much about it, whatever it is. I feel like
Logan Roy, the Logan Roy line where nobody wanted to
watch the Warriors, but then we got Steph Curry and
we got some draft picks, and look at them. It's
amazing how forgotten it is, how irrelevant they were. And
I remember being in those locker rooms where a tumblewee

(02:14):
could have blown through because there's no media at all.
That's all I got to covering them, Colin, is that
I was just blogging about them as a fan on
a fan site, Warriors World, back in the day, and
I had other jobs that I was doing, and the
guy running the blog said, you know, we can get
a credential, and I said really, he says, yeah, nobody's

(02:35):
going to these games. Like they're desperate for somebody to
go to one of these games because they've got the
beat writer and then they've got the other beat writer.
Half the time, those two beat writers are talking to
each other and they're saying, hey, if you don't show
up to practice, I won't show up to practice, and
then we both get the day off like that was
happening back then, and nobody would show up to practice
and get any kind of story. It's been driven by Steph.

(02:59):
It's been driven by more than Steph. I'm a little
bit defensive on behalf of your guy, Draymond Green's legacy.
I know he can annoy people, but I think because
he annoys people, they start rewriting history. I see people say,
oh my god, Drayamon was drafted into the perfect situation.
Nobody has been drafted into a more perfect situation. And

(03:21):
I go when he showed up, there was no situation.
There was no situation to speak of. Nobody cared about
this team, nobody cared about this franchise, Nobody expected anything
good on twenty twelve draft night, and that guy was
a second round pick, no guaranteed spot, and he had
to scrape claw wrench jobs away from guys getting paid

(03:44):
a lot more money with a lot more organizational investment.
He became the best defensive player of his generation, which
then merged with Steph Curry being the best offensive player
of his generation. And a lot of other things have
gone right in between some other things going wrong. But
it's a crazy, just miracle of a story. And yeah,

(04:05):
I think you're right to hit on it that we
almost take it for granted. We almost act as though
this has always been a glamour franchise, they've always been here.
It was not that way. They were Clippers North. It
was different.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
Time to look at this week's Tastiest Matchup, brought to
you by Uber Eats. I think there's an argument to
be made and I haven't given it that much thought
that Steph Curry, more than any basketball player, football player, golfer,
tennis player, or hockey player, changed his individual sport more.

(04:40):
I don't think there's ever been a player in the
I mean, oh, Tawny's great, but we had Babe Ruth.
He pitched and batted too. You look at the great
football players, Well, Mahomes was great, so was John Elway
and Dan Marino and Brett farre and and they're there.
I think you're I mean, Philadelphia has a push push.

(05:04):
People are a little uncomfortable with it. Outside of Philadelphia.
It's not changing football. It's just a really good fourth
down play. Steph Curry has changed every single level of basketball.
Everything he's changed. I mean, I just I look at
the shots being taken now, and like anything else, any
cultural change, is that at some point they all go south.

(05:27):
Like analytics for baseball, You're like, yeah, the game is
more efficient. Oh wait, now it's more boring. Oh wait,
three pointers the math are better than two pointers. Oh wait,
now it's boring. That's the way analytics all work is
that these are TV products, and initially they make the
game more efficient, and they work on a volume scale
regular season, but ultimately analytics don't generally work in any

(05:53):
sport quite as effectively in postseasons, and they generally aren't
good for television. And so Steph, now there's there's a
little bit of a Okay, we all fell in love
with small ball and Steph, but now it's been copied
so often, and people do it at such a much
more a poor level. They don't. I mean, Houston can't

(06:15):
shoot and there I mean we got Wemby and guys
shooting too many threes. Joel Embiid's never shot more threes.
He shoots twenty nine percent. So but I do think Steph,
more than any athlete of my lifetime, literally changed Muhammad
Ali personality driven athlete. I think I think he was

(06:35):
for a long time all Lee was what people looked
at and went, oh my god, look how big you
get if you let your personality out. But I mean
that's just my take that Steph Curry is probably one
of one in a cultural it's changing of sports, esthetic
and style of play.

Speaker 1 (06:54):
You said a lot there. I love this topic is
a great topic. I totally agree, and I think what's
remarkable about Steph and we need to add it when
we say nobody has changed their sport more. When that happens,
people can become a victim of their own influence. Mike
D'Antoni revolutionizes basketball, but then he's almost a less He's
almost a less effective coach because all these other people

(07:17):
learn how to do it and maybe even refine it
and maybe even do it better, and he gets overrun
and he doesn't actually become a championship winning coach. The
crazy thing about Steph is that he's been doing it
for over ten years and he has revolutionized the NBA,
and he's still the best at doing it. He showed

(07:37):
people the way it could be done, he gave them
the recipe, and he's still the best chef cooking it.
I didn't mean to make a chef curry joke right there,
but you see what I'm saying. That's unbelievable to do that,
to be so influential and yet remain the best at
what you're doing. Now, the other part of it that

(07:58):
you've said, the malign in influence on the sport with analytics,
the optimization problem, I think that's real. There are these
strange things where sometimes we like something when one person
does it, but we don't like when a bunch of
other people are doing it. I felt that way about
Zachlow's writing. Zach Low probably the greatest NBA writer of

(08:21):
all time. He had a very particular sort of style
that was highly informational and could be a little bit quirky,
but was fairly dry. But the way he did it
was great. But so many younger writers coming up and
bloggers coming up, they wanted to be like Zach Low
because Zach was the man. And I looked at what
they were doing and I went, I don't know if

(08:43):
I like you doing this. It doesn't work when you
do it. This isn't a recipe that works when somebody
else does it. It would have been better if you
went with something else. And maybe even a generation before that,
Bill Simmons might have been that guy. Or I loved
Bill Simmons columns. But then I'm watching people try to
be a reverent and funny in the way Bill did it,
and it's just this doesn't scale. This isn't what I want.

(09:06):
This isn't what I want. I just want Bill doing it.
That's what it feels a little bit like right now.
In the NBA, where a lot of people loved watching
those Warriors in twenty fifteen twenty sixteen, not everybody loved
watching these teams that emulated the three point shooting. As
optimization takes over and now most of the shots are
going to be three pointers.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
That was this week's Tastiest matchup, brought to you by
My Fave Uber Eats, the official on demand delivery partner
of the NFL. I use it every week during the
football season. Uber Eats best game Day deals all season long,
order now for game day. You know what I thought
was really interesting because I thought Caitlyn Clark I was
really disappointed in the WNBA is that I thought Caitlin

(09:50):
Clark's appeal was very simple. Holy shit, we found that
female Steph Curry. She's taking shots women don't take. I
didn't think there was anything to it, and when and
then all of a sudden and she has this Angel Reese.
You know, competition in college like Magic and Bird, it
pivots to the professional league and it's fascinating. And Angel Reese,

(10:13):
I think her success helps Caitlin Clark. I think it
feels Bird Magic, although I don't think Angel is close
to Kaylin as an influencer. Bird and Magic both had
they kind of ended up in the perfect cities. Bird
in kind of tough guy Boston and Magic and you know,
showy Los Angeles. But it was funny because with male sports,

(10:37):
I feel sometimes I feel bad for Caitlin Clark in
the WNBA that people are trying to explain her popularity
nobody ever had to explain Steph Curry. It was just
did he just shoot from thirty four feet off balance
and make three in a row? And there's part of
me that feels sympathetic to the WNBA and part of

(10:57):
me that doesn't. First of all, I feel like when
you're young, when Bryce Harper came into baseball, he went
through an Andy duframe tunnel for about three years because
he was flashy, right, and baseball doesn't like flashy. So
Caitlin's not the first athlete the deal with this. Tiger
Woods had the deal with a lot of comments and

(11:20):
a lot of traditionalists pushing back, and the network only
shows Tiger, So Caitlin's not the first to go through it.
But I do think the WNBA has gotten to a
point where I want to say, girls, girls, she's the
female staff just embraced the hell out of her. You're
getting on private jets. So I tried to be I

(11:40):
tried to defend the WNBA initially, But how does that
land for you? Because I think they've gotten to a
point where I'm finding it hard now, Like, if the
chippy play continues, you may just lose me as a viewer.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, it reminds me of they say
about academia that the fights are so vicious because the
stakes are so small and the WNBA there wasn't money
to be made, and so attention is the money. And
suddenly this player comes in and is getting all the attention.
And this is the primary thing that you care about

(12:18):
if you're not getting any sort of pay in accordance
with what you think your value is. And there was
a ton of resentment towards her, and a lot of
people in that league seem to get caught up on
this whole versus is problem. You know, there are people
that can really grapple with what is, and there are
people who get really stuck on how it ought to

(12:38):
be and they're just fixated on it. It ought to be.
It ought to be Asia Wilson ought to be a
huge superstar. Asia Wilson ought to be the person Nike
is promoting because she's the best player in the league,
and she is the best player in the league. But
that's just not what it is. People are interested in
Kaitlyn Clark. They like watching Caitlin Clark Asia Wilson's game.
It's more analogous to a Tim Duncan. People are not

(13:00):
as interested in that. You can say there's a racial
element of that. Okay, I don't know what to do
with that. We can't just replace Caitlin Clark with somebody else.
She's the person who showed up for this particular job
of being Caitlin Clark. She's the one who's resonating. And
we can either benefit from what it is, or we

(13:21):
can tear apart everybody who's into it and make everybody
feel bad about it and try to stop it from happening.
That ladder move seems completely insane to me, and yet
it's entirely infected a lot of the coverage of the
WNBA from people who support the league at least support it,
you know, in quotations, because they're not helping it when

(13:42):
they go about it that way. And even the Time
magazine and even some of these publications that covered it's
like they're scared, they're worried if they're not giving enough
attention to the other players.

Speaker 2 (13:53):
Look at the history of basketball. Kareem Yannis Jokic did
not move the ratings needle. Yeah, Steph Michael, smaller players did.
This is the history of basketball. Is that my son's
not a sports fan. He likes Steph Curry because he

(14:15):
feels like, oh, I could do that. I'm not that huge.
Steve Nash had a wildly entertaining game. He wasn't a
dunk machine. I didn't think as a kid growing up,
Bob Lanier was fascinating. This game didn't work for me.
So the truth is basketball's history. The WNBA should take

(14:35):
a deep breath and realize Basketball's history is best score.
Alex English led the eighties in scoring in the NBA.
Alex English. There have been so many players Kiki Vandaway
I don't remember a basket he just never missed. But
there are players that are just aunt is dynamic and fascinating.
Kobe was fascinating, but a lot of the bigs like

(14:56):
and that's something we just have to be honest about.
Russell Wes Westbrook's game. I've said this before. In his
prime had of pay to watch him play. He couldn't shoot.
I didn't love his handles, But sweet mother, a vertical
jump the guy was like it was popcorn in a
hot skillet. He was flying through the air. So the

(15:17):
NBA is so caught up on well, she's the leading
score people like different and no other woman shot thirty
three footers. It's that simple.

Speaker 1 (15:28):
Yeah, they like what they like. Not even Logan Roy
could make Asia Wilson the biggest sneaker saleswoman in basketball,
and it's no distraction from her game. She's excellent, But
she's somebody, especially in the time story when she did
an event with the two K video game, who's just

(15:48):
complaining about the lack of attention she's gotten and how
it's not in accordance and it's not at the level
it should be at, and it's look, life to a
certain degree is not fair, and and that's actually what
makes basketball sort of fascinating to me. That's why I
wrote the Steph Curry article in twenty sixteen. There's this
ineffable charisma of stardom, of superstardom, that you just know

(16:12):
it when you see it, and we're not always sure
about all the elements you need for it to happen
and for you to really pop in the way that
Michael Jordan did, in the way that Alan Iverson did,
in a totally different way, in the way that Steph
Curry did. And the people who do it are worth
billions of dollars to the league and to these sneaker companies.

(16:33):
And then there are players who are effectively at the
same tier or level that just can't and just don't,
and there's just something human about it, and it just
is what it is, and you're just going to make
yourself miserable trying to figure out how it ought to
be and change reality.

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Speaker 2 (18:15):
I think you have either an intuitive sense with business,
either that or an acumen. Sometimes people just have a feel.
But I think I've watched you build your business, and
I think you've done a really good job of compartmentalizing
things being being unique but yet predictable enough that I

(18:37):
get into patterns of listening to you. So I as
I watch you, it's not about your ideology it's always
about your content. But the way you've built is the
way I would have built if I was a writer
and want into sub stack in podcasting. So you're a
network executive, you get to pick five, either events or sports,

(19:01):
to have huge contracts with everything going forward in twenty
twenty five, you can consider everything like the NFL you're
gonna have to pay a fortune for. So you get five.
Now you can include events every four year, events, you
can include leagues, whatever you want. You get five. Put
them in order of what you Ethan Strauss, the new

(19:25):
head of programming for Blank, would do, Oh my.

Speaker 1 (19:29):
God, Colin, I think I'm a good content guy. I
don't know if I have that kind of business acumen.
I think you think a little bit. You think a
little bit more in terms of business. I don't know
how I would rank any of that because it's it's
you've also got the problem of what they're worth, right.
I think that women's college basketball, speaking of women's basketball,

(19:50):
is an interesting sort of by low proposition where it
started to make some inroads. If you gave me, if
you let me be a dictator to run NCAA men's basketball,
oh I would be very intrigued with that. If I
could change it and do it in accordance to what
I thought would make money and grab the culture I

(20:14):
happen to believe. And this might be sacrilegious. The tournament's
too big. I think it's too big a tournament. I think.
I know a lot of people would say that's why
I like it, and it's what the gambling is about.
But it's devalued the NCAA regular season. I might pair
it back to thirty two teams. I might make it
a little bit less. I'd make the season try to
matter more. I'd try to make those events ten pole events.

(20:36):
Because college football has done really well over the last decade.
I know there's been a little bit of slippage in
the ratings. Maybe they I don't know, oversaturated a bit
with the expanded playoff, but they've done really well. College
basketball hasn't. I want to make college basketball more event
and less inventory. I think that's where it can really
make some hay and be a counterpoint to the NBA,

(20:58):
which is just too games. How do I make what
we're doing big events that cut through the noise. It's
hard because it's like hurting cats with all these different conferences.
But if you made me dictator and gave me the
rights and the ability to completely control the schedule and
how it goes, I think that's one that's a little
bit dormant, where there's an appetite for it, but it's

(21:22):
just got a little too much NBA disease of too
many games and your regular season doesn't matter when you've
got this big, single elimination tournament that I know we
love and I know it's called March Madness. I want
a way to preserve March Madness as a thing well
making those regular season games matter. So that's the dream
property for me. I'm sorry I couldn't rank them off

(21:42):
the top of my head, but that's one where I've
looked at it and I'd said, man, if they could
just do it different, they could really make this an
even bigger thing in the culture. Because as much as
we love March Madness, college basketball has never mattered less
in my lifetime than right now. And that's a and
it doesn't need to be that way.

Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah, it's this year. I watched the WNBA Draft and
knew the top seven players, and I did not know
the top seven players in the NBA Draft I'd never
seen them play, and it was like, wow, that's a problem,
Like that is a major problem. So I think one
of your points there that's really a station is that
women's college basketball. Because the players stay for four years.

(22:25):
There are more recognizable names in women's college basketball than men's. Now.
I do think the NIL is going to keep maybe
not Cooper Flag, but it's going to keep like mid
late first round guys in college for a year. So
I actually think that's highly beneficial for the NBA and
college basketball. Stay with tom Izzo for one more year,

(22:46):
then leave after your sophomore year. So the you know,
the NIL gets a lot of pushback, but my take
is it's actually going to be good for college basketball,
and I think and and in turn good for the NBA,
who doesn't have to be abysit every player that comes in.
I mean half these guys come in. They can't even
drink at the Rich Carlton Bar, Like it's ridiculous. They're
just kids that forget learning basketball. There EQ isn't close

(23:10):
to being ready to travel with drown men. So I
think women's college basketball, if all these were stocks, is
one of the biggest buys.

Speaker 1 (23:18):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's undervalued. I think they haven't been
promoting Hannah Hidalgo enough out of notre game. I think
she's fantastic to watch and a smaller player who just
makes incredible things happen out there. But to what you're saying,
the thing, if I was dictator of NCAA men's basketball,
I need the rules to be more in alignment with
the NBA. We can keep the forty minutes, but other

(23:40):
things need to be in alignment because that's what's getting
in the way of the development and making it less
of a reliable pipeline to NBA superstardom. If we can
get these guys playing the same sport that they're going
to be playing at the next level, I think that
helps everybody on both sides of it. So that's that's
one of the other things it comes to revitalizing the

(24:02):
men's side.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
Okay, I want to talk about it looks like World
War three and I don't understand it. And I've talked
about this on a previous podcast with John Middlcoff. So
outside of the NFL, which has been sort of in
a growth trajectory since I was like twelve, every other
sport is cyclical boxing died because of its greed, and

(24:24):
UFC horse racing because of several factors, of one of
which is this controversy with horses dying and drugs. It's
just a mess. Nobody wants to touch it. Soccer, the
World Cup, now globalization takes place, has never been more popular.

(24:46):
We become more of an event culture. But things are
cyclical and so right now. In my opinion, baseball speeds
up the game. Defensive shift is gone Otani to the Dodgers,
Harper Phillies, Soto, Mets, Judge, Yankees, Ronald Lacuna, Braves. All

(25:07):
the best players and most interesting players are all in
the right markets. ESBN a couple of years ago, signed
a seven billion dollar deal. I think it was it
was around there or it was seven years, three billion
dollar deal with TNT. For hockey, there's not a single
iconic hockey franchise in America. Maybe the Toronto Maple Leafs.

(25:28):
In North America. There's not a single recognizable superstar hockey player.
You don't have to love the Knicks, Warrior, Celtics, Lakers,
Lebron Steph these are household names. I do not understand it.
I think Jimmy Pataro or whoever is in this process
has made a big mistake, stiff arming major League Baseball. Like, guys,

(25:52):
it is significantly more relevant than hockey.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
What say you, I wonder I'm sure the analysis they
did was deeper, but everybody's informed by their biases and
the people around them. I wonder if certain decisions are
informed by sitting in the middle of Connecticut versus your
self column where you're doing a lot of your show
out of la I know you're moving to Chicago. There

(26:17):
are parts of this country or the NHL just does
not exist. It doesn't. It's not my assessment of how
good a sport it is. It's just a reality that
there are certain parts of the country where hockey seems
very very relevant, and there are certain parts of the
country where you will go years between anybody mentioning the
sport in your midst. I like what baseball has been doing.

(26:40):
It's a little bit to bring it back to the
Bezos thing. I don't know if everything they're doing is
gonna work, but it's hard to hit a target without
aiming for it. And when they go, we're speeding up
the game, We're making the bases bigger, We're doing this.
We're doing that. It's at least a concession that we
have a problem, we're trying to solve it. We care

(27:01):
about you as the fan, we want your business. And
they did some great advertising for it with Brian Cranston's
narration and now they've got the box office stars and
they've got the Otani thing going. Look, it's strange to me.
I think baseball gets culturally short shrift. It's not as
glamorous as basketball is. But people will say things about
basketball that are just as true of baseball, and they

(27:24):
won't say it about baseball, like, oh, basketball so international,
so global? They go, okay, what about baseball? No, no, no,
Well wait a second, is Japan, Korea? These aren't other
countries far away Latin America. I mean, baseball is still
very popular. I think we just have it locked in
our heads that baseball is the aging grain. Dyings sports

(27:47):
agree and these other sports are on the come up,
when in reality, all the inventory sports I would call them,
have basically the same issue. You know, there are events
sports like football, where they're very rare when you know
when they're going to happen, and they cut through all
the noise in the culture their events, and then there
are inventory sports that made a ton of money in

(28:09):
the cable television years still make a ton of money
but might not be as relevant to that end of
the business now where there are so many games that
you have them on the background of your life. And
that's baseball, that is hockey, that's basketball. They're all facing
the same issue. And I think baseball became almost the
archetype or the example of decline in that respect that

(28:32):
was afflicting the other major sports that had the same issue,
and it's caused some people to overlook some of what
baseball has going for it. How Yeah, the World Series
recently have been more watched than the NBA Finals. I
think that would surprise some people.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
But it's true. Yeah. No, I think to your point,
is baseball, hockey in the NBA are all more international.
But I would say with Luca going to the Lakers
and Jimmy Butler to the Warriors, and the Knicks and
the Celtics, current relevancy the NBA and baseball actually, as
of this week, the NBA and baseball have their stars

(29:06):
in the right cities and they're both buys going forward. Now,
this is not an anti hockey take but it's expensive.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
It is.

Speaker 2 (29:17):
There was no ice hockey rink where I grew up,
and in warmer climates, it's just not a thing. You
don't have hockey teams. In high school. We all played basketball,
we all played Little league baseball. So it's really interesting. Again,
this goes back to everything, but the NFL is cyclical.
If you go look at college football Ethan, after the

(29:38):
kind of the USC Texas National Championship, the sport for
about fifteen eighteen years got really southern and really regional Georgia, LSU, Bama, Clemson.
The numbers and the attendance went down. Alabama had an
attendance problem with Nick Saban. Now Fox and the ESPN
step in and say we're financially going to control the sport.

(29:58):
College football is now a buy Baseball today is a
buye and I think it's a huge misstep by ESPN
to break off talks. I just I can't believe what
I'm watching.

Speaker 1 (30:12):
Man. I wish I could re capitulate what Logan Roy
in Succession said in the first episode. There was this
amazing scene where Ken his son, did you watch Succession?
How much exposition should I? I watched probably four or
five episodes. Yes, okay, that's good enough, that's good enough.
The Logan Roy, his son, is saying, it's all getting faster,

(30:33):
it's all getting different. It's so different. Now we've got
to buy the equivalent of whatever Gaker was in that show.
I think they called it Volter, And Logan Roy does
this speech saying, oh, it's all so different. You know.
You know in the past they said people didn't want
to go to the movies, but we built up the
movie theaters and it turns out they do. And he
goes through this whole speech and basically the idea of
the speech is that it's not all about trends. Trends

(30:56):
are part of it, but sometimes it's just somebody with
a vision saying this is what we're going to do.
This is what we're going to be doing. I have
the money, I can see it. I'm putting all my
life force behind it.

Speaker 2 (31:09):
I don't know if.

Speaker 1 (31:09):
That's going to be enough to make baseball as popular
as it was in the nineteen eighties. Indeed, I doubt it.
But there's just something to this idea of the leadership
matters these sports. They're not just determined by these other factors.
Sometimes the people running these sports, the people televising these sports,
they have the capacity to step in like a Dana White.

(31:30):
I don't think it was just natural for UFC to
become the big property it was. There had to be
a guy who saw it, who knew it could be.
So that's how I feel about it. And I think
there's some potential there with baseball, and hell, there could
be some potential there with hockey if they do it right.
If they say let's start building rinks in the suburbs
of southern California and Florida. Who knows, but you've got

(31:50):
to try, You got to aim for that target.

Speaker 2 (31:53):
I think you made a really interesting comment at the
beginning of that discussion on where ESPN is located may
be a factor in what sports they like. Let me
give you a story. I'm not sure if I've told
this before. He was one of my favorite people at ESPN,
John Walsh, kind of the Spengali of the company, very smart,
and I went upstairs. He was on like the fourth
or fifth floor, which I tried to avoid. It was

(32:14):
all the bosses, you know, And I would go see
him about once a month, and if there was a
good new Yorker magazine. He was very well read, very
learned guy, and I just I thought he was fascinating
and we would go up and talk. And I remember
going to him and saying, John, there is this sport
UFC and it's big in Vegas in LA I think

(32:34):
you guys should buy it. I said. It is more
organized than boxing. They've gotten rid of some of the
eye gouging and some of the real brutal techniques involved.
They've cleaned it up. It's more corporate. And it's again,
it's not a pit bull against the beach ball. It's

(32:54):
like boxing. It's got you know, weight classes and size
dimensions where you get even fights. And I said, John,
I think this thing. I think this thing is huge.
And the takeaway from John and many at ESPN is
it's too brutal. It's too raw. There's too much blood.
Let's talk Red Sox baseball. And I remember when I

(33:16):
was I'm not picking on anybody, but I can remember
there was a commercial one time. I was driving to
work at the other place and they were talking about
Florida playing Florida State and the commercial red at that
company and the Gators from Tallahassee and the seminoles from Gainesville,
and I literally called the Boston went guys, you sound

(33:37):
completely tone deaf to southern college football fans. You don't
even know where they play. And so I think your point.
And by the way, I'm not saying Fox or other
networks haven't made mistakes. I'm not picking on anybody. But
I do think when you grow up in the Northeast
is that you don't follow college football. You didn't initially
get UFC. It was I can remember having bosses that

(34:01):
like that, that really considered college football niche and baseball everything.
And I do think I argue this for years with friends.
I said, my negotiations with Fox have always been pretty easy,
and I said one of the reasons is they're near Hollywood,
and they're what they would call talent friendly because this

(34:23):
is the world they live in, and they you know,
they live in southern California. This is the home of
entertainment and stars. So they're really good at negotiating with
on air people that it feels like family. It never
gets personal, you don't always get what you want, but
it does feel different, whereas a lot of sports companies
in the Northeast feel like sports factories. You go to work,

(34:44):
you punch a clock, you put in over time. Here's
management and down there is the workforce. And it doesn't
feel like that for southern California. It doesn't feel like
that for maybe Netflix based in California, it doesn't feel
like that for Fox. So I do think where a
company is located has an influence on the culture within

(35:06):
the company, if that makes sense.

Speaker 1 (35:08):
No, I have a story that's similar. I think it's
less about the location, but it's just more about these
companies that get locked into a certain way of doing things.
And it's natural for us to project our sensibility on
the public and to make what we think is popular
to us popular for everybody. I think we all do that,
and I had an experience. It's a self serving example,

(35:30):
and forgive me for it, But in twenty sixteen, I
was reporting this story for ESPN, the magazine, and it
was back when magazines, I think, had a bit of
a higher status. And what's in the ESPN the magazine's
a big deal, and it was a big deal to me,
so I wanted to do my best story. I had
a story about how Nike had screwed up the contract

(35:53):
for Steph Curry and Steph Curry had wound up with
Under Armour. Great story, and Nico Harrison how up to
be Steph Curry's handler during that time and was in
this infamous meeting where everything went wrong. Somebody else called
it Steph Stephan. Somebody else put up a PowerPoint. It
was repurposed materials from the Kevin Durant pitch meeting. It

(36:14):
was a disaster. And so I had this story and
I was telling them. I was saying, the sneaker industry,
it's a big deal. People are really into the sneaker
culture and these guys make billions of dollars. And it's
not just about Michael Jordan. This is a big thing.
And the people at he has been the magazine were
very smart and they handled me wonderfully. I'm not trying

(36:35):
to criticize them, but I'm saying that I was younger
back then. They were a little older than I was,
and they had this idea of this is how we
cover basketball, this is how we cover the NBA, which
you're doing right here. I don't know what to do
with it. It's about the sneaker business. That's not what
we do here in Connecticut at ESPN and they cut

(36:56):
the story from the physical magazine and then they put
the link up there and it became and I know
it's self serving, but it became the most read English
speaking sports story of the year because it connected and
there were a bunch of people who do care about
that kind of thing. People are fascinated by business. People
were really into sneaker culture. It just wasn't the sort

(37:18):
of stuff that people in Bristol were focusing on every day,
and so they missed it as a relevant story. I
think that happens all the time. I'm sure I do it.
I'm sure I miss really big resonant things just because
I'm one person and I'm going to see the world
through my own taste.

Speaker 2 (37:36):
Yeah, I mean, I've noticed this. One of the reasons
I love every four years are elections is not because
I'm right. It's because of how wrong I am. Yes,
and issues that I view as niche issues, the transgender issue,
which I viewed as niche, didn't affect me. I think

(37:57):
it became a real touchstone for people in this country.
I had I was asked about it and my take was, ohays,
it's such a small number. It feels clicky well, I
was wrong. It had a touchedn't feel like immigration was
obviously a massive issue. Inflation was a massive issue. But
I think that is something I think about this all

(38:19):
the time, and I tell my staff this all the time.
Let's try to avoid confirmation bias, just because I want
something to happen. Like Sam Darnold, I loved his season,
but I kept saying on the air, I can't unsee
for interception games, the New England disasters, it's ill rear
its head, and eventually it did so. So that's something

(38:42):
I fight, but I'm guilty of it constantly. Do you
do you find yourself like the transgender issue. For me,
I just I never thought it would have that impact.
I remember being in a discussion though. I went and
had a beer with some friends. There's a place in
Manhattan Beach called the nine hundred Club. It's kind of
a private club, really neat, cozy, almost feels like a

(39:03):
ski lodge. And it was about a month out or
two months out from the election, and you know, guys
were talking about stuff and I was kind of eavesdropping,
but half watching, you know, an NFL highlights and half listening,
and I couldn't believe they had kids. I couldn't believe
how passionate they were. And these this is southern California,

(39:23):
these are not like These are not like Midwest alt
right conservatives. It's not the crowd. And I remember walking
out that night and thinking, man, I am just detached
from this. Have you had something like that?

Speaker 1 (39:41):
Wow? I think I was surprised by the Democratic overperformance
in the twenty twenty two midterms. So that was a
situation where yes, where I went, Oh, I thought there
would be more of a reaction. Things seem to have
gone not great with all the inflation, and there are
some of the these other topics, and people were talking
about a red wave, and so I was very surprised

(40:06):
by how the Democrats overperformed in that election. And so
as I share your exact sensibility where I'm endlessly curious
about the public because I can't predict where they're going
to go. I live in the Bay Area. How would
I know what normal people are into and what's going
to be motivating to them. And I don't look at

(40:27):
them in a condescending way when I learn it either,
I just go, Okay, well, this is what's motivating to people?
This is what they care about. I do not believe
you'll hear people use that term voting against your own interest.
I don't believe that's a thing. I think your interest
is what you're voting on. If you're more interested in
culture than you are in economics, you're not voting against

(40:49):
your own interest. If you're voting against something that would
help you economically. Your interest is culture, and that's relevant
to what you care about. I respect that, I understand that.
So I think that was one where where I was
I was surprised, and then you try to learn more
and try to see about, Okay, why why did that happen?

(41:10):
Why are people maybe a little wigged out still about
the January sixth stuff At that particular time, I think
that was motivating. And I also think obviously the Dobbs
decision and abortion that happened a few months before that election,
and that seemed to be galvanizing. And so you learn
a little bit and I think that that's healthy. But people,

(41:31):
for whatever reason, do not approach it that way. Often
they approach it like, well, the public, I either completely
know what they're going to do, They're going to do
what I want them to do, and then when it
doesn't happen, they're idiots and they're bad and this country
is bad. I don't like that reaction. I much prefer
I much prefer going, Okay, what's going on? Why did

(41:54):
you people feel that way? And where are you feeling it.
I'm really curious about the different parts of the country.
It's amazing to me that the county that's to the
east of the county I grew up in, to the
east of California. I think it's Imperial County. I should
know that because I grew up there, But it's I
think something like eighty five percent Hispanic on the border,

(42:15):
and it made this massive shift towards Trump. Nobody would
have predicted that, nobody. So the elections are just this
real object lesson in understanding attitudes out there that.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
We probably wouldn't even be aware of. So, yeah, you're
not beholden to being right, You're beholden to getting smarter.
And that's why I think I like your podcast is
that I again, this is a criticism of the mainstream media.
They are paralyzed by being right, never acknowledged when they're wrong,
and lack a certain ability to just say shit, I

(42:49):
whiffed on that, and I am fascinated. I remember when
emails were a thing to radio shows, and I would
read them almost obsessively. I remember I was listening to
Tim Cook, a CEO of Apple, saying the first thing
he does for an hour every day is read emails
from people about his products, good or bad. I used

(43:11):
to love emails, and I couldn't tell you how many
times I would use an email, and I would use
it either as a topic or as a reminder of
what people cared about. So I think there is I
think I don't. I am fascinated. That's I've said before.
There's three days every four years. I'm jealous of political
talk show hosts the day before an election, the day

(43:32):
of the election, the day after the election. I wish
I was doing their job, not mine, because it's just
fascinating to watch the American public and what matters to them.
And sometimes I'm detached. I remember years ago, I had
this driver that occasionally a company paid for when I
went to Chicago, and he had been Bernie max Driver,

(43:56):
the legendary comedian, one of the funniest people ever would
and I was just fascinated. And I think Ocean's eleven
had been out, and I just would ask him endless
questions about Bernie and just how fascinating he was. But
I found that this driver, I guess, I guess you
call him a personal driver show for whatever you want
to call him. It was suv how in tune he

(44:17):
was to the economy by being a driver. And he
would talk about, oh, oh, traffic is brutal, economy's great.
And I'd never thought about the economy, but his belief
based on what time was the traffic, what days were slow,
what days were busy, what was the activity at the airport.

(44:40):
And he'd been doing this for thirty years. He was
an older guy, and he was like you, he goes,
I could tell you without looking at the stock market,
without looking at the housing market, I can tell you
how the economy is by traffic flow. And it really
I must have had three or four long conversations with
this gentleman, and it really it was like, man, people

(45:01):
like you have such a heartbeat of how this company
is moving. And I find those people fascinating. I think
they're in every neighborhood in this country. They generally aren't
going to Twitter, they don't need to get clicks, but
these people that drive people around, These people that work
in restaurants, the lady at the diner, what are the tips, Like,

(45:25):
are people buying the more expensive thing? I mean, these
people that work at restaurants, these people that work at
movie theaters. They know what's happening with the economy. You know,
there are boots on the ground people, And I think
sometimes we overlook those kind of people.

Speaker 1 (45:40):
Well, I remember Tom Friedman the New York Times off
every would get mocked. He would get mocked for doing
these sorts of columns where he would have a cab
driver and there'd be some primary out in some state.
And I look back on it and I go, some
of you cool kid media people need to get in
some cabs and some ubers, because I don't know if
Tom Friedman was wrong and using that approach, It's amazing

(46:03):
what you can learn talking to people, especially if you're
traversing the country. I felt like I understood the country
better when I was a beat writer covering the Warriors,
just because I'd be in random towns, random overs, random cabs,
a lot of people listening to Rogan. That's all. I
got a sense of how big Rogan was. A lot
of people listening to you. I'm not trying to flatter you, Colin,

(46:24):
but I did remember going, man, a lot of them
are listening, listening to the herd out here, and you
get a sense of people because I think a lot
of people don't even understand the bubble that they're in.
And understanding it, I think is important to being open minded.
We're all in it. I'm in it, you're in it,
but you have to know that you're in it to

(46:45):
start questioning things and start wondering about some things. And
it's one of the reasons why I've really enjoyed I'll
give a shout out to Mark Halprin's YouTube show two Way,
where yeah, he'll have opposing perspectives and he'll have Spicer
from the Republican side and I'm drawing a blank on

(47:05):
the guy from the Democratic side, and they'll talk about
the news of the day. But what's really crazy is
he'll bring up just random people to the floor and
you'll have random viewers of his debate something political. I
saw a debate happening between somebody whose perspective was that
Trump couldn't be elected heus of January sixth, and somebody's

(47:26):
saying that the media was over hyping it, and at
some point Mark broke in and he said, look, we're
not going to settle this today, but we're going to
stay on this because this is the only place in
America where this is happening, at least in a way
that everybody can see it and regular people have unpredictable
political opinions. That's the crazy thing when I watch where

(47:47):
somebody will have two right wing opinions and one left
or vice versa. It's just hard to imagine because I
think in media especially, we're all talking to each other
and we're all seeing what we say, and we're just
forming this consensus like that, and a lot of people
aren't plugged in online, they don't go about it that way,
and they often have more idiosyncratic viewpoints because of it.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
And now for our segment, Hot Off the Press, presented
by our friends at Louisiana Hot Sauce bring the food
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hot sauce, perfect for those who demand great flavor with

(48:33):
just the right amount of heat. I use it on
my eggs, I put it on my sandwiches, I put
it on my pizzas. I love that. So I'm gonna
throw something out there because you have a great sense
of media and you've created your own media position. So
Jeff Bezos, you know, the founder of Amazon, who, by

(48:53):
the way, there's an old story in Seattle where I'm from,
that years ago when Jeff Bezos was pitching Amazon to
the top names at Microsoft, that the Microsoft guys came
out of the meeting and said, we just met the
smartest person we've ever met. Like he was. Jeff was,

(49:14):
really he was a next level thinker. And so he
buys the Washington Post and the business is broken. And
the most important part of media to me has always
been not resources, but trust, and the newspaper industry especially
has lost trust. So he comes out and he says,
you know what, We're going to change things at this company.
He says, We're going to embrace in our op ed section,

(49:39):
personal liberties and free markets, and of course the predictably
precious media. People at the Post are outraged. The business
is dying. It's been dying for twenty years. When a
business is dying, you have to change things. My takeaway is, well, guys,
what you're doing is not working. You were given the
keys to the kingdom and you lost the try the

(50:00):
American public. And here's a businessman saying, well, we can
go belly up or we can do it my way.
So I defend Bezos. Here your thoughts on what he
said and what transpired.

Speaker 1 (50:13):
Man, there's so many directions to take this. I don't
necessarily know if this loadstart is going to work, but
I completely agree with you about where they were at.
And I think to have an honest conversation in media
about what's happening, we need to at least acknowledge that
you see a lot of people in legacy journalism, formerly

(50:33):
at the Washington Post, even a guy currently at the
Washington Post lashing out, And I go, can we admit
there was a problem? Can we at least admit that much?
And then maybe you can disagree with Bezos's approach and
say making the Washington Post like the Wall Street Journal
won't work or it's self serving or whatever. I want

(50:56):
to just give people an object example of what I'm
talking about. Because everybody is accusing everybody of bias and
political bias all the time. There's this critique of the
Washington Post that they were biased for the Democratic Party.
But I really don't think people understand the extent of
what we mean. I'm gonna I wrote this article about
the Post. I've been criticizing the Post for a while.

(51:19):
I draw a distinction by the way, I think The
New York Times has been a very useful paper, whatever
people think of its biases. I would not say that
about the Washington Post, even if some people. They're certainly talented,
and people have gotten angry at me for that. But
here's an example of what I mean. The day after
the Biden debate debacle that ultimately got him shoved out

(51:43):
of the presidential race, right that was the biggest news
day of the year, and I remember it. I remember
going to the Washington Post and going, well, I want
to know what the insider gossip is. This is the
Washington paper of record. What is going on? I took
a screenshot of the front page of the Washington Post
the day after this debate, where Biden's meltdown was the

(52:06):
biggest news story of the year. The top story on
the front page is justices strike down obstruction charge used
for hundreds of January sixth rioters. Latest from the Post
what Trump said with his very fine people comments versus
what he meant. There's something about how elephants have been
orphaned as babies and returned to the wild, and there's

(52:27):
something about Baltimore's revived Redline will be the light rail system.
More says those are the top headlines. That's crazy, that's insane. Yeah,
and there were left leaning or Democrat leaning publications that
actually covered the news. If you don't do your job,
somebody is going to do it for you. That's the

(52:50):
lesson I take from it. The people at the paper
were not doing their job. They had such a group
thing going on there where everything was about Trump, and
everything was about all pulling in the same direction to
defend the party to the extent when the party actually
fractured and Biden totally collapses, they can't even cover the story.
So if you're not covering the story and I can't

(53:14):
rely on you to do that, then what are we
really doing here? And Bezos realized he was running that
kind of operation that just couldn't tell people what they
wanted to know, and he obviously wants to change things.
So that's what drives me crazy about how this is
all played out, how we can't even discuss that this
you know, this publication was just in a really bad way,

(53:36):
and now you've got you know, you're kind of subject
to a lot of journalists thinking that, you know, people
who aren't the show, who've been propped up by the show,
the Bezos, Billions, assuming that they are the show, and
you're not the show. You're not and you're certainly not
the show if you're not going to do what people
want you to do.

Speaker 2 (53:55):
So that's my background take on it. You know, I
was saying this about JJ Reddick the Lakers today. I
don't mind arrogance as long as it's accompanied by self
awareness and humility when you're wrong, and I think Jay
Reddick possesses those. I think he has self awareness and
he's not somebody that is unwilling to move off things

(54:17):
if he's wrong. So I think you have to be
somewhat arrogant to manage the Yankees, to coach the Cowboys,
and to coach the Lakers. It's a big brand there's
a lot of opinions, and I think the lack of
self awareness among the print media especially and traditional media
is really out of whack. Bill Maher often says this,

(54:41):
the idea that you could not discuss the concerns about
the wu Han lab, the idea that Joe Rogan was
taken to the woodshed because he suggested what we were
all seeing during the election, that Joe Biden has a
significant cognitive decline and it's oatmeal and it's getting worse

(55:02):
every six months. And then then Jake Tapper's now writing
a book acknowledging, oh there was a cover up. Well,
I mean it was if you discuss that in the
first two years of the presidency, it was considered mean
spirited and it was a wacky conspiracy theory. And the
lack of self awareness between the traditional you know media
that guys, we're watching things happen. You know, there's that

(55:27):
kind of a now iconic piece of John Stewart going
on Stephen Colbert, and Colbert just can't just lacks complete
self awareness, just can't embrace it. And so and I'm
no a fan of Trump, but you know, I I've
kind of come to terms with I get Trump voters.
I completely, absolutely get it. And when Bezos makes this move,

(55:50):
it's like, guys, the business is broken. Yeah, it's over.

Speaker 1 (55:55):
Well, And you could criticize Trump within the context of
what Bezos is saying. If you're in favor of free markets.
Trump is very much pro tariffs, which doesn't really seem
to be in accordance with free market. So it doesn't
necessarily read that this means that you need to lockstep
cheer on everything Trump is doing. But I think what

(56:17):
people want ultimately, they want authentic. They don't want you
to be right all the time. It's impossible you do
the you know where Colin was right, where Colin was wrong.
People don't love Charles Barkley because everything he says is true.
They love Charles Barkley because they know that everything Charles
Barkley says is what he's thinking.

Speaker 2 (56:40):
And by the way, and Barkley admits when he's wrong,
and this is what I've said before, Nobody in politics
will admit they're wrong. Nobody in traditional media goes, hey,
I whiffed on this until election night and then they're
all all unravels because the wrong guy want in their eyes.
And you know this is just something that I and

(57:01):
I grew up with somebody. I don't have a problem
by the way, with our government funding the Associated press,
I really don't. Or but I do think you look
at NPR and I listened occasionally to NPR. Yeah, there's
there's no question where it's leaning, there's no question where
it's coming from. And I'm a subscriber to the New
York Times of the Wall Street Journal. I love media.

(57:23):
I can read Anne Culture, I can read Ben Shapiro,
I can read Bill Maher. I go all over the map.
I just I'm curious. I want all sorts of media.
But the inability for kind of these mainstream media is
to acknowledge they are completely out of whack, like even
like right now, even with Trump and Elon Musk doing

(57:44):
all these moves, well the truth. And I was thinking
about this the other day. I'll throw this a Yeah,
obviously I don't want to get over my skis too much.
But if you look at Europe and what has happened
to their economy, it's bloated, heavy bureaucracy. I mean, you
can go read about the last ten years of Germany's economy.
Too many regulations, too much bureaucracy and now it's stuck
in the mud. It used to be a powerful, a

(58:05):
more powerful force. And so I think what Trump is
saying is what we don't want to do in this country,
and I got about six months to turn this stuff around,
is we don't want to be Europe. We're going to
cut bureaucracy, We're going to cut spending. We want to
be nimble and twitchier. So I kind of I'm interested
to see how it plays out. I don't agree with
all the moves. The media is just has come on

(58:27):
the side of this is ending democracy, and my take
is there are too many smart people that don't agree
with that. Where are you on the Trump musk? Rapid change?
Rapid changes that are happening very quickly. Okay, Okay, so
you said a lot right there. One thing is I

(58:48):
think it's important to admit what you don't know. I
think if people get so invested in trying to show
that I have the best take on politics, I'm so
smart that they pretend to know things they do. I
do not know how our vast federal bureaucracies function. A
lot of them I don't, And right now there's a
fog of war quality to everything happening. Every story is

(59:11):
like that story where from the musk side, it's Politico
is getting paid a gazillion dollars by the government, and
then it's, well, no, they're not really, but there's some
function called political pro and they've got a subscription and
it adds up, and maybe it's a little loosey goosey.
There's this fog of war where it's really hard for
me to track what's happening.

Speaker 1 (59:30):
I'm intrigued by it. I also have concerns about how
you might not know what we rely on until it
suddenly gets broken in this move fast and break things
sort of ethos that Elon seems to be operating under.
But my critique of the democratic side on this and
the media side on this is this I could accept.

(59:52):
Let's say they're right about every single criticism they have
right now of what Trump and Elon are doing in
taking a machete to the bureaucracy and the way that
they're doing it. That it's illegal, that it's misguided, that
it's going to end bad. Okay, let's just accept that premise. Hypothetically.
What is your alternative plan? Because I don't think anybody

(01:00:13):
believes that our federal government, which just to service it,
we're paying unbelievable amounts in just the interest on the
debt in order to get it functioning. Nobody believes that
it's completely efficiently run and all the money is being
spent efficiently. Nobody believes this. Nobody literally believes this. So

(01:00:34):
tell me what should be cut. If you think they're
doing it wrong, then tell me how it should be
done right. What you know, what aspects shouldn't get as
much money? Where could we become more efficient? If that's happening,
I haven't seen it, or at least I haven't seen
it at scale. And I think that that speaks to
the problem and the predicament much of the Democratic Party

(01:00:56):
and the media that the sympathetic to them are incurrently, which
is this ability to criticize, but not an ability to
present an alternative vision. This ability to say that this
Trump issue set is bad or appeals to our basis instincts,
but no ability to say, this is what the country
should be, this is how we're going to thrive, this

(01:01:18):
is how we will be great or great again.

Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
As Trump to say, we're increasingly a bloated bureaucracy and
what he's trying to do I think is in the
six months, get as much done as he can. And
if he takes a machete to some things, he probably shouldn't.
It's just part of It's the reality of anybody that
buys a new company and tries to create efficiency. You

(01:01:44):
may cut too deeply, but you have also made the
company more nimble. You know, you've made the company more efficient,
and sometimes you just chop or lop off too much.
I can live with a little bit of that because
you can always remember, you can recalibrate. You lose it
to midterms. I mean, this thing's not going to last forever.

(01:02:07):
Trump's polarizing, so he's going to lose people along the way.
But my take is, not only is there no plan,
but there is. Once again, it's this almost derangement syndrome
where there's nothing that he's doing that works, and I
don't believe that to be true, and that's what the
media is feeding me.

Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
Yeah, it's I completely agree. I think there are a
lot of issues like this. I think Trump's number one
issue in the first election, maybe the second election, was immigration,
and you could say that he was cruel or wrongheaded,
but then I would ask friends in my life. I'm
in the Bay Area effectively, you know, ninety percent of
my friends are liberal vote Democrat, and I would go, Okay,

(01:02:48):
what should our immigration policy be? Who? How many from where?
And it would be crickets. And I think one of
the reasons that that side of things has fallen into
this this sort of paralysis of never needing to articulate
a vision is I think they had a significant advantage.
I think that they did have a near monopoly on media,

(01:03:12):
certainly legacy media. Yes, Twitter was on their side. Twitter
was run by like minded people and it was this
messaging apparatus, so if they had a problem with what
the other side was doing, they would just mirror what
each other was saying and it would be very effective
messaging wise, we're in a new reality. Love him or
hate him. Musk has this powerful network in Twitter x

(01:03:35):
as he calls it. He's in government, so he can
message what he's doing and get his version of it
out there. You can say that there's a conflict of
interest there, you can say that's a dystopia, you can
say all these different things about it. But it's powerful
and you're going to do You're gonna have to do more.
You're gonna have to do better than just saying he's bad,
he's a Nazi, or Trump is a Nazi or a fascist,

(01:03:59):
or any of the sort of messaging that might have
worked in twenty seventeen. But we're in a new reality.
Demographics are shifting. The Democrats are losing young men to
a crazy degree. I'm sure you've noticed this because even
in our business, Colin, it's not necessarily politics. Purely, the
customers people care about are young men, and they're going

(01:04:20):
the other direction. I just don't think it's good enough
to sit back and criticize. I think you need to
have something of your own to sell.

Speaker 2 (01:04:28):
Ethan Strauss his podcast is House of Strauss. He's got
a wide variety of guests. He is a podcaster with dexterity.
He can talk business, he can talk sports, he can
talk media. You and Glass Piegle get all you know.
It's one of my favorite You guys get into the
weeds on stuff, which I'm completely fascinated by, and you

(01:04:50):
do all this amazing homework, and I just want you
to know. I don't know the download numbers, but all
that wonky media stuff for a guy that's been in
at probably too long. I find fascinating body.

Speaker 1 (01:05:03):
I really appreciate that, and thanks so much for all
the kind words, and this has been fantastic. Thanks so much, Colin.
The volume