Coming up, basketball masters three body problem. Curb your enthusiasm. Lots going on next. We're also brought to you by the Ringer podcast network. Put up a new rewatchables on Monday night, we did War of the Roses as part of Rock Bottom Week. This is a movie that did really, really, really insanely well in 1989. Michael Douglas, Kathleen Turner. It's excellent. It's one of the best divorce movies ever made. I encourage you to check out the podcast. Me, Mallory Rubin, Amanda Dobbins. So there you go. We have a bunch of master stuff happening with fanduel and on fairway rolling, including a bunch of ringer specials, these special props and bets that we made that you could go on Fanduel before the Masters start. You can jump in on them. Joe House and I are going to be talking about the combo of the Masters and NBA title teams and the odds for both and which ones remind me of which ones. We're going to be talking about Caitlin Clark and her effect on the sports world. And I'm going to do my kirby enthusiasm episode mini pyramid with House. So that's a long, long, long part of the podcast.

But that's not all we have because we brought in from the three body problem, the creators, Dan Weiss, David Benioff, Alexander Wu, they came on to talk about what it's like to create a binge science fiction show for Netflix in 2024. What are all the obstacles? We did a spoiler free interview, which I was really proud of because I wanted to talk big picture with them about different, especially with Dan and David, differences between creating a show for HBO in the early 2010s, they created Game of Thrones, one of the most famous shows of all time. You might have heard of it. And what it's like to do now when you're doing a binge science fiction show for Netflix, when attention habits have changed, when the data and the analytics of what you're trying to do has changed, what kind of world you have to create, what are the obstacles? So we hit a bunch of stuff. I think it's really interesting. And the best thing about it is, even if you haven't seen the show, I think you'll enjoy the interview. But I would encourage you to watch the show because it's really good.

Before we throw it to Pearl Jam, taping this tiny part of the podcast, it's like 745 Pacific time. I watched Celtics bucks tonight. I watched Giannis get hurt. And it was both not that bad, but also, like, not great. You know, it was the classic inbed of the ball just jogging up, all of a sudden reaches down, grabs his left leg, falls to the ground, limps off. And then even afterwards, they showed him limping out of the locker room and they're saying, strand calf. He's going to get an MRI. Doesn't seem like it's an Achilles, so I don't want to overact too much, but it reminded me a lot of the Durant moment. Not in the finals in 2019, but around two against Houston, when Duran had been crushing in the playoffs. He was averaging like 35 a game against the Clippers and Rockets and was the best he'd ever played. And it was a very similar type of situation where he took a shot. You can go watch it on YouTube. And he was jogging back and then all of a sudden reached down, grabbed his leg, and he had a string calf. He ended up missing nine playoff games, came back near the end of the finals, probably wasn't ready to come back.

I don't know if that's 100% why he ended up getting even more injured and tearing his achilles, but I'm sure it wasn't unconnected. And I mentioned this just because this is at least a three week injury, if it's a strain calf like, you don't rush back from that. It's too dangerous. It can lead to way worse Achilles stuff. And it's going to have dramatic implications on the Bucks if he can't play for three weeks, if they have to play without him, with all the other injuries, with the fact that he's the most athletic guy they have by far. So, storyline to watch. Just wanted to mention here at the top because house and I are talking about the bucks during the podcast. It would have been weird not to mention that. So there you go. All right, House is coming up first, our friends from Pearl.

Jim.

Are we taping this Tuesday morning before the master starts? Joe House is here. He hosts fairway rolling for us. He's on the winger gambling show. He's been my friend since 1988. He's coming to California to watch the masters with me and Nathan Hubbard because we decided not to go this year. We need a break. We want to keep it special. We've done two years in a row, house. I didn't want it to be stale. For us, it has to be special. Every time. Felt like two in a row.

I felt like it felt like three or four.

Um, we actually did some homework and planned this podcast out. We're gonna talk about the masters in a second. I was thinking, because we're. We're the same age range. I was thinking about this Caitlin Clark thing, which I think a lot of people had trouble coming up with, like, fancy cool takes on. Cause it was just like, this is really fun to watch. But I was thinking about all the people that have shifted an interest in a sport in our lifetime. Right? Like, I feel like, I know Ali was huge, but then it went to another level after he beat foreman and Frazier and was on wide world of sports all the time, and it just, like, it just felt like he lifted boxing to this different level and it wouldn't happen. Would you say Jack Nicholas did that for golf in the seventies when we were kids? Or was it already there?

I think whatever audience existed for professional golf at that time was there.

Um, that's fair. Let's take them off.

And the 86 masters, you know, like, rekindled it.

Yeah, but it was people cared about. You're right. Sugar Ray Leonard held the audience, but I don't think he shifted it. But I think he held it. So I don't think he qualifies here. But I wanted to shout him out.

I have a biased perspective because he's from the greater Washington, DC metropolitan area. He's from Maryland. So, like, we were. We lost our minds at Sugar Ray.

He just immediately took the oddly spot, but I don't think he changed the sport. Bird and magic in college basketball, I don't think they changed it, but it did. It was the start of the eighties, which was the eighties, through the early nineties, which was the glorious. But I don't think they shifted anything. Cause UCLA, in those games, they were all. They're all huge in the sixties and seventies.

Well, the thing that changed was the nature of the tournament. They introduced seating in 1979, and that coincides with magic and birds rise, so. And ESPN arrived. So if you want to, like, put all three of those things together.

Um, sports shifter. That's fair. That qualifies. All right, I'm counting them. So we have Ollie and bird of magic in college so far, I'm going to say Gretzky for hockey. I just felt like hockey was already important. We had less team sports. We had less stuff to do. But Gretzky in the eighties and the Oilers and their dominance and the scoring records, just. It just felt like he shifted something. Right?

I totally agree with this. Yes, he was. It was like a. For us growing up, like a genuine goat. We had two goats in our lifetime. I mean, in that stage of our lives.

Yeah. And where you cared about basically every round of the playoffs and whether they're going to win. And it was fun to watch their games and they're like changing rules, all that stuff. McEnroe and Borg. I'm going to say no, but I thought about it for a while because I feel like tennis in the seventies when we were growing up, Connors, Chrissy Evert, it felt big. Anyway, I don't know if they shifted it, but it felt like the apex of it. Yeah.

Those characters were all bigger than life and they were all on television. It was network television.

Yeah.

And if you like, I can distinctly remember being out with my father on a Saturday afternoon and seeing McEnroe on a grainy television screen. Wherever we were, whatever, Aaron, we were running. Yeah, for sure.

Bigger than life characters everyone was in. Okay, now we have a couple in a row that are no doubtors bird of magic in the NBA, specifically the 84 finals. The sport just changes. Mike Tyson in the mid eighties, bringing back heavyweight boxing. I'm not going to say boxing, but I'm say heavyweight boxing. Because heavyweight boxing during the Holmes era, it started to shift into something else. And then all of a sudden he became appointment tv. So I'm giving him credit, Jordan and everything he does from basically the year he averages 37 a game on. We were just so lucky.

We had Gretzky and Jordan in our lifetimes, like in our formative sports orientation.

Fab five. I can't give it to them, but I wanted to give them a special shout out, special star, because they changed the concept of college basketball for what turned out to be for the worst, because then they ushered in the one and done era. But I don't know what their impact. I don't know.

I think what they did in terms of the culture and the seeds of this were probably properly associated with Georgetown and John Thompson and his sort of defiance and what he did in terms of grabbing kids from backgrounds that were not Georgetown backgrounds and saying, this is our team and this is who we're going to be. And then the Fab five, I think, kind of advanced that. They took the phenomena of their talent all coming together, but they also. They changed the culture. The Black Sox, the shorts. That was like revolutionary stuff.

Yeah. And the ratings were probably the peak during them. I can't totally give it to them. We had to shut them out. Tiger woods is the next one, clearly did it.

Another goat.

Maguire and Sosa for one year with home run ball, when everyone had turned on baseball after the lockout. And was it a strike or a lockout? I can't remember the strike. Was it a lockout.

No, it was a lockout. The players never. The players don't strike the world. Lock them out.

Yeah, they got locked out. They canceled the World Series and then the Ripken street captain. But really, it wasn't until the Yankees won the World Series they were little baby steps back. And then that summer 98, everyone went nuts and then kind of rode that momentum all the way through all the Red Sox Yankee games, the 99 us women's soccer team.

Oh, I like this.

Where women's soccer in America. Not a conversation ever. And then all of a sudden, that summer turned into something completely different, and I think propelled a women's sports revolution in a lot of different ways. Serena and Venus together. I don't know if they changed. I don't know if they shifted the sport from, like, a ratings popularity standpoint, but they shifted the sport in a bunch of directions, so they have to be mentioned. But they didn't. They didn't elevate the ratings. Like what? Like what we're going to talk about with Caitlin Clark. Are we sure? Did they elevate the ratings? I don't know.

I feel like they did at different times in their heyday. I feel like there were some mega ratings for, like, wimbledon, you know, the time they played each other. I bet there's. I don't know.

Yeah, but I remember, like, being disappointed with their matches half the time because we remember we were always arguing about, did one of them agree to lose to the other? And there was a lot of bitterness about, hey, why aren't these matches better?

That's different.

But it's because they were sisters, right?

That's different from whether or not it was catching eyeballs.

I kind of think it was Messi and Ronaldo in the US, specifically in the late two thousands when ESPN started running the Premier League and the World cup was becoming bigger in this country. I think for this country, they have to be mentioned.

Okay.

LeBron going to Miami in those four years elevated the NBA and the conversation about it. The next big one is Curry and the three point shooting. And what happened in the mid 2010s there, where it felt like the league was just going to be tied to whatever happened with LeBron year after year. And then all of a sudden, this warriors team comes out of nowhere and becomes the most pop, basically the most popular team since the Jordan Bulls. Three more. Conor mcGregor. Okay. Making UFC, going from, like, a really popular sport to a. Felt. It felt like it became mainstream after he was, you know, whatever ascent he was, he became the first a plus lister they had so I think he has to be mentioned, undoubtedly.

Yes.

The Netflix f one show, which isn't a person.

Wow.

But was a sports shifter, because there's a before and after with f one in this country and maybe in a bunch of other countries about the, especially with the under 30 fan base, I think was super important. And then I think Caitlin is the biggest one of these in a while where she took this now women's basketball, the ratings were going up, the interest was going up. There was momentum in all these different ways. But that rating, normally, I'm like, I don't really care about ratings, whatever. But to get 18 million people to watch at 03:00 p.m. On a Sunday afternoon in April was, like, shocking to me. That was the biggest basketball rating in five years.

Well, the rating Friday night, like a 09:00 Friday night game, I watched it at a bar, and everyone in the bar came to the.

To the.

Where the tvs were surrounded for that second half. And it was like, you know, an ongoing is a true throwback. Like, being in a bar, having a sports event that galvanizes everybody, and everybody's having a running conversation about what's going on in the game.

Yeah, maybe that's what. Instead of sport shifting, maybe it's a pull people over to the one tv in the bar, like, who had that ability? Remember when we had the party in college and it was Tyson Douglas?

Yes, of course.

And we just had it on in the corner, and then all of a sudden, Douglas started handing it to Tyson. And literally every guy at the party was just crammed on one side, and all the girls just started, like, leaving, unless they cared about the fight.

Well, that was basically holy cross.

Yeah, that was totally crossing. But, uh. But the Caitlin thing, it's the first one in a while where it's a. No doubt about it, took a sport from one place to a totally different place in the span of 15 months. The old way. And I don't think it goes back to the old way. I think this is where we are now.

I want to keep talking about Caitlin, obviously. But why did you leave out the rock?

I thought about it. I didn't want to take shit for. It was sports entertainment. It would be the rock and stone cold together. Oh, I see. Yeah, that got to be, because then you'd have to put Hulk Hogan too, in the mid eighties. So those are good, actually. I mean, both should go in. So Hulk Hogan and then Stone cold and rock fair.

Okay. Anyway, but yes, on this Caitlin point, I think you're absolutely right. She is the right person at the right time, the right vessel, some might say the white vessel, because, let's be honest, right? Like, we had two consecutive years of this racial juxtaposition in the first place between Iowa and LSU, and then secondly, Iowa and South Carolina. And Iowa beat South Carolina last year and then lost to them this year. But her style of play was, I think, the thing that is what's captured everybody's imagination, everybody's interest. Right? Isn't it? The fact that she gave us, like, we've had great female shooters. We just watched Sabrina Ionescu go up against Steph Curry, NBA All Star Weekend, and yet Caitlyn is her own animal altogether for some reason.

Yeah, there turned into a media. Meta media. A meta media commentary popped out of the Caitlin thing that, for me, it's like, she's just super fun to watch. I just didn't see any difference between them, this and Stephen. But she also kind of had to deliver on a big stage to justify it, which was why the LSU game was so important, because that was like the classic, just a revenge game, you know? And she played the best game she's probably ever played in her career. In the perfect spot on the right stage, she elevated herself, which is like the last level of this stuff. This is what happened with Tiger in 97. And I think that's what was special about it. I'm trying to think, are there any other sports that could kind of use a lift like this, male or female?

Because it felt like baseball was on the brink, but their best player got a little trouble.

Right?

Like, baseball was kind of there. Baseball is there with the asian audience. And it seemed like Shohei was perhaps on the brink of capturing our imagination as well. Like, finally on a stage where we're going to see him 30 or 40 times. But, I mean, are we.

Are we right?

Are we going to see him? You know, there aren't any more shoes to drop in connection with this very curious gambling.

It's totally fine. He just had his assistant, who made $150,000 a year, ran up a $4.5 million gambling debt. It's totally reasonable. Find the story. Let's all move on, everybody. I was trying to think what would Otani have had to have done to shift the sport of baseball up a level? And I think it would have had to be like. Like a 70 home run chase combined with the Dodgers trying to win 110 games. Cause to. To get people to care about the regular season baseball that's not their team has now become an impossible task in 2024.

You know what's sad is the season he had before he got hurt. If he'd had it on the Dodgers or the Yankees, that would have been national. Every time he pitched would have been a potential moment. Right. Because he had an incredible pitching season to go along with, leading the league in the. In the home runs.

I think your instincts. Right, about baseball, because I don't think it can happen in hockey. The guys are, like, too fast and too good, and I don't think there's, you know, like, when we were growing up or as a defenseman was just so different than every other player in the league. And then when Gretzky came in, he was just so different and so much better and fast, faster and everything than every other forward in the league. I don't know how you would be that in hockey anymore. I think it's almost like, degrees of.

Yeah, it would need to be, like, a freak athlete, like, somebody who shows up. That 68270, like, is LeBron size, but. But is, like, a crazy fast skater.

It would need to be. That's a good idea. So basically, like, that guy in the Rangers, but if he had LeBron's athletic ability and was just like, an absolute wrecking ball. Cause it's almost like in hockey, would happen with the. With sprinting, where the sprinting kept getting better and better, and then at some point, it's like, all right, well, now we're talking about the difference between 9897 and nine seven and nine, maybe nine six. Like, at some point, there's a ceiling on it. Yeah, I feel that way when I watch hockey. The guys are so freaking fast. Like, can you imagine showing us a hockey game from 2024 in 1978? Like, what? Our heads would have, like, exploded. We would have been like, are these guys going to die? Why are they going so fast?

It's probably the same experience we would have watching Steph Curry back then. Like, you know, seeing guys shoot from. Remember that there wasn't even, like, a really a three point line that anybody paid attention to.

So one thing you'll notice, I left out NFL for 50 years on this, because the entire time we've been alive, the NFL has been a monolith. And it really didn't matter who the stars were. Every year was just somebody else. And that's kind of by design. This is. That's how they want it. But there's. I don't feel like a star levitated above the league at any point during that stretch. Do you?

No, I mean, who do you give credit for the brilliant innovation in terms of changing the rules every four or five years to make it more offense friendly, to make it more television friendly. Do you say it's commissioners?

Yeah, that's probably Goodell.

Yeah.

That doesn't pass the crowding around a bar test. Nicholas is a good one. To me, Nicholas is almost a cutoff line because where he landed in the eighties, where he became basically everybody's dad, but anytime he was in a match, I guess, like, another one. That is a good one is Tiger post all the, like, late 2010s, kind of wearing some. Some battle scars. Tiger. Cause what happened with him in 2019, I think, was probably the biggest sports thing that's happened. Right. For any sport in the last ten years in terms of people galvanizing around an event.

The crazy thing is it happened in the morning, too. It wasn't supposed to. It wasn't at its conventional time. So we all like golf. People watched it. They were worried about horrendous weather that was coming that afternoon. He won the golf tournament at, like, a very unusual time.

Yeah, true.

So the replay of it, I think, caught as much attention as the live version of. Because people, a lot of, like, normal sports fans were like, I'm not waking up early to watch the Masters. And it very quietly happened. It was, like, done by 01:00 that day. But, yes, I think you're right. Like, in the last ten years, what else could we point to?

I mean, really, this Caitlyn thing, the last two weeks. Cause now she's gonna go to the NBA, WNBA, and I actually do feel like they have. They had enough stars in there already, and they had enough of a foundation to get momentum, and now they're putting her in there. So now you're gonna get the casual fans that come with her. And now we're off. And now we have more players coming, right? Like, Becker's gonna come and Juju and everybody else.

I'm putting this to you. You could put on. I want you to put on your sports czar. Let's fix the WNBA. Can we, like, just take care of some of the low hanging fruit? Can we at least get a schedule where they're not going up against other. Other sport? Like, pick a schedule and own those days of the week? You know what? What day of the week? There's nothing on in the NFL season. Tuesday. Give me the NBN on Tuesdays, right?

Give me. Just.

Just give them an opportunity a, to shine where their playoff games aren't buried.

Like, it's a.

It's an insane schedule that they play right now, that's part of, to me, what has hampered the. The overall acceptance of that sport?

Well, the style of play is a hundred times better than it was 20 years ago. It's way more. The slash and kick and the shooting is just really fun to watch. The players are more skilled. Like, did you watch Juju in the tournament?

I did. I loved it. I loved every aspect.

Her coast to coast speed was kind of just stunning. Like, I just did not expect to see that in a woman's basketball game like that. But I'm with you on the schedule. They have to figure out some way to peak during the two dead months. So even if that means they have to start the WNBA in, like, February, March, and kind of pick their spots with when the NBA kind of peaks. And, you know, right now, I think they started may, but maybe you start earlier because you want to peak in July and August. I think I would, you know, think.

About the opportunity they would have if the WNBA season started in the next two weeks.

Right. So the March madness ends.

Yes. The women's. The draft ends. Yes.

Oh, so that's. You know what?

Yes. Yes.

You just explained why they have to wait. I didn't think of that part. Women's tournament ends in the beginning of April. People have to graduate, so they can't really start till may anyway. Yeah.

We live in an age where you can be in college and play professional sports. Those two are not mutually exclusive.

All right, let's talk this out, because, remember, in hockey, I remember this happened with the Bruins, with Craig Janney and Bob Joyce. When I used to care about hockey as much as the other sports, we, the 88 Bruins, were making a run, and then those guys graduated from college and joined the team. It was like, 88 or 90. I guess it was one of those years. It was one of the newly Bork years. But those guys came out of college and were, like, right on the team, and we were adding them. Maybe that's. So if WNBA started, like, February, they had the draft, and you could just add the players to your team pretty much right away, like, innovate.

There's no reason you can't do that. Be innovative, like, get. Catch some eyes. You have this opportunity.

The other thing to me is it feels like they still have too many teams.

I don't think they agree with you.

They have twelve and the two expansion teams coming. Twelve is actually pretty good.

I think 16 is a good number. 16 becomes eight becomes four becomes 216 is a nice, round number. Get these markets right. Look at look at what the Midwest has shown us in terms of the enthusiasm.

Yeah, but you don't want to make the mistake where that all these leagues do when they start getting a little momentum and then they just start expanding like crazy because they're trying to grab the expansion fees.

Fair enough.

We know that doesn't work. So you would say 16.

I think it's a perfectly good number.

16 is good because you have the two, the two conferences. Well, we'll see what happens because they have a lot of talent coming in, but it does feel like the other piece with the Caitlin thing. And then we'll move on to a different topic is the imitators that are coming. Oh, right. 5th, 6th, 7th grade girls who have not watched her for two years. And like, I want to. This is who I want to be. Same thing happened with Steph. Steph happened. Five, six years later, the steph, kind of the first generation of Steph guys started coming in. And now you see this, you know, now the shooting is crazy. So I wonder if that's going to help with that. All right, when we come back, who's, by the way, who's your favorite sports shifter out of all this? Tiger. Yeah, I think you're.

Without hesitation or reservation. I love MJ, you know, and MJ was the most important must see tv in my household, you know, from as soon as he arrived on the scene. But Tiger just was transformative in so many ways, and he became, in the same way as MJ, a worldwide figure.

I'm going to make the case for MJ. Okay. When he left, there was such a void that none of us knew what to do for like two years with even remember all the stories about who's going to be the next MJ, and we're like, not you, not you. Nope, it's not going to be him. The ratings went down. The league just felt like it was in such a bad place that led to all of a sudden start maybe shoving some bigger market teams in there. Maybe. Maybe some teams are getting a little bit of help. The Larry Johnson four point play. All of a sudden that's happening. Kings Lakers, game six.

Oh. Blazers Lakers 2000.

Some shit's going on.

See, golf has been terrible since Tiger fell out of the scene. This is why what made the PGA Tour so susceptible to live. I mean, Saudis deciding they wanted to spend their money, but, um, the, the, the tiger void is. Is never going to be filled for. For golf. And they're still scrambling about how to fill it.

Well, especially once, once he had real adversity and then real off the, off the golf course stuff. And that seemed like it pushed him to another level. Like, then people are like, okay, let's get this back. All right, coming up, we're going to do NBA Masters. Golf's first major is here, and we teamed up with a fan duel to create special bets for all the action at Augusta. To make it even better, all customers can get a 30% profit boost to use on any of our specials. Joe House and I are about to talk about a bunch of our favorite bets. I think the one Haus is the most excited about is our swedish Colorado connection, Windham Clark Ludwig Eberg Eberg Heberg Ludwig a. Berg, the swedish guy. To finish in the top 20, including ties as a parlay. That's like plus 145 on fandor right now. But if you bet with our special bets, you get a profit boost, which will be 30% on your win on America's number one sportsbook. Download the app today. To get started, you must be 21 plus and president. Select states gambling problem called 100 Gambler. Visit rg Dash help.com opt in required bonus issue.

Does profit boost tokens restrictions apply, including token expiration seat terms at sportsbook that fanduel.com. So, House, I would say the two things you care the most about in normal April's are the Masters and the NBA playoffs. But yet Washington as the number two pick in the NFL draft, you haven't said on the pot who you want. Who do you want?

Justin Fields.

Stop. Who do you want?

I'm legitimately, genuinely torn. I would have without hesitation, said Jaden Daniels even two weeks ago. And now I want Drake May.

That's my guy, you motherfucker.

My concern with Drake May is the North Carolina track record. I don't want another Mitchell turkey.

Trub. He's not Mitchell. I don't want to hear that from anybody. Mitchell Trubisky barely played. I don't play like eleven college games.

Another giant North Carolina turkey, that's my only concern. But he's, I love his strength. The thing that has come to the fore is that he possesses a running ability, a mobility that otherwise might have been kind of slept on.

And this giant size is 230 pounds at age 21, where he'll end up being 245.

I can't, I can't unsee Jaden Daniels getting smashed into pieces. I, we lived through this. We had this, this guy, his name was Robert Griffin. The third. He was fast enough in college to not take any hits, but that wasn't the case when he got to the NFL and he was missing games, you know, right at the very beginning of his career because, you know, he's super fast guy, but there's a lot of super fast guys in, in the big boy league.

You know why I think you haven't decided who you're taking yet, the, the Washington freshman football team? Cause I think they're waiting to see what happens with Caleb Williams in Chicago.

Oh, what, what could happen?

Who knows?

Oh, who knows?

I think it's a. Who knows?

How can, how can it be? Who knows? They, they moved just in fields.

Sure. But what if he says to them, I want to go to Washington? Like Chicago? He's, I know he's in Chicago this week. He's trying to win them over or they're trying to win him over. Right. So it's like, here's our coach, Matt Eberfluss. Here's, here's our organization. Really, nothing that good has happened. Here's our GM. We made one awesome trade with Carolina. Um, it's super cold here. There's a terrible history of bears quarterbacks. Chicago's good.

That, that's exactly that. What more does he need?

I'm just trying to talk you into, I'm trying to talk you into Washington potentially having a chance for a one pick trade up and then getting your heart broken. That's really what I'm trying to do here.

I'm not going. I'm not playing along with that. There's no scenario under which he has a lot of picks. We need them all. Have you seen the roster? They got rid of everybody.

Have you read a quote yet from Caleb Williams saying, I can't wait to play in Chicago because I haven't. I googled it today. I didn't see anything.

Does he need to say that?

Yeah.

Why?

You know what? Suck up. Suck up to the city. You're going to and be like, oh, my God, they haven't watched the 85 bears. 30 for 30. That Jason Harridan. I can't wait to play for this thing.

He said anything on the record? He doesn't have to say a word. What if somebody, Chicago, a mega godfather deal.

Maybe it's your team. It could be.

It could be. So then him being on record saying he can't wait to play in Chicago looks a little foolish.

All right. I tried to set a trap for you. It didn't work. All right. Your two favorite things, the NBA playoffs and the Masters.

Yeah.

I think these are 50% of our texts in April are, are just possible bets for two of those things, and fortunately, there's odds for all of it.

Amazing.

You said, let's try to figure out, from a betting standpoint, NBA teams with master guys who are the doppelgangers. And then if we had to pick a combo to bet on, who would that be? So, that led to a bunch of texts with us, and I'm just going to go through the list that we had, and we'll do it from descending or escalating odds for the NBA team. So, the favorite will be first, and then we'll go backwards. So, the Boston Celtics are the favorite on fanduel right now to win the NBA title at plus 170. Rory McElroy is not the favorite to win the Masters. He is ten to one. And yet, when you sent me your list, you said, rory's the Celtics. And I was like, I completely agree. It's kind of perfect. There's an Irish. There's an irish lineage with both teams. Um, there's just an incredible amount of talent, and I don't trust Rory in the last couple holes of a fourth round, and I don't trust the Celtics in the last couple of minutes of close playoff games yet. I thought it was perfect. Great job.

Thank you. Yeah. I mean, the other thing with both Boston and Rory, lots of championships, lots of chips. It's just been a while. I mean, Rory, you know, had four majors, but he hasn't won one since 2014. And the Celtics, you know, were right there. They were in the finals in 2022. Just can't get across the goal line. Rory in the open championship two years ago, lost at the very, very, very end to camp Smith. So, thank you. Yeah, I like that parallel when you.

Said it's been a while. You mean one title since 1986 for.

The Celtics for who they were. They. They traded titles with the Lakers there. 2000, 920, ten.

What's more realistic to you, the Celtics at plus 170 or Rory McElroy, ten to one if you had to pick one. Damn, that's awesome.

Rory.

Rory's more realistic to you than the Celtics, who are going to probably run through the east the way everybody else is playing and will then have a puncher's chance in any series? I would say the Celtics are more realistic. It doesn't mean I think they're going to win the title, but I think. I think they have less ways for it to go wrong than Rory. Also, we haven't seen Rory do it in ten fucking years.

That's great point. Fair enough.

We should mention to the audience you're Rory's like last believer. You're like his Bundini Brown.

I. This week, you know, I make wagers on that the majors as soon as the odds start becoming available. So I do have some investment in Rory to win the Masters. I just haven't done it recently. I'm very, very cautious. I'm going to bet him to top ten this week. He's on my top ten card.

We should mention on Fandor, we have ringer specials that we did a whole bunch of bets that we liked. We'll get to a couple in a second. 30% profit boost on this. Okay, this was another one. I thought you did a great job on Denver plus 360. Somehow they have the second best odds, and yet I think they're the team all of us would pick if your life depended on it. And then Scotty Schepler, who right now is plus 450 with the best odds to win the Masters, as we tape this on a Tuesday, very similar, where all of the, all of the evidence is pointing to both of those, Denver and Shelfer being the best bets, and yet you look at them and you try to figure out ways to talk yourselves out of it. Shelfer has been the best player in the world for how long?

Going on two years now, over 24 months. I mean, John Rahm had a run in there, including, you know, winning, winning the Masters. But overall, the body of work for Scheffler, to me, warrants Scheffler over Rob.

If you had to pick one of these, what would you pick? Denver plus 360 or Scheffler plus 450? You put $100 down on either? That's so hard.

I'm going to say Denver.

I would say Denver as well. There have been some little signs, though, the last two months. They've. One of my things with them was the way they execute at the end of these games. Nobody can beat them, but they had a couple of games recently where they didn't execute as well down the stretch, and teams beat them and made you think their record against above 500 teams, it's. It's good. It's above 500, but it's not amazing. I think they're like 27 and 20 as we head into tonight's games. So, you know, I. Murray, it's like, what's going on with his knee? Why do you have to sit two weeks?

It's always that. It's always, always what's going on with Murray. That's the Denver story.

So what is it for Scheffler? What's the thing that worries you?

His putting. He switched a putter. He had a. We went from a blade putter to more of a mallet putter. Hilariously, Rory McElroy gave an interview. Actually, he was in Los Angeles at Riviera, sitting in the booth, and he's like, I think Scotty would really benefit from trying out a mallet putter. And the next week, Scotty puts a mallet putter in his bag and wins two consecutive.

Oh, Jesus.

But it's always. It's still a little bit the thing. Scottie had a chance to win three consecutive tournaments, but his putting, he missed a five foot putt that would have put him into a playoff on the 18th hole, the 72nd hole of the tournament. So that's the only thing that really sort of keeps him close to the field. I mean, the amazing thing with this guy, he had an injury during the players championship. He had to get, like, physio treatment during one of the early rounds.

Right.

Uh, and even with that, he still went on to win. So he. He can play hurt. I mean, that's part of the thing with. With Scheffler. Uh, Denver needs, uh, Jamal Murray to be able to play hurt, to. To be able to repeat the next one.

We argued about and switched the golfer a bunch of times here, but Milwaukee is eight to one, which, by the way, is hilarious. Milwaukee is the third best odds of all the NBA title teams. They losing to everybody. They look. They've never looked worse.

Yes.

We settled on John Rahm as eleven to one as they're betting doppelganger for Milwaukee. Same kind of premise.

Right.

Maybe three years ago, Giannis was the best player in the world there for a split second. So is John Rahm. Giannis won a title. Rahm won some stuff. Rahm in a slightly different position than maybe he has been in years past, and yet there's a fear factor with both sides. Yeah.

So, you know, you said Giannis three years ago. Yes. That's when he won the title. But we still talk about him as a potential MVP candidate. Right, right. So, like, there's been no drop off. We considered this year. Is there going to be a stretch that he puts together, that the Bucs put together, where we're having an argument about him as the MVP again?

Wait, you know what happened? Yana said no.

Well, to be fair.

Settle down, guys.

You know who said, though? Dame Lillard's calves, Dame Lillard's hamstrings, Dame Lillard's glutes. Cause.

And the new. And the new rules with Dame Lillard, where he doesn't go to the free throw line anymore, and his body's already breaking down. Oh, by the way, it doesn't really play defense. Hey, we tried to tell you all this before this season. Nobody listened to us.

Father time said no. But, yeah, uh, the rom thing. So, Rahm is the defending champion of the masters. He hasn't lost his fastball. He won the US Open, you know, two years ago, but he made the super curious decision to go take 350 or $400 million and go play on the live tour, and he's quietly been complaining about it ever since. He hasn't played a full 72 hole competitive tournament since last November 1 of the last DP world Tour events. He finished that, he took the money, and he's going and playing in these live events. They're all wearing shorts and playing boop boop dee doo music. Okay, great. I hope you're having a great time. That's what the money was for. But he's like, oh, I see these guys, these tournaments. So he's missing out on the opportunity to defend titles that he won last year because he's playing on the lift tour. He couldn't defend his title at the American Express. He couldn't defend his title at Riviera. And he said, I'm watching these. Watching tv, watching golf on tv, rather than playing in events that I think he'd prefer to be playing in.

So there's, like, stuff going on with him.

It seems almost like the Bucks having Adrian Griffin as a coach, getting rid of him, and then bringing in our guy, Doc Rivers, who's 500 since he took over. Yeah.

So, like, unlikely for John Rahm to repeat it hasn't happened. It doesn't happen in the Masters. Hardly ever. And I'll.

Unlikely for Milwaukee to keep Chris Middleton, Dame Yanis healthy, to just figure out on the fly how to be an elite basketball team in two months when they've shown no evidence that they can. That's it. Wow. This is another one we argued about. The Clippers are somehow eight to one on fanduel to win the title. We put a bunch of guys in this spot. And then you settled on Xander Schofley at 14 to one. Why?

Mainly because the Clippers, in this iteration, look to me to be a bridesmaid, look to me to be capable of getting all the way up to the finish line and then falling down for some reason, for the Clippers, that reason is because they're the clippers. Now, I. You know, if. If they all go to the same hyperbaric chamber and they all get on a PJ and get over to Germany and see the same doctor.

Don't forget Mexico. Mexico, too.

Right?

Maybe a stopover in Miami, as well. The triangle.

You don't have to go as far these days. That's a great point. They all hit the find the rejuvenation machine, James Harden and Paul George and Kawhi, and they all show up like, you know, ready for action. Then you see the clippers, like, you know, we talked ourselves into them over the course of the incredible run.

They went on completely out. I completely, 100% out. So what's that?

What's the case for Schofley, another guy who has been right up to the. To the finish line and then hasn't been able to get across it, with the most recent example being the player's championship, where he was in the lead? Uh, he had the lead through 54 holes, went into Sunday with the lead and bogey the 14th and 15th hole, which let Scottie Scheffler kind of open. It opened the door, really, for Scheffler to come in and get across the. To the. To the finish line with a number. And then, you know, Xander had opportunities to birdie coming down the stretch, couldn't get it done, missed out on a playoff. And, you know, the other sort of glaring thing on Xander's resume is the year that Hideki won the Masters. Xander had a chance on the 16th hole to be sort of right there and perhaps force a playoff, grab the lead, hit the ball in the water. His tournament was over. So he's a guy like a bridesmaid. He recognizes it, but until he does it, I'm very skeptical.

Yeah. Xander became a.

He might be James Harden. That would be the thing, right? Like, crazy talented, right up to the brink.

All right, the odds start jumping here. OKC, 14 to one. Probably going to be the three seed, and you put debutante number one at 33 to one. Our guy from Sweden. Tell. Tell the audience who it is.

Ludwig a bear. Yes. The very handsome, square jawed swede who is at the tippy top of all of your advanced metrics in golf. This is his first major major that he will have ever played in his life. But he finished his. His college career, came on to tour, won on tour, and immediately put himself, like, as top 15 kind of guy in all of the metrics that matter the most. So he's a guy whose name we're going to start seeing on important Sundays. It could be this coming Sunday. But the thing about Augusta, everybody will say it. It's one of the popular, you know, Masters week observations that nobody's won in their debut since Fuzzy Zeller in 1979. So unlikely to win this week has chicken and cowards. Fuzzy. That's him. That's the one. That fuzzy. That fuzzy right there.

You know why people don't win the first time? Cause they go to the 18th hole and they see how narrow that fucking fairway is and they get psyched out. It's like, jesus, I have to hit that through there.

Just as fans. Yeah. So Oklahoma City, right? I mean, they're talk about a team that checks all the boxes. Top ten. Are they top five in both offense and defense?

They checked all the box. They checked all the boxes. Except for making a trade deadline. Trade that could help the team. Every other box was checked. They still have 39 1st round picks. I like that. Okay, see, maybe a year away, Ludwig. Maybe a year away. This was another one we changed our opinion on a couple of times. Phoenix, 20 to one, a team that neither of us has any confidence in, nor should we. So what golfer fits that profile? Well, we landed on Jordan Spieth at 22 to one. And there's some spieth. KD parallels. Right. KD won a couple titles last decade. So did Spieth. It seemed like the ceiling of KD was maybe going to even levitate in the top ten. Didn't quite happen. Spieth didn't quite happen for him either. And yet there's still a blind faith in both entities. Yeah, there's still a blind faith. Like, and then by Wednesday before the Masters, you're talking yourself in a Jordan speed.

Well, he did finish fourth in the Masters last year. He's still not 30 years old. So there's still lots of time.

Listen, Phoenix.

Phoenix has KD, Booker and Bradley Beal.

Grace it out that we did on this very podcast, I think. Talk about the idea. Or maybe it was on east coast bias. But like Phoenix, because of the way that the playoffs, the NBA playoffs tend to play out, if you have guys that, that can score the way Phoenix is capable of, they can find the right matchup or even two. And, and it wouldn't be like a stone cold stunner for them.

The Denver recipe last year where they, the series was two, two after four because those guys played two awesome games and then they couldn't sustain it. But you figured last year was Booker, right? So two, two after four, maybe something. Yokich foul trouble in game five or Murray has to leave the game. Or. Or Booker just goes nuts. Or I. Listen, I'm not talking myself into it. Just telling you now. I don't see it.

I got Jordan Spieth in the top ten and a top 20 bet. I mean, let's just, you know, the math. I'm. I'm required.

Minnesota at 22 to one. You have debutante number two at 40 to one, Windham Clark. A guy that you've liked for a while.

Liked him a ton. Big municipal guy. Our shout out. Our pal Harry Arnett. And municipal.

Yeah.

So Wyndham Clark, since winning the US Open at LA Country Club, we watched it with our own two eyes. I came out and visited. He has validated that by being one of the three best golfers on earth so far in this 2024 season. He has been right there with Scottie Scheffler in a lot of the categories. He won at Pebble beach. That was rain shortened. He went to bed, you know, Saturday night and woke up Sunday morning, the winner, because, you know, the California equivalent of a nor'easter came through there and wrecked the course. But he's been. He had a putt that hit the back of the hole at the players championship. That would have put him into a playoff with Scottie Scheffler. It should have gone in. The golf gods were somewhat unkind in that respect. But he is another guy. He famously said, I will not go play any rounds at Augusta until I've earned it. And so it wasn't until I said that, too, just spring, that he finally played some practice rounds at Augusta. He declined invitations all the way up to this point. So Minnesota was, I want to earn it.

I want to earn my masters. I want to be. Oh, and also, if I get invited, I would play tomorrow.

So I had a hard time with Minnesota. Do you think that they're a debutante?

Yeah. Fuck, yeah. They've never won a playoff series since 2004.

Okay, great.

But good. I think the advanced metrics case is good, though. Like everything you just laid out. Wyndham Clark, Minnesota, their number one in defensive rating, right? 107.7, almost three points better than anybody else for a. For net rating. Their second. They're probably going to be the one seed in the west, unless they screw it up this week. I saw them in person on Sunday. And really good seats. That team is locked in. That team likes each other. That team plays defense in a real way. They're very well coached. Um, I was watching their coach, um, who I've never been, like, a giant fan of, but I was watching, like, yeah, I. I'm not against them. That, for him, I never really put thought into him. But I was watching the way, like, he handled himself during the game with the players, with the referees. And he's got this really calm demeanor. It's like when you watch, you know when your kids have a playdate and you see somebody else's parents and the mom is just super calm and has her shit together and like, oh, that's what that looks like. Same thing with him where it's just even when there was bad calls, he would kind of wait for the referee to walk over next to him and then he'd be like, what the fuck was that?

But he always, like, calm, always, like, really, like, kind of supportive of aunt. Cause they're really trying to get ant to go to this next level where he's beating guys off the dribble but not going to the basket like a rocket ship. He's. Now, if you watch him really carefully, he's beating guys off the dribble, but he's slowing down and he's picking his spots and he's. It's. It's a little like what the evolution of what happened when Jordan. Not to compare him to Jordan, but he's. He's trying to slow the game down so he can find shooters. And it's not just like, I'm an athlete. I got by somebody, I'm going to the basket now. He's going by people. He's using his body. He's just trying to figure out, oh, do I want to post this guy up? Should I just accelerate? Get to the basket? Should I bring the guy over and then slash out. And Finch was so happy with all the decisions ant was making. Combined with the defense they have and go bear. They got towns coming back. I think they're really dangerous. I'm kind of back in on. I think the two teams that could beat Denver are Minnesota and Dallas.

Wow. And that, that's where I've landed. Well, right now, the week to go in the season, those would be the two I picked.

In the last ten years, we've had two guys show up and finish runner up in their first try at the Masters. Jordan Spieth and Will Zalatoris.

Right. I do. I think Minnesota can make the finals. I do. Would do. I think the odds are fair for what it is now. I think a Celtics versus Minnesota finals is 16 to one. That's kind of a long shot. That's fair. I wouldn't say Minnesota is like a favorite, but if you're looking for teams that could beat Denver, I think they have the infrastructure because they can play defense and their main guy is getting better every week with decision making. And they have Conley, they have a bench, Nas Reed. Holy shit. I mean, we've like Nas Reid for three years, but Nas Reid is like a fucking weapon now.

Well, Wyndham Clark loves this. Wyndham Clark's thrilled to hear all of this b's.

Well, here's the other thing. They might have the one seed. They might. You're going to have to beat them on their court. So I don't know. I think the odds are pretty live. We're, we're going to talk about Dallas in a second. Take quick break. All right. I mentioned west teams that I think have a chance to beat Denver, and it's basically, for me, it's Minnesota and Dallas. Dallas, I can't believe. I think I've changed my opinion on them ten times. I'm ready for them to let me down in any round, any week. But the Luca Kyrie combo and how well they're playing, combined with the defense and the Punchers chance they have just with the two scores they have, it's a better version of what Phoenix has with a guy who's a little more confident at the end of game. And you could pick either of them, but just, you know, I feel like they could go in any city, any stadium and not be scared. I don't love the coach. I think it's going to be an uphill battle. Cause they'll be an underdog. They'll be the lower seed in every round. It looks like they're going to be the five seeds.

So every round they'll be the lower seed. But I feel like they have a puncher's chance at 24 to one to win the title. And their doppelganger is a guy named Shane Lowry, whose odds are not commensurate with Dallas. They are 55 to one. You had the great Justin Ray on fairway rolling, and this was his favorite masters, non favorite pick. What did he say?

Well, Shane Lowry checks a lot of boxes in terms of the kinds of attributes that are successful at Augusta.

He.

His strokes gained approach. He scores very well. His strokes gain teeth green. He scores very well. His best masters. You know, you need to be somebody with some experience. Yeah. Stroke, strokes. He's third in strokes gain, approach fifth in strokes gain, t to green, strokes gain around the green is, is positive, and his best Masters finish is third. Those are all attributes, the kind of attributes that, that go along with historical winners at the Masters.

And you left out unafraid which is why we thought Luca was the per. Luca Kyrie is a combo. The perfect kind of parallel for that.

I love you using punchers, chance, because one of my favorite vignettes from this most recent season of full swing on Netflix was the Ryder cup. And Shane Lowry not afraid one bit to go get his nose in the mix with Patrick Cantlay's caddy, Joe Lacava, who created a kerfuffle with. With Rory. Big boy Shane was not afraid to let his opinion know.

Now, he.

He had the role of peacemaker, but it looked like at any minute, he might have been. Been willing to flip the switch a little bit and play a little bit of irish bar jig on him.

So Shane Lowry won a British open. Kyrie made the biggest shot of a game. Seven of a finals. Yes, it's a little bit of pedigree. I like it. I like that as I think this is the funniest one. Philly is 25 to one, and we put a beefy Bryson with them at 35, 35 to one as the doppelganger. It's perfect. They're physically imposing. Oh, my God. And you kind of talk yourself into it on east coast bias. Our poor guy Raheem has already talked himself into Philly being a live playoff sleeper. Meanwhile, I don't know if I would bet the over on MB playoff games at four and a half, and. And DeChambeau is just the perfect parallel for them. Yeah, I can see it on paper, but I don't see it.

Two guys, two situations where they have absolutely no chance whatsoever to win their respective, uh, title.

You.

You said the. You made the most salient observation with. Salient observation with. With Embiid and Philly. Like, let's get Embiid through two playoff stage. Can we see that at some point?

Yeah, let's see. A month of playoff basketball.

Bryson has been playing well on the. The live tour. It's just that I think that Augusta national is beyond him.

It is.

You know, the way he's wired his brain. He hasn't yet. It. Augusta national requires an artist, not a scientist.

And.

And Beefy Bryson hasn't yet shown. His best finish was his debut, where he finished 21st. And since then, in the last three years, he has two cuts. Now, one of them, uh, he missed the cut.

He.

One of them is because he was hurt. But, um.

Well, what about 2021? He lost to the Hawks in seven in round. Oh, no, that was indeed. Sorry.

That was. That was Ben Simmons.

Yeah, there's Ben Simmons. Um, all right, we'll blow through Cleveland, 37 to one. Um, we have either can't lay at 41 or more cow at 50 to one for this. Like, a lot of talent on paper. There's been a lot of conversations about them and just a ton of signs that neither of these guys are going to do anything. You've, like, can't lay in a bunch of these tournaments in the past, but.

I think he's having a down season. He's spending a bunch of time and energy and brainpower on trying to get this deal done between the PGA Tour and live. He's leading part of the player contingent on the, on that front, and it seems like it's detracted from his attention. Yes.

It's like how Donova Mitchell is on Redfin looking for condos in New York.

Well, it better be Brooklyn if it's not going to be Manhattan.

No, it's going to be New York. Miami. This is a great one. Miami's 43 to one to win the title. Odds have been dropping week by week. Brooks Kafka, 22 to one. Very similar on off button situation with these two entities, right?

Yeah, of course. I mean, the playoff version of Miami. They've been to the Finals, the NBA Finals twice in the last four years with teams that nobody on, on paper and by regular season performance, you would say, oh, yes, we saw. We could see it coming. Brooks, I like so much here. I actually, I love Brooks to win. Um, this week. He's. I think five people can win. Brooks is on that list of, of people that could definitely win the Masters this, this week. The same is now. I don't think Miami is going to win the NBA title, but, like, under what scenario would you write them off? Like, what team in the east can they flat out not compete with, not be?

I don't think they can be. Paul, if Porzingis plays the entire series, okay, I just think there's too much size. Okay. But Porzingis is a little like the embiid thing. Like, I just. Every week we get Bioware. He's healthy. I'm happy. But, you know, you watched Milwaukee last year. Porzingis is really good. We didn't have anybody like last year.

He's good. I like him.

I like the Brooks. Miami, that's a really good one. Just ripping through Nick's 60 to one. Put Phenau at 45 to one. Really fun story, fun crowd. So always fun when phenows beloved. Like Jalen Branson in New York.

Right? The most beloved Nick in, in 50 years.

Tony Fenow, beloved on tour, New Orleans, 80 to one. Victor Hovland, 35 to one.

Victor's in a funk. I don't know what happened. He ended last year, he won the tour championship, and then promptly started under, undertook some kind of swing change. New coach, and he's in a funk. He hasn't gotten himself out of it yet, but nor can't get healthy at the same time.

Right? Ton of talent on both sides. Victor's got a bunch of first rounders coming up. Indiana, 100 to one. Cam Smith, 50 to one. Just talented, fun, but ultimately not.

No idea. Yeah, no idea what to expect.

Maybe could upset around Orlando, 180 to one. Cerudes team will zal Torres, 40 to one.

So the Zalator is, um, thing is, we're, we're not sure. He's performed excellent at, uh, the Masters, and he's also been like, Orlando has.

A real defensive identity, which should work in the playoffs.

All, all, and it's, it all feels like it's a brand new thing. So for Willie Z, he was injured for the majority of last year. He withdrew from the Masters last year, in fact, because of an injury. Um, but the talent is there, and the, the eye opener with Orlando. Orlando could be the two seed. They're right. They played the Bucks twice.

That's why I put a good odds guy next to them. Because if Orlando is the two seed with the defense that they play, and if they get any sort of home court advantage at all, who the hell knows? Maybe they win, like, two rounds.

Who the hell knows?

We've seen weird shit happen. We saw that dame, CJ Portland team made the west finals one year. We saw a couple weird Celtics teams make it. You know, that the year they didn't have Hayward or Kyrie, they still made it to a game seven in these finals. Like, you never fucking know. And if you have home court, it's a game changer, and you made the key point. Orlando's chance to get a two seed. All right, this is the big part of the pod right here. The Lakers and the Warriors. Lakers, 32 to one to win the title. Odds are dropping, so I'll give you two choices here. Are the Lakers going to be a possible Hideki Matsuyama? Like a 22 to one sleeper veteran? Don't count them out. Oh, shit. It's round four. I can't believe he's one back on the 9th pole. Is Jesus or Phil Mickelson at 270 to one with dyed black hair and.

Right. This is fantastic. So Hideki is also on my list of guys that can win. Absolutely can win. He is my pick, in fact, on fairway rolling on Monday and we'll have a chance. Nathan Hubbard and I will go on the fairway rolling podcast. It'll be up Wednesday afternoon. If you want to finalize your card, here are final thoughts. We're getting some information from the grounds right now. We'll know what the draw is. There's bad weather on Thursday. So wherever, whether you play early or late and whether Thursday gets washed out, like all that stuff is matters. So we're going to do a final show on Wednesday. But Hideki is on a tear right now, not that dissimilar from the tear that the Lakers have been on eight and two over their last ten, fighting hard to get all the way up to the seven seed. And they're not exactly completely ineligible for the six seed. As we sit here taping this pod now, a whole bunch of stuff would have to happen.

They're a game and a half back from Phoenix. They are a game and a half back from New Orleans for the six seven. Not insurmountable. Everybody's playing each other. I think losing that Minnesota game on Sunday, I was surprised, um. Cause LeBron. I was surprised they used LeBron for the Cleveland game and not the Minnesota game. Cause I feel like they probably would have beaten the Cavs with or without LeBron. It's the way the Cavs are playing. So anyway, they used their bullet on the Cavs game, then sat him for the next game. Davis got hurt. Minnesota really wanted it. They're probably going to be. I think they're going to pass Sacramento, which they're basically a half game back, and they'll be in the seven eight play in New Orleans. If they go to New Orleans for the seven eight, are you picking New Orleans? Cause I'm not.

No. No, sir. No. And then if they get to the eight seed. Seven seed.

Seven seed, they could play. They could potentially play Denver, a team that I don't think they'd be unafraid to play. I don't know if they'd come close to beating Denver, but I don't think they'd be afraid of the matchup.

What would the numbers be for Lakers Oklahoma City or Lakers Minnesota? Like I. Both of both Minnesota and Oklahoma City.

I think Minnesota is a bad matchup for them. They have. Just because of the size, they have defenders to throw at LeBron. They have the go bear Davis thing. I watched it on Sunday night, like Davis was not too pumped to go against go bear. Uh, I just think that's a bad matchup for them. Okay. See, is the team they would want, right? I mean, their ideal would be if they could get to six and play. Okay. See, in round one with the size they have, I think that would be their dream. So we'll see. We'll see if they can put it together. So you're more on the Matsuyama camp for them than the Mickelson washed up camp.

Yes. Although, you know, any, anything can happen here.

This last week, Golden State 60 to one to win the title. We have either Dustin Johnson at 45 to one, super talented, peaked in the past, have been there, have done that. You want to count them out, you should count them out. But there's something stopping you from counting them out. Or just Tiger woods 150 to one, ceremonial ovations at every hole. And it's just we're happy to have the warriors as a ten seed, but ultimately nothing is going to happen with this team.

So my favorite, one of my favorite bets, we'll get this into the ringer specials and this is all I'm rooting for. And the same would be true of the Western Conference playoffs. You can parlay Tiger woods and Phil Mickelson both to make the cut. And that pays like over 320. It's like plus 323 or something like that. I went on the parlay combobulator at Fanduel to see if I could parlay the Lakers and the warriors and Phil and Tiger all together. Phil and Tiger to make the cut along with the Lakers and the warriors to make the playoffs. You couldn't do it. You can't do it.

Well, maybe Fanduel will go off the menu for us.

Oh, that, that could be one of your off the menu selections for sure. But the, that would be what's going.

State to make the playoffs.

They're plus 245. Some crazy number. So.

Plus 245.

Plus the Lakers are minus the Lakers.

Yeah. So that's probably plus 245. Five to one. Plus three to one. Yeah, that's probably like a 15 or 16 to one bet.

There are a lot of ways it could go wrong, but much tougher road for the warriors.

Yes. With that said, I thought they had no chance to make the playoffs. Like none, zero. But if they play Sacramento in the 910, I think they would beat Sacramento. So we just think, yeah, we didn't.

Do Sacramento for me. I would give Justin Thomas to Sacramento.

Oh, dad, forget Sacramento. I think Golden State would be just. The time is fine. Uh, Golden State beats them in the 910 and then the Lakers beat New Orleans and then Golden State goes to New Orleans. So New Orleans would be in a situation where kind of a, you know.

A little bit of a up and.

Down basketball market, and they would have the Lakers and LeBron coming in for one playing games. That's going to be a shitload of Laker fans. And then you have the warriors coming in for the next playing game, and that's going to be a shitload of warriors fans. That's a tough situation, man.

Go to the grounds at Augusta national, score yourself a ticket and see what the groups look like, the fans around Tiger and Phil.

I would put the warriors more in the Dustin Johnson camp. Okay. And I would put the Lakers more in the Hideki Matsuyama camp, just because I. This playoffs are gonna be a free for. All right, we're taking one more break. Coming back, doing the curb pyramid. All right, Curb. Your enthusiasm ended on Sunday night. One of our favorite shows since you and I have known each other. I don't know how long that list is, but it certainly spurred as many conversations as any show we've had. Right? I mean, one of the few shows where one of us would call the other after the show for twelve seasons.

This guy, Larry David, taking on taboo subjects, and not just like crossing the line, annihilating the line, you know, putting it inside a nuclear reactor. And many of your shows on this pyramid are line annihilators, which is what.

We love in comedy. So we're doing a mini pyramid, and it's going to be 36, 10, 15 episodes total. Honorable mention. Things that got cut out. Sorry, sorry to the sprite store.

Super clever.

Loved the whole spice store, was great. What a way to end it. Sorry to the shrimp incident. An earlier curb episode that really laid the foundation for a lot of where the show is going. Also spoke to you because if somebody plucked the shrimp out of your chinese food order, I, I feel like that would have caused an international incident. Um, affirmative action. One of the last shows of season one, which was when Larry offended the dermatologist and Richard Lewis had the, the one of the funniest jokes in the history of the. That whole. Oh, my God. Ken, Kendra from this season, Springsteen. I thought that Ken, Kendra with Springsteen, that whole five minute scene was, was one of the best scenes I can remember in the show, just because I was so stunned. First of all, they're like, oh, yeah, we got to get Springsteen. It's like, they're not going to get Springsteen. Then all of a sudden, Springsteen is right there. Amazing. Larry realizes the. Yeah. And then last but not least, the, the group, the incest. Survivor group, which I think was the last episode of season one, but that was probably as close to the line as they got.

But a show that they pulled off and was really, really good. So honorable mention, all those.

We're going to get to some other lines.

Yeah. Yeah. Meet the blacks. I'd want to put up there, too. I mean, the whole. The whole first season when the blacks come to live with them is just. And we get JB smoove in our life. And I think Super Dave's coming in right around there. And that's when the show went to another level. I said this on the. I think I said this when I did the pod with Larry, but I do feel like as soon as he started having marital issues on the show, the show went to another level. Once he started dating and other possibilities, it just opened up the universe. Otherwise, I don't know if it would have been able to go twelve years. Okay. The curb mini pyramid. So we're going to do first level, one episode, second level, two episodes, third level, three episodes, fourth level, four episodes. And then the lowest level is five episodes shaped like a pyramid. I have palestinian chicken as the level one. Best episode in the history of the show.

I don't think you're alone.

It has some of the funniest moments in the history of the show. It's a high degree difficulty episode, to say the least. The concept of Larry loving chicken this much. And then when I did the event with him in Boston last week, when he was just saying he started with the premise, would I have sex with an anti semite? And the answer was yes. And then they started making the episode. But, um, this was season eight, episode three, and I think it's the best episode. It's not my number one favorite, but I couldn't put my number one favorite first. This is the best.

It is recognized as the best.

Uh, yeah.

And and with. With good reason. On topics that, uh, you know, now have a different resonance. He could do the show now. He wouldn't do the show now.

I don't know. I would. I wouldn't rule out anything with that guy.

Well, that's a fair point. Okay. It feels like the degree of difficulty might be a little higher. I think that's.

That's fair.

But, yes, to take the taboos and to, you know, jump all the way into them and explore them this way, it re. It remains, you know, as. As groundbreaking feeling as it felt watching it the first time.

Yeah. Very similar to the contest, I think is considered to be the best Seinfeld and the same thing. It's like, whoa, oh, oh. They're gonna pull this off. I can't. I can't believe this is working. All right, level two, really. The two favorites for us, the two that I think we enjoyed the most. Crazy eyes, killer, season three, episode eight. I don't know if any half hour comedy ever brought me more delight than this episode. And the character of Crazy Eyes, killer and then Funkhouse's crazy sister, which we did a hall of Fame episode of on the prestige tv podcast. But these two are just like two of the funniest, craziest characters ever introduced in the end of the show. Are you okay with those as two and three?

Yeah, sure. Of course. Like, you and I have, have had. This is these two shows with Curb and then probably boogie nights in terms of the number of hours that we discussed. Yes, but pure enjoyment. Put that on my tombstone.

Them.

Come on.

Next level. The doll, the Carpool lane, and the table read. The doll is. And it's funny, Larry. I think this is Larry's favorite episode.

Oh, wow.

And he was explaining that the reason he liked it was because the doll is omnipresent every moment of the episode, and they figured out how to string all these other things around it and stay true to the Larry character while at the same time, like, just crazy shit going on. That's season two, episode seven. Carpool Lane is the famous one where he needs to bring somebody to the Dodgers game so he can use the carpool lane and ends up being a working lady and shit happens. Sex worker. And then the table read, season seven, episode nine, from the great Seinfeld season. This was really like, this really was, in a lot of ways, the Seinfeld reunion, watching those guys around the table shooting stuff. But the bigger thing is this was Marty von Kaiser doing the in the sink joke, which is the funniest minute in the history of the show.

In the history of the show. I think that's right.

Yeah. It might be the funniest 1 minute clip that you can see on your instagram feed. It's up there. It's just perfect. Everything's great about it. Okay, level four, the show that really took you and I to another level with the show. Season one, episode three. This is when we knew this show was going to be in our life. Gil Bang, played by Bob Odenkirk. Larry goes to dinner with somebody who invites him over to his house, and it's Gil Bang, a former, former porn star, who then tells a bunch of off color stories at the dinner. And Cheryl is absolutely horrified. There's the double goodbyes in this. The camera guy sticking Tabasco sauce in his finger and sticking it up Gil's, but so he get erection again, this Gil bang.

Gil bang.

Who knew?

Like, at that, when we watched this, who knew what tv history had in mind for Bob Odenkirk? All the places Bob's been since then.

I just knew him as like, larry's agent on Larry Sanders show. And, you know, and he would pop up on different things. He, you know, he'd been in a couple different behind the scenes comedy stuff. The grand opening, season three, episode ten, when they open the restaurant and they hire a chef who has Tourette's, who starts swearing at something. And then all the people, all the people in the restaurant start swearing. But this leads to Suzy coming in and saying, fuck you, you car wash, to Cheryl, which is probably Suzy's greatest moment. And Mister Softy, which was the Bill Buckner episode. Right? Season eight, episode nine, also had the orgasm car, which was like one of the funniest bits they've ever had.

Do you remember this? I don't remember it, so I think I'll look it up.

His girlfriend, the car, starts vibrating. And she's just sitting in the car all of a sudden, kind of enjoying the car and then really enjoying the car. And he doesn't realize it. Then she has to take her home. And then he realizes what happens after. After JB Smoove sits in the car. He's like, you got yourself a fuck machine. But it leads to Susie sitting in the car and him sitting next to Susie as she starts enjoying the car.

Oh, no.

Mister Safdie is amazing. The ugly section, season ten, episode seven. This was the jets fan who ended up killing himself. And Larry was convinced it was cause of the jets, but it also had the ugly section of the restaurant. The last level, first one I have, is the final episode. No lessons learned. I thought they landed the plane on it. What did you think of it?

Yeah, I mean, it was so self referential. The fact that it was such a perfect mirror of Seinfeld and having Seinfeld in it was very, like, nostalgia inducing for me, that that's the thing. Like I had. I'm gonna have to watch it again. I sat down, I watched it all the way through. I enjoyed it. It felt like, you know, it was grabbing from a lot of different places because it was. But for me, the. I want to watch it for the comedy now that the nostalgia is out of my head.

Yeah, I watched it a second time, and there was a lot of good bits in it because you're watching the first time, you're wondering, where's this going? How are they going to end this? And then the second time, there's a lot of stuff packed in there. I love the meta thing about the Seinfeld thing where it seemed like it was going to end the same way, and then it flipped and Seinfeld saves him, and he was like, oh, we should have ended Seinfeld this way. I really liked that. I thought the last two episodes were the best episodes of the season. The bisexual season eight, episode seven. This is the Rosie O'Donnell episode when they're chasing the same girl and Larry ends up using Viagra. The ski lift, season five, episode eight. That's the giant vagina.

Amazing.

Denise, handicapped when he has two different women in wheelchairs that he's dating. And then the last one is the freak book, which a lot of people like, we did the Ringer list, which we just published, the last version of all the curbs. And the freak book, I think was, might even be number one. Oh, wow. But it was. People feel like the freak books in the top five or six. That's. I don't have it that high, but it's definitely pyramid worthy. So that is the pyramid. Palestinian chicken, crazy ass killer. Funk house's crazy sister, the doll, the carpool Lane, the table read. Gil Bang, the grand opening. Mister softy ugly section, serious fanatic. Bisexual ski lip, Denise handicap freak book. Who is your favorite character of all time on the show that wasn't a cast member? If I give you Gil Bang, bam bam Funkhouser or crazy eyes killer.

For me, it's crazy eyes.

It is for me as well. It's a great, it's a great category, though.

It is. Part of it is, because I can't imagine any other person being crazy eyes.

Yeah.

Such a perfect casting match that I.

Think his name is Chris Williams.

Yeah. And isn't he Vanessa Williams brother? Isn't there a relationship between him and Vanessa Williams?

Maybe. I think there is.

I think there it goes that far back. But in any event.

So who's your best supporting actor slash actress?

Susie. And what reminded me of it was the doll, because the doll, to me, was really the episode that revealed the full capacity of Susie to decimate both Larry and Jeff for being complete morons. So I'm a fan of Susie.

Hmm. I think I am too. I I really love Marty Funkhouser.

Oh, I see.

But he was only like, yeah, he had like four years there. It's a tough one.

Recurring character.

Favorite season for me is either the Seinfeld season or this season right after, which had a bunch of these, the season eight, which had. Yeah, I think it had Palestinians, chicken and Mister Softy and the bisexual. I just thought that was an awesome season. I'm going to miss this show. It feels like the end of an era in some ways for HBO. I don't think it's the end of HBO, but it just feels like something has slightly shifted to some sort of. It's fitting that we're entering the Max era with HBO and that curb's, like wrapping up now because Curb is the lineage to Larry Sanders and sopranos and Sex and the City and, you know, all, just 20, basically a quarter century of the channel.

Right. It was a, that is, it was the connective tissue through, you know, sort of an evolution of HBO programming.

What funny show is out there now?

What's a funny show? What do we watch? We just watch.

It's just way more.

Right.

Yeah. Way more niche. Right.

Netflix specials. Is that what we watch? Yeah, or HBO specials.

See, people are. People are gonna suggest, Kyle, what's your favorite show? What's your favorite funny show right now? No, just right now. That's a show that's on tv right now that you think is your favorite funny show. Yeah, it's very niche now. I don't think it's like elementary is charming.

I've gotten some charms out of that.

Yeah, it's a good show. I don't know, like, like when you think, like, we grew up with that Seinfeld shears kind of show, and then we kind of moved to the Larry Sanders curb veep, the more targeted stuff. It'll be interesting. The turf is open for somebody. Anyway, um. All right, well, good luck on. Oh, some. Kyle says, always sunny in Philadelphia. Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure.

That, and that's below.

But I would say it's a little, it's beloved, but a little more niche, right? It's not, I don't think it has the same size. Some of these other ones. All right, good luck trying to get Caleb Williams.

I'm fine with Drake. May, you're going to be mad. You're going to be so mad when, when peters take straight May.

We're going to do. You're coming to LA. I'll see you on Thursday. And we're going to do some master stuff on Thursday and some basketball stuff too, with some special guests. House, good to see you.

Always a pleasure.

All right, we are taping this on a Tuesday. The creators of three body problem on Netflix, a very ambitious science fiction show that in the binge era with some big themes. And I wanted to figure out for people listening to this who have not seen that show yet, we're not going to spoil stuff. We're going to go big picture. What is it like to put together a tv show like this in the 2020s, especially during COVID was piece of this, too. So David Benioff, Dan Wyatt, Saxwoo, they're all here. They started working on this. Dan, what was it, five years ago?

2019 we started, yeah, I guess you would say 2019. We were reading it and David and I were reading it over, I think, the summer of 2019, and we finished, we finished the third book, like towards the end of August in 2019.

So you and David, you just come off Game of Thrones, which is one of the most complicated tv shows slash adaptations anyone's ever had to do. And instead of just being like, let's do a rom.com, or maybe we'll just do a feel good show for Hulu about like a Red Sox manager with an alcohol problem. You just went, you went even bigger and more ambitious.

We see three body problem primarily as a rom.com.

So I didn't realize one about the Red Sox magic.

That's pretty good. Where were you like that? Yeah, when we were making our choices?

Yeah.

Jeez, you could have saved us a lot of, a lot of trouble.

If you guys want to take that idea, go. But was there any point just with the two of you where you were like, do we really want to dive into something this complicated with this kind of fandom again?

We definitely didn't want to do fantasy again. Like, we knew that we were done with horses, done with knights and armor and dragons, at least for a good decade. And science fiction was probably the other genre that we grew up loving. And there is something about genre stories.

That we are keen to tell.

You know, it's something that attracts both of us. And, you know, as someone, I'm in the middle of reading Stephen King's the stand right now, and it's just so much fun. And a lot of it has nothing to do with the genre. A lot of it's just, like, interpersonal relations, but it's all heightened and made more powerful because of the genre overlay. You know, it's the 99.9% of the country has been wiped out by a virus, and now what do the survivors do? And a lot of it's just almost like soap opera stuff, but it's so much more exciting because of the dark, horrific, apocalyptic part of it. And when we first read these books.

I think we just, first of all.

We just encountered stuff we'd never read before and which is so rare at this point. And this could be a tv show so different from anything we'd seen before, which, in an era where there are 800 shows or whatever, you know, coming out every year, it's really hard to differentiate yourself from the other shows. And this was unlike anything we'd read before, and we thought it could be a very different show. So, yes, it was. It's. It's ambitious. The books are so ambitious, and we knew it was going to be a ton of work, but it was also just more exciting than, you know, a lot of the other things that we were thinking about, including the Boston Red Sox manager.

Alex, how'd you get sucked into this? Was it because you thought of the end of the world a lot as a Red Sox fan, or were there other reasons?

Well, after. After a bunch of World Series, then it wasn't, you know, like, it was a new. It was a new dawn, like, so I wasn't thinking about the end of the world, but I was thinking about it, what I was going to do next. And I just come off of my own show, and one of the execs at Netflix, his name is Peter Friedlander, whom I'd known for a really long time, called me up and said, I've got this project that I think you might be really interested in. David and Dan are working on it. I can't tell you what it is because we don't have a contract with you, but I'm sure you'll love it. So it was kind of a bit of a blind date. You know, David and Dan and I all kind of crossed paths a little bit. We overlapped at HBO. The last few years of true blood were the first few years of Game of Thrones, but. And we had a lot of friends in common, but we didn't know each other personally, but Peter thought we'd get along well, and it turns out he was right. And then after I signed on, they told me what the book was, which I'd heard of but had not read.

And I knew its reputation as something that was really, really dense and really, really hard to adapt. But I had already signed up, so it's almost like you're thrown into the deep end, but you've already signed the contract, so you got to do it.

When you're thinking, doing a show like this said in the 2020s for Netflix, where, you know, people are binging them all at once versus what all you guys had during the HBO era of it's gonna be on every week. You're gonna have this Sunday crest, and then next Sunday, and you're gonna bring the audience down a little bit, and then the next Sunday after you're coming up, like, how hard was it to, I guess, go with Dan on this? How hard was it to wrap your heads around the binge concept versus what you had kind of been weaned on?

I mean, it is definitely a different approach, and it's a different approach that informs the way you think about the shape of episodes and the way you think about the shape of a season. We had been watching shows that way ourselves, like, for a while. I mean, Breaking Bad, I watched that way. I watched the first. I think I watched the first four seasons of Breaking Bad in, like, a month. And it was an amazing month because it's, like, arguably the best tv show ever made. And so I was used to consuming something that had been designed for an even more kind of formatted and restrictive way. I mean, like, where literally every episode had to be 47 minutes and 21 seconds or whatever it was. All the act breaks had to come at the right minute, and it was, like, really a much more demanding, like, stricture to fit inside. And so we came from something that had a bit more freedom than that. But still, like you said, it was basically like, you're thinking about, you need to leave. People are going to, by and large, watch it day and date at the time it errors, and they're going to.

You need to leave people with things that shoot them across the gulf of a week to the following week. Whereas in some ways, like, the binge model gave us more freedom in that, like, we knew between, say, the first and the second episode. You need to create something that gives people the momentum they need to shoot them across the button, click into the next episode. It doesn't need to, like, hang with them with a cliffhanger, necessarily every week in, week out. So, you know, it can just be like, I need to know what happens enough to watch the next episode, which is cool. It lets you design, like, I think with this one, we are. Our first two episodes are kind of a very concise, dramatic unit. Like, clear dramatic unit without giving too much away.

So, like, it let us.

There was no real way to jam them into one episode without making it a two hour pilot, which is something that we had thought about, but ultimately, we decided to. To do it this way. We could do it this way because of the binge model. So I guess the short answer is we knew going in that that's what we were signing up for. Because at Netflix at the time, when we signed up with those guys in 2019, the drop all at once was the only option. So it just, from the very beginning, even as we were reading the books and thinking about how you might break this thing down, it was with that model in mind, which, you know, which I think gave us some, it gave us some freedom to do some things we maybe couldn't have done the other way. And it also imposes other kinds of, you know, it's not, there's something we loved about doing it the way it was before. There was something about that. The idea of, like, trying each week to have. Have the episode that was going to make people talk for a week and look forward to the next week and be there the second it shows up.

Like, there was something, there's something just great about that. But there's kind of.

No, it's hard.

It's hard. It's easy in your mind to hold on to the way things used to be, but there's just things change.

Well, can I tell you what we love at the ringer? We love every week shows, we just get more content out of them. It's been really hard for us to figure out content strategies for the binge dramas because you never know who's on what timetable with the, like, I know some people that have watched half of your show, but not all of it, or they have two episodes left, or they watch one and they really liked it and they're saving it until after March Madness. And then, oh, the weekend of April 10, I'm in, and that's when I'm going to watch it. And for us, it's, you know, it's just different. Like, Thrones was amazing because we had a whole podcast strategy around it. We had the website around it. We were doing, like, shows right after the episode, shows leading up to the next episode and with the, with the bench stuff. But what's interesting, like, if you, even if you google some of the stuff people have written about it, it's almost like reading big critical pieces about, like, a giant book or like a three and a half hour movie, which I guess, Alex, is that where we are now, just with culture, with, like, the white Lotus type of thing accepted.

There's something that was kind of great.

About the last getting towards the end of any great show that everyone is on board with. So whether it was the last season of Thrones or Breaking Bad or Mad Men, where everyone was on. Was on the same pace, you know, leading up the same week, and you had six days in between episodes where everyone had their own theories and everyone had their own gripes and everyone had their. Had their own things that they would talk to other people, you know, about. And that, I think, allowed those shows to become more of like a. A real conversation, part of the national conversation. COVID may have actually changed that now where you're not actually going around and seeing the same people every day, and you have to do everything at your own pace. Even though obviously Netflix and the binge model existed well before COVID I think it has made it more of the norm where some people, if they really. Because I got nothing to do but spend 8 hours watching one show tonight. If that's what I want, I want it and I can have it. So I think it's changed. It may swing, the pendulum, may swing back again some other time.

But I do remember and have kind.

Of a soft spot for those times.

When, like, everyone in the country or sometimes the world was along on the exact same ride as you were.

As you say that, I realize that it also skews things in some ways.

Like, something.

It skews things in the direction of the kinds of shows that appeal to the kinds of people who can watch 8 hours of television in two days.

Because that's, like, there are plenty of.

People out there who might like to watch 8 hours of television in two days, but just they can't because they've got kids and they've got jobs and they have, like, their responsibilities. Like, maybe make them lucky to be able to watch an hour or two of television a day. So, like, the numerically, data wise, like, the stuff. The stuff that's aimed at demographics that can sit there. Like, my kids, like, when they watched anime, one of my kids watched anime, and he'd watch a show that had a thousand fucking episodes. 1000, right?

Like, he was 13.

He could watch a show that had a thousand episodes in, like, a bizarrely short period of time and get through them all. Like, I. Even though I found that show fun, called one piece, I found it a lot of fun to watch.

I just.

I never really engaged with it because I can't watch a show with a thousand episodes. But I think that, like, the gaming model and streaming in general, like, pushes the data that comes at you. That's the most impressive and the most kind of eye catching in terms of the ratings beta, I mean, like, that's the stuff that's gonna explode. The biggest and the fastest and make the brightest fireworks is gonna be the stuff that, like, is geared towards the people who can watch things all at once, even if it's 810, 20 hours, whatever it is.

It's interesting because on the one hand, I still feel, I still feel like the every week thing helps certain types of shows, right? Like, white Lotus definitely helped because you could have theories, and it just tied into the whole culture when shows like that work. On the other hand, we know, like, from people catching up on binging shows that have already happened, like, people are watching, you know, mad men in three weeks, and especially if you're, like, in your late teens or your early twenties, and you just kind of miss some of these shows. I know people that have watched lost over the span of, like, four weeks, which to me is insane, but that's kind of. So they're kind of used to that habit. I guess. The thing that worries me is just, like, how much attention are they paying to everything as they're watching? If they're. If they're binging, it doesn't, it doesn't simmer.

It doesn't like, yeah, are they locked.

In or are they doing one other thing at the same time?

But on the other hand, maybe because watching it all together like one giant movie, they're. They're aware of connections that if you're spreading everything out, you might not get as much. I mean, I had the same experience as Dan, where I watched Breaking Bad because I was trying to catch up before the finale aired. And I would watch one episode on the iPad on the way to set. This is back when we were shooting thrones on the way back from set and watched the whole thing. And I don't think it was a lesser experience for me. I mean, I was so, like, I was so in that world, and, like, everything, all the characters and all. Everything was so fresh in my mind, and it worked. I could imagine some shows where it won't work as well. And you are talking about maybe the greatest show of all time, but still, like, it did feel like you're reading some thousand page russian novel and all the characters have names that you can pronounce. And it made sense.

I always liked, it was funny with thrones, obviously, I liked it.

I loved.

We were just been talking about how much fun it was to write something and produce something that was watched by people in that they had to lock themselves in and watch it. But when sometimes people would tell you that they didn't catch up until later, and they bought all the DVD's and they watched five seasons at once, or they binged five seasons, six seasons at once to catch up. And there was something with that show where I think there were probably benefits to watching the show that way, because, as you said, when we started this thing out, like, it was complicated, and there was a lot of information to hold in your head. And it's easier to hold information in your head for five minutes than it is to hold it in your head five days.

And on the flip side, there's a.

Show like beef just came out limited on Netflix, that I think would have been just because of how well it was, like, written and structured, it would have been amazingly successful as, like, a week by week water cooler show, because it was built that way, even though it was something that I watched much more quickly than that.

Yeah. There's certain shows that were clearly designed for the binge era that I don't think would have the same kind of meat if it was. I'm waiting till next Sunday to see if FBI agent X is gonna be able to get out of this. Like, even when I think about 24, 24 was, like, the ultimate binge show, but it wasn't a binge show. It was once a week, right? And it'd be like, countdown, and that was it.

There have been people who have done the stunt of trying to watch all of 24 in a 24 hours period and staying awake for the whole thing.

Really? Yeah. Cocaine. Like, what kind of drugs are involved?

It's been done.

It's not a pleasant experience. It really. It's rough to stay up for 24 hours to watch. Watch a tv show. Alex, sometimes.

Always hold together.

Sorry. Is science fiction mainstream now? Cause when I was growing up, and it was like, Star Trek, and they were, you know, we had a couple Star Trek kids, and we're like, oh, those guys, you know? And then Star wars hit. Star wars hit when I was in, like, third or fourth grade, and it was really interesting because Star wars became huge, and then it was like three camps. It was like the super Star wars nerds. They were, like the people that went both ways, and they kind of could go in and out of the group, and then there was other people, like, fuck that. I don't like that stuff. I'm out on Star wars. And then as you watch, you think of, like, some of the biggest movies we've had over the last 50 years. So many of them have to do with aliens. Is there an afterlife? What does this mean, are we all going to die? You know, Will Smith, what's the biggest movie of this year? You know, what is it?

I'm saying this having absolutely no idea whether I'm telling the truth, but I think. I'm pretty sure Dune two is the biggest movie.

Yes, you're right.

Of this year. That's not, you know, that's not. That's not simplistic science fantasy, like, western dressed up as science fiction. That's like. That's epic. Like, interplanetary saga science fiction. And that's the biggest single movie or one of the two or three biggest movies in the past year.

So, Alix, you think it's mainstream now?

Yeah, I think the nerds have taken over. It's swung in that direction. A giant fantasy show, Game of Thrones, that you would think would have just been for the dungeons and dragons crowd became mainstream. We've got a whole bunch of science fiction shows. There was a show about chess that everyone was watching. It's like how all the saber matricians have taken over the front offices. I was the one reading the Bill James baseball abstracts in the mid eighties. That was my nerdy thing to do.

That's nice.

That may be next.

So, David, you got this show. It's a huge premise, and you have to figure out, how do you hook people in the premise in a couple episodes while also doing this? I mean, you have two different things going on. You have, are the aliens gonna take over? Basically, but then you also have humans versus humans. So there's two different kind of wars going on. One's a little bigger, one's a little smaller, and you have to suck somebody in all that and then also create this world that makes sense, but also lead to some sort of cliffhanger at the end of the first season and account for everybody trying to watch this all at once, potentially. What did I leave out?

That seems like a pretty good song. I think it was. One thing we learned on Thrones is that it doesn't really matter how great the battle scene is, doesn't matter how great the stunt choreography is or the visual effects, any of that stuff. If you don't care about a character who's in the middle of it, it's not going to be a great fight scene. And we found this out the hard way, so it became really important to us that every time there was any kind of violent action, one of our key characters was in the midst of it and in genuine peril, which means you really have to think they might die, which means that some of them do have to die, because otherwise there's no real peril. Then you're just in a Marvel movie. I guess Marvel did start killing people off, actually.

That's not fair.

So I think the thing for us was the novels presented these incredible, kind of brilliantly imagined set pieces and just a whole universe of insane science fiction. But what was crucial for us, for the series, was that the characters at the heart of it, we need to care about them. So Dan talked before about the first two episodes and how it's really kind of like one big pilot all leading up to no spoilers, but all leading up to a button being pressed, you know, and we always knew that was going to be the very end of episode two. Is someone pressing a button. If you don't care about that woman, you're probably not going to stick with the show, because so much of it is, she's the one who starts everything, and pressing that button is really what triggers all the events that happen. And so some of it's in the writing, and honestly, some of it's in the casting. You know, we got very lucky that we found Xine sang, and who's. Who's brilliant that Derek sang is directing her brilliantly. But I think that people do care about her, at least the people who stick with the show.

And really, a lot of it's just, in this case, the woman whose face you're looking at, do you care about her? Is there something about her that makes you want to follow her and that makes you fear for her when she's in danger? So that's. I don't know if it's a trick, but that's kind of at the heart of it.

Wait, you said. You said before, you said, we learned the hard way in thrones. Now I have people on. On staff and people I'm friends with who would be furious if I didn't ask the follow up question of what?

What did you learn?

Who did you learn that from the hard way?

I just mean, like, we would have these fight scenes that we'd spend days on, you know, like, any kind of action scene takes longer to shoot because stunts are involved. You gotta. You have to get. Shoot so many different angles, you have to cover it so, so well. And if it was a fight between characters, you know, and we'd have to go back to, like, the first couple of seasons to, like, go through these. But if it wasn't, if there weren't people involved in it that you're like, oh, sh. Ned might actually get like, stabbed here, or is Tyrion gonna get cut if they're not in the middle of it? It just feels like you're watching a YouTube, like, kung fu video. It's like, oh, that's great. Wow, look at that guy's martial arts techniques. That's amazing. But I don't really care that much on any emotional level. And so, you know, I think about, like, Miguel Sapochnik, who directed Battle of the Bastards, and one of the things he did so brilliantly, or hard home. One of the things he did so brilliantly is, like, his shots were so much about getting you in tight with the characters who you care about, like, whether it's Jon Snow or Arya, whomever else, and you're there with them and you're fearing for Jon because you know that this is a show that might kill somebody, like, even, like, a Jon snow.

So it's just.

And the other quote, I remember a lot, and this is, again, like, just talking about action. But we worked with a great director named Dan Minahan. And Dan said, every time I've seen and realized, seen something violent happening, I'm never standing in the right place. Or if you see a video on YouTube or something of something terrible happening to someone, the camera's never, like, perfectly set up to capture it. And he shot maybe the greatest fight scene in tv history in a Deadwood episode where Dan, you're gonna remember the characters names better than I am. Or Alex.

Well, it's Earl. It's Earl Brown. As Dan is fighting. It's fighting the. What's his name? The other dudes, enforcer, like, the two. The two kind of main antagonists there.

They're like, must.

Their heavies are fighting each other in the middle of, like, the town, in the middle of the main drag.

It's one that it's just incredible fight scene that ends with thumbs going into the eye sockets and. But he, Dan, when he was describing how he shot it, he's like, you know, the camera should never be, like, just perfectly set up because it always feels more real if you're. If you're kind of, like, trying to peek around the shoulders of the guys to see the two dudes fighting the bar. So I got. I got a little bit farther away from your original question.

No, that was. That was really interesting. Alex, what was the biggest challenge for this?

The biggest challenge is in adapting the novels. They are structured in a way that, you know, a novel is not a tv show, is not an opera, and is not an epic poem. They're all really really different. And the novels are structured, have a lot of complicated physics. That's certainly one challenge. But also the protagonist of book one, mild spoiler, is never heard from again. In the. In the. In the other two books, the protagonist of book two never shows up in book one. Protagonist of book three never shows up in books one or two, even though they all exist at the same time. And for us, this is what David was. Was touching on. We all came to tv from different mediums, and the thing we really all share is that you work, you get into it through character, because that's the one thing that's going to carry you from one episode to the next to the next, to the next. There's an old episode of this American Life called what I learned from television back in 2007, and David Rakoff referenced a study, a medical study, that found that the brain chemicals that are fired from watching episodic television were the exact same brain chemicals that are fired from having actual friends.

That experientially, it's the same thing, you know, in your mind. And that's why these shows stick with you. That's why you go from one episode into another, and then ten years later, these.

These.

They feel like real people to you. And that's why the actors on these shows, the actors on these shows are approached like that by people who think they genuinely know them. And so that's always at the heart of it. It's like, you know, how can we make people engage with the characters? And it would be a very weird kind of show is if you went two seasons in and said, okay, here's the new lead of your show, whom you've never met before. Rather, we pulled in the leads of books two and three into season one, and we made them all know each other. They also don't cross paths very much at all. In the trilogy of books, we gave them pasts, we gave them feelings about each other. And, you know, whether it was rivalries or romances, whatever it was, they connected with one another. They had the scenes together. And what that allowed us for is when all the whiz bang stuff, all the craziness happens, you care about them. When something horribly violent happens, you see the reaction on someone's face that you care about. And I think that's kind of the secret sauce, if there is one.

So you're working on this during COVID when it feels like the world might end, at least for a little bit there, but then you're working on the show where the world met in, like, what kind of Dan, what kind of mental state are you in? I remember running into you a couple times. You looked a little haggard.

Yeah, we were walking sort of stag zombie walking around the neighborhood.

Right.

Bill and I live close to each other.

And you.

Yeah.

I mean, it's a weird, it was being in the middle of something that was starting to have kind of almost science fictional, like, vibes to it. I mean, every time I think about disease that hits everybody in the world all at once, it's like, well, what was the most formative experience I had with that? It wasn't in my life. I wasn't alive during the 1918 pandemic or any other pandemic. My formative experience with the idea of a disease that hits everybody all at once was the stand by Stephen King when I was eleven, or whatever I was when I read that book. So, like, that you're, you were in the middle of something that started it almost like there was a genre feeling to your everyday life where everything had been interrupted and replaced with a new world, with a new set of rules that everybody was, like, trying to navigate and figure out. And in the middle of all this.

You'Re coming up with a world with.

A new set of rules and trying to make it make sense to people. So there was a weird kind of mirroring effect there.

And then.

I mean, it's a lot of weird. I remember we were, we were doing all of our, all of our rooms, our writers rooms on Zoom, just like this. And so, which meant you could do them from anywhere. And I was, we were doing a little movie up in, in Portland during the middle of the pre vaccine pandemic. And so I was up there. It was working with some wonderful people, but miserable experience in a lot of ways, because you don't get to spend any time with those wonderful people or even see their faces. And, and then we were doing, I remember us doing, we were in the middle of a writer's room for this on January 6. And like I said, we were doing a writer's room. Like, I'm looking at this screen like the one I'm looking at now in zoom. And then my eyes would, like, tilt up to the tv, like, behind the screen, where there was something else that seemed like something out of a near future science fiction movie happening. And so it was just, it was, it was making a show about the ultimate in kind of strange days in the midst of some really fucking strange days.

And I don't know, I'm sure it.

Definitely had it definitely informed, like, watching the way people were acting.

It's all related.

I mean, watching the kind of the strain, the way that the strain on people and the anxieties and the fears and the frustrations watching the way they leaked out in the. In the way people related to each other and related to their culture and their government and everything. I think, like that. That definitely informed in ways I'm sure we aren't even entirely conscious of informed. The way we were writing about, like, the. The ultimate sort of strange experience for the whole world, and the way. The way it made people as a whole act, the way it made the characters act. I think that we. It colored it for us in a way that probably has found its way onto the screen of the show in a whole bunch of ways we're aware of, and in a whole bunch of ways we're not.

There's a virtual reality piece to this that, you know, becomes more relevant, strange days becomes more relevant, even, like, apple releases the Vision Pro. When you see something like, the vision pro's out and you're thinking about your show, or you're like, what the fuck? We.

All, the three of us, Netflix was kind enough to give us Super bowl tickets. I'd never been to the Super bowl before, and I was bucket. Major bucket list item. Was super excited. I don't have a video of this guy. I would share it with you. There was a dude with the apple vision Pro sitting right in front of us in the middle of the Super bowl. He had this thing on, and he would periodically stand up. He could see the game through the glasses. He would stand up, and he was djing his own, like, private dj set while watching the Super bowl. And it was the first thing I thought was this. I've never seen anybody look more ridiculous than this dude. And the second thing I thought was that in ten years, everybody in the world is going to be this dude. And sorry to derail the virtual reality question, but that was just. It really fit in. Like, we were there promoting the show where people had a big techno, shiny headset on their heads, and that was a key element and image in the show. And then seeing the real world version of it three rows in front of us, doing his own club set in the middle of the Super bowl, was, in its own way, so much weirder than anything we even came up with in the show.

That made me feel like, oh, we could have just. Could have just done that. It would have cost a lot less money and a lot less time, right?

Yeah. I don't know where this stuff goes. Cause there's a world where I could see 20 years from now where you don't even have season tickets anymore for, like, the Clippers. You just put a headset on and you're sitting courtside and it's as good. There's a world where they could take all the Game of Thrones episodes you guys did and retranslate them so that when I put the headset now, I'm like, on the set watching the show versus watching it as a tv show. I don't know what to expect anymore. Like, even you think, like, when we started, you know, when we started the ringer and we're doing podcasts, and the producer had to be in the studio or the office when we did it, right? And then the pandemic happened, and we were like, well, we're not gonna be able to do a podcast anymore. It's like, wait, no, there's gotta be some way. And then all of a sudden, we're doing them on Zoom, and the guest is on Zoom, like you guys are right now, and we're recording, and it's like, all right, we figured it out. I just wonder, like, what?

How is we going to figure out sports, movies, tv? Where does this shit go? What are movie theaters going to look like in ten years? Are we going to have one 10th as many movie theaters? How many movie theaters do you think we have in ten years, Alex? There's like 38,000 now.

I think we'll still have a lot of movie theaters because people still want to be around other people now over a long period of time, that might lessen, but there's still, I think, a need for people to want to socialize. And there's certain movies. There's certain kinds of movies that are better when you're watching it in a room with 300 people fast. And the furious is a lot more fun when there's 300 other people screaming with you than if you're watching it by yourself looking at an iPhone. So I do think it'll still exist. I mean, thinking about and trying to speculate what the future is going to look like ten, 2100, 400 years from now is something that we're doing now as we're trying to piece together, hopefully a season two, because the show goes into the future, and you want to make it look like a future that isn't a future that someone else has drawn up a million times. It's not the Jetsons. It can't be something that has already been done, but also seems plausible and also seems cool. And so we do think about this kind of thing a lot.

Yeah. You think about the future stuff and the tvs and movie shows, the stuff we grew up watching. And some of it was pretty good, like total recall, you know, where they would have, like, a big tv, where they were just tied. Basically. It's FaceTime, right, but nobody knows what FaceTime is. Yeah, it's like, all right, you guys nailed that one. There's some other people being beamed to different.

Pretty good job, right?

I think we're kind of half in.

The minority report sort of interface world, you know?

Feels like it, David. So HBO is all feel, and it's creative execs, and they're just going, we love this. Here are notes. Netflix in the 2020s, they can tell you exactly, like, to the second when people are checking in and out who the audience is. Is it male, female? What countries? Is it more popular? What do you do with all this data? Because it's kind of antithetical to, you know, with the three of you, like, trying to do tv with feel and what makes sense to you, but then you have all this advanced metric stuff that you kind of have to listen to. So how do you listen to it?

Man, that's a great question. I don't really know. In terms of what to do with it. I don't really know. It's. I think it's probably incredibly useful for the company in terms of, like, determining what shows work for them and what shows don't work for them and where to allocate their resources and all in terms of actually making a good show. I mean, it feels like if the metrics, if the information was sufficient for that, then AI could be doing it right now, you know, I mean, you pump that into, what's it called, Sora, what's the one that does the video. It's like this is by minute two and 12 seconds in, they have to have a scare, like a jump scare.

Here, sore, a critical.

And we're clearly not there quite yet. Maybe we will be in ten years, I don't know. But so I feel like it's really useful information for the companies and for them, for the people making the shows. I honestly don't know. I mean, I think there's a lot of things that we wanted to do on the show that we knew probably wouldn't be, you know, this is probably not the way to create a big hit show, but this is what we want to do to tell the story the right way. And by our lights, ultimately, a lot of it just comes down it's subjective and it's taste, and it's, you know. Well, the three of us, our job is to. Is to write the show and produce it and make it work by our lights, not. Not by the lights of, you know, 272 million subscribers to Netflix. It's just got to come from our minds. And so it's kind of a non answer to your question, but I honestly don't know what to do with. With a lot of the information. I think it would be, you know, it, um, if you're. If you're deciding, like, do I pull this picture right now?

When he's going up against this left handed batter, who hits that? That I see being, like, incredibly useful in terms of, like, how to write this scene or how to cast a person or anything else. I don't know how to apply the stats.

When do you start sketching out season two? We're doing it. Yeah. Has it been greenlit yet, or are you waiting?

No, it has not. It has not been greenlit yet, but we're already outlining it. We're deep into it. We have already, like, six episodes. Some.

We got parts of everything.

Yeah, we got parts of everything.

So, Dane, what. How do you. So the show comes out. It's just thrown every episodes out right away. Then there's that weird. People are on the different time cycles. Some people are writing about it. What have you learned over the years? How to pay attention to certain things versus ignoring certain things. I'm talking about reviews. I'm talking about Reddit boards, feedback from friends. Have you gotten any better at learning what the tune out?

Because what you're talking about is actually a different facet of the same thing you were talking about before, a minute ago with David. And that's just data. There's, like, a lot of information. Like, there's a lot. There's. There's an exponential increase in the amount of information about anything and everything that could find its way to you if you open the floodgates to any and all information. I think we found with Thrones, we were kind of. It was a cuspy show where it was. It was when. This was when that the curve was starting to get steeper, you know, in terms of just how much potential information you could receive at any moment about the thing you just did if you so chose. So we were. We were lucky enough that we were getting eased into the pool with it a little bit. And what I think we found was that you need. You need to self regulate, because if you. If you.

It used to be like, I would.

Say, imagine 35 years ago, 40 years ago, you put something out there, the world has something to say about it. You get the limited snippets of that, like, views from 10,000ft or like a fan mail from this person or a letter from that person. Like, yeah, you'd engage with it. I think we found even towards the beginning of thrones, when social media was really just kind of in its infancy, like, we found that, like, engaging with it in any kind of a major way was it was just, it was overload and it sort of, it was like that thing on your computer where if you, you know, have you ever checked the thing? If you have an Apple, they've got the activity monitor where it shows you, like, what your computer is doing. It's like, look at the computer's brain. It's like 95% of your computer is now clocking on Zoom, you know, this program. And I realized early on that I started was reading about the show and thinking about what other people were thinking about the show, and, like, 95% of my brain was just grinding on that. And I just, that wasn't a really smart way to use the increasingly limited resources that my brain has to provide.

So I was kind of like, I was like, I gotta shut this shit down, because if I, like this is, it's not healthy and it's also, like, not. I've got, first and foremost, a job to do. So I think that, and it's the same thing with, like, you could dive into the data pool about, like, who turned the show on two minutes and 74 seconds. Two minutes and 34 seconds into it. Who turned the show off in scene five? Like, you could find slice, they have access to if you wanted to. You could get so deep into the weeds on the data of, like, like, what is happening. The data swirling in a cloud around the thing you put out there. You could, you could drown in it because there's, there's so much of it. And maybe, I mean, I'm old, man. Like, I'm, I'm not really native to this. And maybe, like, my, our kids generation, like, maybe they're just gonna be congenitally, like, more equipped to deal, to surf that data and not fall off the board and drown in it. But, like, I do think it's going to requires a fundamentally different approach to, like, information about your show when there's that much information out there about your show and about any show and anything that anybody does anywhere.

So you didn't listen to binge mode, our Game of Thrones podcast that. Three hour episodes about every episode. That's your way of telling us that wasn't on your radar.

Most impressed, my brother in law, who is a mass hole ever was with me ever in my whole career, was when he forwarded me your bill, your. I think it was after the first big battle we did, the battle of Blackwater. And like two to him, that was like, okay, everything you do is so boring to me, but the fact that.

This guy's talking, that it crossed over. No, that was nice.

That was like the. One of the biggest. It was one of the biggest indicators with, like, half of my friends that, like, what we had had left, the kind of petri dish that we grew it in and, like, moved out to people who we never thought it would reach.

Seeing lineman talk about it on paradox, that was great.

I remember there was one Sunday night, and I think I might have even written about it, when Thrones was going against some giant Sunday night football game. And I want to say mad Men was on, too. And it was like the. It was like the single greatest tv night anybody could ever remember. It was like, what are you going to watch first? What are you taping now? It's just. I just feel like people would probably be watching all three at the same.

Time while on your phone and catching. Watching it all and catching. Not really being fully invested in any of it. But I always hated when we were up against football anyway. Being up against sports is always the worst because you're never going to beat. You're never going to beat live sports ever.

Right?

You're never going to beat a good football game. You're never going to beat March Madness. Like, you can't compete with what that means to people and what it means to people to be in the moment. Like, even my son was watching. We were watching the finals last night. He rewound to listen to something a commentator had said. Then he fast forwarded, like, through, like, you know, through two or three, maybe even two scores. He fast forwarded because he didn't want. When he got to the end of the game, he wanted to be. He didn't want to be behind. He wanted the end of the game for him to be, like, concurrent with the end of the game in real life. Like, that's how important.

Alex, Alex. If we're going to bounce around on three body problem, could we maybe bounce backwards and make the Mookie bets trade not happen? Is there a way to put that in the show? Could that be an alternate universe?

There's so many things I would love.

He's just on the Red Sox.

There's so many things I would love to take back. There's a whole sort of dark era where it was not so much fun to be a Red Sox fan.

It is true.

The most fun, I actually have to say was David is just like his guys.

I know. That's why I had to bring this in.

I can tell you actually now, even though I wasn't born on the, I could tell all the years the Red Sox lost in seven games in the World Series. But after 2004 and then 2007 and winning the World Series became a little less fun to me then. Like this team that was just always would be at the doorstep of heartbreak again and again and again. The feeling of winning a World Series for the first time was one of the greatest feelings I've ever had as a sports fan. The other odd thing is that my NFL team is the Saints, who also historically never won anything.

Oh, wow.

And the feeling of them winning the Super bowl for the first time seemed like insane.

What kind of childhood did you have?

Are there any other New Yorkers who are Red Sox and Saints fans?

I've yet to meet one. Yeah. I've always been contrarian. I was rooting, always rooting for the underdog. So when I was a fan, I was 78, was when all the kids around me were following sports.

Talk about that season.

Yeah.

And they were all huge Yankees fans. Like, okay, I'll be a Red Sox fan. There was also, I've never bought this. I have the baseball card somewhere. There's a baseball card of a utility man named Jack Broheim from 1978. I said, that's what looks like a baseball player to me. And that's why that's going to be my team. I followed the Saints because I started following football in, was it 81 when they were one in 15 and they, everyone was wearing paper bags over their heads.

And you had a cocaine scandal, too. I think. I think it was the, you did the combo of the worst record in the league with the cocaine scandal.

I didn't know that at the time, but it was the ain't and all that said, okay, that's going to be my team too, and Archie Manning's going to be my favorite player. So it was always like the perennial losers were always.

Yeah, it's kind of childhood. If somebody ends up becoming a screenwriter, it sounds like a lot of torture and brain killer. Yeah. All right, guys, this was fun. We, we got through this without spoiling any of the show, but I would encourage people to watch it. It's on Netflix. They've done a good job of promoting it. I feel like it's been on the main screen. I know they feed stuff to my algorithm to things I'm going to like, but it's always been there. But congrats on the show. Fun to watch. I'll be really interested to see, especially where it goes down the road. How many? Like, I guess, I guess we can ask this question, like, how many seasons ultimately, is this in your heads? Can you even answer that? Is there, is there like a cap? Is this, like, this is four seasons and we're done? What is it?

There are three books and we all love the ending of the third book. The third book. The books get bigger as they go. So the second season would more or less be the second book, but the third book is so long. It's hard to say right now if it would be one season or two seasons because, or maybe one slightly longer season or whatever, but I'd say at least three seasons, but I'd cap it at four.

All right, so this won't be Grey's anatomy. We're not going to be year 21. Just changing every. Just Ellen Pompeo. Is there nobody else you don't know? Who knows?

We'll never make it to a thousand episodes.

All right. Good to see you guys. Thanks for, thanks for coming out and talking about the show.

Thanks, Bill. It was great to see you. Thanks for taking the time.

All right.

That's it for the podcast. Thanks to Joe House. Thanks to Dan Weiss, David Benioff and Alexander Wu. Thanks to Steve Cerude and Kyle Creighton for producing as well. I will see you on Thursday on Lisbeth. Until then, Donna, see them when we start at once. I don't have a few years with them. Must be 21 plus and president in select states. FanDuel is offering online sports wagering in Kansas under an agreement with Kansas Star Casino, LLC. Gambling problem called 1800 Gambler visit fanduel.com rg. In Colorado, Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Vermont. Call 100 next step or text next step to 53342. In Arizona, 8887-8977 or visit ccpg.org chattinconneticut 809 with it in Indiana 805 224700 or visit ksgamblinghelp.com. In Kansas, eight city seven 70 stop in Louisiana, md gamblinghelp.org. In Maryland, 800 gambler.net in West Virginia, 805 224700. In Wyoming, hope is here. Visit gambling helpline ma.org or call 800 327 50 50 for 24/7 supported Massachusetts or call 18778 HOpe NY or text Hope NY in New York.