35 Burst results for "72 Hours"
Tech Path Crypto
A highlight from Macro-Economy vs Crypto with EconomicNinja
"All right, so lots of influential factors right now in the markets today from real estate, what we're dealing with, with inflation, and also banking issues that really could affect your strategy going forward around crypto or real estate, all those kinds of things. We're going to bring in a special guest today to kind of break this down. This is going to be a good one. My name is Paul Baron. Welcome back into Tech Path. Joining me today is the Economic Ninja. If you guys don't follow him, hit him up over on YouTube as the Economic Ninja. Great to have you on the show, Ninja. Hey, Paul, thank you so much for having me on. So let's get into a couple of topics around the current state of the markets, we'll call it. Some of the things that are happening right now, obviously around jobs, we saw, of course, COBY kind of reporting on this, 150 ,000 jobs in October. This was below the expectations of 180. And it's likely that this is highly underreported in the sense of real job loss overall. When you look at some of the research and the data that you're doing, I know on your own YouTube channel, you look at the current situation with jobs as they are and where those jobs are coming from, because they're coming from places that are not necessarily even job growth areas. Do you feel like this is a major catalyst for a potential oncoming recession or do you think this is kind of a natural evolution of these down markets? Well, you've got a couple of different factors at play. One is that the government is not reporting the truth in the way that it should be reported. It actually gives out the facts and figures. But one fact and figure that they really go a little light on is the headlines come out and they say that employment's increasing, employment's great. But what's increasing is part time jobs, not full time jobs. When you see it seems to be right now about for every one full time job that's taken away, taken off the market, that's somebody that's fully employed, has hopefully some type of benefits package, has insurance, things like that. For every job that's taken away full time, we add about three to four part time jobs. And a lot of this is because of government overregulation where governments have stepped in and they tell employers, hey, if your employees are employed at a minimum 30 hours a week, that's considered full employment. So we want you to give them benefits so easily. And it makes sense. Companies go, OK, we're going to start pulling back and giving certain employees like twenty eight hours a week so that they stay right underneath that threshold. So that's one factor that's really not explained very well. Another thing is that the Federal Reserve is hell bent to raise unemployment. And this is what normally happens during a tightening cycle. The reason why the Federal Reserve has to tighten anything is because inflation got out of control. The Fed has always had an inflation mandate. Their numbers are two percent, which we all know inflation runs a lot hotter year after year, over two percent. But again, they're moving these metrics are changing the goalposts. And so now that inflation has gotten away, they need to tighten. One of the ways to tighten is to cause unemployment. Well, how does the Federal Reserve cause employment? It puts the pressure, turns the screws on to the employer in the form of less money being lent out into the market, higher interest rates, things like that. Do you feel like this is just the beginning of the iceberg in terms of jobs available, true unemployment spiking into possibly some people out there have even pushed out into what we could see? If you look back at some of the recessions in the past where we see double digit unemployment over 10 percent, do you think that is even possible with the current status here in the United States? Yeah, 100 percent, I completely believe that by the time we hit a bottom, we will be well into double digit unemployment numbers. Let's give the car industry as an example, we've seen numerous auto lenders completely pull out of the market. The latest large auto lender that pulled out of the market was Bank of Montreal. Now, if you think about it just from that aspect, that means that there are less lenders lending into the market, allowing people to be able to buy a car because most people and I'll tell you, I've got a car for sale right now around nine thousand dollars. There's not a lot of phone calls. My phone's not ringing off the hook. And the reason why is because people don't have the cash to buy it. They need to finance nine thousand dollars. And so they're having a harder time because their interest rates are so much higher. Why? Well, one of the reasons not only the Fed raising rates and the bond market going crazy, but also since there's less lenders in the market, a lot of these auto lenders have to take a certain stance on risk. And they go, hey, if we're going to loan at a certain amount of money into the market with the certain average credit user or the person that needs a loan, they have a credit score of X or they've got bills of Y. They've got to ask higher rates. So the problem is now you've got employment being affected there, too, because if there are less car loans going out, there are less auto salesman employed. There are less people working behind the desk giving those loans out. I know that might seem real small, but when you look at it from a twenty thousand foot view perspective, you start really thinking about just one little step where the Federal Reserve makes it so impossible for a bank to loan money to someone that chain effect that going down the stairs, stepping down from one job loss, two jobs lost, three job loss after a while, it starts just multiplying. So a lot of factors here that you're mentioning and you look at this because we're talking about potentially still job numbers going up, if job numbers and when I say job numbers in the sense of unemployment, if it does go up, wouldn't that kind of align with what Powell's directive is, which is job loss goes up, inflation numbers start to reduce and we see what we could see, which is maybe that target of two percent. Do you think that's achievable in, say, the next two to five years? What is your thoughts on what Chair Powell is looking at in terms of hitting that target? Yeah, so I actually believe that you're going to see a two percent inflation rate in five years, maybe six, and the reason why is because we're going to have an epic crash before then. The Federal Reserve historically does not start touching or pivoting its rates until we see about 20, 25 percent taking off the major indexes of the stock market. It takes a lot more than just a housing correction to do that. If you look back on when the Fed started to really pivot last time was 2007, which was in line with not only a housing correction, but also the stock market indexes started really trending lower. It wasn't until it hit its crescendo between September of 2008 and the spring of 2009. But you also have to remember, too, the Federal Reserve did not have its repurchase window open until January of 2009. So we'd already seen a massive haircut off of stock market indexes. We saw a massive haircut off of home valuations well before they even opened up the repurchase window. Now, what's different this time is that the repurchase window has been opened for quite some time. We have over 700 banks failing. That's from the Federal Reserve, not from me. We are seeing an epic crash in the banking sector. But tying this back into like what you were saying with the pivot and the unemployment numbers, the unemployment numbers are actually showing positive. If people don't really disseminate them, it's showing that employment strong, but it's strong in the wrong way. We're getting more part time and under employed employees and we're losing these full time jobs. As a matter of fact, we are already seeing the month of October has been impressive as far as job losses because we're seeing companies shave 10 percent of its workforce or at least are announcing that they're about to lay off 10 percent. Even Citigroup came out September and they said we're going to lay off an undisclosed amount of people and then we'll really let you know in a couple of months. And the reason why they said that they're preparing people. They don't want everyone jumping ships. They don't want everyone to know exactly what they're doing. But at the same time, they're trying to appease their shareholders because they're trying to keep their shareholders from selling their stock. And they're saying, hey, we've got a plan. Don't worry, everything's be fine. Very similar to what happened with WeWork. WeWork gave you the idea in the last couple of months. Hey, we don't see ourselves really going forward in the normal direction. We're going to have to start talking to our creditors and starting to try and renegotiate leases. And now you find them in bankruptcy. So we're in that situation where CEOs are trying their hardest to keep their shareholders calm. We saw that with Lowe's and Home Depot back in the spring where they said the consumer has changed. And they're trying to give you very interesting ways of wording or wordsmithing. Please don't panic. Don't sell our shares because we're essentially screwed right now. Some of the things I want to kind of point to, Fed has lost control, bank collapsed, commercial real estate disaster, pension fund devastation. Something is running up quickly. This is kind of the topic around what's happening overall. And then I want to play a clip from Peter Saint -Ange on what's happening in Switzerland. Let me just jump to this clip real quick and let you listen in. In an ominous sign for our coming financial crisis, Switzerland is considering locking people into failing banks using capital controls that would stop depositors from withdrawing their money. I talked about this in a previous video, so -called friction tech that would lock depositors into dying banks, forcing them to go down with the ship so no banker is left behind. The Fed has also been pushing such controls in a series of papers ever since Silicon Valley Bank went down back in March. So specifically, Switzerland's considering limiting withdrawals to 50 ,000 Swiss francs per year. Franc is about a dollar. Larger withdrawals would be subject to a three month notice period. So you'd have to wait three months. I'm going to pause it there. So it isn't, in fact, taking place in Switzerland, but they're looking at doing this. Remember, if you look at the European Union, about six months ahead of us in terms of the economic cycles and they're obviously already in a recession. If something like that, if the Fed were to come in and put those kind of controls in to kind of avert what happened at Silicon Valley. How do you think consumers would respond to that retail? I mean, because everybody is already on edge with this and now I'm going to have a limit on what I could pull out of my bank. What are your thoughts on how Americans would say, OK, we're OK with that? This has actually been happening for over a decade. We've seen times of banking crisis and I guess the ruble would be one of the most recent examples. And there was some examples in certain Slavic countries where they were told that they were only allowed to withdraw a certain amount of money per day when there's an actual banking crisis. And it's happening in America right now in cryptocurrency. If you have a Coinbase account, you know if you deposit some money, wire it that day, it shows in your account. You could buy Bitcoin with it all day long, but you can't withdraw that Bitcoin for 72 hours. It's because they are insolvent. That's a derivative. And most people don't understand how that works. And so these are great signs when you see countries start to say, hey, we're looking at doing this or you look at what's just going on with Bank of America and some other key banks just a few days ago where they had a quote unquote glitch. And I'm going to tell you, this is sort of the conspiracy theory side. I don't believe that these are glitches that just accidentally happened. There are some that happen, but it's also a test to see how depositors react. And that test was a few days ago. Your deposits were coming into your bank, but it might take a day or two or maybe three for you to be able to access that money because there was a glitch. And really what that is, is the ability for bankers to be able to see how the public reacts to such an event. And those are things that I'm reporting on all the time. I'm sure you are. And I think people need to take heed. So what can you do? First thing is separate your risk. And that is big multinational banks, local regional banks and credit unions. But then also, you don't have to have all of your finances in paper as well. You could actually get alternative assets.
Telecom Reseller
A highlight from Feet on the street: we will sell with you, not just to you, says Snoms Marc Magliano, Special Podcast
"This is Doug Green, and I'm the publisher of TR Publications, and I'm very pleased to have with us again Mark Magliano of Snome. Mark, thank you for joining me today. Hey Doug, thank you for having me. Glad to be back. So you know, this is going to be a Mark podcast. We're going to be talking about your background a little bit, how you signed up with Snome. You know, now what your vision for Snome is, what you see coming forward, especially for enterprises that are thinking about, hey, what type of product should I be buying now for the future, and especially for our service provider, our MSP community channels, thinking hey, you know, how should I jazz up my portfolio? What type of products really should I be offering people that really take me into the future? So Mark, tell me a little bit about yourself. How did you end up at Snome? Wow, this is, do we have enough time on this podcast? I'll tell you, I'll start by sharing with you, boy, I've been at this a long time. I cut my teeth in the industry about 30 years ago, a little over 30 years ago, and I was working for this little known company, small distributor called TechData down here in Florida. And I was in the retail and VAR space before that building and fixing computers and then selling computers on the weekend. But Doug, let me tell you, the second I got a feel for and a taste for distribution, true broad line distribution like that, I fell in love. I started to learn and get to understand the relationship of a manufacturer with their distributor and then the different types of partners, resale, excuse me, resellers, whether it's the retail market or the VAR market or corporate resellers, the DMRs, as we used to call them way back when. And I felt, I just absolutely fell in love, loved everything I did, I loved the atmosphere, I loved learning about how product went through the channel and ended up getting out to the consumer. So, to make a long story shorter, I spent the next few years really honing my craft at TechData, left and went to a series of manufacturers where I really started to focus on the building or rebuilding of channel and channel teams. So, the most relevant and all of this discussion would be my tenure during Grandstream. A few years back, I was brought on to build out or help rebuild their overall channel and I was part of a tremendous growth cycle that Grandstream went through, spent almost four years there. And during my time there, I had the pleasure of bringing on a coworker. His name is Antoine Karachacki and I think you've had an opportunity to give him a handful of times. Antoine, when he left Grandstream, went to Snow. I got a call about a year ago now and he said, Mark, we're going to be going through some changes. I worked very closely with the executive team in Hong Kong. And if you're available, we'd love to have a conversation with you. And the rest is history. So, here you are. Let's go from history to the future. What's your vision for Snow? Oh, great question. I'll take my head out of the clouds for a second because I view Snow and our opportunity as really the sky's the limit. You know, we can do so much with this product and with this company. I can't even begin to get into the details, but I can share this with you. One of the things that I need to do when I first came on board, obviously, is learn the ins and outs of the company, understand what makes the channel tick, understand really what buttons to push and levers to pull. And after about 30 days of doing my due diligence to really dig into what makes the channel tick or I should say made the channel tick, I realized that we need to come up with a new distribution strategy. And that's the first thing I focused on, Doug. I focused on the distribution piece of the business. After all, it's one of the pieces that I know the best. I took my experience in the distribution piece and doubled down on it. I reached out to all the executives in leadership members of leadership teams within these distributors in our space who I have direct relationships with and had very honest and open conversations about their challenges in the marketplace and how and if Snome could fill those gaps. And I found out real quickly that there was a tremendous opportunity for someone to come in and make an immediate impact. So, you know, we were talking just before we started our podcast today, you said you're getting a lot of excitement from the channel and from your service provider, from your whole community. And it's not just about a product or a family of products. It's like across the board. It is, it is. So there's a lot of excitement about me joining Snome and within the distribution community first. When I started to share that vision with those leaders in distribution, it really resonated and they understood what we were going to do and how we were going to do it. And I'll share some of that with you and our audience. What our main focus is, was and it still is, strengthen those relationships with the distributors and distributors love that, right? They want to get closer to their manufacturers. The sales reps want to get closer to their manufacturers. The closer they are, the better they can work with the partner, usually leads to more margin for them and less mistakes, right? Everyone wants to have those close relationships. Well, after the distribution piece, I shared with the entire community that we want to focus on the MSPs and the SPs next, not just recruiting and enabling them, but selling, having a sell with mentality where we go in there hand in hand with the distributors and sell the Snome solutions. So instead of a traditional sell to which our competitors have, we're going with the sell with super excited, like, wow, you're willing to do that? You're willing to go in there and dedicate resources to sell with us to these solution providers? Absolutely. That's what we want to do. So we're in the very, probably I would say, I was going to say the early stages, but we're probably in the middle stages, Doug, right now of finalizing that strategy. I've hired the team. Actually, I have one last key hire to bring on, but we'll have feet on the street to help drive resellers to our distributors. And we have feet on the street to enable our distributors. So very much that push pull ecosystem that you want for a healthy channel. That's what's got the the overall Snome channel super excited and energized about working with us again. And then when you combine the fact that we've brought on industry leaders like Andy Abramson and a dedicated channel marketing manager that reports directly up through our organization, everything is under one umbrella and we can make things happen. So, again, in a nutshell, that's what's driven the excitement and that's what's going to drive our growth for years to come. You know, I note in what you just said, the strong emphasis on people. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Relationships, you know, it's interesting. I've gone back and forth over the years. I don't know if you're familiar with the book, was it The Challenger Sale? Have you heard of that book? I think I have. So, yeah, there's a very popular book out there that talks about different sales techniques and it actually de -emphasizes the relationship. It says the relationship selling is probably, I'm sorry, not probably, relationship selling is the least effective way of selling in the channel, which has contradicted everything that I've learned and taught for the past 30 years. Well, while that may be true to some extent, you still have to have these relationships. Everything is relationship driven nowadays. As a matter of fact, the relationship, my relationship got me the job. My personal relationships with these distributors opened up more doors for us. And it's my relationships with the MSP solution providers and our overall team's relationships with these partners that have gained the trust of the community to allow us to do everything that we're doing to bring new products, new technologies. We talked a little bit about our deck solution earlier, our M500 solution. When you get that trust from your channel based on those relationships, again, the sky is the limit. And that's another, I'm not going to say secret to our success, but that's definitely a path that we're heading down. It's really doubling down on those relationships. So we have people and then it also seems there's places. You mentioned three or four different verticals where you're seeing growth. Yeah, we're seeing growth all over the board. But as far as vertical markets go, I'll touch on a couple of things. Part of our strategy for next year, our next fiscal year, which starts in April, is to become verticalized as well. So it's very relevant. We are going to have dedicated resources and probably new products on our roadmap to handle some of these vertical markets. But we're seeing a tremendous interest, especially when we started talking about our deck systems in retail, whether it's the restaurant business, automotive has been significant for us. We've done very well and continue to do very well in hospitality. We actually have a whole separate division dedicated to hospitality and we're seeing growth in the hospital and nursing home facilities right now. Just absolutely exploding. So, again, very exciting times for us. And, you know, as we close up our podcast today, any ideas for growth, anything you'd like to say to the MSP community, the service provider community about how to get engaged better for 2024? Well, from my perspective, I'll turn this into a little bit of a soapbox for me, for Snom. I believe that there is a lot of room right now for someone like Snom to step up and partner with the MSPSP space. And what I mean by partner is really, truly provide services that other manufacturers aren't providing. And I'll touch on those real quick. The existing Snom ecosystem is well aware of some of these key differences, but the vast majority of the marketplace is not. And that's the fact that we've got a three year manufacturer's warranty. So we've had this warranty, Doug, since day one. We're going back into the 90s when we delivered the first sip phone, right? We talked about that earlier as well. Three year warranty. Now, not only is it a three year warranty, but it's an advanced exchange. You don't have to call your reseller. You don't have to call your distributor. You go online, you fill out the actual ticket itself. You get a ticket number and within 72 hours, you as the end user or the reseller or partner could do this on behalf or receive the product as an advanced exchange. So just for the service providers to cut out that middleman to deal directly with the manufacturer is a game changer. No one else has that. So combine that with the fact that we have dedicated resources for sales and service here stateside, both the US and in Canada, all of our support is done here locally. So, Doug, when you combine all of those services with the fact that our parent company, VTech, is an actual manufacturer, we can be much, much more nimble than our competition, especially when you start talking about working with the service providers, right, having that single throat to choke. We're the only ones you come to us, you come to Snom Direct, we can handle everything from your distribution pieces, your manufacturing, your marketing, everything gets done centrally with us. And it's just incredible value proposition for the service providers that are out Mark, there. I want to thank you for joining us today. This has been very interesting. I want to congratulate you on your appointment. And I want to wish you the very best of luck. And I'm already see that you're making tremendous progress and big strides with Snom. Where can we learn more about Snom? Where can we learn more about the Snom partner programs? Ah, you can go to and our audience can go to SnomAmericans .com. Now we are having, we're going to be releasing a new version of our website in a short time here, but still SnomAmericans .com. We can be reached through most of the social media outlets. LinkedIn is fantastic. I can be reached directly or anybody on our team can be reached directly. And you'll have links in there for the Snom partner program, which again, that's also going through an overhaul. We're super excited about new components. And you know what, that may be a great topic for one of our next podcasts. Let's talk about the new Snom partner program and some of the components of it and how, how that's going to be very different in the game changer in the industry as well. All right. We're queuing up for the next one and there's going to be a bunch of these everybody. We're going to be doing a lot of work with Snom, but for now I want to really thank Mark for joining us today. And I'll look forward to that, that, that next podcast. This sounds like a plan. Thanks, Doug.
The Eric Metaxas Show
A highlight from Victor Marx
"In an unsettled world, knit yourself in truth as you gain the knowledge and skills to meet the challenges of what's to come. Regent University is a Christian community that seeks to honor God and serve people. Christian leadership begins here amongst your professors and alongside your classmates. Find your folks welcome to the Eric Metaxas show sponsored by legacy precious metals there's never been a better time to invest in precious metals visit legacy p .m. investments calm that's legacy p .m. investments calm welcome to the Eric Metaxas show they say it's a thin line between love and line or at least make it a double or triple line but now here's your line jumping host Eric Metaxas let's welcome the hour two I warned you told you that we're gonna have my friend Victor Marx on the program Victor welcome it's hard to describe you I tried in the opening segment but I want to first of all want to say I'm not clear you are one of the first people to be on the scene at the music festival that Hamas attacked on October 7th am I getting that right yeah I would say that's accurate because you were already in Israel what were you doing in Israel at that time no actually we got contacted within 72 hours of the attack and had access and placement and an invitation from an organization there so we you know we jocked up got our team ready flew right in because of the relationships that we have with special operations community and commanders in the IDF and it really gave us access to things that I you know man I wish on one hand I'd never had to see but I know it's a responsibility to share it this this is this is I guess the point Kevin McCullough in our one today shared some things I've shared some things that I have read and heard and I want to talk to you about this now before we do that just to give people background on you you are the president of all things possible ministries you're hard to sum up maybe you can yeah if you can do a little bit of that for us yeah the former US Marine I have a background in martial arts passion is to help set captives free physically emotionally spiritually our organization's been around 20 years now we have a home in Iraq we've done over 130 missions into Iraq Syria northern Iraq northern Africa Southeast Asia we currently have teams in it certainly happened and it's turned into a calling you when did you come to faith Victor yeah I was 1986 June of 86 and I was still in the Marine Corps at the time had a pretty tumultuous background as a child you know I was abused as a kid and tortured and left for dead in a commercial cooler and I guess that's what is the imprint on my soul that never allows me to forget about kids who suffer at the highest level who did that to you Victor it was a the worst of it was a stepfather who ultimately ended up in prison and escaped prison and fled the country they never found him he actually turned himself in so he was a highly educated affluent pedophile and he was in connection with the network of pedophiles and you know sadly I was one of the kids that was a recipient of that and this is why a big part of what you do is rescuing kids from sex trafficking yes we we have a we just started a new division of all things possible ministry it's the pedophile hunter task force and we have acquired the best people that we believe just all tier one top former investigators detectives DA's and we are working diligently here in the US we started it in Southern California which is riddled we're expanding to other states but soon by God's grace and good hard -working men and women who are fearless will our goal is to be in every state in the nation attacking this problem and assisting both state and federal agencies to do really what they're not funded to or don't have the capacity to do and they love our help I obviously I want to talk to you about Israel that's that our main subject today but I want to talk to you about two other things one of them we're people like me I see my role on this program and in other places to help people process things because I am myself trying to process things when you hear about real evil yeah like sexual abuse of children somebody like me who was raised by a loving father and a loving mother who themselves were raised by loving parents it's nearly inconceivable to many people of the evil that is out there and when I talk to somebody like you and I hear about this I feel like part of what's happening in America today is God is allowing us to see the evil that's there he is allowing people like me who have thought that things weren't so bad to see the evil so that we can confront it so that we can so that we can stand against it so we can work against it so we can get serious about what God wants us to get serious about and what you're doing you know you you you've seen this and I think part of part of what's challenging is most people haven't seen this most people don't want to see it I don't want to see it but then you feel a duty just like what you said about Israel that we don't want to think about what was done to people but we sort of have a duty to know some of it and and that's when we're talking about you know child sex trafficking I've been talking a lot about the southern border how this is a moral issue you know the moral issue it's not a whole completely and if churches don't care about child rape why would God care about those churches if you're a Christian in a church that doesn't care that we have sex trafficking being aided and abetted by the US government whether intentionally or unintentionally if you don't see that as a moral issue what do you see anything as a moral issue I can't think of anything more serious than that but but because of the movie sound of freedom and a few other things somehow people are beginning to open their eyes to this and I guess that must give you some hope because you've been aware of this problem for too long yeah and I appreciate you saying that because I think we are in a process of Americans and Christians starting to understand this as a reality you know who's always known it our detectives law enforcement social workers this is the round that they live in and I'll tell you this part of the reason that I believe the church is so what's a good word impotent weak this whole deal is because they're that's why most people who are aware and could make a difference but don't it's because they themselves are involved in levels of darkness and wickedness that they just don't touch they don't publicly do anything and think about it one in three girls will be sexually assaulted by the time she's 18 it's one in five boys males will be sexually assaulted so what what America and the church is starting to accept through like the movie sound of freedom is well it happens other places and there's trafficking networks the hardest thing for people to learn and understand if they really want change in America is it's happening in our homes by families abusing children and trafficking their own kids it this has been known forever in the hood especially among the black community girls will get turned out by their mom put on a front porch and tricked out it's that culture the the dark side of that culture now like we'll use prostitution or trafficking high school boys were trafficking their own girlfriends ten years ago so there's this is why you have the moral decay and you know only fans and which is nothing more than self prostitution it's we're going to a break folks please subscribe to my newsletter at Eric Metaxas calm we send videos these to you you need to share this we need to get the word out Eric Metaxas calm be right back technology is moving so fast it's hard for many churches and nonprofits to keep up with the trends especially when it comes to giving stay ahead of the curve with secure give seven and one giving system with all new features like Auto card updater cryptocurrency giving and tap to give kiosks with Apple pay it's the system that's proven to engage more people in giving and it's all back with their full suite of management tools that enable you to gain insight into your church's giving at a glance but secure give is more than a tech company it's a partner in growing giving and engagement they believe that every church should be fully funded and they want to help you to make that happen empower people to support your church's mission through secure gives seamless integrated all -in -one giving technology visit secure give comm slash Metaxas today to get six months of free software to see why secure give is the trusted giving solution again get six months of free software when you go to secure give comm slash Metaxas secure give comm slash Metaxas legacy precious metals has a revolutionary new online platform that allows you to invest in real gold and silver online in a few easy steps you can open an account online select your metals of choice and choose to have them stored in a vault or ship to your door you have access to a dashboard where you can track your portfolio growth in real time anytime you'll see transparent pricing on each coin and bar this puts you in complete control of your money the platform is free to sign up for visit legacy PM investments .com and open your account and see this new investing platform for yourself gold hedges against inflation and against the volatile stock market a true diversified portfolio isn't just more stocks and bonds but different asset classes this new platform allows you to make investments in gold and silver no matter how small or large with a few clicks visit legacy PM investments .com to get started you're gonna love this free new tool they've added legacy PM investments dot com legacy PM investments .com check it out the most anticipated rock holiday tradition returns trans Siberian Orchestra live in concert coming to a city near you legendary blend of rock classical and holiday music for the entire family don't miss trans Siberian Orchestra live in concert the ghosts of Christmas Eve go to tso tickets .com for info the most anticipated rock holiday tradition returns trans Siberian Orchestra live in concert coming to a city near you legendary blend of rock classical and holiday music for the entire family don't miss trans Siberian Orchestra live in concert the ghosts of Christmas Eve go to tso tickets .com for info beyond the sea welcome back talking to victor marks president of all things possible ministries victor we're talking about some dark stuff but you've been in this and you know I want to ask you how do you deal with this in your own soul dealing with this darkness with this evil my guess is that by doing good it gives you hope that you're you're in the middle of it and and you've been in the middle of it for such a long time but most people as I say most people don't kind of don't want to know about this and you you were saying earlier that you think a lot of people in churches are morally compromised and they they just don't want to they don't want to rock the boat yeah it's a great question and I've been asked that a number of times especially just coming back from Israel and seeing what I have and done and you know you spoke at dr.
The Breakdown
A highlight from SBF Testifies; WSJ Errors; Bitcoin Booms - The Top 5 Crypto Stories This Week
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Saturday, October 28th, and that means it's time for the weekly recap. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review, or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Hello, friends. We are back with another top five most important stories in crypto this week. This of course is the conversation that I have live with Scott Melker on Friday mornings. Now this week, there are two big, big blaring things that stand out. One is, of course, the SPF testimony, and the second, which is way more significant in many ways, is the attempt to blame crypto for Hamas's attack on Israel a couple of weeks back. Now, we got a lot more information in that story this week. Elliptic basically said that The Wall Street Journal had misinterpreted what it said, but of course, we've gotten no corrections from The Wall Street Journal, and even if we did, the damage would likely already have been done. We also talk a little bit about the big pump this week. All in all, a very dynamic and exciting week. So let's dive in. Quite a week that we've had, huh? Indeed. It's been a week. It's funny because we always talk about how hyperbolic and exaggeratory our titles are allowed to be. Yeah. And this time you're actually like, take it off, do whatever you want. Have at it, man. It really did skyrocket, right? I mean, obviously, we have Bitcoin sort of consolidating here under 35 ,000. Meme coins like Pepe and Flocky do 100 % plus gains. Is there real money and interest coming back into this market right now? Are we back in the washing machine and we're going to see it rotating? What do you think? So two answers to that. On the one hand, I still think that the vast majority of it is just our money internally and people moving things around and people kind of putting more of their own capital back in, moving out of stablecoin, stuff like that, right? It is excitement that's predicated on the community itself that's already here. However, the big, big caveat to that is that every institutional fund, every Bitcoin onboarding firm, if you watch like anyone who works in Swann's institutional management, all week they've been talking about just phones ringing off the hook, people coming in. I think Matt Hogan tweeted that there are, that the conversations this cycle have started to move from, hey, you should have a 1 % allocation to, hey, you should have a 5 % allocation to Bitcoin. So I do think that while when it comes to sort of like this vicious rip up that we had on Monday, that's market structure dynamics playing out with regard to this particular community by and large. But it does seem like this one may have finally triggered alongside all of sort of the narrative stuff we've seen, the phone calls to start coming in for people to actually kind of move in from outside. So I think that for the first time when we're asking this question in a long time, it actually is potentially some amount of a mix of different types of buyers. Yeah, I mean, Matrixport being the analyst here that they're referring to, fifth bull market has further to run. That's coming from Matrixport Research. They're saying that this is officially now the fifth bull market for Bitcoin. Of course, they say 125 ,000 by 2024. We don't care about that, right? We don't really care about the hyperbolic price predictions. But to your point, I think that something's different this time. I know those are dangerous words, but we can see that the market cap has risen dramatically. We can see that both Bitcoin rose and things like meme coins rose at the same time. That can't happen with the rotation of capital. That means that there has to be new money in the system. I've spoken with quite a few people. I had James Butterfield from CoinShares on and he said, yeah, we're seeing some inflows definitely at 300 million this year, institutional inflows. He said, interestingly, we're seeing a bit of outflow from the futures ETFs. What that tells me is that everybody now is ready for this ETF's approval. I'm not surprised that we haven't seen billions flowing in already, because why would you start throwing money into this market if you're an institution today, if you think that there could be a Bitcoin spot ETF that you can safely invest in in a month? Yeah, 100%. I think that the other thing, going back to this contention of, is it a bull market yet? Listen, analyst papers love to call those things. They're very useful. They're good for selling research. When it comes to the gut check on this question, because I think from a community perspective, that's in some ways more enlightening, I think that we are just starting to be in a phase where in the long in -between, between a bear market and a bull market, you have the first part in which the little spikes that look like bull markets feel like the exception and then you return back to the rule, which is either down or sideways. Then you get to the second part, where it feels like the retraces back down and the slight move sideways are the exceptions to the larger momentum. I don't want to say this for sure, but it does feel from a psychological standpoint in this space that we maybe have just flipped over into that, even if we saw the first half of November going slightly down, we get back down to 30, 29, I think that it would still feel like, yeah, whatever. It's not going to change. It's not a return to the norm. It's now sort of like, that's the exception, not the rule kind of a thing. No asset in the world loves to leave people behind more than Bitcoin, right? So if we get the retrace, it'll be shallower than people think. It'll bounce a thousand dollars higher than everybody has their orders. We love to talk about the meme of which direction is Max Payne and what can the market do to punish the most people. Right now, it feels like anyone sidelined is really hoping that they get that dip to buy, which means to me they probably won't, that Max Payne perhaps in this case finally is up. And speaking of Max Payne, look at this guy, in a Bitcoin -free trial, live updates from the courtroom. I know looking at him gives me Max Payne. I'm sure even every ex -FTXer is just calling their therapists off the hook for the last month. I'm quite sure that the therapists, that service crypto clients are probably making almost as much money as bankruptcy attorneys who are service crypto companies at this point. But some wild stuff happens here. Maybe you can explain why he testified, but not in front of a jury. Even the judge seemed somewhat confused at why that was happening. They asked the judge a question, frankly was like, I've never done this before. So I don't know. And SPF went on to say things as wild as I had no idea it was wrong to use customer funds. So a couple of things. One is it's worth noting that I don't think that there has been a lot of meaningful progress in the case besides this. I don't even really think that the defense had a chance to make a lot of its cases. I don't know, there's just not much there. And I think that that's sort of what gets us to the situation. There are two reasons that SPF is testifying. One is because he was always going to testify because it's a person who is the biggest thing that he suffers from is narcissism. And there was never a chance, I think that at the end of the day, he wouldn't testify. So that's one. The second though, is that it really is the only chance he has left. Even if it is a literal snowball's chance in hell, it's better than the definitive verdict that he was looking like he was heading towards. And so I think on some kind of perverse way, it makes sense that he asked to at least try. Now what my read on the situation was in terms of why the jury was dismissed. The government said something like there's data that the government doesn't think that jury should hear, but it seems more like the situation was the judge was trying to figure out what Sam was actually going to say because they called it sort of a mock testimony. And he wanted to see like if Sam was just going to be evasive and not give answers, because I think the judge has to rule on whether he's going to allow Sam to testify in front of a jury. And so yesterday was this very weird, there was a lot of obfuscation, there was a lot of, someone noted, I think it might've been Laura Shin or someone else, it was Sam or maybe it was Tiffany Fong, but someone noted that Sam was doing exactly what he was doing during his media tour, which is when asked a question, he slightly sidesteps it and answers something else. Yeah. And unfortunately for him, courts don't work like that. When you do that in court, they say, you know, answer the actual question asked. Right. So it's sort of TBD on how that's going to play out. A second thing that Sam did a lot is they very clearly, the defense very clearly and has from the beginning, wants to make this an issue of FTX counsel. Right. That Sam was just doing what he what he was legally told to do. Every other answer was Dan Friedberg. Right. Who's the name of the general counsel who was formerly involved in a big sort of poker scandal as well. And it's very clear that Sam is desperately trying to throw Dan Friedberg under the bus and say, I just did what he said. Now, I don't know if you have this tweet pulled up or if we can find it, but there was one moment where the judge literally asked Sam's attorneys to explain to him how blaming counsel was different in this case versus if you laundered money from a bank, like the judge was basically trying to figure out. It's like, look, you did a crime and then later the attorney told you how to deal with the crime. Doesn't that mean you still did the crime? And and it's just this sort of very weird moment where, again, the judge is still trying to figure out if he is going to allow the way that the defense is trying to present the case, you know, because it's not a for sure. Yeah, he wants to blame his lawyers for everything and play claim ignorance, but nobody's going to buy that. There was even a point in the trial where they objected and it was sustained and he decided to answer anyway and his lawyers got missed. I mean, this guy is off the rails. I don't know if he got his Adderall or not. To me, that's the bigger story, right? He needed Adderall if he was going to testify. I wonder if I wonder if they gave it to him. Do we have any insight on that important story? That was I mean, that was the most I think that was the most remarkable moment for kind of anyone watching or reading along about it is Sam deciding to that he said he felt he needed to answer a question to which his attorney, you know, after an objection was sustained to which his attorney said, have you not been here for four weeks? Just wild, dude. Chill. Yeah, I loved, by the way, that in this quick summary from inner city press that we had the inclusion of Sam China Bribe, Trabuco and Dan illegal narcotics, Friedberg. This is the first time that we've seen Trabuco's name. He's been the missing man this entire time. I mean, he was the head of Alameda with Carolyn Ellison and it's like he never existed. I think this is still this is still super confusing. I mean, it seems like there has to be something more going on because it's just it doesn't make any sense. No one has ever offered an explanation. No one's ever tried to offer an explanation that the complete silence around it is, you know, as as sort of dubious as anything else. Deafening, as they said, the silence is deafening, you know, we get to move on from SPF because I think that's enough. We all know where that's headed for today. And we get to talk about something much more favorable. I believe we touched on it actually last week. Hamas militants behind Israel attacked raised millions in crypto. Obviously, the bigger story that that was a Wall Street Journal article that referenced data by Elliptic, we saw Chainalysis come out and say this is completely wrong. And then Elliptic themselves, who were the basis for this article, said, whoa, whoa, whoa, we're setting the record straight on crypto crowdfunding by Hamas talking about potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars, not tens of millions of dollars. But the bigger story is that we're not seeing a retraction from the Wall Street Journal and we're certainly not seeing Elizabeth Warren and 100 plus senators and Congress people retract their statement that was made based on this article. And then to dig even deeper into it yesterday, Senator Lummis, who's been very, very favorable, she's the one writing the stablecoin legislation that's being proposed, saying the DOJ needs to do their job and go ahead and charge Tether and Binance for their role in things like this. It's a lot. Yeah, so this is I mean, this has been this is actually one of the most probably the most significant story going on in crypto right now, because there are a bunch of different dimensions to it. There is obviously a larger media story of, you know, the incentives of press. You know, you've kind of seen the journalist who wrote the piece or one of the journalists who wrote the piece on Twitter defending himself. And effectively, his argument has been, well, no, I buried these caveats later in the piece and it and it makes sense. Now, if you go back and read that original piece, the headline and the first paragraph could not make it clear that the thesis of the piece is that Hamas was able to carry out this attack, this specific attack, by the way, because of cryptocurrency financing. Now, by the end, there is a lot more doubt into that. The journalist isn't wrong, that there is more questions by the end than are there in the beginning. But one, it's a fair question of does that matter when you scream out the headline the way that you did? And two, the way that he did these caveats sort of like with with, you know, journalistic, you know, his journalistic covers are things like they raised as much as ninety three million from crypto. It's like, come on. You think that adding and as much as and like that that doesn't imply that it's ninety three million? Like that's not a reasonable journalistic take, I don't think. And so there's the whole media side of the story. But obviously it's even more complicated because it comes at a time when the crypto industry is being absolutely assailed and has been for the better part of a year now for the opponents have been looking for anything to cast doubt on this. This was the sole source of information for a letter that was signed by a fifth of Congress. That's totally, totally inappropriate. And so, you know, the question has been, will the Wall Street Journal issue a retraction? But I don't think that there's any chance on the planet that they will. It also doesn't matter if they do, because we know that it's already seen proliferates so much faster. And once it's seen, the retraction never is that damage has been done. Absolutely. Yeah. There's no coming back from that. Obviously, I also pointed out here that Sherrod Brown calls for crackdown on the use of crypto to fund terrorism. I think what's just most interesting to me is that this Senator Lummis letter comes after we already know that this is a fake story. It was one thing for Elizabeth Warren, I guess, can claim plausible deniability. I read the article. I trust the Wall Street Journal. It was right there. We wrote the letter. Lummis, who we all love, who we all love, she wrote this letter seemingly after it's very clear that this isn't true. So I'm just trying to figure out what the potential angle there would be. My instinct is that the angle there has more to do with a prioritization around where we are, you know, what threats we're dealing with. Like she clearly wants the emphasis to be on offshore, non -American regulated sort of institutions and their role, rather than sort of like targeting the better part of the or the sort of controllable, you know, regulatable part of the American crypto industry. So, you know, listen, it could just be literal politics. You know, instead of trying to say, hey, don't go after crypto, it's instead saying go after this very different part of crypto, you know, go, go after non -American crypto. Right. I mean, that's basically what they're saying. They're saying we're going to pick the winners, which we understand. Maybe this is saying, hey, use USDC. We're regulating the hell out of it. Don't don't use Tether, use Coinbase for regulating the hell out of it. Don't use Binance. I mean, Paolo from Tether and Bitfinex responded. We at Tether are proud of the work we do to stop illicit activity. Tether proactively collaborated since inception with tens of law enforcement agencies, including US, Ukraine and Israel. Crypto used by malicious actors accounts for a small drop. You get it, right? I mean, he very quickly said the same thing they've been saying all along. Listen, we're literally working with you guys to freeze these wallets. Everybody sees it. They're actually doing that work. So it just kind of kind of blows my mind to see that. But I think you actually have it correct, which is that we're going to get rid of the foreign actors in this industry so they can be better controlled by the United States. I mean, I think that that's a fair sort of way to approach this. Yeah, I mean, listen, it's reasonable to not like that approach. It's just this is very clearly there are let's put it this way. If on the one hand you have crypto antagonists and on the other hand, you have like the full on sort of crypto industry, let markets decide, you know, figure it out, folks in the middle, especially in D .C., there is a big space that says, you know, we've got to make some compromises. We have to exert some control. And so the compromises that we're going to make are things like, you know, focusing on, you know, pushing out the unregulated, uncontrollable stuff and, you know, and sort of enshrining and holding up the things that that are sort of, you know, regulateable. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. The next story, I believe this is number four, BlackRock Bitcoin ETF in August got on the DTCC site that just belatedly moved markets. That is a mouthful of a headline from Coindesk. I'm not even sure if they wrote that in English. But the idea here is a story that we've all been discussing, which is that the reason because we need a reason for the last move of Bitcoin from thirty one thousand to thirty five thousand was because BlackRock's Bitcoin spot ETF had been listed on the DTCC was BlackRock that is advancing. They're taking the next steps. They wouldn't do this unless they thought they were going to get approval. And further, once you do that, you start to actually seed the fund, meaning that you have to buy the underlying asset for that ETF, meaning even if in small amounts, BlackRock's going to start buying Bitcoin. We all know what happened next. Apparently, it disappeared from the website. Then the website itself disappeared because so many people went to check if it was still on the website, which actually crashed it. Then when it came back, it was there. It wasn't there. This all, of course, according to Twitter and the ARK ETF was there. But then that wasn't there. Apparently, that was fake news. So basically, we had this massive, confusing, nonsensical story and it turned out when someone actually just bothered to call DTCC that it had been there since August. I personally I just love this story. Everything about it is I mean, listen, what this story tells you more than anything else, hold aside the details, is that one, this is now two weeks running where we've had a Monday fake news story around the ETF. So let's see if we can make it three. And then two, it's that there is so much pent up energy, excitement, anticipation. I mean, look, it is it is very clear that people believe, rightly or wrongly, that this ETF is going to be the starting gun on the next bull market. And anything that hints that we are there is pushing people in. What I would be interested in is knowing sort of how much it's new market participants versus just more new capital from existing market participants, because it feels like it's a lot of that. But anyways, listen, I think it was hilarious that ultimately it was just something that we didn't notice for two months, drove the market that way. But I think that that speaks less to us being insane, although there's obviously always a little bit of that and more to just the the anticipation of what is seen as a absolutely catalytic event. That's right. It shows you that this market wants to go up. It wants to believe and it wants to continue to continue. And so I think you're right. It really doesn't matter what the news is, real or fake. It's giving us a huge hint as to what we can expect from this market when we do see a real approval. My favorite, just to wrap up on that one, was this final take from Philback, my brothers in Bitcoin. I spent six years managing new ETF launches for NYSE 2010 to 2016 and about 15 years in ETF product development and management. The DTCC thing means absolutely nothing, nothing. Get offline and spend time with your loved ones. So just to just to give you the context, all of that, even if it was just there since August, apparently even the takes about how important it was that it was there were false. And this is literally an entire nothing burger. But the bigger nothing burger it is, the bigger the story it is to me on how it was treated and handled by crypto, the crypto world and media. Well, you know, it was interesting. I mean, I think that like so we had this crazy rip up and then when the next day on Tuesday morning, when this ticker symbol was suddenly gone, everyone freaked out and Bitcoin three retraced or four percent. Right. Not not nearly the entire move, but but meaningful. Then when it came out, when it came back, and even when it was revealed that it was nothing, people were like, oh, no, you know what? We like that higher level better. We'll go back to the thing. You know, this this asset wants to be, you know, somewhere around where it is now for the moment, you know, and sort of clinging to that, I think, you know, I don't know. I'm not sure what would knock it off. I guess, you know, another ETF denial entirely if the SEC came out and, you know, kind of wiped off the slate, maybe that was sort of, you know, really, I think it would have to be the January denial when there's actually a final deadline for I think that would probably be it. I think until then, we're just going to sort of maintain this hype. Maybe it'll float down if we hear nothing for a bit. Maybe my favorite actor in this whole story, I don't know if you saw today that Jay Clayton, who's been on his road show, the SEC chairman, saying that we should approve a Bitcoin spot ETF, saying if he was chairman now, he would approve a Bitcoin spot. ETF is the most fair weather clout chasing human I've ever seen in my life because he was literally SEC chairman and had the opportunity to approve a Bitcoin spot ETF. I guess we can say, hey, it's changed. The environment is different. Yeah, it's actually a lot worse. Like we're in a bear market. So I don't really get that. The life of an ex -regulator, it's very good work if you could get it. Living in the sun, man. Just like sunny 24 -7, got a great tan, having a beer and just getting to fight. It's kind of like being the party that's not in power in politics because you don't have to do anything but be critical and say what you would do if things were perfect. So much fun for him. But man, it just aggravates me. He's literally the guy who could have done it. But hey, what are you going to do? Now, moving on to the fifth and final story is not just the approval, but what would happen if we do actually get it, right? Bitcoin spot ETFs could see inflow of $14 .4 billion in first year. This is from a pretty comprehensive report by Galaxy, which we can accept and enter the site. You can see that here on galaxy .com. But we're starting to get the analysis, we can call it research. It's really hard because it's all projection on just how big this could potentially be for the market and how much money we could see coming in. I think the only real reference point we have is BITO, the Bitcoin futures ETF that was approved a couple of years ago. We saw over a billion in less than 72 or 48 hours of inflows, assets under management. That was the most successful ETF of all time. Launch any ETF, obviously, not just crypto ETF. And Valkyrie, which didn't launch for another 48 or 72 hours after that, even being second was still, I believe, the 14th most successful ETF launch of all time. So that was in a bull market. There was huge demand, obviously, for a futures ETF. Now you have 8 to 10 of these, including the biggest names in the investment world. What can we expect and how can we come to that sort of conclusion as to what we can expect? Well, to your first point, it's all just projection. So there's no certainty here. A couple of things worth noting. One, obviously, Mike Novogratz himself is a huge bull. He will always show up in the arena with a price prediction. That's sort of his thing. His team at Galaxy Research are not that. They're super serious. Alex Thorne was at Fidelity. He's been an investor for a long time. These are very serious people. If they're coming out with a $14 .4 billion projection, and that's in their first year, they think it goes up to $21 billion in the second year and $39 billion by the third year. They're looking at that. Listen, they still could have the rose -colored glasses that we all have in the Bitcoin space, but I think that you can take it more seriously than just some sort of errant CEO pumping up this space. So that's one thing. The second thing is, I think that these big numbers are predicated upon either an assumption or a bet that what's different this time is that, one, because you have an instrument which is accessible to a huge array of investors, and two, you have the providers of that instrument being some of the biggest giants in traditional finance, that all of a sudden those messages of get off zero, basically, the stuff that people have been talking about for six, seven years now or more, actually start to resonate. When you start to have some meaningful portion of people who wouldn't allocate before there was an ETF say, sure, 1 -5 % going in, it doesn't take all that much to add up to these seemingly big numbers. So I think that the question will not be, in some ways, so much to me what the actual number is because that's arbitrary. It will be, do the things that we anticipate happening because this instrument exists, i .e., this new set of investors allocating a little bit to it, does that actually happen? That's the big question. And if it does, it's game on in a huge, huge way. Yeah, do registered investment advisors actually say, okay, now that we can, we're going to? Do institutions say, now that we can, we're going to? Is the real demand there? All of these calculations, as you said, they're based on a theoretical, if we get 1 % from all of the investment managers in the world, it breaks down to X number. Mark Yusko came on, he did it. Yeah, it's like, we have some 3 trillion, if we get 1 % of those and they do 1%, it's this number, we're going to see. But I would tell you that the price action in the market is showing that at least that demand is there.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
"72 hours" Discussed on The Bill Simmons Podcast
"It feels like either team could win this one. Bengals plus four and a half. So that's our first one. Second one Steelers. We're going back to the well, baby all year long. Who has been the biggest supporter of the Pittsburgh Steelers other than everyone from Pittsburgh, this guy right here, four and two. They're the Michael Myers team this year. You have no idea how they're pulling it off. They pulled off week after week. I actually thought they played really well. The second half of that Rams game last week, they ran the ball. They made plays down the field. Their defense was terrific. It's Michael Myers' birthday on Tuesday. I don't know if you're aware of this. It is. He turns 63. Man, he looks great. I mean, he's died at least 72 times. He looks great. The Steelers are not going to lose him on two days before Michael Myers' birthday. It's going to be pouring rain. I repeat, pouring rain. Mike Tomlin is a home dog. The Jags, so the Jags, they, they win two London games. We covered this with Shrager, two London games and a Thursday night game. Let's see them win a normal Sunday game on the road, on grass, in bad weather against Michael Myers. I don't see it. Eli 2.0, take us home. Taking the money line on the Steelers plus 124 to win outright against the Jags because the line's two and a half. So I'm grabbing the money line. Next one. This looked a tiny bit too easy, but on the other hand, Desmond Ritter has six turnovers in the last two weeks and is the first person I've ever seen fumble the ball more than once at the one yard line. Falcons minus two and a half at Tennessee. They traded Kevin Bayard this week, the Titans, who is one of their good safeties. It's a borderline white flag for me. No Tannehill this week. They're doing this thing where they're going to play Will Levis and Malik Willis. Two quarterbacks. It's almost like one plus one equals three. But in this case, the one and the one is kind of a zero. It's a zero plus zero equals zero. That's my take. I know this looks too easy in the Falcons outdoors and switching conferences and they have burned us over and over again with with either they win, but they don't cover all these different things. I just think this is a rare chance to bet against a team that's playing Will Levis and Malik Hooker. And that's it. I don't know if this situation will ever happen again from a gambling standpoint. We'll get to less than three points. Atlanta is better. I think Tennessee is dipping their toes maybe in the number one pick sweepstakes. Trade deadlines coming up. Will they trade Derrick Henry? Will they trade DeAndre Hopkins? Will they trade other guys in the defense? It's all in play. It is not a good team. They cannot block. And I think the Falcons defense is pretty good. Maybe the Falcons defense can win this on on their own. Taking them. I love this one. Browns plus three and a half at Seattle. You're like the Browns. You see Deshaun last week? He was awful. They're gonna have to play PJ Walker again. I'm fine with it. PJ Walker, solid C minus. You know what? I got a C minus in a couple courses in high school and college. It's okay. You can still get a 3-0. Seattle's offensive line got decimated by Cincinnati two weeks ago. And in general, it's not good. I would say it's below average. Cleveland's front seven, as good as it gets, I'm willing to throw away last week against Indianapolis. They thought they were gonna walk in, beat up on Minshew. Watson shits the bed so badly in the first quarter. Indy hits a couple of big plays. I just think that was a looking ahead game. They thought they just had to show up with their great defense. They're gonna win. I think their defense wins this game. With that said, I don't trust PJ Walker enough to take the money line. I'm gonna do the plus three and a half. I think this is a three point game. They have a chance to win. Browns plus three and a half at Seattle. And we'll see if that defense can win that game. Last but not least, a teaser. I've lost teases two weeks in a row, and I wasn't gonna do one again. But two that I cannot resist. The Lions coming off a horrible loss. They're playing the Raiders in a night game. I think the Raiders have packed it in for the season. Lions bringing them down from seven and a half to one and a half. I still believe in the Lions. I have them number five in my power rankings. And if you go DVOA, all that stuff, they're just so much better than Vegas. And then Chiefs Broncos would be the other one. You know, the Broncos, they have a way of hanging around in Chiefs games. I'm not that concerned about it. Um, hopefully Taylor Swift will go. But we're gonna tease the Chiefs down from seven and a half to one and a half. So Lions down to one and a half, Chiefs down to one and a half. That's a tease. And then a couple small ones. So the first one, Jacksonville to win the first half, but Pittsburgh to win the game. Cousin Sal talked about this on Sunday. This happened last week in the Pittsburgh Rams game where the Pittsburgh, they take like a half to get going. We're just going to put 50K in this plus 800. So Jacksonville wins the first half. Pittsburgh wins the game. Just sprinkle. We're just sprinkle 50K on that plus 800. And then we're also going to sprinkle 50K in this parlay. It's the same game parlay. It is in progress because we don't have Demara Douglas, um, passing props yet for receptions. Pats adjusted to four and a half. The over against the Dolphins to 29 and a half points. And then you can do the, the, the Pop Douglas TD here and make that plus 1049. Or you can wait for me on Saturday because I'm gonna either do that or I'm going to do, um, catches for him. Because if you watch the Pats last week and remind, remind yourself that I told you this just for fantasy purposes, Pop Douglas for the Pats has reached, they cannot keep him off the field territory. And I think he's just going to get better and better every week. But I like the receptions and the yards with them. We'll see. Maybe they'll have like a plus 40 yards. Put that with Pats plus four and a half. I think that's going to be a close game. Rain and wind. Second time they played each other. The first game was pretty close. Miami's banged up on both sides, even though they're getting Jalen Ramsey back for this one. But I think the Pats will hang around and I think they can rush to a Miami's offensive line isn't good. I think the Pats can pressure him and, uh, they'll throw some stuff to take Tyreek out of the game. Tyreek's hurt, but playing. Waddle has a bad back. Most of it might not play. And I think the Pats can steal that. So to recap, we are doing 300K on Bengals plus four and a half Steelers plus 124 Falcons minus 2.5 Browns plus three and a half. And then a tease Lions minus seven and a half with Chiefs minus seven and a half. And then 50K Flyers on that. Pats same game parlay, which I'll officially have on my Twitter feed on Saturday. And Jacksonville wins the first half. Pitt wins the game plus 800. You know what? I'm going to move down my Steelers money line parlay to 250. Is that plus one? Yeah, 250K at plus 124. So add that to your scorecard even though you're not scoring this. Those are the million dollar picks for week eight.All right, that's it for the podcast. Thanks to Rob Mahoney and Peter Schrager. Thanks to Kyle Creighton and Steve Cerutti as well. Don't forget a new rewatch was coming on Monday. Enjoy the weekend. Stay safe. Everyone in Maine, we're thinking about you. See you on Sunday. Must be 21 plus and present in select states. Fandor is offering online sports wagering in Kansas under agreement with Kansas Star Casino LLC. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit fandor.com slash RG in Colorado, Iowa, Kentucky, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Tennessee, and Virginia. 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The Bill Simmons Podcast
"72 hours" Discussed on The Bill Simmons Podcast
"All right. We're going to wrap things up with some million dollar picks. We have a full slate this week. Last week we had six by teams this week. We have zero and that makes no sense, but that's the NFL for you. Stayaways this week for me cards Ravens. We laid this out on the South podcast on Sunday. Every time somebody has played the best game of the week, something weird happened the next week with them. And this has been seven weeks in a row. The Ravens played the best game of the week last week. I'm a little worried. It's some sort of trend that I don't like all the money is on the Ravens. All of it. People are putting them in teases straight up. It's just pencil them in the Ravens are the best team in the league. I'm staying away. Same thing for Texans minus three and a half at Carolina all week. I thought I was going to bet this game all week. I waited for the line to move to four to four and a half. Carolina's 32nd in DVOA. Houston has a chance maybe to be a seven seed. They've looked really good. They've looked good against a tough schedule. And yet, uh, the line has stayed at three and a half and I'm suspicious. I am staying away. I'm staying away from Bears plus eight and a half in LA against the Chargers, even though I love that Tyson Bajan story. Um, it worries me a little taking him and having Collins worth, you know, having little mini orgasms about him. And then he just starts, God only knows he was in division two last year. Could this be Brandon Staley's last week? Maybe. Could this be a fun Bears Moneyline pick? Sure. I'm staying away, even though there's going to be 50,000 Bears fans there. Eagles, Washington Eagles are favored by seven. Philly's a little banged up, still not sure what's going on with Hertz. The last two times these teams have played, the game's been close. More importantly, Philly's got Dallas at home next week. And this looks like a classic Milton Berle game where they just pull just enough out of their pants to win. Uh, I'm staying away from teases, everything with that game. I'm staying away from two games with bad quarterbacks. Saints minus one against the Colts. Jets minus three against the Giants. Uh, Carr versus Minshew in the erratic quarterback ball. I'm staying away. Zach Wilson versus Tyrod Taylor. No, thank you. Hate betting on games with bad quarterbacks. Somehow I did it last week with the Packers Broncos, took the Broncos and despised myself for most of the day. Cowboys are favored by six and a half over the Rams. This feels like either the Rams have a shocking upset and win this outright, or they lose by 20. And I couldn't decide which one. So I am staying away. I'm not positive they can block the Cowboys. That's what worries me the most, but I could also see them going up 10 nothing in the first quarter and everyone has Cowboys and the teas freaking out. Last day away from me, Vikings minus one and a half at Green Bay. Green Bay has been crushed by injuries. I think we're starting to realize that Jordan Love might suck. I'm not officially ready to acquire that yet, but he was really, really, really gruesome in that Denver game last week. And just in general, he's looked pretty iffy. Lambeau Field, Kirk Cousins. It seems easy. There's some Vikings momentum and yet, uh, the Vikes coming off a great win and Green Bay coming off a horrible loss. Something about that seesaw. This looks too easy. Why isn't this line three? Why isn't this Vikings by three? I'm staying away. All right, here's what we do like the million dollar picks for week eight. Just for the record, we lost last week. We had some bad luck last week, down 360 last week, down 865,000. I'm not scared. You've watched me come back from this before. I think I'm quaking in my boots at all. I'm not. Million dollar picks. Week eight, first one. Bengals plus four and a half right in that Vegas zone against the 49ers. I am proceeding like Brock Purdy is not playing in this game because all year long, anyone who got a concussion did not play in the next game. I think it's an unofficial rule. I think Goodell called that one down. I think we're going to get Sam Darnold. I like Cincy's defense. I thought they did a good job against Seattle a couple of weeks ago. A little worried about their offensive line against San Francisco's front seven, but, uh, Cincy coming off a bye. Joe Burrow has a dog. The stats are great. Cincy needs the game. As we covered with Schrager, they have a really tough schedule coming up. And, um, I think they either win this game or come close. And even if the Niners, uh, you know, go up double figures, they're still in the cheap touchdown zone here. So I was going to take more Moneyline underdogs just going forward because the Moneyline underdogs, if the underdog covers, they also seem to win. But in this case, I'm going to grab the points. I think this is a close game. Maybe they win. They stick around. No Deebo. McCaffrey, relatively healthy. Sam Darnold.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
"72 hours" Discussed on The Bill Simmons Podcast
"I don't know. I was really impressed by them last week. I thought they played well. And I think this Dolphins game is a nice spot for them because they played them well. It's a division game. And I think that they're giving up too many points, but I'm not sucking myself back in, Trakes. That said, last week, they played their best game of the season and it took, they almost gave it away. And Mac Jones had to go 80 yards heroically to win it, but they were winning the whole entire game. And then Josh Allen. They set that up just for Mac just to make the big comeback. In the 52nd minute. They told Born to fumble. Browns are at the Seahawks and this Deshaun Watson story, which has been weird from the moment they made the trade. I don't know why they played him yesterday. He had, I've never seen, he had five throws and two of them were the worst throws of the entire season. They took him out. He seemed fine with it. To me, this is, I guess why you don't guarantee football contracts where you have a guy who has been a disaster from the moment he showed up and was just on the sidelines. Didn't seem like he cared if he was out there or not. They're cutting him on the sidelines and he's just kind of like watching like everybody else. And this is the weirdest story I think of this decade so far, this Watson thing. From the moment they made the trade, the fact that he didn't want to go there, they guarantee the deal. So to try to convince him to go there, he's got all these allegations and things he has to settle legally that just immediately turns it into you're on one side or the other. Then he shows up and he's aggressively mediocre or worse for the entire time he's on there. And he doesn't look anything remotely resembling Deshaun Watson from three years ago. And it just seems like it's getting worse, not better. The shoulder injury is a legit injury from what I'm told. So let's just put that there. Okay, fine. Let's talk about the quality of play when he's out there. It's substandard. It's not in the top 20 quarterbacks. It's not, no. It's not in the top 25 probably. And then when they put PJ Walker in, it seems like the offense moves just the same, if not better. And then really how they're going to win games this year, which is what they've done. And they've got a fantastic record is the defense is going to have to lead them. And Jim Schwartz's defense has been absolutely insane. In this past week, special teams, they had two 50-yard field goals and a blocked field goal on their own. So they're going to be one of those teams that wins with defense and special teams. And yet they have the highest guaranteed contract in the history of the sport at quarterback. And everyone's just kind of like shrugging, like, well, my thought process in this is like, go back to that March, whenever that all went down and there was a bidding war for Deshaun Watson and Cleveland basically said, we're going to give you what no one else will. We'll give you the guaranteed contract. We're the Browns, nothing good happens to us. I guess we're going to have to do the dumbest thing possible to try to get you. And the reaction from, I was at the league meetings and the reaction from the owners was like, sickness from those owners that the Browns did that. And yet they were like, you know what? We're the Cleveland Browns. We've had 21 quarterbacks in 23 years. We're not getting over the Humboldt Baker. And I almost was like, you know what? Shit, they're going to take a public relations hit and the fans, it's going to be a very difficult thing. They're going for it. They want to do what's best for the football field. They go for, the football hasn't been there. So here's my question. Those teams, Atlanta and Carolina, were both very in on Deshaun Watson. If you were to say to Atlanta and Carolina, would you right now trade for Deshaun Watson? Would you right now? Right? I don't even think contract aside, they would take. I think Carolina's would rather have Bryce Young than Deshaun Watson. And I think Atlanta would rather have the locker room that they've got. Well, this was like basketball and they could just flip him to Denver for Russell Wilson. And it's just like, oh, the salaries match. We can just do this trade. I don't even think Denver would do that. I don't know if they would. And I don't think Russell Wilson is exactly lighting it up in Denver this year, even though he started off better numbers. Russell Wilson last week, not good. It's sad. It's actually kind of a bummer to watch. It's different than Deshaun. Deshaun just seems like a shadow of himself. Russ just seems old. He said it was Sal. You see him and he starts doing the Russ thing and he's running and he just can't run anymore. And like the pass is just not there. You guys said, I think it was Lombardi or Sal early in the season, like at some point Stidham's gonna go in. And I haven't spoken to Peyton about that, but it's like, you can't watch those games with Russell, especially the Thursday night game against the Chiefs where they have 85 yards off. You can't watch it and objectively be like, this guy's job is unassailable. So I think you're right. I think if he keeps on losing, we're gonna see Stidham. But back to the Watson thing, the numbers aren't there. They're winning games without him. And they just signed PJ Walker to a one-year contract, which basically gives him the stability that you are the guy for now. But PJ hasn't lit it up either. So it's just one of the things, like how far can you get if you're the Browns with what they have on offense, which, they could control. PJ can at least make the one throw a quarter to somebody and make, like, he's not like a complete, or he'll run around and create a first down somehow. But he's not a complete disaster. No. He's like a C minus. In today's NFL, when we talk about the quarterbacks and the offense and how, I don't know if we go to the playoffs, if Cleveland can, A, they could probably make it, but B, if they can, with Watson under center, the way he's playing, I don't know if you can win a playoff game with just defense and special teams. And it's not their fault that they lost Chubb. And I think Cooper and Moore and Ford, they're good players, but like the quarterback position is huge and it's a major area for them. So it's amazing to me for what they pay and that that might be what holds them back from being a great team. Can I talk you into Seattle plus 4.50 to win the NFC West? Let's do it. If they win this game and then San Francisco loses that Cincy game and all of a sudden it's like, whoa, look at this. Oh, they still haven't played each other yet. Minnesota, I didn't get to talk about them on the podcast cause that was the Monday night game when, it turns out Purdy was probably concussed and that might've helped them a little bit, but also Minnesota hung around. Addison finally had his, oh, you're gonna be like a special one, it looks like. He had one of those games and it was a nice win. Then you go backwards, there are four losses. They lost to Tampa by three, Philly by six, Chargers by four and KC by seven. They were in all those games. Coming up at Green Bay, at Atlanta, New Orleans, at Denver, Chicago, bye week, at Vegas. So they might not play in an above 500 team for almost two months here. And then they have this Packers game. The Packers were so bad in that Denver game. And I had that a million dollar picks, I had in real life. I did, I was like, they're gonna score at least 20 points. That should be enough. Not only did they not score 20 points, but that was the first time where I felt like Love might not have it. Like he just might not have it. So this seems like a nice spot for them. They're 16th in DVOA by the way, the Vikings. 14th offense, 15th defense. Seems like a nice spot. So why are they only one and a half point favorites? Yeah, look, they're gonna go as far as Cousins is gonna take them and this year he's been really good and the offensive line, which was such an eyesore, was great. In San Francisco, they give up zero sacks and only six hurries. But, Bill, it was 22-17. They bring out our boy, Greg Joseph, who we've lived and died with over the last, he misses that kick and Purdie's at the 50, down five. And if he's not concussed or if he throws, they probably lose that game. So it's one of those where it's like, yes, you wanna get it on the Vikings and yes, all this stuff, defense looked great and Brian Flores has been playing better. No, Jefferson is still huge to me. And I don't think they have a running game to speak of with Akers and Madison not exactly letting it up. So it's on Cousins, again, and Cousins numbers are fantastic this year. I don't know, do you see them as a special team this year? Do they go on one of these runs? No, I don't, but I'm trying to figure out, can I get, who's my sixth and seventh seed in the NFC? To me, they're the Anton Chigurh coin toss team this year. Which is like, they're in all these games in the fourth quarter and then flip a coin. And you might have the one week where Cousins has a tip pick, you might have the next week where their defense does something and all of a sudden they win. Are you out on my Rams? They can't block. It's a struggle. Their offensive line seems like, they'll come out in these games and Sean's so good and the first quarter looked really nice and crisp and they'll add that first 20 plays. And then by the time you get to the two hour mark of the game, it starts getting a little gamey. And then all of a sudden Stafford's running around for his life. It just doesn't seem like they have enough. But on the other hand, they have two guys who just seem like they can get open whatever they want. It's pretty good. They could just block for Stafford long enough. I thought Henderson was really good last week. I don't even know where he was for two years. He was hurt. The other kid was good too. They had Royce Freeman. He had 66 yards. They were moving the ball. And then the pick six was a killer. Not pick six, but the Watt plays a killer. And then again, Sean, by the way, just had a baby on Tuesday. Congratulations. He was beside himself and he didn't speak out publicly. Obviously you could see the face, but the pass interference call, they called on Witherspoon there at the end of the game. And then Deontay Johnson taunts him. They get off setting and then you get the spot. And it's amazing. He didn't have any timeouts so he couldn't review it and they lose on that. And I watch everything and some of the criticism was like, well, that's because McVay's an idiot for wasting his timeouts. When he called his last timeout to change out of a third down play and then they ended up scoring a touchdown on that play. And my thought on that is, and he's been in baby world the last few days, but my thought on it from the outside is, is the officiating so bad? Is it so wretched that we blame coaches for not saving a timeout in the emergency that they might need one from a terrible call? Like that to me is not an explanation. I thought they outplayed Pittsburgh. They had an unfortunate ending there with the timeout and with how they couldn't get that play reviewed, but they stopped them on fourth down clearly. And that's a big loss, but I don't think that team is necessarily gonna fall off the wayside and they might lose to Dallas this week. They're playing Dallas getting almost the touchdown. And it just seems like a classic throw Dallas and a tease, the Rams can't block Cowboys defensive line. I'm not touching that game. That's a complete stay away from me. I don't like teams getting a lot of points that can throw the ball and get cheap touchdowns and be down 13 with two minutes left and then just keep going down the ranchers. I've got Seahawks or Niners winning it. I'm writing this down. I think the Eagles and the Cowboys, right? So there's your four. You need three more teams. You need someone in the NFC South. So let's say Atlanta, there's your fifth. I said, yeah, so I got Seattle, San Francisco, Philly, Dallas, Atlanta, you need an NFC North team. Let's say the Lions. There's one more team. So is it Minnesota? Maybe, but pick your poison. I mean, it could be the Saints might rally. It could be the Giants. No, I don't see the Giants. You could pick it. It could be the Rams. It could be the Rams. So that's where we're at. You have seven teams, half the conference makes it. So it's like, I don't know. I like the Packers before the year. And it just seems like they've had too many injuries now. And love might not be the guy, unfortunately, for that. They also got nothing from Watson. Can we quickly talk about one team that we haven't mentioned? And I don't think they're going to the playoffs, but it's my favorite story of the year. Can we talk about Tyson Bajan? Oh, yeah. I was going to ask you about that. Hold on. Save that, because that was my last thing. I'd have this tease that I was looking at with the Lions over the Raiders and the Chiefs over the Broncos. It just quickly on the Raiders. What's going on with the Raiders? That was one of the worst losses. That was the saddest team last week. It honestly looked like they were kind of quitting on everything. And I don't know. The McDaniels quote was alarming, too. They're like, why didn't you start Aiden O'Connell? Because it's not the preseason, Josh. I'm like, what? Yeah. Hoyer's almost my age. Hoyer had a couple passes to a guy who was bold enough after two wins to speak out in the media, who just dropped them. Devante Adams dropped two passes. They're a confounding team, and the Raiders, I can't get behind them. But they've got so many great skilled players that it's confusing, because Max Crosby is an absolute nightmare to de-block. And then you have Jacobs, who's a good running back, and Adams, who should be a great receiver. Jacobs is a good running back, who is running 2-9 in carry this year. I would trade Adams to borrow them. I just don't think it makes sense to have Adams if you don't have good quarterbacks. And couldn't they get a first rounder and something else for them right now? I think, and I've seen a lot of people in my world, and I guess we're now so scared, we, I say that collectively, a lot of guys are so scared to come at the player directly and question their name because of player empowerment. I really didn't like the timing of those quotes. And I like Devante, and I think he's as good as it gets with the right system and quarterback, obviously, or not even that, that's not fair to him, but you know what I mean? He's one of the best wide receivers, it's unbelievable. For the Raiders to be like, no, because they've told everyone, he's not tradable. And he's often like, I thought that was a big, him waving his hand being like, I'm not happy. So you don't have that many assets. Like, are you winning a Super Bowl this year? He came to go sign with Derek, to play with Derek Carr. Derek Carr's out of there. I was a little surprised that they've told every team, he is not on the trading block over the next few weeks. And I'm like, well, why not? Like, consider it. I don't know. He's a great player and he doesn't want to be there and says he wants to win, obviously, but to win, he needs to get his touches. And he was only getting nine targets in two weeks. The whole thing was weird. Yeah, I was preparing for like some, oh, he's been traded to the Bills. Like one of those kind of trades, I'm like, oh no. Or he's been traded to the Cowboys for two first round picks. Oh no, oh my God. No, two men, everyone around the league is like, he's not getting traded. All right, let's talk about your guy, Tyson Bajan. So look, man, I've been doing this for a long time. I'm not saying I bad a thousand. I'll miss some stuff. This Tyson Bajan, he gets the nod to start last week. And I do no homework on it at all. I'm just like, oh man, the Bears, who cares? I don't know anything about the story. I don't know the Div II quarterback thing. I don't know about the dad being a champion arm wrestler. I just didn't know it. And I'm watching, it's on one of the TVs, and he scrambles out and gets the first down and then starts doing the gladiator, give me some, and I'm like, who is this guy? And it was very purty-ish. They win the game. I watched all the videos after in the locker room. The team seemed like they loved him. Gives his cool speech. Yeah, I'm like, this is exactly the kind of shit I love and bet on. So does this feel real? Like, is he maybe half decent? All right, so let's go back to Senior Bowl last year in January. There weren't a lot of guys that were rushing to get to the Senior Bowl this year, or there was just not the senior class that there usually is. And Jim Nagy, credit to him, who's at the Senior Bowl, he scours the earth for these guys. And actually invited two different players from Shepherd University in West Virginia, which is a Division II school with 5,000 fans in the crowd. And he gets this kid, Bajan, who's the quarterback and his offensive lineman, Joey Fisher, comes to the Senior Bowl. And I interviewed the head coach, whose name is Ernie McCook, and has been there forever, and is almost out of a movie, Ernie McCook. I interviewed him for my podcast, and he says, we couldn't afford airfare to the Senior Bowl, so me and five guys on the coaching staff, we drove overnight 20 hours to get from West Virginia to the Senior Bowl in Mobile to go cheer on Tyson. They don't have a state-of-the-art facility. We see the Alabama stuff. At Shepherd University, there is a high school history teacher who built a man cave-slash-crossfit thing. That's where the team trains. He built it. This guy who's a teacher at the local high school, not the college, not a professor, the local high school, he built it, and that's where the players train. And I posted the clip on my feed. He's talking to me about Tyson Bajan, how he works out during a college career. He's lifting logs of wood. This is Rocky IV shit. Logs of wood. Rocky IV. He's bench pressing logs of wood with his teammates and their workouts weren't let's run on the shred mill or the shred mill. We've got these guys at Exos. They would run to the shores of the Potomac River, which is like three miles from campus, and they'd run and they'd jump in the water and they would swim in the Potomac River and then get out of the Potomac. And then they hollowed out with their own hands and their own ingenuity a man-made cold bath out of the shores of the Potomac where they would go in and that's how they would get their bodies back. Bill, this shit's crazy. It's crazy. His team this weekend, the Shepherd team, they're playing Bloomsburg of Division II in a big game. And I'm talking to the coach and he's talking about Bloomsburg. And I'm sitting there and I'm listening and I'm like, this guy is gonna be on Sunday Night Football with Torrico and Collinsworth in front of 30 million people. And his college coach is talking about Bloomsburg and how he loved Tyson when he was a kid at church and he would see him in the church pews because he grew up in the local town. Only two schools recruited him and this might be good for Kyle here. Albany being one of them and then Robert Morris being the other. They were the only two schools that were bigger than Shepherd. He stays at Shepherd and then long story short, gets to the Senior Bowl, kind of as like an oddity, but also, all right, we'll see, Division II kid. He's got the helmet on and the Bears coaching staff, Luke Getze is coaching at the Senior Bowl and who do they fall in love with? Tyson Bajan and the rest is history. He doesn't get drafted, but he chooses to go to Chicago and I have one last Bajan nugget that I freaking loved. So this summer, he's an undrafted rookie free agent, quarterback, very long shot for those guys to make a team, especially if you weren't even, Purdy we thought was a cool storybook story. He was- At least he was seventh rounder, yeah. And a three time starter in the Big 12. Like, you know, this guy comes from, might as well be, you know, Mars in West Virginia at Shepherd, where West Virginia has never produced an NFL starting quarterback, by the way, the state itself. Guys have come in and played there. And this summer, he gets the Luke Getze playbook and whereas other players are going on vacation and whatever, and you've heard these kinds of stories, but this is why it's so crazy. He would go to the Shepherd field every morning and with the playbook, he would have his friend come and stand on the sideline with a cell phone, all right, and he would have an earbud or an EarPod, whatever it's called, in his ear at the 50 and the friend through a cell phone would say the play calls from Getze's offense, would list it out, like whatever it is, you know, Spider Y2, Banana, da, da, da, da, da, da. And he would sit there and he would simulate the calls at the empty field, line of scrimmage at Shepherd University and he did this for six straight weeks, didn't take a day off. Friend is on the sideline on a cell phone so that he shows up to training camp and they're blown away. So much so that Nathan Peterman, who's, you know, you make your jokes about Peterman's career, was the veteran guy. They're basically like, this guy's our number two, it's not gonna be Peterman. He had the playbook down inside and out. So all those little things, it's the stuff that like you make a movie out of, but it's all real and the Bears absolutely love the guy and what he's brought. I can't, you and Sal do the Collinsworth voice. I cannot wait to hear Collinsworth gushing over time this weekend. Well, they're playing the Chargers in LA. I would say we thought there was gonna be like 50,000 depressed Bears fans in there, but now there's gonna probably be 50,000 excited Bears fans. Bajan, I love that he had what, like 53 people? He had in a whole section in the Sunday game of his family and friends. 65 people, 65 people came to Chicago. Yeah, all crowded in one section, just losing their fucking minds. And then you have the Chargers who are a complete mess. Who are, could this, if you're gonna be cynical here, the Bears are getting eight and a half, the Bears are plus 350 for the game, but if you're gonna be cynical here, this is the kind of setup for Brandon Staley's last game. We're like, oh man, then he lost to Tyson Bajan and they had to make a move. So weird to think this is a must win against Tyson Bajan, but the Chargers are two and four. They've looked terrible. Hugely disappointing season all over the place. Herbert, even the nerds are like, it's harder for them to defend their nerd hero, Justin Herbert, when he keeps screwing up at the end of games. The JC Jackson paying him to play for the Patriots. He was great last week. He's defending Diggs and Gabe Davis for four quarters. They're paying for him. I don't know what the F's going on with that team. So this has all the makings, but we could also see, it looks like a sports movie and this could be the part of the sports movie where he just sucks on Sunday night and now he's got to hit rock bottom again and then he comes back. I don't know. I don't think it's happening. Here's why. His numbers last week were like 21 of 24 for 160 in a touchdown and then he ran for 40 yards. They're not asking him to go throw for 300 yards. They're not asking him to throw the ball 55 times. A little bit like- Well, they have my guy Foreman too. Foreman, who you said, he's been on seven teams. I love that guy. Every year, it's just like every team's begrudgingly play him. Then he just kills it when he plays. It's great. He was like an inactive for them for four weeks. Yeah. Yeah. And he's been great. You want to talk Celebrity Jeopardy before we go? Yeah, can we? Let me- Just give us like two minutes on it. So there's an actor's strike, a writer's strike. If you're listening and you're like, why the fuck would Peter Schrager be invited to Celebrity Jeopardy? I think- Hey, listen, why is Tyson Page in the Bears quarterback? We don't argue. You're there. You're there. I got the invite. I think a lot of people were reluctant to go on and do it during what was going on in Hollywood at the time. I go out to LA in August. Bill, if you were told like four days in advance, you're going on Jeopardy, of course you would go. The question is, would you prepare? How are you going to prepare? Thank you. So everyone's like, get the book. There's no books. Come on. So I get on the plane. I'm on like Southwest, like boarding group B. And I'm like on Wikipedia on the janky internet, like U.S. state capitals. Like I'm going to learn about that or something. Like presidents, like Fillmore. I get there. It's surreal, dude. You walk in and it's the actual set. It's the Jeopardy set. And they share the studio with Wheel of Fortune. So like I saw the actual wheel and I'm like, I grew up on this shit. I don't know about you, but I think we're probably similar in this that like my family, we didn't talk a lot about feelings when we were growing up in Freehold, New Jersey. And at seven o'clock at night, it was like a wonderful thing to put on Trebek and just zone out and not talk to each other and just watch Jeopardy. That was it. So I grew up on this thing. I get out there. It's me versus Mira Sorvino. Yeah. You guys go way back. The two of us. I'm sure she's watching a lot of good morning football. Right. And this guy, Adam Rodriguez, who's on like the CBS procedure was the coolest experience, but here's what I will tell you. It aired last night, wild. It goes down to final Jeopardy. The category was tween lit. All right. Tween lit. Tween lit. What was the answer? T-W-E-E-N. The answer was, uh, well, first I had to put down my thing. I was down 200 points to Mira Sorvino going into final Jeopardy. And I look over and Sorvino's got her family at the taping, you know, she's got her crew and she's got like two teenage daughters in there. And I'm like, fuck, she's got, she said, and I saw her and I'm like, So they rigged this? They didn't rig it. They didn't know whatever it is. I'm like, shit. So I'm like, as I'm about to put the number down, I'm like, who wrote those Twilight books and who wrote that? Uh, the other one that, uh, the, the hunger games. I'm like, I don't know those answers. I'm like trying to think. So I said, screw it. I went big number. And the question was like, this author later said she would regret not calling her hit book, just Margaret. And I'm like, Oh, that's Judy Blume. Like that's Judy Blume. That's, that's, you got this. Write it down. I'm like, who is Judy Blume? And I had a big point total and all this thing. And I'm like, I got this. They start revealing like Peter Schrager. What do you have? Who is Judy Blume? Correct. You wagered. I'm like wagered, you know, $7,000 or $8,000. Great. I'm like, I'm sitting pretty. Goes to Sorvino. I'm looking, trying to get a read. Mary Sorvino. Did you have it? And she was up like 200 points or something. She goes, Sorvino, who is Judy Blume? She bet the entire thing she had. She just beat me by the slightest margin. It was the most dramatic Jeopardy game ever. I absolutely loved it. It was crazy. No shame. I played a good game. They do stats now. I got 19 questions, right? I got three questions wrong, but I, I got two daily doubles wrong. So that's what killed me. And I'll tell you the tip to anyone who's ever going to go on or if you want to go, the buzzer is what what screws you. And here's the deal. When you're watching at home and you're jumping out of your couch and it's like, who, you know, who is it? I know that. I know that. But you can't buzz in until Ken Jennings finishes the clue. And if you do jump in and you press the buzzer before he finishes the clue. So it's like, yeah, this, this famous author wrote Romeo and Juliet. You're buzzing in beforehand. You get locked out. So if you see people freaking out, pressing that buzzer, it's because they've been locked out and they're frustrated. So I didn't get that rhythm down until like a little bit midway through. And then I was hot, dude. I got like random as shit stuff. I got joy luck club. I'm like, Amy tan. What about it? Like, let's go, let's go. Uh, you start, your brain goes into this crazy, like, like they were showing me bridges. One of the categories was bridges and I like cleaned up. I like, and I didn't know I knew bridges like buzzing in bill. It was the coolest experience, man. I, you got to go on. I know you've been asked. I'm sure you have. And you're whatever reason. I don't know. My brain works that way anymore. Are you serious? I can't believe sort of Vino took you down Harvard. Jesus. You went ambassador and I believe a member of Mensa. I had no idea about any of that stuff. Teen daughters is a murder murder category. They have no chance. It was so fun. Well, congrats. It sounds like a moral victory. You're kind of, you're kind of like Tyson, Beijing against the, uh, against the chargers this week covering the eight and a half, but not winning. No, if I was Tyson Beijing against the charges, I would have beaten everyone by a million. That's what's going to happen this weekend, bro. All right. Good to see you. Shrags. Love you, man. Thank you.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
"72 hours" Discussed on The Bill Simmons Podcast
"The Indy games in Frankfurt, which is interesting because I was in Germany last year and we're in Germany. I was doing the Munich game last year. The two Munich games were there for Good Morning Football and it was pretty cool. And I was blown away with all of the Patriots fans in Germany. The Patriots were not playing in Germany. And I was like, what the hell is this? And it was explained to me that in Germany, on their network, whatever it is, they play one game a week from America for throughout the early 2000s. So think about who was winning all those games. So they've kind of been adapted as Germany's team, the New England Patriots, because they only would get one game a week and it was usually Brady versus whoever. So I think that one is going to be really interesting crowd in that it might feel like it's going to be a neutral field, but I think there are a lot of people living in Germany who grew up Patriots fans and that one could be a home field advantage in a major way for them. All that to being said- The first thing that happened was in the sixties with the NBA, because they would just show Russell and Chamberlain every week. So then in the next generation- And then it was like all these Sixers, Celtics fans, because those were the two teams that were just on for like eight years. Yeah, and if you look around in like airports, you'll still see a lot of guys in Steelers and Raiders jerseys. I think it's the same effect that in the seventies- Yeah, that was my generation. Steelers, Raiders, Cowboys, because we would have kids when I was in like kindergarten, first grade and in the Boston area and the Pats weren't good yet. They weren't good until 76, but there were kids that were like, I'm a Vikings fan because of Sammy White. I'm a Cowboys fan. I'm a Steelers fan. And we're like, what about the fucking Patriots? Yeah, the kids got the Chuck Foreman, the Chuck Foreman jersey. It's like, really, you're a Steelers fan, you fucker? But yeah, no, it's what happens. The bandwagon, the bandwagon potential. So you're saying Germany's on the Pats bandwagon. I think Germany's on the Pats bandwagon. I would not, of all those games, that one, but I think you're crazy if you think based on that one win last week, you think the Patriots can go on a run and I'm not being- I don't want to talk myself into it. So thank you. Do this for you. You ever have a friend who keeps on like, going back to that same girl and this just isn't the time for it. I mean, you can go back to the Patriots, dude, obviously. And I don't see it, but I also think they were just good enough last week that they're not gonna be sellers at the trade deadline. They're not gonna be shopping off all these guys, whoever's left. So you're kind of in purgatory with them. One quick note, interesting timing on the Ian Rappaport report that Bill has signed a multi-year contract over the off season. I feel like he signs an extension every year. I was gonna say, first of all, I know everyone at the league and all that stuff, like the league offices, they don't know what Belichick makes. I don't think they've ever seen a contract. I don't know if Belichick is still represented by an agent. All that stuff is so back room between him and Kraft. There might be three people in the world who knows about that. And it's Belichick and it's Jonathan and Robert Kraft who would even know what it is. Rappaport got a story and you're like, well, how did he get started? And who leaked it? You can get into all that and why it came out. But there was some heat on that seat going into this week and of all the times to kind of just say, hey, get the dogs off. It might've just been, hey, here's two years and Mayo's taking over after the second year. It could have been that's multi-year, that's whatever it is. But I do think those guys played their asses off and that talk of Belichick being on the hot seat immediately went away. And it was like, all right, that was such a necessary win last week for just the rest of the season. And it might come back if they lose this week and all that. But I just thought it was an interesting report, which is accurate, I'm sure. And then an interesting reaction from the team and from the way it was handled moving forward, because then they asked him about it. And he was like, I do not talk about my contract. I was like, all right. But someone was talking about your contract and kind of put that at bay for a little bit. I interpret it as the season could go either way and it's probably going the wrong way. And if we have to tank, just know that he's here for the longterm and he would be participating in the tanking decisions. Now, you could argue last week, they did a couple of things that they just hadn't done for six weeks. One of them was play their receivers who actually can get open. Pop looked great. What a crazy idea to play Born and Pop Douglas who both can actually get open and then make plays after they catch the ball, unlike everyone else in the receiving corps. And then I'm gonna throw this name out. He's a borderline fantasy pickup, but this guy, Pharaoh Brown, they have, who's this converted offensive tackle, basically. He makes big plays for them. He had a big play called back last week, but then he had another big play and it just seems like he makes two 25 yard plays a game.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
"72 hours" Discussed on The Bill Simmons Podcast
"All right, couple more teams I wanted to hit. I think the consensus is since he's fine, Burrow's better, we'll be hearing from them. Couple of red flags. Over under on FanDuel right now is eight and a half wins. They're three and three. So that makes me a little suspicious. Like why is there over under nine and a half? There's been some action. You look at their next six. At San Francisco this week. Buffalo home, Houston home, at Baltimore, home Pittsburgh at Jacksonville. Maybe six playoff teams in a row. Pretty good. And from what we've seen from Cincy, I trust, I personally trust them a little more than most because we watched them last year. They got better as the year went along. They have an excellent defensive coordinator. They have talent on both sides of the ball. As Burrow gets healthier, he's just gonna win games by himself. But the line this week is weird and it moved down a little bit. It didn't move down as much as I thought. We got Sam Darnold almost definitely QBing for the 49ers and kind of a must win game for the Bengals in some degree. Because if they go three and four with them, they're playing five straight AFC teams after that. All of them are potential playoff teams. I don't know, they just gotta show up. They're 21st in DVOA, 23rd offense, 19 defense. We just have not seen a lot of signs yet. I know you monitored that team pretty closely. What are you seeing? I believe in them. I think there is a, I spoke to Lou Annaromo, who's their defensive coordinator, and he's talking to them about how their defense has actually been leading the way the last few weeks and their offense is, which usually is, it's Burrow and Chase and Higgins and Boyd and everyone follow us and the defense holds your own. Defense has been really good. And you have all these young guys. They lost Jesse Bates. They, in the last couple of years, they've lost Eli Apple and Von Bill and all these guys in the back. And they've got all these young ones, Cam Taylor Britt, who shut down D.K. Metcalf. This other kid, Turner, out of Michigan, who's been good. So how do you, he goes, we have something that the Yankees used to have. And I was like, all right, here we go. Baseball, what do we got? He's like, we have a core four on our defense that hasn't changed. It's DJ Hill, DJ Hill, DJ Reader, Sam Hubbard, and Trey Hendrickson. And in the last few years, those guys, they don't miss games. They always show up. And they're the ones who kind of lead the way. And then you've got your Assai and Jermaine Pratt. And I could just, I could do whatever naming names, but the core four. And I'm like, oh shit. So offhand, I was like, I was in a conversation with him. I'm like, all right, let me try this. I'm like, all right, we got Mariano. We got Jeter. We got, I'm like, who is, we got Pettit. Do you know who the fourth of the core four was, Bill? It was Bernie Williams. I thought so too. Jorge Posada. Oh, it was Posada, you're right. I was like, I was like, who's though? Cause they, Bernie predated all of them. Bernie was there and Andy Stankiewicz and Pat Kelly years. We could talk early nineties, Yankees, if you want. I'm here for that. That sounds horrible. All that. So who's Jeter out of those four, Hendrickson? I guess, right. And he's a free agent signing. They got from New Orleans, but he's been one of the best free agent signings in football over the last few years. And Hubbard, Cincinnati kid, went to Ohio State. He's probably Jeter. He's like their guy. But I say, these are not household names. There is not a Miles Garrett. There is not a TJ Watt. There's not a Micah Parsons. And yet that's what kind of gets it. And to me, you're mentioning Jacksonville and Pittsburgh and Baltimore. And it's like, no one's played in bigger games than those players. And to me, good quarterbacks too. Yes. And whatever happens at halftime. And Lou's pretty honest with it. He wanted that Arizona job last year. And I went to Jonathan Gannon and that's fine. They went their direction. But like, there's no one better in football than that guy at halftime adjusting and confounding these opposing quarterbacks, whether it be Mahomes all those times or Josh Allen all those times. So when you listen- We're Sam Darnold this weekend. And exactly right. So when you're listing these teams on paper, it's like, oh yeah, wow, those are all playoff teams. But to me, I think the Bengals and their defense, they can hang with any of those teams. And I think they're as well coached as anyone on the defensive side of the ball at the very least that they'll be able to hang with those squads. And I think we'll be talking about them in January, even so. And then there's the burrow it factor that came two weeks ago. And they were like, Joe just wasn't losing that game. Like all the teammates talking about it. Yeah. Cause you could flip it around and go, all right, they got Sam Darnold this week. They have banged up super weird Buffalo next week. They got a super young Houston team after that. At Baltimore, they always play them well. Home Pittsburgh, the Michael Myers team, but you know, Kenny Pickett on the road is gonna get to 20 points. And then at Jacksonville, all those are winnable. To me, that's five wins. And one of those, the Baltimore thing's interesting. So Baltimore and Cincinnati, you think of the great rivalries, you think of Baltimore and Pittsburgh. Like I could tell you, no one coaches on both sides of the ball. Like they don't like each other in Baltimore. So when Lamar was having his MVP season, they would put up 50 on the Bengals and Bengals were awful. It was like early Zach Taylor years. And then last year when Lamar was out and it was like Huntley and Cincinnati, obviously was looking to put it to them. And it goes back and then they had that great playoff game last year. So Baltimore, Cincinnati, like that's an underrated rivalry. And I think before we crowned the Ravens, like the Bengals aren't done yet this season. I could see them coming from behind here. FanDuel seems to think they're dumb because the over under being at eight and a half says to me that the sharps out there aren't believers. I think that's too low. The other one, San Francisco's over is 11 and a half on FanDuel. And I was like, man, that seems low. And then I was like, man, that seems high. And I just, I don't even know what to think. Like, who knows? The Patriots are playing at Miami this week and Miami is super banged up. Like we're taping this on Thursday morning. I don't know if Tyreek's playing. I don't know if Mostert's playing. They're already missing a bunch of guys on the Miami side. Their offensive line is not good and really has not been good. Lombardi's talked about this on his podcast about how everything McDaniel does is basically to disguise the fact that his line can't block and he's just really good at it. But there's some games when, Pats played pretty well against them and Mack cost them the game a few weeks ago. The Pats are getting nine and a half. The Pats, next five after this game, they have home Washington, home Indy, bye week at Giants and then home Chargers. And I saw that and I'm like, am I getting sucked back in? Can somebody just hit me over the head with a baseball bat? I don't want to get sucked back in. I was rooting for them to tank five days ago, Shrigs. Turn the TikTok camera on.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
"72 hours" Discussed on The Bill Simmons Podcast
"It was a bad week, they were banged up. And it just, they caught Baltimore on the wrong week with the wrong kind of team situation. I still have them fifth. I have Jacksonville sixth, which I can't believe because I actually think they might lose to Pittsburgh this week. Dallas seven. I have Miami eight and Baltimore nine. Miami's had so many injuries now. I'm starting to wonder if it's gonna hit the point of no return. They got their asses whooped by Philly last week. Buffalo's lost too many people. And then I have the Michael Myers Steelers at 10, our team. That's our team, dude. Four and two. Once again, underdogs against Jacksonville this week. Most of the money's on Jacksonville. At home. I just watched my East Coast Bias guys today. All three of them were like, love Jacksonville. Oh my God. Oh, family play. And how many times do we have to watch it with them? They're gonna be five and two in four days. You know Pittsburgh, they'll, 56 minutes into the game, you're banging your head against the wall and then you look up at the final score and they won by three. And you're like, how'd they do that again? And it's not, at some point it's not a coincidence. The other thing, I wonder, the other thing about the league wide stuff, and I was talking about the quarterback position, but the new CBA put in a lot of rules. And I know this is like, maybe Lombardi can go bigger on this, or if you have on someone who's coached, going back into the nineties. Offensive linemen and defensive linemen, they do not do one-on-ones in practice anymore. So the offensive linemen come in, and by and large, they're not great anymore. And you come in, these guys come in from college and a lot of these college offensive lines and linemen are taught, you know, bullshit. And you've got to unwire their mind on how they played offensive line in college football and then teach them how to play NFL. And you can't do it in practice because you can't do one-on-one. You can't do it in training camp. But then week three, you need this guy to start it right tackle. And he hasn't ever played in an NFL game. I think that stuff matters. It's not sexy. It's not as easy as saying the refs suck, but it is something that the offensive line play is atrocious right now. And the defenses are dominating in every which way at the line of scrimmage. The people that love college football always talk about how there's a certain way a lot of these college football offenses play, where it's just like shotgun snap, throw the ball quickly. They just kind of learn how to block one way and that's it. And then they get to the NFL and they have no idea what they're doing. They, you know, one other piece, I don't know how major this is, but it's definitely not nothing. They clearly changed the concussion policy this year. And if you get a concussion, you're out for the next week. You just are. Brock Purdy got a concussion Monday. We're not gonna see him. They're like, oh, we may be. You're out. And it does feel like it's clearing out two guys per week in games. So maybe it'll be one each, one on each team, two on one team, whatever. But I've noticed that more than usual that guys are just scratched. I think the league responded to people crying on air and tweeting nonstop when Tua went down and was still in the game. And I think if it's an overcorrection, it's because they're playing it safe. But I'll give you an example. The Jets right before the game last week, it's like, all right, Soss Gardner is still in the concussion protocol. Well, then he had a bye week and now we're coming out of the bye week. And I don't know, I can't give you the measure if it's gonna be like, it's Thursday we're recording this. Both he and DJ Reed, the starting corners, they're both, you know, Soss still is in the concussion protocol and still has not been cleared to play. And I think they're being very safe about that, but that's your best defensive player. That's huge. Right, in the old days, hey, Soss, get back out there. How's your head feel? Okay, you're good? You know, the other thing with the league, and this usually happens when we get to the teens, but I had just, my rankings were Cleveland 11, even though they have no quarterback. Seattle, Cincinnati, I think they could go either way. I would look at Ed Cincy's schedule. I'm pretty worried about them being able to turn it around because every week they're playing a banger. Seattle, same thing, they have some tough games coming up. They got San Francisco twice in three weeks. And then you have Houston in the Rams at 14, 15, and Atlanta at 16. And then it drops for me at least. Tampa, Jets, Minnesota, 17, 18, 19. Then you get to the Chargers at 20, I'm crossing them off. Just listing all those and then looking at the schedules and stuff, it's really set nicely for Houston to be either a possible contender in their division or maybe like a sneaky seven seed because the AFC wasn't as good. But their schedule is abominable. So when you, like, do you believe, I know you love D'Amico Ryan's, to CJ Stroud, hard not to love. Is it far-fetched to think that that team could win 10 games for you? Yeah, we spoke a couple of weeks ago. I was like, I'm not buying it yet. And then they went out and beat Pittsburgh. And then they won a tough one against the Saints, where it was back and forth and their defense stepped up in the red zone. And of course, we could blame Derek Carr for that. But it was the defense that played well. Listen, Bill, in today's NFL, when 14 teams make the playoffs and schedules can go a million ways, of course they can win 10 games. They have to win seven games the rest of the way. They're already three and three. They've had their bye week and they're only going to get better with a rookie quarterback who's going to develop and develop into whatever he wants to be this rookie year. It's going to be better this week than he was his first week. But I can't say in good faith, like looking at like their roster, that they're any better than, you know, some of those other AFC teams. And that Demeko Ryan's... Yeah, is Demeko Ryan's going to coach circles around John Harbaugh in a big game or is he going to be able to... Is Bobby Sloick going to be able to outwit Vic Fangio? Like, I'm just giving up different AFC teams. It's week eight. We could say, yeah, this team is the team. But I did that with Tampa after they went on the bye and they've lost two terrible games since. So I want to be careful still on crowning Houston as much as I love what that team is doing. Can I give you their schedule? Let's go. At Carolina this week, Tampa home, at Cincy, Arizona, Jacksonville, Denver, all on a road home, at the Jets, at Tennessee, who might, at that point, have completely packed it in. They don't really have a hard game over the next eight, except for at Cincy. And who knows with Cincy? Jacksonville. Well, I'm saying that at least is home. Yeah, but you're right. They won't be favored at home against Jacksonville and they won't be favored in that Cincy game. Maybe they won't be favored at the Jets game, but they're a schedule team for me. And the other schedule team for me is the Falcons, who I've watched a lot of their games this year and somehow a bad action on a bunch. And boy, are they a rollercoaster. But they have- Well, Arthur Smith also wears it on his face very well, the exact feelings of every fan. His look of despair is just so meme-worthy. At Tennessee this week, seems like they're minus two and a half. It's like, please, come take this. Come on. Yeah, Tennessee's packing it in. Home Minnesota, at Arizona, by home New Orleans, at the Jets, home Tampa, at Carolina, home Indy, at Chicago, at New Orleans. It's like, they're not playing anybody for 10 weeks. So we see this too, we looked up last year with the Vikings. Like, what the fuck? They're gonna win 13 games? I don't know if the Falcons have it in them and Ritter, again, it's just strap it on, man. Put not only the seatbelt on, but the shoulder harness when you're betting on him. But they do have a lot of talent. I think they're pretty good. They are. Defensively, they're good. Ryan Nielsen's got those guys playing. At Ritter, to me, it doesn't do much. I don't know what they see in that. They're so steadfast that he's their guy. And I talk to Arthur a lot. They have the full support of Denman. Heinecky's the backup. I've seen Heinecky win games. Give it a shot. But they're in on Ritter. Yeah, and it's like Falcons, Texans. Those do feel like they could be very easy, the seventh wildcard team in the AFC. And then we're like, all right. And then they go and they get whatever happens in the wildcard round. And then next year, they're the hype teams because they're young and they're on the move and they made the playoffs. Sure. But I very easily can say- Well, you say sure. Let me give you the playoff odds. Let me give you Atlanta to make the playoffs and Atlanta to win the division. First of all, Atlanta has minus 178 to make the playoffs. Almost two to one odds that you'd have to lay for them to make the playoffs. So they aren't just slightly favored to make the playoffs. They're legitimately favored to make the playoffs. I'm surprised by that. Okay, it's not like they've been playing dominant football by any chance. I think it's schedule related. And then the division, not only are they the favorite, even odds. Bet 500 bucks, win 500. Bet 100, win 100. Bet 10, win 10. Vegas has looked at the numbers and they have looked at the schedule and they have all collectively, all the sports books, everybody have decided this team's a really prohibitive favorite to win this division, basically. They're first place in week eight and that's our pick. It's like, all right, I don't know. Yeah, okay. And then what about Houston? So Houston plus 184 to make the playoffs. That seems a little more normal. And then plus 450 for the division. Yeah. I think Jacksonville could be a runaway train right now, Jacksonville. And I know they're playing Pittsburgh and that's gonna be like, Jacksonville's got a nice little cushion. They got a little thing going here. Houston's over, under for wins is eight and a half, which I think before the season was probably four and a half. So that might be the biggest jump that we've had. But again, like their next eight, two hard ones. I could see him winning coach of the year, D'Amico. I could see Stroud winning offensive rookie of the year. And then I could see Casario who had to walk through two years of mud and shit to get to this point. He might be executive of the year because it's an interesting balance. They do have some like Robert Woods makes plays for them. Like they've got veteran guys that are out there doing it. Like Shaquille Griffin is like one of their good corners. And it's like, gosh, he's been on a couple teams. So they've got a nice mix of obviously the young guys, but some of these older veterans have come in and offered some veteran presence, which is cool too. So Jacksonville's next seven. And again, they're heavy favorites. They're, you know, I think they're like minus 550 for the division, but their next seven, they have the sneaky Pittsburgh game. They got to buy San Fran, home Tennessee at Houston, home Cincy at Cleveland, Baltimore. There's some good defenses. That's a tough run. There's some good pass rushes in there. Yeah, that's a really tough run. I'm interested to see, you know, they got their left tackle back. They've looked better the last couple of weeks and you know, they played pretty well in that Saints game. But I also thought the Saints were horrible and they had their last three games. If you really think about it, two London games, which the London games just shake the snow globe. You don't know what the fuck's gonna happen. Like Buffalo goes there and basically their whole season flips. Then they have a Thursday night game against the Saints. Thursday nights are like, who knows, anything can happen. You have the Bears scoring 40 points on a Thursday night. So now we're like, oh, Jacksonville, they're for real. I had them sixth in my power rankings. We haven't seen them play a normal Sunday game in four weeks. Now they have to go into Pittsburgh. Yellow towels, crowd waving. You know their field goal kicker will miss a field goal in the first half. Little sticks renegade blasting the fourth quarter. You know, Watt will do something. Oh my God, Watt, oh, he tipped the pass to himself and got an interception. All of a sudden, like this is gonna be a hard game for them. But the one thing that I noticed with them and I have them on all my fantasy team, so it's hard not to notice, but ETN has been excellent. I would say like maybe like a top five running back, right? He has two touchdowns, I think, and back to back games. He's electric. He's a first round pick for a reason. It just takes a little time. He was injured the first year and last year, it just kind of like a split carries. He's really electric. And again, buried in that market. Two games played at 9.30 AM recently. You know, a Thursday night game. Not everyone's watching the Jaguars and they're all already behind the eight ball because they're the Jacksonville Jaguars in that media market. But ETN has been fantastic for them and so has the receiving core. I think Christian Kirk's been great. Ridley's been great. And, you know, Trevor Lawrence was barking a little bit after the game and was like, tell me about the analysts. Like he was like, all right, cool. Like a little swagger's good out of that team. So yeah, they're good. They're good team. Congrats, you barely beat Buffalo when they lost three guys during the game and then just flown into London two days ago. I don't think the Bills have been the same since Matt Milano went down on that floor, man. I'm telling you, I think that was the moment for the Bills that changed everything. I think he's the most underrated defender in the league. And at- Well, they lost Taequann Jones too. Yeah, and Trey White. Worried about them. Let's take a break. This episode is brought to you by Nissan. Thrill looks different for each of us. For some, it's re-watching that one film over and over again. For others, it's hitting the open road with nothing but a full tank. Whatever your thrill, Nissan has a car that gives you more, more action, more freedom, more head-turning style. Sports cars, sedans, EVs, pickups, crossovers. More is what Nissan does. Learn more at NissanUSA.com. This episode of the Bill Simmons Podcast brought to you by Hilton. The dream vacation rental you book can quickly turn into a nightmare even before check-in. Like when you can't find the keys under the mat or the lockbox won't open or the code the host gave you isn't working.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
"72 hours" Discussed on The Bill Simmons Podcast
"All right, Peter Schrager is here. You can watch him on Good Morning Football, and you can see him on Fox on Sundays as well, going head-to-head against the best show on TV, Ringer Wise Guys. I root for everybody, Schrags. I don't pick favorites, except for the Ringer Show. I picked that favorite, but other than that, I don't pick favorites. You know my affection for house, for JJ, for you. I wish I could watch it. I'm sitting there trying to do it while I'm on set talking to Charles Woodson in his Hall of Fame jacket. I wanna hear what JJ's got on the jets. I have you on one of the other TVs, so I can see your friendly face popping up there, and it's wonderful stuff. We have a lot to cover, including your celebrity Jeopardy appearance. I wanna start here. It's week eight, and I don't know who the favorite in the NFL is, and I was looking at the FanDuel odds, and I don't remember everything being over four to one for all the teams. It might have happened before, but I just don't personally have a recollection of that. Casey is the favorite at plus four fifty, and San Francisco's there. Why don't we have a favorite yet? Is it injuries? Is it just the league is deeper? What is it? I have a couple thoughts, and it's not like I'm giving you a thesis statement or a dissertation, but if I can provide a couple thoughts, I think it'll lead to good conversation. The first is all of the really good teams have lost in prime time or big national games when everyone was watching, and I think that takes a little bit of the luster off these teams, and makes the odd, like if these were losses at one o'clock, it might be different, but we watched Casey lose to Detroit, so we're like, well, they're not invincible. Then they played Denver on a Thursday night, and the offense didn't click, so you're like, all right, Casey, I don't feel the same way about Casey, but everyone watched those two games. Philadelphia goes up and plays against the Jets in the most watched Fox game of the year, which was at late window, and everyone watched Jalen Hurts throw three interceptions with 28 million people watching in the second half. So, eh, Philly, the Bills have now lost to the Jets without Aaron Rodgers. Philly's six to one, San Francisco's five to one, Casey's plus four-fifty. Okay, keep going. The Bills have lost to the Jets without Aaron Rodgers, and then looked terrible against the Giants in a Sunday night prime time game, and then they went to London where everyone did wake up and watch that morning game, and they couldn't get out of bed and beat the Jaguars, and the last one is the Niners. You're going into this thing, and it's like, all right, we've been watching the Niners win by 20 every single game. They get on prime time against the Vikings and they lose. So I think that's maybe the betting side and the external media side from a football standpoint. Oh boy, I don't know if the football's ever been more, just head scratching in a lot of ways, and I think it might be a quarterback thing. And I think about Buffalo, Cincinnati, I'm listening to teams here, Casey, Dallas I put in, Miami and Philadelphia, and I'd say those teams are set at quarterback, right? Other than that, you either have bridge quarterbacks, you have declining quarterbacks, or you have a rookie quarterback. And Purdy with San Francisco is the one that's like an outlier, but I think that you're looking at this quarterback thing, it's like, okay, if you have a set quarterback that we know is good, but other than that, that's only like a handful of teams, that means there's a bunch of gobbledygook in the middle, and you could say, yeah, well, cousins, I'm talking about the guys, the guys you talk about. And if those teams all pick each other off, it's a quarterback thing, and there's so much turnover year to year in offensive systems and the way we wanna do things that I honestly think the quality of play at the quarterback position, as much as we did a Netflix series this summer, and we talk about these young, talented guys up and coming, I remember growing up and you can pick out 12 to 14 quarterbacks that were like the same guys for eight years on a team, and like, those were just the guys. Did you just do a, when I was growing up? Yeah, in my growing up, might be a little different. You're officially like, how old's your kid now? I have a seven-year-old son. I like this. You're turning into like a, you're broaching toward middle-aged media member status. I wake him up and I'm like, let me tell you about Jim Everett and Chris Miller in the NFC West. I think you really need to hear about these showdowns between Bobby Hebert and Joe Montana. But yeah, you had the- No, I like your theory though, because I was trying to do my power poll. First of all, I couldn't believe that I had Dallas at seven. You have to. I don't like Dallas, but I had, so the favorites are Philly, Casey, Baltimore, and San Francisco, but I don't know who the actual favorite is. I usually like to put somebody in that spot. And I went with Philadelphia because I think I trust their infrastructure the most with their offensive and defensive lines. And they have a couple of playmakers and they have the tush push. And like Devonta Smith, who's been in a coma for five weeks, if you had him on your fantasy team, you're like just completely panicking. But I still think he's a good football player. I'm sure they're going to get a go one of the weeks. They're getting Goddard going. They're always going to be able to run the ball. They're still adding, like they added Bayard from Tennessee. They just stole him for nothing. So I think I trust them from a talent standpoint and from, I think it could go sideways in the least possible ways. Casey, Baltimore, San Francisco, I'm not going to trust Baltimore yet. I want to see Lamar play three straight healthy months. I should have put Baltimore in the quarterback conversation, by the way, if I was a double back. I don't think I had him listed because I was doing a free game. Yeah, that's fine. But to your point, they, you know, they went to London and they beat Tennessee, but they did it with six field goals. Like it's, you know, a lot of people watch that game. So as much as the one o'clock Fox game where they crushed Detroit, is everyone buzzing right now? All right, well, we saw different versions of them a week before. So that makes it hard to be like, they're the favorite. And you don't want to just be prisoner of the moment, which is what essentially we are in the media. Well, especially because the season is one third of a year long now. And I do wonder if the length of the season ties into this because every game can't be a big game when the season is 18 weeks, including the buy and you're gonna let down, you're gonna go up, you're gonna go down. I have Detroit at number five. Still, okay. I thought last week was a real humbling experience. And it was, and they were out of it immediately and they got their asses kicked, but I'm okay with that. I don't think that's a team that's built to play from 14 points down. And I just think they got their asses kicked. I also think the running game situation with them was not ideal.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
"72 hours" Discussed on The Bill Simmons Podcast
"This episode was brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Listen, you work hard. You probably have a job at a house that you have to keep clean, and maybe kids and parents you're taking care of. You go to the gym, you play pickup, you still have to mow the lawn. You deserve some time to crack a Michelob Ultra, sit on the couch, and watch some hoops. Hoops is coming back, end of October. You know, come back, long day, maybe get a little exercise in, walk around the block a few times, maybe go to the gym, come back, watch some hoops, maybe just pop open a nice, nice, ice-cold Michelob Ultra. Because what tastes better than a beer? Around 9.30, 10 o'clock, right when you're starting to get a little sleepy, it's only worth it if you enjoy it. To find out where to order Ultra near you, tap the banner or visit MichelobUltra.com, and click Find Product, LDA 21 and up. We are supported by McDonald's. This month, McDonald's is upping its game by introducing two beloved sauces to its lineup, Mambo Sauce and Sweet and Spicy Jam. Hmm, why do I love these? Well, they both pack a spicy punch. They let you switch up the flavors in your usual order. I like having more choices. You know what, if you're gonna give me eight choices, why not give me 10? The Sweet and Spicy Jam sounds delicious. These two sauces are only available for a limited time at participating McDonald's, so make sure to try them while you can. Tap the banner to learn more.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
"72 hours" Discussed on The Bill Simmons Podcast
"They play the Nets on Friday night and then they don't, I don't know what their next game is, but the schedule, it might lead up where they might have a good like first 10 days and people will start feeling good and then Kyrie will be like, you know what, I gotta do something stupid. Here are my thoughts on something I shouldn't be weighing in on. I can't wait. And then it'll take a 180. We got some prime world events for Kyrie to weigh in on. Kyrie's like, he's got a notepad out. Like, hmm, wonder if the world needs my thoughts on this. All right, that's it. I think we hit everything, right? And he makes some good rounds. I mean, a lot of good basketball yet to watch. A lot of teams I still need to see for the first time. So I'm really excited for this first weekend to kind of level out, spread the wealth a little bit, hit some of these teams on league pass that I haven't had a chance to see. This is, I mean, one of my favorite parts of the sporting calendar. It's always a great first couple of weeks, but I also think we used to overrate it some years when the talent wasn't really there. But we'd be like, oh my God, it's so great. Basketball's back. This year, honestly, I would say 75% of the teams I actually want to watch, which is pretty rare. I would say the list of teams I don't want to see is probably less than six. I mean, I'm good with the Bulls. I don't need to watch the Bulls anymore. I'm good with the Wizards. Portland, I might check in in February when they figure out stuff. But for the most part, a lot of these teams aren't skippable for me. Can I say one nice thing about the Wizards? Yeah. I thought Jordan Poole was a good citizen of the offense in his first game, kind of running the Wizards. I was expecting the full gunner experience from him. And he and Kuzma both, to be honest, I thought were pretty patient, trying to get guys involved, trying to run some semblance of an actual thing. And it didn't work out super well because they gave up 143 points. But I appreciate the effort, is all I'm saying. Okay, there you go. Rob Mahoney, so we expanded group chat to two times a week, Sundays. Yes. Like right around, maybe after some early game. Yeah, we're the warm-up act for your Sunday show. So doors at 3 p.m., come for us, and then check out Bill later. We need more basketball on Sundays. There's so much going on. So Sundays and Wednesdays on Ringer NBA, and then you might make some prestige TV appearances time and time, too. Thanks for staying up late with me. Good to see you. Thanks, Bill.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
"72 hours" Discussed on The Bill Simmons Podcast
"And then Warriors Kings, which was an awesome playoff series. Those are just five of the games tomorrow night. We got to get a Thunder game too. I think Thunder Cavs. Yeah, Thunder Cavs. I need to see more Thunder. I got a text out of the blue the other day from Kyle Mann that just said Jalen Williams is swole. So I need to get to the bottom of that situation. They need to figure out what's going on with that. Well, there was a Kason Wallace development with them in the first game. I have Thunder bets all over the place. So I'm very invested in them for a variety of reasons. And the Wallace piece coming off the bench. There's some energy from their bench that is pretty unusual when you watch the other teams. Where like, this is a team where they can actually go on a run with their bench, which I thought stood out. I am uncomfortably in on the Kason Wallace experience. Just something about the way that guy plays, the tenacity. And I'm sure the shot will come and go, but the flashes when it's been hitting are just so impressive. I'm just a sucker for a dogged perimeter defender, to be honest with you. And if you have any semblance of an offensive game, sign me up. Sign me up for the Kason Wallace season pass. That team is a bitch to play. They're just like, that is not... You had that game on your schedule. You're like, oh, fuck these guys. A couple other quick things. Oh, we'll say Memphis really quick. Like they're just too, they're just too small. And it's a lot of bane. And they're going to get the Marcus Smart experience of like the, I got this Marcus Smart piece of everything where I actually think they could tail spin it a little bit in these 25 games without Ja and now no Adams. And you'll have the random game when triple J gets into foul trouble. He gets three fouls in the first four minutes. The random game. That might be two out of every three games. I could see a start for them where they start out like five and 10 or something where we're like, oh my God, what do the Grizzlies do? And I wonder like, they've been a pretty patient team for the most part. I don't know if they can be patient this year if they want to be in position when Ja comes back because the West is too good. So do you agree like, probably they need to make a move in the next couple of weeks like especially if Portland looks as bad as they looked last night. Rob Williams is sitting there to be grabbed. Virno's been calling for that for a week. Somebody like that, right? I think especially the Adams injury puts them behind that particular eight ball and it makes like a Williams trade or a trade for another big just make all the sense in the world if you can jump on one of those guys right now. They're a tough team to understand at this juncture just because historically they've done pretty well without Ja, especially two seasons ago, they did pretty well when he was out for an extended period of time. I wonder how much of that is just like Grizzlies DNA and a thing they can replicate and how much of it was that moment in time, that collection of players, Tyus Jones who isn't on the team anymore just being like a rock solid backup option who you're slotting in versus as you say, the Marcus Smart, like the ups and downs of living with Marcus Smart on an everyday basis is just a very different thing. Desmond Bain is going to have to do a lot and you would hope that Jaren Jackson can flex out his offensive game a little bit too. It's just a little more matchup dependent for him. And when those nights aren't, like when those matchups aren't in the cards, I don't know where else they turn other than Bain forcing a lot of action, Smart taking basically whatever he wants out of some of those possessions. A lot of offense is going to dry up for them. So I agree. It's like if it was just Ja, I would feel better but that it's Ja and the front court depth with Adams and Brandon Clark out, it's just a lot to compensate for. It's a lot to put on Desmond Bain's plate even though he's one of the best young scorers in the league, like a really impressive player who's going to grow but that's a lot. And they lost the rebounding too which they can't be happy about either. Yeah, I think that team, that's definitely a watch the first two weeks with that team because that could go sideways. I thought Washington and Portland were the only two teams that stood out over the first couple of days as just bad. I don't know if we have any other bad teams. I think Washington and Portland have a chance to be bad. A team that I was hoping would be good and I picked them to make the playoffs and I feel like it was the right instinct is Toronto. New coach, they flipped out Van Vleet, brought in Schroeder, who's having a Schroeder stance with the world championships, the Lakers run last year. I just like the vibe of that team. I want to see them again. I'm not going to say like, oh, I've watched one game, that team's going to win 45 games but there was an energy to them that they did not have last year. And I think what was alarming about them last year and the year before was it was like, what is this team? Doesn't seem like they like each other. So do you notice that or no? The vibes were so horrendous last season that even just seeing a team like celebrating each other, like being a little more into it on a collective basis, I think is pretty heartening, but also like individual defensive effort from guys like Siakam and Barnes. Like that stuff I think means a lot. Like those are two guys who can be very good defenders. Siakam can be an excellent defender. Barnes I think is still learning, but has all the tools to be one. And so seeing those guys like engaged and plugged in on a more like standard regular basis does mean a lot. And Schroeder plugging in, and I mean, they didn't really miss a beat as far as like that kind of playmaking worked really well for them. As you said, I was honestly really impressed with who he turned out to be for the Lakers, not just offensively, but chasing defensively. That's something that Dennis Schroeder, again, historically has not always done. And so another guy who like when everything, when his head is screwed on right, when the environment is right, can be a very impactful player. And I think they have maybe a couple too many of those guys stacked on top of each other to feel like they're gonna be an excellent team. But if the energy is good in terms of how that group works together, I think they're gonna be pretty formidable. I like them. And they beat a Minnesota team that I thought I watched probably the last, I watched the last 18 minutes of that game. And I thought Minnesota was actually playing hard and the Towns go bear thing, I have that kind of check mark that I wanna keep watching it. It still doesn't look right to me. Towns made the biggest mistake of the game. Couple more quick things and then we'll go. Simmons doesn't wanna shoot still. And that's just where we are. And he can't play in the last four minutes of the game. He put up stats, he had some rebounds, he had some passes, he pushed the ball. But ultimately, I just don't think that's a guy that can be out there in the last five minutes of the game. What did you think? And that might be okay, right? Ultimately, I think you're probably gonna want the ball more so with Mikael Bridges, even more so with Spencer Dinwiddie in some situations, just in terms of who is willing to take that shot, who's willing to step up into those moments. I'm fine with slow playing Ben Simmons. You want rotation guy Ben Simmons. I want rotation guy Ben Simmons. You're not looking for all NBA Ben Simmons anymore. That guy's gone. If that ship hasn't sailed, it's getting ready to leave harbor imminently. The crew is telling everybody, two minutes. They are taking the ropes off the dock. So, and I'm honestly, genuinely, I'm cool with that. Like a guy who accelerates pace, who gives them a playmaker. The Nets don't have a lot of high level passing on that roster, and that's why they get a little stodgy sometimes. So if he's even able to help connect some dots, I think that's a healthy thing for them. Let's just keep expectations extremely low and see if he can met out as being a useful guy for them. I thought Charlotte looked a little better than I was expecting. They're not deep, but I thought their five played well together. I'm watching them. Cade's back. That was good. That was a bonus. He's on my must-hit list for the weekend. I got to see Cade. Yeah, I want to see it again. He did a nice job against Miami. And then the last one for me, Dallas beats San Antonio. San Antonio, their over-under was 27 and a half wins. Like don't throw yourself a party because you barely beat the Spurs, right? I thought Lively looked really good in the game. And I don't know how real it was, but the thing I really liked was how hard he played. Like he really gave a shit. And that was the feedback about him pre-season. I didn't love the pick. I didn't like that they were counting on a rookie center, but I thought he played like 120% with athleticism. And compared to what they were getting from that position the last couple of years, I was like, all right, this is notable. I want to keep an eye on this because maybe they do have something here. I never believed the Mavs and were like this, oh, this guy's going to be amazing. Like they burned us too many times, but I liked what I saw. What'd you think? I think he profiles as exactly the kind of player you want with Luca. And I think the quality, when I think about who fits with Luca, there's a lot of skill sets that make sense. Dwight Powell has eaten well for years now, just based off rolling off of Luca. Like those kinds of things make sense. With Lively, it's the same thing I see in Josh Green. It's the same thing I see in Tim Hardaway Jr. to be honest, which is like, who are the self starters? Like who are the guys who energy wise are summoning it just cause like they just have those bursts where they can make really hard plays, like go through sudden, like that put back dunk that Lively had against the Spurs. That is an exceptional like 97th percentile athleticism play. But it's also like a 97th percentile energy play, right? I would say 97% fearless too. Like those are one of those, like I might crack my head open when I land type of dunks. A hundred percent. And so to come out of basically being uninvolved in the primary action that led to the shot and make that kind of effort on the glass, like that's what I'm excited about for Derek Leavitt. Like that's where I see him being an incredible benefit to the Mavs. Cause the reality is playing with Luca and Kyrie, there's gonna be possessions where you don't touch the ball. There's gonna be possessions where they don't even really look at you, right? Like you are there to occupy space and defenders and you have to draw it from within yourself to find a way to be involved. And that he can already do that this quickly, I think is a great sign.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
"72 hours" Discussed on The Bill Simmons Podcast
"I mean, so people put the crown on Boston. Anyway, I have the Jaylen Brown thing marked. Zion? It still looks a little heavy to me, but athletically looked really good last night. And I thought it was encouraging, right? Were you encouraged? Definitely. I mean, it's encouraging that he's challenging Jaren Jackson Jr. in the air, right? It's not just bully on the ground, nudge him out of your way and try to finish with layoffs, but that he's going up in those situations. Those are really encouraging signs. You know, as usual, my concerns with Zion are much more like, is he ever gonna guard anybody? Does he have a defensive position? What are they gonna do with all that? I'm more concerned about that stuff. Offensively, he's just, he's so efficient. He's so good at getting to his spots inside. He's so good at finishing around people. Shouldn't be able to finish around. I feel pretty confident about him being a hugely impactful offensive player. I just, I really wonder about the other side. You and Woz and Vary are, you guys did great previews for us that I think are still going. I don't know, they somehow were longer than our previous. But you had a whole Zion conversation and just about like, what position is he ultimately if your team is a 55 win team? And could he be like a stretch five? Seriously, yeah, I don't know. Where do you put him? Who's the right person to put next to him? He really is this enigma trapped in a riddle. It's like a college basketball team just adding the best football player and be like, hey, this guy, he's good. We'll just figure it out. But this is like year, what is it, four or five for him? Year five? God, is it really? No, maybe it's year four. Or year five, one of them. But we're still trying to figure out what this is and what kind of team should be put with this person. Does he need a point guard? Does he need a rim protector next to him? I don't know. He's gonna be 30 and we're still gonna be figuring it out. They're the anomalies that come into the league and we feel very dumb forever second guessing where they would fit. Like Draymond comes in, it's like, is he a three, is he a four? What is he supposed to do? And it's like, oh, obviously, he's one of the defining small ball players of his generation. Clearly that one worked out. And then there are the anomalies that's just like, it never really is apparent where they should be or what they should do or how they should play. Like they always have some kind of very specific deficit in their game that makes it hard to slot them in. If you have one of a kind players, sometimes you have to find other one of a kind players to play with them. And that can be a very challenging process for a team in the Pelicans position. They have a ton of talent. They have a lot of depth, especially when all their guys are healthy. They're dealing with some short-handing issues right now. But ultimately, it's hard to even conceptually think, who is the best player to put next to Zion? What does that player look like? How do you get them? Every step in that process is hard. I don't think it's Brandon Ingram, I'll tell you that much. Another guy, another unicorn-y guy, the ultimate unicorn, Winbanyama, who unfortunately, the league didn't get the memo in time to the refs. Please don't put him in foul trouble during this first game. People just want to watch him. I think he's easier to fit around because he can play off the ball, he can play with the ball, he can play four, he can play five. He can protect the rim. He could just be in the middle, like how the Celtics use Porzingis, or he can be in the corner and jump out Rob Williams style. He's, I think, a better passer than any of us were prepared for from the weird French highlights and the league like that. But his stroke's nice. He's just further ahead than I was expecting. And I think what I wasn't really fully expecting was how much I'm going to be watching him this year. Because it's one of those like, and I had the three TVs going, if he's on one of the TVs, I can't really focus on anything else when he's in. Like, I really can't. It's like having one of your kids in a soccer game or something. You're just kind of transfixed by it. Did you feel that way? Yeah, I mean, especially if you have that kind of multi-screen experience, there are things where you're saying, you're looking down, you're checking your phone, you're on your computer or whatever, and you'll just kind of casually look up. And the way he contests a three-pointer. It's so exciting. He's the most exciting three-pointer ever. Incredibly so. And it's legitimately disorienting where it's like, I'm seeing a movement on my screen. I'm just not used to seeing. A blur of arm going to this shot that hasn't arced yet, but is very much in midair. Did you see he almost blocked the Kyrie three at the end of the game last night? He missed it by a fingernail. Absolutely insane. But can you blame Kyrie for going for it? You gotta take that shot if you get that opportunity. That would have been an incredible moment. But I was looking ahead for this weekend. Who are the teams that I need to check in with early that I really want to see? Rocket Spurs, I think is appointment viewing for me this weekend. I really want to see what Houston looks like. I haven't had a chance to check them out yet. And Victor, especially against young teams, especially against other young bigs, I just want to see those battles. I want to see how these guys try to comprehend everything that he can do and figure out ways around him. It's going to be such an interesting mental exercise all season long for the most clever, the most skilled bigs in the league to just figure out what to do with him. Yeah, and you could tell they're amused by it in a way like, oh my God, I just can't believe this person exists. One of the things, the league is so deep. You just think this Friday night, the Heat Celtics we mentioned, Whenby's playing the Rockets, Knicks Hawks, Trae Young versus the Knicks, Nuggets Grizzlies, Grizzlies already in like a little bit of a danger zone. I want to talk about them in a second.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
"72 hours" Discussed on The Bill Simmons Podcast
"Score early this NFL season with FanDuel America's number one sports book. Right now, new customers get $150 in bonus bets when your first $5 Moneyline bet wins. I am gonna be talking about NFL million dollar picks week eight. We're talking to Peter Schrager in a second, do a million dollar picks at the end of the episode. Do I do a tease? I've lost two weeks in a row of teases, but there's a perfect tease, a perfect one with the Lions and the Chiefs. Are we gonna do it? I'll tell you at million dollar picks. You've been thinking about joining FanDuel. There's no better place to get on the action than right now. No better time to get on the action right now. The app, so easy to use, so many different ways to bet. Live, same game parlays. You can find best in new Explorer tab. You can dive into the Parlay Hub, which is great. It's the best way to find popular parlays and so much more. Visit fanduel.com slash bs. Kick off the NFL season. FanDuel, official partner of the NFL. You must be 21 plus and present in select states. $5 pregame money line wager required. First online real money wager only. $10 first deposit required. Bonus issued as non-modrable. Bonus bet set expires seven days after receipt. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. This episode is brought to you by Simply Safe. Basketball season's here. I'm so excited about it. And you know what else I'm excited about? The holidays. I like the holidays. Love Thanksgiving. You know, holidays come around, your life goes into overdrive, and it's easy to forget. You gotta protect your family. And a good way to do that is Simply Safe Home Security, which as I've mentioned many times in this podcast, they have HD cameras for both inside and outside wherever you live. Simply Safe, they can protect your whole home from break-ins, fires, floods, and more. And you can even get 24-7 professional monitoring for less than a dollar a day. Look, people travel. I'm always going somewhere. 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So I was on a lot of text threads last night and today during that Celtics-Nicks game, another game that had some bad calls that I will fully admit benefited my team, but that there was a Jaylen Brown subplot to that game that I started getting texts about and just in general was concerning to me watching it where you have a guy who averaged almost 21 shots a game last year. Now you're watching the team this year and especially when it got to the fourth quarter, and by the way, he had no shot attempts in the fourth quarter. There were just better options all the time than Jaylen Brown for the Celtics in that particular game. I was happy when either guard had the ball. Tatum, obviously. And then this seven foot four freak Porzingis for as long as he stays healthy. Like, awesome if, it was weird because I had the same reaction watching. I'm like, you know what? I'm gonna suppress that as a Celtics fan. I'm not gonna be cynical. And then started getting texts about it. It's like, ooh, Jaylen, is he gonna be happy? Is he getting enough shots this year? 304 million bucks is the third option, maybe the fourth option. How is this gonna play out? This is one game. He might be awesome on Friday night, but it was a subplot I wasn't expecting. Is Jaylen Brown gonna be happy this year on this team if his shots go down? Doc Rivers mentioned this on my podcast on Tuesday. He thought this was the subplot to watch. When he said it, I was like, nah, it'll be fine. And then I watched that next game. I'm like, oh, what is this gonna be? So I don't know. It's a TBD, but I wanted your take. I think it's one of those things that, first of all, yes, it is game one. I know the body language doctor is always in, but I'm one of the ones. The body language doctor is 365 a year, Rob. I get it, but I think your license can be revoked if you act too early on these things. So we might have to bottle it up for a little while. I think it's gonna depend on whether this is a pattern. If every time they get into crunch time situations, Jaylen Brown turns into the guy in the corner, I'm sure he's gonna feel a certain way about that. I think any player of his caliber would. So just like it's gonna depend on who is starting on a night-to-night basis, the Celtics were talking about maybe they can share those responsibilities from time to time in terms of who comes off the bench. Jason Tatum was volunteering. Did you see the top six guys, they had a meeting and tried to figure it out? It's like this is Joe Mazzola nation. Let's do it, man. Never too early for team meetings. The Chicago Bulls also are the earliest players only meeting on record. It's a big day for meetings. So I hope they were all productive. I hope they all were more substantive than an email. Certainly for the Celtics, I like where they are to start. How these things ultimately settle in with Jaylen Brown, extremely hard to say, but I think it's gonna depend on, they're gonna have to pick nights in the regular season, certainly, where they openly clear out for him in those spots, right? Right. That's so much of what regular season basketball is about. It's not just troubleshooting for the playoffs, figuring out your rotation. There are nights where teams just actively have to set up their second and third guy and say, we're giving you this one. Show us what you can do. We're playing the Wizards tonight. You got 25 shots for you tonight, buddy. And there's nothing wrong with that. I think the only question is will he be content if that's kind of what his place in things is? If ultimately, when they do get to the games that matter in the playoffs, or the big marquee nationally televised games against the Sixers or the Bucks or whoever, if he is kind of in the background of those games, that can be a very tough thing to deal with for a player in his position. Well, we have this Friday night game with them in Miami, which I think is probably the number one rivalry right now, right? I mean, you would say they're, I guess LeBron and Curry, anytime they play, that feels like it means the most because those are the two best players of this generation. But I would say for teams, for history, for Miami's chip on the shoulder-ness, Miami's in rare form already. They won their typical one-point game. They came down on the other team, missing weight, and they went to the free throws. They made all their free throws. It was just a classic, ridiculous heat win. They'll have another 40 of those. And they'll play Boston tomorrow night. Boston's feeling good. Lot of Porzingis fever. It's funny, some people didn't see the preseason and didn't see, if you watch the preseason, just the open threes of a seven-foot-four guy who is almost like a free throw for him. So to watch that, I think in that Knicks game, I think some people are like, oh my God, Porzingis. It's like, yeah. The question is, can he stay on the court? But matching them up against Miami, that Porzingis piece, where Miami doesn't really have any size, and Miami was always able to just throttle their half-court offense, I don't think it's gonna happen this year. But they'll lose some other stuff. But what do you- Famous last words in the Heat-Celtics matchup. So I wish you and them the best in that regard, but the Heat have a way of throttling a lot of really good teams in those situations. They are throttlers. We'll see, though. I'm sure Miami, they've read everything, they've heard everything.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
"72 hours" Discussed on The Bill Simmons Podcast
"And he was 17 for 17 on free throws, which was amazing. And just like that kind of driving force is something Milwaukee hasn't had outside of Giannis. So the fact that you have this not only phenomenal scorer who's gonna hit, I mean, he hit and won threes in this game, he had incredible shots, but who can get to the rim and who clearly like knows how to use his gravity to pass out and set up other guys. It just felt a little more in control than we're used to seeing from crunch time Milwaukee Bucks basketball. Yeah, Giannis is not the type of guy who's gonna be going, hey man, I could have used a couple touches there late. Like he seems super happy with it. It was the perfect Dame game because there were people to hide him on on the Philly side the entire game. Like he was like, oh cool, it's Danny Green. I'm gonna go stand over next to him on this possession. I'm not sure they're always gonna be able to get away from that. In terms of their supporting cast though, I still have a lot of questions, but they can always add to it. Maybe Beauchamp, I don't know, could- Could get some real run. Yeah, cause he at least was giving them a little defensive intensity. And was trying to do stuff. But I think the maxi type players are gonna kill that team all season. Cause he was just full head of steam, nobody getting close to him. And I do think if Embiid had had a better game and a couple plays had gone their way. I mean, there was just a slew of terrible referee moments in these first three days. Not ideal. It still feels like the preseason for the refs, but Giannis throwing that air ball to himself with like three minutes left, clearly an air ball. Like it wasn't like, oh, I wonder if that hit the rim or scraped the backboard. I was like, no, he just threw it over the rim, caught it. The two of the Sixers stopped. The whole Sixers bench is jumping up. And then they could have reviewed that and basically nullified the three, I think, right? Or are they not allowed to do that? I'm trying to forget what the shot was that followed. I mean, look- I think it's a violation to play stops, but somehow everybody missed it. And that turned out to be a big one. Well, that's where you're tripping up. It wasn't a violation. This was a revolutionary new act of basketball. And I don't know why you're turning your nose up as someone pushing the envelope forward. Air ball rebounding. Yeah, so if you're Philly, on the one hand you're encouraged. On the other hand, you're in day two of the James Harden hostage crisis. And God only knows how that's gonna play out. And it's this thing you're gonna have to deal with all the time. And you're still on the clock with Embiid. Not great. I really, really enjoyed the Dame Giannis part though. I just, as a basketball fan, it was really fun to watch. And I was thinking, I didn't really love watching the Bucks the last couple of years, because we had spent a lot of time with Giannis, so I knew all his stuff. But in terms of like league pass regular season stuff, I never felt like they were really a must watch. Cause I'm like, oh, I know that team. I'll just watch them when they get to the playoffs. I don't need to necessarily put my Bucks time in. But now I feel like I'm gonna watch more of them this year because their crunch time stuff is gonna be more fun. Right? Is that fair? I think it's totally fair. And as far as, when I think about league pass teams too, I'm thinking, which teams reward repeat viewing, right? Which are the teams that over the course of the season, you're gonna have more and more fun with the more you see them. And Milwaukee has always been a, we play the way we play kind of team, tactically speaking. They have their system, they stay to it. Man, we got game one, Milwaukee Bucks doubling Joel Embiid aggressively. Like Mike Budenholzer's Bucks are a long way in the rear view mirror at this point. So I think just from the perspective of, we're gonna see kind of what Adrian Griffin has in store for this group, how they're gonna defend on a nightly basis, what kind of different things they might do in addition to all the Damon Giannis wrinkles. Like there's gonna be a rewatchable quality to them that's a little more interesting than it's been. But I don't wanna be too down on Philly. Like I think it's interesting that they're doing this kind of decentralized offense and they're clearly trying to, it's the kind of thing you can really only do after Joel wins the MVP, right? He's gotten his acknowledgement, dominant player. We all understand what he can do. They've been very vocal in camp about trying to move the ball more, trying to get Tobias Harris involved as a ball handler. Clearly Maxie is gonna be a huge priority. He had 31, as you said, he's gonna torch the Bucks and teams like the Bucks all season. I thought he could have done even more in this game. Yeah, I thought he could add a 40. I agree with you. He probably could have had like a good floater or a good look at a three almost whenever he wanted based on the match-ups. So I'm interested in seeing how that bears out because I did, obviously they're balancing their offense. Four guys scoring 20 plus is indicative of that. But there wasn't a lot of rhythm to what they were doing. It didn't feel clean. It didn't feel practiced. It didn't feel comfortable for them yet. And so I wanna see if this is the group they have, if they end up having to kind of sit on James Harden for a while and they don't get whatever the return for him is gonna be for months, until months from now, like how are they gonna settle into the rhythm of this offense? What will this ultimately be if this is the collection of guys they're ultimately gonna go to war with for the majority of the season? I think for league pass purposes, they might actually in some ways be more interesting than last year because that Harden and B, two man game stuff, how many times can you watch it? It was Groundhog Day. Let's take a break. I wanna talk about some of the stuff from last night. But there were a couple of things that jumped out to me.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
"72 hours" Discussed on The Bill Simmons Podcast
"Now they look great against Portland. But they look good and they're healthy. And the last thing they want to do is bring the James Harden problem onto their team. So Philly has no options. He's got to come back in the next 28 days. But their best thing that happened to Philly this week was that the Bulls looked like shit yesterday. And that's probably the panic team for James Harden. If the Bulls are just like, Jesus, what do we do? Hey, all right, maybe we just get out of Zach Levine's money and figure it out. But the Sixers-Bucks thing, the thing that jumped out to me from the Philly side is, you know, in beads coming off this MVP year, he really did not have a good Boston playoff series. Certainly not a series he could feel good about in any respect. And you see some of these other guys come back from disappointments, like even somebody like Giannis. And they're like, they just look like they're in amazing shape and incredible focus. I thought he sucked tonight. And I did. Especially in the fourth quarter, I just thought, you know, he missed a bunch of shots in a row. The key play of the game, they're swinging the ball around. He does that touch pass. Oh my gosh. Maybe the worst touch pass I've ever seen. Right to the Bucks. They get a fast break and he doesn't run back. And they end up, the fast break doesn't work out. They throw it back for a three and he still hasn't run back. And it's a five point swing. And it was a lot of stuff like that. He fell down a bunch of times. And this was not a, hey man, I know we don't have James Harden, but get on my back guys. I didn't feel that way at all. You know, and he's going against Giannis too. So I thought from a Philly standpoint, that was pretty discouraging because there are other guys played really well. I thought that was a great Maxi game. Maxi, like he's got all the Bucks games circled because he's like 30 plus. They got a lot out of Oubre, and Harris in a contract here looked really good. Thought some of their bench guys looked okay, but he was the piece that didn't come through for them. And on the flip side on the Bucks, like it's just Dame and Giannis and some Lopez. And then they got a little more from Jay Crowder than I thought. But I left that game a little suspicious of both teams. I know that's weird to say, what about you? Well, I think Middleton being on a very clear minutes limit and looking like a guy on a minutes limit, it kind of bends Milwaukee's rotation in certain ways. It certainly asks a lot of not only Dame, because he's kind of taking on more ball handling, but even your Malik Beasley's and your Pat Connaughton's, like those guys are just having to do more than hopefully for the Bucks they will ultimately have to do. So I think we'll see. What's heartening about the Dame part of it is just like we've never seen Giannis play with anything remotely like this before. Oh my God, that was awesome. 39 points. And as I said earlier, there's a lot to work out in terms of what this offense is gonna look like and how those two are gonna work together. And in fairness to Giannis, figuring out your short roll game with a new teammate when Joel Embiid is waiting for you in the paint every time, like the difficulty has been ratcheted up for this particular scenario. So I'm conscious of that. But for any hand wringing you would wanna do about the Bucks, when it came time to decide like who was gonna close this game, there was complete clarity as far as who that was gonna be. And we'll see if that is because Dame was having a great night, or if that's just kind of what his role in this team is gonna be. But in terms of his place in the offense, Giannis teammates don't score this much. They just don't. Like they had categorically, historically have not. It happened two times all last season. Two Drew Holiday games where Giannis teammates scored 39 or more. No Giannis teammate ever has attempted 17 free throws before.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
"72 hours" Discussed on The Bill Simmons Podcast
"Coming up, basketball, football, million dollar picks. Oh yeah, it's Thursday. Next. It's the Bill Simmons Podcast presented by FanDuel. It's the best time of the year with football in full swing and basketball returning soon. FanDuel, the best place to bet on the action. The app is safe, secure, and easy to use. And when you win, you get paid instantly. Get exclusive offers every day. Jump into the action at any time during the game with quick bets and take home a fast W. Plus check out the explore page for the simplest way to start betting. Download the app today. Bet with America's number one sports book. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Visit theringer.com slash RG to learn more about the resources and help lines available and listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Must be 21 plus and present in select states. Gambling problem, call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit theringer.com slash RG. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Listen, you work hard. You probably have a job at a house that you have to keep clean and maybe kids and parents you're taking care of. You go to the gym, you play pickup. You still have to mow the lawn. You deserve some time to crack a Michelob Ultra, sit on the couch, and watch some hoops. Hoops is coming back, end of October. You know, come back, long day. Maybe get a little exercise in. Walk around the block a few times. Maybe go to the gym, come back, watch some hoops. Maybe just pop open a nice, nice ice cold Michelob Ultra. Because what tastes better than a beer? Around 9.30, 10 o'clock, right when you're starting to get a little sleepy. It's only worth it if you enjoy it. To find out where to order Ultra near you, tap the banner or visit MichelobUltra.com and click Find Product, LDA 21 and up. We're also brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network. I put up a new rewatchables on Monday night. Did In the Line of Fire. Have a horror movie coming on Monday for rewatchables. So stay tuned for that. Coming up, we're gonna have Rob Mahoney talking after the two Thursday night TNT NBA games. We're gonna react to basically everything we've seen for the last three days. Just things that have jumped out to us. And then Peter Schrager is gonna come on and talk about the NFL. Do we have a best team? What are we noticing through seven weeks? What can we expect in week eight that will lead to million dollar picks? And that is today's podcast. Let's bring in our friends from Pearl Jam. Here we go. All right, we're taping this. It's almost 10 o'clock on Thursday night, Pacific time. Rob Mahoney is here from The Ringer NBA and showing TheRinger.com. We stayed up late because these were two good games. We've had three straight days of very entertaining basketball and we gotta start with the biggest story. Kelly Oubre in the Sixers. What a signing that was, he looks great. No, we just watched LeBron versus the Suns. LeBron's 29 minute limit I think is out the window. He played the whole fourth quarter. And then made the two big head down just going to the basket plays at the end. But biggest thing that's jumped out to you in the last three days is what? Lakers wise or just in general? In general. I think a lot of these teams that we expect to be really good clearly have some assembly required. And the Lakers are one of those teams. I think we saw that from the Bucks and the Sixers tonight too. We're seeing it certainly with the first days of the Victor Webinama experience. Everyone is getting up to speed into their rhythms, trying to understand how all these new pieces fit together. Not revelatory for the opening days of the season to feel that way, but I think even some of the stuff that personally I thought was going to be seamless, like the Giannis, Dame pick and roll, there's some kinks in it that they're going to have to figure out over time. Lakers I thought were the one that surprised me on that one because I thought they were one of the teams that were going to have the advantage coming in. You think about last year's team compared to this year's team. It doesn't seem like Reeves is involved enough either game that, I don't want to say he's an afterthought, but it just felt like he was more in the mix in the playoffs last year. And I liked what Schroeder did for them last year and he was good on Toronto last night and really fit in with what they did. So they're going to have to figure out that Vincent D'Lo thing. Wood was playing crunch time, which I was really surprised. Did you think we'd be getting this much Christian Wood? I thought that was like a flyer for them. Guarding Kevin Durant on some possessions, wild stuff. But if nothing else, we can trust that when Christian Wood is out there, he will be Christian Wood. In these uncertain times, we can always fall back on that. He certainly had his fair share of like black hole kind of possessions in this game, but he also does play into the Lakers advantages in terms of their length, right? Their size against a team like Phoenix, they're just going to be able to out muscle, get to rebounds, get to balls that they can't get to. So that part of it paid off, I thought in terms of just like having another big out there and certainly the Anthony Davis experiment continues as far as like, do you want more size with him? Do you want to play small with him? There's always that internal question because he seems a little reluctant to do it on a full-time basis, but I'm sure Christian Wood's going to get his shots. I mean, clearly Jackson Hayes is going to get some shots in the rotation to be a meaningful part of the Lakers, the mix there for the Lakers. So I don't know. I think Darvin Ham has a lot of questions to figure out, including the one you listed with Austin Reeves, which is like, who has the ball? Who's initiating for us? Who is involved on a possession to possession basis? Because this game, this was a lot of D'Angelo Russell, and it was a lot of a better version of D'Angelo Russell than maybe we saw the other night, but it still feels like a lot. 33 minutes for him tonight. Yeah, Reeves, seven shots, one assist. And I thought all of his usage stuff was going to go up, but it seems like it drifted Russell's way. The other thing I was surprised, I thought Rui was going to be a bigger part of this team. I only played 12 minutes, but I haven't changed my thought on them. They're just such a big, problematic team. And if you're the Suns and you're feeling good after that Warriors game, right? And the Warriors, no Draymond, they were able to overpower them a little on the boards. The two centers had 22. And then tonight you see the flip side of the use of Nurkic experience, where it's like, you're getting zero room protection and you're getting somebody who's just going to be confused anytime somebody is coming off a pick. Basically Lebron at the end of the game just said, I'm going to go attack that guy. Yeah, I'm going to go attack that guy right there. Durant was better tonight, at least for the first three quarters that he looked on Tuesday night. It was really cool just seeing those guys on a basketball court after all these years. As I get older, I'm older than you, but just think like, man, this goes way back now. We're talking mid 2000s was the first time these two guys played basketball against each other and it's still going on. So that was in a cool way kind of lingering over this game. I was enjoying that one. How do you think Durant looks in terms of being a 35 year old guy who they gave up three first rounders and two swaps and Mikhail Bridges and Cam Johnson for? It feels like a slightly loaded question. Yeah. He's looked good. And certainly as you said, the first three quarters of this game looked more than good enough. I think the problem was just like this version of the Suns felt very like James Harden is hurt and Kyrie Irving won't get the shot. Nets, you know, just like Kevin Durant and a bunch of like- I blocked that net out of my mind. I think a lot of us have tried to, but you know, him with a lot of like serviceable workaday role players can get you so far. But as you saw on this one, against a really good defensive team like the Lakers in the fourth quarter, they can just shut the water off. And this is where, you know, I'm nervous about the Suns for a variety of reasons. I think if it was just the defense or just the depth or just the injury risk of their core guys, I would feel better. But it's all of the above all the time. And that's going to put Durant in some games like this one. It's going to put Yusef Nurkic in positions like this one where all of a sudden he's triggering your offense because you don't really have a default point guard out there. And sometimes the value of having a point guard in your rotation, I don't think it's really going to matter when Beal and Booker and Durant are playing together. Those guys can all handle and play make and do everything they need to do. But in a game like this, where two of those guys are out, sometimes it helps to just be able to run some offense that doesn't have to involve Kevin Durant pounding the rock through pick and roll. Yeah, 28 shots for him today. 13 including, and then 13 free throws. He played 39 minutes and was also playing the five in stretches. And this is game two. They had to basically try to unlock 2007 Texas Longhorns Durant. That's the last guy I want to be throwing miles on, maybe in the entire league other than LeBron. Cause he's, you know. That's going to be true for Booker and Beal too, right? Like when any of these guys are out, those three, whoever's left is going to have to play huge minutes or else you get into Grayson Allen and Drew Eubanks are playing like a massive role in your rotation. And I like those guys. I like Drew Eubanks. Maybe not like tamper and lose a second round pick like Drew Eubanks, like some teams do, but. I'd lose 50K for him. Maybe not a second round pick. It's a little steep. Yeah. The other game, Milwaukee Philly. So no Harden. I wish there was a way to just mute the entire Harden story of all coverage for it. Anything online, anything on Twitter, all conversations. I just don't want to hear it anymore. And I don't think he has any interest in playing. And I just think, just tell us when he gets traded. Their best chance now, now that the, especially the Clippers last night looked great.
The Bill Simmons Podcast
A highlight from A 72-Hour NBA Binge With Rob Mahoney, Searching for an NFL Alpha Dog With Peter Schrager, Plus Million-Dollar Picks
"Coming up, basketball, football, million dollar picks. Oh yeah, it's Thursday. Next. It's the Bill Simmons Podcast presented by FanDuel. It's the best time of the year with football in full swing and basketball returning soon. FanDuel, the best place to bet on the action. The app is safe, secure, and easy to use. And when you win, you get paid instantly. Get exclusive offers every day. Jump into the action at any time during the game with quick bets and take home a fast W. Plus check out the explore page for the simplest way to start betting. Download the app today. Bet with America's number one sports book. The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Visit theringer .com slash RG to learn more about the resources and help lines available and listen to the end of the episode for additional details. Must be 21 plus and present in select states. Gambling problem, call 1 -800 -GAMBLER or visit theringer .com slash RG. This episode is brought to you by Michelob Ultra. Listen, you work hard. You probably have a job at a house that you have to keep clean and maybe kids and parents you're taking care of. You go to the gym, you play pickup. You still have to mow the lawn. You deserve some time to crack a Michelob Ultra, sit on the couch, and watch some hoops. Hoops is coming back, end of October. You know, come back, long day. Maybe get a little exercise in. Walk around the block a few times. Maybe go to the gym, come back, watch some hoops. Maybe just pop open a nice, nice ice cold Michelob Ultra. Because what tastes better than a beer? Around 9 .30, 10 o 'clock, right when you're starting to get a little sleepy. It's only worth it if you enjoy it. To find out where to order Ultra near you, tap the banner or visit MichelobUltra .com and click Find Product, LDA 21 and up. We're also brought to you by The Ringer Podcast Network. I put up a new rewatchables on Monday night. Did In the Line of Fire. Have a horror movie coming on Monday for rewatchables. So stay tuned for that. Coming up, we're gonna have Rob Mahoney talking after the two Thursday night TNT NBA games. We're gonna react to basically everything we've seen for the last three days. Just things that have jumped out to us. And then Peter Schrager is gonna come on and talk about the NFL. Do we have a best team? What are we noticing through seven weeks? What can we expect in week eight that will lead to million dollar picks? And that is today's podcast. Let's bring in our friends from Pearl Jam. Here we go. All right, we're taping this. It's almost 10 o 'clock on Thursday night, Pacific time. Rob Mahoney is here from The Ringer NBA and showing TheRinger .com. We stayed up late because these were two good games. We've had three straight days of very entertaining basketball and we gotta start with the biggest story. Kelly Oubre in the Sixers. What a signing that was, he looks great. No, we just watched LeBron versus the Suns. LeBron's 29 minute limit I think is out the window. He played the whole fourth quarter. And then made the two big head down just going to the basket plays at the end. But biggest thing that's jumped out to you in the last three days is what? Lakers wise or just in general? In general. I think a lot of these teams that we expect to be really good clearly have some assembly required. And the Lakers are one of those teams. I think we saw that from the Bucks and the Sixers tonight too. We're seeing it certainly with the first days of the Victor Webinama experience. Everyone is getting up to speed into their rhythms, trying to understand how all these new pieces fit together. Not revelatory for the opening days of the season to feel that way, but I think even some of the stuff that personally I thought was going to be seamless, like the Giannis, Dame pick and roll, there's some kinks in it that they're going to have to figure out over time. Lakers I thought were the one that surprised me on that one because I thought they were one of the teams that were going to have the advantage coming in. You think about last year's team compared to this year's team. It doesn't seem like Reeves is involved enough either game that, I don't want to say he's an afterthought, but it just felt like he was more in the mix in the playoffs last year. And I liked what Schroeder did for them last year and he was good on Toronto last night and really fit in with what they did. So they're going to have to figure out that Vincent D 'Lo thing. Wood was playing crunch time, which I was really surprised. Did you think we'd be getting this much Christian Wood? I thought that was like a flyer for them. Guarding Kevin Durant on some possessions, wild stuff. But if nothing else, we can trust that when Christian Wood is out there, he will be Christian Wood. In these uncertain times, we can always fall back on that. He certainly had his fair share of like black hole kind of possessions in this game, but he also does play into the Lakers advantages in terms of their length, right? Their size against a team like Phoenix, they're just going to be able to out muscle, get to rebounds, get to balls that they can't get to. So that part of it paid off, I thought in terms of just like having another big out there and certainly the Anthony Davis experiment continues as far as like, do you want more size with him? Do you want to play small with him? There's always that internal question because he seems a little reluctant to do it on a full -time basis, but I'm sure Christian Wood's going to get his shots. I mean, clearly Jackson Hayes is going to get some shots in the rotation to be a meaningful part of the Lakers, the mix there for the Lakers. So I don't know. I think Darvin Ham has a lot of questions to figure out, including the one you listed with Austin Reeves, which is like, who has the ball? Who's initiating for us? Who is involved on a possession to possession basis? Because this game, this was a lot of D 'Angelo Russell, and it was a lot of a better version of D 'Angelo Russell than maybe we saw the other night, but it still feels like a lot. 33 minutes for him tonight. Yeah, Reeves, seven shots, one assist. And I thought all of his usage stuff was going to go up, but it seems like it drifted Russell's way. The other thing I was surprised, I thought Rui was going to be a bigger part of this team. I only played 12 minutes, but I haven't changed my thought on them. They're just such a big, problematic team. And if you're the Suns and you're feeling good after that Warriors game, right? And the Warriors, no Draymond, they were able to overpower them a little on the boards. The two centers had 22. And then tonight you see the flip side of the use of Nurkic experience, where it's like, you're getting zero room protection and you're getting somebody who's just going to be confused anytime somebody is coming off a pick. Basically Lebron at the end of the game just said, I'm going to go attack that guy. Yeah, I'm going to go attack that guy right there. Durant was better tonight, at least for the first three quarters that he looked on Tuesday night. It was really cool just seeing those guys on a basketball court after all these years. As I get older, I'm older than you, but just think like, man, this goes way back now. We're talking mid 2000s was the first time these two guys played basketball against each other and it's still going on. So that was in a cool way kind of lingering over this game. I was enjoying that one. How do you think Durant looks in terms of being a 35 year old guy who they gave up three first rounders and two swaps and Mikhail Bridges and Cam Johnson for? It feels like a slightly loaded question. Yeah. He's looked good. And certainly as you said, the first three quarters of this game looked more than good enough. I think the problem was just like this version of the Suns like felt very James Harden is hurt and Kyrie Irving won't get the shot. Nets, you know, just like Kevin Durant and a bunch of like - I blocked that net out of my mind. I think a lot of us have tried to, but you know, him with a lot of like serviceable workaday role players can get you so far. But as you saw on this one, against a really good defensive team like the Lakers in the fourth quarter, they can just shut the water off. And this is where, you know, I'm nervous about the Suns for a variety of reasons. I think if it was just the defense or just the depth or just the injury risk of their core guys, I would feel better. But it's all of the above all the time. And that's going to put Durant in some games like this one. It's going to put Yusef Nurkic in positions like this one where all of a sudden he's triggering your offense because you don't really have a default point guard out there. And sometimes the value of having a point guard in your rotation, I don't think it's really going to matter when Beal and Booker and Durant are playing together. Those guys can all handle and play make and do everything they need to do. But in a game like this, where two of those guys are out, sometimes it helps to just be able to run some offense that doesn't have to involve Kevin Durant pounding the rock through pick and roll. Yeah, 28 shots for him today. 13 including, and then 13 free throws. He played 39 minutes and was also playing the five in stretches. And this is game two. They had to basically try to unlock 2007 Texas Longhorns Durant. That's the last guy I want to be throwing miles on, maybe in the entire league other than LeBron. Cause he's, you know. That's going to be true for Booker and Beal too, right? Like when any of these guys are out, those three, whoever's left is going to have to play huge minutes or else you get into Grayson Allen and Drew Eubanks are playing like a massive role in your rotation. And I like those guys. I like Drew Eubanks. Maybe not like tamper and lose a second round pick like Drew Eubanks, like some teams do, but. I'd lose 50K for him. Maybe not a second round pick. It's a little steep. Yeah. The other game, Milwaukee Philly. So no Harden. I wish there was a way to just mute the entire Harden story of all coverage for it. Anything online, anything on Twitter, all conversations. I just don't want to hear it anymore. And I don't think he has any interest in playing. And I just think, just tell us when he gets traded. Their best chance now, now that the, especially the Clippers last night looked great.
Mark Levin
Mark Levin Warned That the Democrat Party Hates America in Jan. 2020
"The commander in chief the president of the united states exercises his solemn duty under the constitution to tech this nation to protect our armed forces to protect our to prevent a regime of almost half a century at war with the united iran conducting itself in a way that harms further american citizens and the commander in chief is under full scale 24 7 an by attack the democrat party media because now they're trying to tie the commander in chief's hands what do you think iran sees when it sees that what do you think the terrorist groups see when they see that or north career china russia any of them who do you think they want to win the next election donald trump anyone or of the democrats who do you think iran wants to win the next election donald trump or anyone of the our enemies are rooting for the democrat party they love nothing more than joe eiden or bernie sanders or mike bloomberg as he arms the american people the democrat party for the most part in this country is an evil force for the most part in our history certain but certain exceptions it's been an evil force and it still and it's proved again over the last 72 hours rooting for the enemy attacking the good guys attacking the good they guys are totally out of the closet folks see this is after he had uh sullamani taken out they were criticizing him and by the way the
Nonprofits Are Messy: Lessons in Leadership | Fundraising | Board Development | Communications
A highlight from Ep 189: Is a 5-Star Development Director a Needle in a Haystack?
"Let's start with an important premise. Your mission, your organization, your clients, the communities you serve deserve a five -star development director. Seems like a pretty obvious thing to say, doesn't it? But do you know how often organizations stay with mediocre or worse development directors? Because they don't believe they will be able to find someone stronger. That somehow finding a terrific development director is a needle in a haystack business? I want to talk about that today. Is it really true that there are way more organizations that need rockstar development directors than there are excellent prospects? Or is it possible that your board and staff don't understand or don't want to understand the role they play in the success of a development director? Maybe it's possible that you did hire a rockstar development director and your organization failed them because they believed the work of fundraising rests with the development director. A couple of things before we really dive in. One, we're going to talk about, are there really a scarcity of great development folks out there? Spoiler alert, no. Number two, should you move a poor performing development director out? Spoiler alert, yes. Another, three, should you make damn sure you have a poor performing development director and not a low performing unsupportive team? And here, I mean board and staff, including the executive director. Spoiler alert, it's one of the big things we're talking about today. And by the way, if you do make a move and hire a new development director, I have a few words of advice for you at the end. Okay, we've got a lot to unpack, but I have a mic, you've got earphones, so let's spend a few minutes on some of these questions, shall we? Greetings and welcome to Nonprofits are Messing. I'm your host, Joan Gary, founder of the Nonprofit Leadership Lab, where we help smaller nonprofits to thrive. I'm also a strategic advisor for executive directors and boards of larger nonprofits. I'm a frequent keynote speaker, a blogger, and an author on all things leadership and management. You can learn more at JoanGary .com. I'm a woman with a mission, to fuel the leadership of the nonprofits. My goal with each episode is to dig deep into an issue I know that nonprofit leaders are grappling with by finding just the right person to offer you advice and insights. Today, it turns out that the right person is me. Time and again, I hear this from executive directors. Well, I can't beam without a development director. It will take forever to do a search. And I'm not convinced I'm going to find anyone better. I'll take gross generalizations for 800, Ken or Mayim or Alex of blessed memory. Enough already. There is an entire sector of fabulous, dedicated, relationship builders who are responsible for fueling the movement to make the world more just, more fair, and more beautiful through their commitment to bring vital financial resources to the 1 .5 million organizations here in the United States. So can we just stop saying that? So what's the implication of this? If you do need to terminate your development director or manage that person out for poor performance, just do it. Always remember, the funding for every staff position came as a result of someone else's generosity and deep belief in your organization. Imagine that person was me. I funded your development director salary and we had a meeting and I asked you to tell me how well my donation had been invested. Could you look me in the eye? If not, it's time to make some kind of change. You owe it to the donor, to your mission, and to the people you serve. But don't do it just yet. There is one very important step to take before you decide to fire your development director. It's recognizing that development is a team sport. A development director is a quarterback. A quarterback needs a good team. Now, for those of you hiring your very first director of development with no staff support, congratulations. Manage your expectations and get out and tell every person in your organization you just hired a quarterback and they need to be active players on the team. Start from the beginning and set the expectations right from the start. Here are 10 things I want you to think about. As you assess whether the problem you have is a poor performing development director or whether or not your quarterback does not have a strong enough team. I want you to consider these things. This is not by the way to slow up the process of managing development directors out. Trust me when I tell you that nonprofit executive directors are slow unusually to move people out. We are a helping kind and we like to help people succeed. And that means that we often fire very slowly. So I'm not suggesting we make it even slower. I am suggesting that there needs to be some context to the decision that you make. So here are what I think are 10 things to think about when you're thinking about, okay, is my development director a poor performer or do I have a quarterback with a lousy team? So number one, when was the last time the executive director made a direct ask to an individual or a foundation, made an ask whether or not the gift was closed? If it's been longer than six weeks, you may not have a strong team. Because your ED may be part of the problem. Number two, is there a clear vision, a strategic plan and great impact stories? Are there great stories to tell about the work of the organization and an aspirational destination for where you're headed? When those things are true, a development director can tell those stories and invite people to join the organization on a journey towards that aspirational destination. If not, harder. Number three, what's the charge of the development committee? Charge, you say? I guess I would put the question differently. Is it if you asked the development committee of your organization what its charge was and they said something in the vicinity of, well, we keep an eye on the development directors' progress to make sure we're hitting our goals. I have literally heard development chairs say that. There's so many problems with that, but I'll just give you two of them. One is, you have just described the charge of the executive director. It's the executive director's job to hold the development director accountable to ensure that the numbers get hit or that there are reasonable explanations for variances and creative ideas generated for how to solve for the variances, things like that, right? That's the ED's job. The second problem with that is that it actually puts the development committee in a place where it really has no clear charge. The charge of the development committee should be a group of people who are the engine that holds the board accountable to meet its development obligations, to make sure it has the skills, the tools it needs to be successful, the stories it needs to tell, the training, things like that. I don't think that's how most development committees see their role. I actually think most development committees don't really quite get their role, which may be a reason that they're not very engaged. So, development committee charge. That's number three. Here's number four. When was the last time a board meeting had some time dedicated to educating the board on what development work is like? I could say a fundraising training, that would be fine. And if it's been longer than a year since there was time allocated at a board meeting to make and help to make board members better, more compelling ambassadors to think about their networks of folks and who could be invited to come closer to the organization. That's a problem because my team needs to be well -trained if I'm a quarterback, right? Number five is development on every single board meeting agenda. You see, important things make it onto agendas. Things that are not seen as important do not. If it's missing from the agenda because development and fundraising makes your board feel uncomfortable, that's just too bad. It's an important part of their job. And when I talk about it being on the agenda, I'm not just talking about the development director showing a report with numbers. I'm talking about real time from the development committee talking about how the board can be more engaged in being effective, credible and compelling ambassadors for the organization. If that's not happening at all, flag on the field. Here's number six. Does each board member fill out a fundraising plan of some sort at the beginning of each year? I know I heard, I saw eyes rolling just now. Probably the answer to this in a lot of cases is no. But you see, one of the key things a development director and their staff team, if they're lucky enough to have one, needs is a prospect list. And I'm not talking about a prospect list of wealthy people. That would be nice. I'm talking about a prospect list of people who could get an E appeal, who would benefit from knowing more. A fundraising plan isn't just, I plan to give this amount of money, but it's also here are some of my contacts. Here's some people that might be interesting for the organization to know, right? What we're trying to do is grow the army of people who would benefit from knowing more, who would derive more joy and meaning and purpose in their lives by knowing more about the work that you do to bring them closer. Let's not forget that volunteers are the biggest source. Volunteers give disproportionately. We all think that volunteers give their time. They are an absolute foundational element of your fundraising strategy. So we're looking to bring people close in every imaginable way. So your fundraising plan can be a development strategy for each person for the year, and it can be very broadly defined, but we need one. And it should be administered by the development committee and the development committee should do the followup, not the staff. If your development director is in the business of nagging the board for things, they will get demoralized very quickly. They won't be an excellent quarterback because they won't have an excellent team. Number seven, it's an interesting question. Is the chair of your nominations and recruitment committee a timid or reluctant fundraiser? Why did I put that on the list, do you think? Well, see, because building a culture of philanthropy on your board starts with recruitment. And here's what I see happen time and time again. The most enthusiastic fundraisers go where? They go on the fundraising committee, the development committee. The people who know numbers, they go on the finance committee. And then the people who maybe are good at process and good at follow through, they go to nominations and they are not usually enthusiastic fundraisers because if they were, they'd be on the development committee. And so these people will soft peddle the fundraising obligation in your organization. They'll soft peddle the give get if you have one. They'll say, oh my gosh, we have a terrific development director. We always hit our numbers or there are so many ways to hit your give or get, don't even worry about your Rolodex because they wanna get that butt in that board seat. They're gonna soft peddle what they understand to be the most challenging part of board service. And what you will wind up with is a weak team that is not invested in winning with your quarterback. Number eight, does your board and staff just special love events? Well, that's swell, but if you're lucky, really lucky, 70 cents on the dollar comes back to you to the bottom line. And that doesn't include the staff time or the board meeting dedicated to what centerpieces you're gonna use and promise me that if you ever sit on a board and the conversation moves to the kind or cost of a centerpiece, that you will run screaming from the room if for no other reason than the dramatic effect. Now don't get me wrong, I am a big fan of special events. They are a key way to market and evangelize your mission. But each member of the quarterback's team has to understand that making a direct ask for support is a key part of their job. Not selling them tickets, it's not transactional. They have to be able to understand that it makes people feel good to give money to causes they care about. And so when I ask you, would you consider joining me with a gift to XYZ organization at the $1 ,000 level and I have made a compelling ask for that, I have been successful, I've made that ask, that person gets to decide yes or no. And if they say yes, it's gonna make them feel really good. It's gonna fill them with a sense of meaning and purpose. Board members need to understand that. If they are sucked into the tornado of special events time and time again throughout the course of the year, they won't learn that. And they won't have to learn it because they're gonna be so busy doing special events they won't have time. Number nine, during the budget process, did anyone add revenue to the budgets that the development director protested? This is what I call a plug number. I do know some development directors who tend to lowball their numbers to ensure success, but the vast majority of them are highly realistic. They understand that money is programs and they want to raise the most money they can. They submit a number, then they're told by audit and finance the programs are really important and we can't cut that so you're gonna have to add another $100 ,000 someplace. And all of a sudden those numbers no longer belong to the development director. And when numbers don't belong to you, you feel don't accountable to them. And that can set up a development director to fail. You know, I don't know if that was nine or 10. I think that was 10. I'm not rerecording this podcast by the way. Whether it was nine or 10, these are important considerations for you to really reflect on before you say, my development director is a poor performer, right? These are ways for you to assess the team of the development director quarterback to see if that quarterback has what they need to succeed. I want you to give real thought to these questions. I want you to remember that development directors need a good team to win, that they need a strong staff if you have that luxury, they need a board and an executive director who embraces development work, builds relationships, grows that army of engaged people who wanna know and do more for your organization. And to be fair, you also wanna evaluate the extent to which your development director has raised the issues they face and has offered solutions, right? Has raised some of these issues and come to you and said, okay, I have a couple of ideas for board prospects that I think are really aligned with our mission and really can help be a catalyst for building a culture of philanthropy on our board. That's a really good example of a solution. A first rate development director sees these problems and initiates conversations to raise them and comes prepared with some really interesting ideas about solutions. All right, so let's say now that after that kind of reflection and assessment, you think to yourself, you know, I really do have a strong board. I really believe we have a culture of philanthropy in our organization. And maybe you're the executive director and you say, you know, I actually really love fundraising. And I can't remember the last time I was asked by my development director to go meet with XYZ person and make a $5 ,000 ask. Maybe your board members are super great storytellers who share those stories, both in person, on social media, maybe all of those things are true. And you actually have real performance issues with your development director. So you decide to make a move. As promised, my last comments here are about that new rockstar development director that you bring in. And I have four pieces of advice. I'll try to keep track of the counting. First, you wanna see that in the first 30 days, the development director has met with the development committee and really talked about the charge, about how this new person wants to partner with the development committee to foster, to cultivate, to continue to nurture a culture of philanthropy and storytelling in the organization on the board. I want them to begin to create a partnership relationship with the development committee that is more than just about there are 10 people that need to be asked, let's divvy up the list and make these asks, right? It has to be broader. It has to be more systemic than that. And it has to be a reframing of the committee's role as one that involves peer accountability. Secondly, I'd like to see a document from a new development director that's titled what success looks like in my first 90 days. And the spirit of this is to say to your new development director, I think I hired a rock star, how will I know for sure? Put it down in writing for me, see what they come up with. Meanwhile, build your own list. Think about what you would be on the list if you were writing it, but I want the development director to write it. And then I want you to sit together and look at their list and evaluate. I want you to assess, are they the kinds of things that would be on your list? Is their list better? But it gives you a roadmap. The first 90 days are everything. There's also a 30 day marker. I want to touch base with the development director after the first 30 days. And I want to ask them a couple of questions. One, what have you learned about our organization in the first 30 days? Two, tell me who you've met with. Wonderly, I might actually want a list. Let's go through your calendar. Like who'd you spend time with outside the organization? I'm assuming you met everybody on staff. Who'd you meet with outside the organization? And then a third question, which is, what do you think you need that you don't currently have? This is always a good way to suss out whether the person is a responsible asker for resources or falls sort of into the whiny spectrum. But what do you need that you don't currently have in order to meet your 90 day success metrics in order for you to be successful in this job? Maybe the person will say, Joan, I need to have a relationship with your assistant such that I can block out white space on your calendar and hold it for 72 hours so that I can fill it with people that you and I should go meet. That's a good one, right? There's a whole long list of them, but that's one, okay? And then I want you to think about the development director's first board meeting. Now, I don't know how, obviously I don't know how often your board meets, but how that person shows up at that first board meeting, I always say that a great presentation or interaction at a board meeting extends somebody's honeymoon by like six months. But you want your development director to crush that board meeting. So I'd like you to sit and think about what success will look like. What do you want people to know and feel about the development director after that first board meeting? And then make sure that your board, that your development director is on the agenda and does some engaging presentation that starts to really catalyze your board around what development ought to really be like, that starts to really reframe development as a team sport. And if you can also go into that first board meeting with a quick win, a gift you've closed, that's the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae. So that's what I've got for you today. What I've got for you today is, what's the moral of this story? It might be time to fire your development director. And if it is, please do so with compassion and speed. The problems you're trying to solve aren't waiting. And the donors who contributed are looking for impact on their gifts. But before you do that, please give thought to the notion, start to reframe in your own head and in your whole organization that development is a team sport and that you're looking for a great quarterback who wants to play for a winning team. And lastly, there are great quarterbacks out there ready to play for winning teams. I hope you found this helpful. Thanks for the work you do. I'll see you next time. The Nonprofit Leadership Lab is led by Joan Gary and is the world's best online community for leaders of small nonprofits. Learn how to raise more money, build the board of your dreams, grow a large audience of supporters and so much more. To learn more and request an invitation to become a member, please go to nonprofitleadershiplab .com slash podcast.
Mike Gallagher Podcast
A highlight from The Mike and Mark Davis Daily Chat - 10/03/23
"Not just any Fleetwood Mac record, little secondhand news, first track when you put the needle down, when that little Rumors album was released, you heard this, you heard the great Lindsey Buckingham, who is 74 today. Mike, you've caught, you've caught the Mac a few times, have you not? Oh, sure, sure. Love Fleetwood Mac. What a sad, what a sad story because he's so, he's a genius. He's a total genius. And they fired him like four or five years ago. The chemistry was just terrible. He does solo tours now and does some, some Fleetwood Mac stuff, but I just hope he's just not... These stories, these stories about these guys all breaking up and fights and all that. The Eagles, of course, had an epic, epic battle. You know, who they fired, they fired, I guess, the, I mean, they had a big, the two of them, the two founders, I guess, of the Eagles. They broke up and then they came back and, you know, it's like, hey, life is short, you know? That's it. You know what it makes you think about? It makes you think about Aerosmith. Same five guys, 50 years. There you go. You got to get Steven Tyler well again because he like blasted a vocal cord. But anyway, speaking of people who've been together for a long time, here's my buddy. How are you doing? Well, I'm good. I'm just trying to make sense out of the, the rage that the establishment Republicans and the Rhinos and the squishes are exhibiting towards Matt Gaetz. Now, I, I think there's a lot of merit towards the frustration over what Gaetz is trying to do in, in ousting Kevin McCarthy personally. I think Kevin McCarthy has done a great job. I think he's, he's fine. You know, it's a tough conference. It's a tough coalition. You got to hold it together. McCarthy did a great job in helping to identify strong candidates in California and New York, in New York. And without those victories, Marc, we don't have, we don't have a Republican majority in the House. Now, we have a slim majority in the House, slim, four, four people. That's it. All right. So I want to present, and I get it, you know, this is probably giving the Democrats a lifeline. It's ceasing our momentum. This is probably not the most productive thing to happen right now to try to have this crisis over the Speaker of the House. But what the establishment types are saying in their rage, and man, are they mad. I mean, Marc, they're not agitated. They're not, they're livid. I mean, I, I heard this morning, I, I never knew Switzerland could be so angry. Man, for Switzerland, Switzerland's got the knives out in the show before yours. Geneva is on fire. Oh, my gosh, Switzerland is burning. This is a reference, of course, to the always even -handed, neutral, and presidential matters, et cetera, our buddy Hugh Hewitt, who has decided to take a couple of sides, take one side on this. Not so neutral on this issue, is he? I mean, it's just like full -blown, Gates is a clown, he's a fraud, he's a traitor, he's a this, he's a that. I saw a tweet last night that got me thinking, and this is, I think, a reasonable thing to have as part of this conversation. Has Kevin McCarthy fulfilled the promises he made in order to get elected speaker in the first place, or hasn't he? It's a reasonable thing to talk about. It was, you know, Gates and Lauren Boebert and Eli Crane and all these real, you know, sharp -elbowed Republicans got concessions from McCarthy in his bid to become speaker. Remember, I'm old enough to remember that wasn't so easy. That was not long ago. Exactly. And it wasn't that long ago. It wasn't that easy, right? Well, he promised they would pass 12 appropriations bills for a budget, in other words, fiscal responsibility in the budget. He'd give members at least 72 hours to read legislation. Now those are not, that's not onerous and that isn't crazy. So those two promises, well, both of those promises were broken this past weekend. And Gates is saying, you broke your promises and we're going to hold you accountable. Now, does he have a plan? It doesn't really sound like it to me. I don't know who you replace him with. Thank you. And it does hurt the Republican momentum we have. There are over 200 Republicans who are solidly in McCarthy's corner. But Mark, we expect some accountability. We do expect disruption. We do expect people who are warriors and fighting for what we believe in. So it just seems to me that to turn on Matt Gaetz all of a sudden and, P .S., insult the millions and millions of Americans who are rooting for him isn't very productive. Are they rooting for, first of all, your sound, sound logic throughout. Are they rooting for him in this particular tactic or they admiring the lofty standard that he has? And it may not even be all that lofty is like, hey, you made us promises to become speaker. How about keeping those promises? There's an old adage that it's possible for multiple things to be true at the same time. Here are the two things that are true at the same time. Kevin McCarthy has been a very successful, very impactful speaker and deserves a lot of conservative praise for the things he has been able to do. There's thing number one thing. Number two is he might have fudged on some of these things, seems to have fudged on some of these procedural things, and I don't say that to be dismissive of them. Some of these things that he promised the Gang of 10 or whatever they were that were that were holding him up. So in what form is this the only accountability? Is this the only way to call him out? Because all I would ask, and I'll give this back to you in the following way, is if Gaetz tactics are so great and if they are to be admired, what is the end game? What is the plan? Trump's have disruptions a plan, and it's a wonderful plan. Various other people who are disruptors, there's a place they're trying to get you to. Here's what I want to do that is specific. Here's the goal I'm trying to get to. What exactly is the Matt Gaetz end game? I don't know, and I don't know that he knows. I'm not sure he does. I would suggest, I would respectfully submit that the way to deal with these differences is behind closed doors, not to burn it all down. I mean, again, make no mistake. I don't agree with the Gaetz tactic right now. I don't want anybody to be lost on that, but I also strongly disagree with disparaging the spirit with which he's doing it. And again, savage millions and millions of Americans in the process. So listen, I guess Cal's out of the barn. He's called for the vote. The vote's going to come today or tomorrow if they oust McCarthy, which is possible because Democrats are quite capable of adding to this misery right now. Right now, Gaetz needs some Democrats. And if he gets Democrats to support him because they like to sit back and see this kind of dumpster fire, well, McCarthy's out, Mark. Is there an irony there in that Matt Gaetz needs Democrat help to oust a speaker whose worst sin is doing something with Democrat help? Yes. That's a great irony with a capital I. Great way to put it. It really is. And I heard a congressman, you know, a RINO New York congressman on Hewitt this morning and they are again, they are on fire. As you said, Geneva is burning. But this guy pointed out, well, I don't think any of the Democrats are going to want to be associated with this guy, Matt Gaetz. Don't be so sure. Strange bedfellows sometimes. Well, AOC of all people said this week, hey, we're not going to it's not up to us to bail the Republicans out of the mess they're in. Believe me, they're enjoying this. I do agree that this benefits the Democrats. I'm sorry for that. And I hate it. But I also don't like seeing, you know, somebody called a nihilist. I mean, nihilist. You know, it's like and he's anti -American and he's got his daddy's boy and daddy was the Florida. I mean, they're just attacking him personally. I mean, it's it's kind of wild. To see it. There are bigger fish to fry. I want to share with you. You mentioned earlier I was listening to you talk about the plight of the big cities. Horrible story out of Philadelphia. There was a young journalist, an LGBT journalist who was very prolific on X and social media mocking conservatives for being concerned about crime in big cities like his city of Philadelphia. And this guy was even mocking the idea of having a gun to defend yourself in your home. He was mocking and taunting Republicans for criticizing cities like Philadelphia. He loves this Jim Kenney, this sanctuary city mayor. Markie was shot and killed in his home this week. He was murdered seven times, seven bullets put in his body. And of course, the ghouls on social media are dancing on his grave and they're mocking him. Can't do that. But but you must understand that this is life or death, that things are happening in these cities. And I hate it. I hate it for his for obvious for him and for his family, his loved ones. And again, a well -known journalist in Philly, apparently in the LGBT community. But the bottom line is a day before he was murdered, he was literally, you know, poo pooing the idea that we got a crime problem in Philly, mocking the people who are trying to draw attention to the issue to make it better. And it's funny. So did you hear the two things when I was talking about the conversion of Dallas mayor Eric Johnson? He said, listen, we need Republican mayors in our big cities, so I'm going to become one. We also need to elect more of them. And that seems like a ridiculous long shot. How do you get a Republican elected in most of America's big cities? And I don't know the answer to that except to try. A lot of people don't even want to try. We have given up. We have ceded the cities to Democrats. Is that helpful? 70, 80 percent of Americans live in these big cities. Is that helpful to just give up or should we try to it's a marathon, not a sprint. It's an uphill steep climb to try to get some sensible Republican mayors who can save our cities. You spend so much time in New York. I grew up in the suburbs of D .C. I'm in Dallas and Fort Worth all the time. You're in Tampa all the time. Big cities are beautiful. There's no more beautiful city in America than San Francisco. It breaks my heart what happens out there. Should we try to save American cities or say, screw them, get buried under your own bad policies? I'm inclined to say you own it. You live with it. You've got to you inherited this. There's a great column by Douglas Murray of the New York Post called The Fall of Lululemon. How stores have surrendered to looters. He tells the story of how Lululemon fires employees who try to stop shoplifters from walking out with the high end material and merchandise from Lululemon. And a lot of stores are doing this. They're firing any of the employees. They're saying, let them go. Let them walk out. And guess what? When you when that happens, when you encourage it. I mean, it's not a sane society anymore. I mean, call us old fashioned. Law and order is an important thing. It's one thing that people want to steal, but for businesses not to mind being stolen from. Well, but I'm intrigued by the employees thing. And for those that don't know, Lululemon is high end athletic wear, mostly for for women, but not exclusively. And so there's some some an arm load is some serious cash if you're going out the front door. Thousands and thousands of dollars. What do we expect? I mean, if I'm an employee, I'd love to say, well, I'm not going to let this happen, blah, blah, blah. But sometimes these people might be armed. I mean, what these what these stores need is armed guards to prevent this, not employees trying to try and try to go vigilante. Two female Lululemon employees in Atlanta confronted three masked men who pillaged the store. All they did was call the police. Right. I mean, one of the systematically said, you know, what do we want them to do? What do we want? They did call them. They were fired. They were fired for for for OK. Pardon me. Confused host for for calling the police or for not doing more for calling the police. No, they did too much by calling the police. One of the fired employee told the Atlanta Journal Constitution, we are not supposed to get in the way. You're supposed to clear the path for whatever they're going to do. And then it's over. You scan a QR code. We're not supposed to call the police. We're not supposed to talk about it. And Douglas Murray says Lululemon isn't the only company in America that has taken this completely lax approach to its own stock. Well, guess what? Lululemon's on the verge of bankruptcy. They're going out of business. And Douglas Murray writes, you know what? I'm sorry. Count me as one who's not real sympathetic. We're in post consequences America. And this is how Congressman Henry Cuellar gets carjacked. Or it's not the specific because of this, then that because crime is going to happen. But we're going to get more of it in cities where people know they'll get away with it and know that punishment does not await them. And there is a choice that Americans get to make. Republicans are law and order. The Democrats are certainly not, no matter how mad Switzerland gets. Look at that. Look at that call back. Happy Tuesday. And the Mike Gallagher Show lies ahead. Everyone knows that putting money aside and savings is really important. But then what? Should you keep your savings locked in a CD for a higher rate or keep them liquid in a money market? Can your checking account help you save, too? Or is it about creating the right combination? We believe real banking is a conversation. Let's talk about the savings options that are right for you. Learn more at SandySpringBank .com. Member FDIC.
CoinDesk Podcast Network
A highlight from MARKETS DAILY: Featured Story | What I Learned Managing a Crypto Fund for Five Years
"This episode of Markets Daily is sponsored by Kraken. Hello, this is Markets Daily from Coindesk. I'm Noa Latcheson here with your weekend story. On today's show, we're taking a look at how crypto fund management has changed over the past few years and how it is different from traditional fund management. Just a reminder, Coindesk is a news source and does not provide investment advice. Today's featured story is by Jeff Dorman, Chief Investment Officer at ARCA, titled What I Learned Managing a Crypto Fund for Five Years. Jeff Dorman, Chief Investment Officer at ARCA, says crypto funds still need to find a balance between adopting professional Wall Street practices and taking advantage of crypto's unique opportunities. I've been running a crypto fund for 1 ,825 days. ARCA just achieved a major milestone, reaching a five -year track record of managing outside capital in our liquid hedge fund. Five years in any other industry may not seem like a long time frame, but in crypto we often joke that one crypto year is equivalent to five normal years, and with 24 -sevenths trading hours, it's not untrue. During these past five years, I have seen many of our peers come and go, leaving a bit of survivorship bias as it pertains to crypto asset management. As Chief Investment Officer overseeing this fund, as well as three others under the ARCA umbrellas, I experienced firsthand the evolution of this industry through good times, bad times, and constant innovation. The five -year anniversary provided a natural timestamp to reflect upon what I learned about managing money and about the industry. Here are five of the most important takeaways from managing a crypto portfolio for the last five years. In short, investing in these markets is very challenging. 1. Tweak assumptions and risk models. This perhaps goes without saying to any person who has invested in this market, but this is not an easy asset class to invest in. For starters, the frequent booms and busts creates a false sense of liquidity and an oft -inaccurate depiction of expected beta and returns. All risk models, expected loss provisions, and sizing parameters are based on historical data and correlations, which change incredibly quickly. There is a reason why most funds in this space are early -stage venture funds, where many of these real -time market -related issues are not relevant. For those like ourselves who manage liquid funds, it is a constant game of tweaking assumptions and risk models. 2. Interpretation over speed. Contrary to popular belief, just because crypto markets trade 24 -sevenths globally does not necessitate 24 -sevenths trading coverage. Overtrading every tick is costly in any asset class, and the additional hours of crypto trading often try to lure you into more activity. But the reality is that the fragmented, global investing landscape actually gives you more time to react to news and information. While there will always be bots and algorithms that react immediately to news, much like after -hours equities trading post -earnings, these initial knee -jerk reactions are often wrong. And since one -third of the world is sleeping at any given time, it often takes days for the true market reaction to play out. A correct interpretation of information is much more important than the speed with which you react. 3. Careful documentation is crucial. On the flip side, the 24 -7 workday does lead to difficulties not seen in traditional markets. In TradFi, even your worst day week eventually comes to an end, giving you ample time to reset and think through decisions, while markets are closed without price gyrations clouding or influencing your thought process. In crypto, these natural resets often don't exist. Take the events of Terra Luna, for example. The entire unwind of a $30 billion ecosystem happened within three days, with continuous trading and new information flow over this 72 -hour period. We made decisions during this stretch that in retrospect would not have been made with more of a grace period, and we have since learned how to better implement risk management during a future period like this. In hospitals, mistakes don't often occur because doctors are overworked or tired, but rather because of improper handoffs to the next doctor, who lacks that full set of information, because the previous doctor failed to document fully. Crypto asset management requires similar knowledge handoffs and documentation.
Markets Daily Crypto Roundup
A highlight from Featured Story | What I Learned Managing a Crypto Fund for Five Years
"This episode of Markets Daily is sponsored by Kraken. Hello, this is Markets Daily from Coindesk. I'm Noa Latcheson here with your weekend story. On today's show, we're taking a look at how crypto fund management has changed over the past few years and how it is different from traditional fund management. Just a reminder, Coindesk is a news source and does not provide investment advice. Today's featured story is by Jeff Dorman, Chief Investment Officer at ARCA, titled What I Learned Managing a Crypto Fund for Five Years. Jeff Dorman, Chief Investment Officer at ARCA, says crypto funds still need to find a balance between adopting professional Wall Street practices and taking advantage of crypto's unique opportunities. I've been running a crypto fund for 1 ,825 days. ARCA just achieved a major milestone, reaching a five -year track record of managing outside capital in our liquid hedge fund. Five years in any other industry may not seem like a long time frame, but in crypto we often joke that one crypto year is equivalent to five normal years, and with 24 -sevenths trading hours, it's not untrue. During these past five years, I have seen many of our peers come and go, leaving a bit of survivorship bias as it pertains to crypto asset management. As Chief Investment Officer overseeing this fund, as well as three others under the ARCA umbrellas, I experienced firsthand the evolution of this industry through good times, bad times, and constant innovation. The five -year anniversary provided a natural timestamp to reflect upon what I learned about managing money and about the industry. Here are five of the most important takeaways from managing a crypto portfolio for the last five years. In short, investing in these markets is very challenging. 1. Tweak assumptions and risk models. This perhaps goes without saying to any person who has invested in this market, but this is not an easy asset class to invest in. For starters, the frequent booms and busts creates a false sense of liquidity and an oft -inaccurate depiction of expected beta and returns. All risk models, expected loss provisions, and sizing parameters are based on historical data and correlations, which change incredibly quickly. There is a reason why most funds in this space are early -stage venture funds, where many of these real -time market -related issues are not relevant. For those like ourselves who manage liquid funds, it is a constant game of tweaking assumptions and risk models. 2. Interpretation over speed. Contrary to popular belief, just because crypto markets trade 24 -sevenths globally does not necessitate 24 -sevenths trading coverage. Overtrading every tick is costly in any asset class, and the additional hours of crypto trading often try to lure you into more activity. But the reality is that the fragmented, global investing landscape actually gives you more time to react to news and information. While there will always be bots and algorithms that react immediately to news, much like after -hours equities trading post -earnings, these initial knee -jerk reactions are often wrong. And since one -third of the world is sleeping at any given time, it often takes days for the true market reaction to play out. A correct interpretation of information is much more important than the speed with which you react. 3. Careful documentation is crucial. On the flip side, the 24 -7 workday does lead to difficulties not seen in traditional markets. In TradFi, even your worst day week eventually comes to an end, giving you ample time to reset and think through decisions, while markets are closed without price gyrations clouding or influencing your thought process. In crypto, these natural resets often don't exist. Take the events of Terra Luna, for example. The entire unwind of a $30 billion ecosystem happened within three days, with continuous trading and new information flow over this 72 -hour period. We made decisions during this stretch that in retrospect would not have been made with more of a grace period, and we have since learned how to better implement risk management during a future period like this. In hospitals, mistakes don't often occur because doctors are overworked or tired, but rather because of improper handoffs to the next doctor, who lacks that full set of information, because the previous doctor failed to document fully. Crypto asset management requires similar knowledge handoffs and documentation.
The Breakdown
A highlight from How the Crypto Investing Landscape Has Changed
"Welcome back to The Breakdown with me, NLW. It's a daily podcast on macro, Bitcoin, and the big picture power shifts remaking our world. What's going on, guys? It is Sunday, September 24. And that means it's time for Long Read Sunday. Before we get into that, however, if you are enjoying The Breakdown, please go subscribe to it, give it a rating, give it a review. Or if you want to dive deeper into the conversation, come join us on the Breakers Discord. You can find a link in the show notes or go to bit .ly slash breakdown pod. Hello, friends. Welcome back to Long Read Sunday. Today we are getting into a topic that relates to maybe one of the biggest themes that we're watching right now, which is capital fun flows and the institutional engagement with the cryptosphere. Now, our piece today comes from Jeff Dorman, the CIO of ARCA, who has some really interesting insights to share about the time that he has been running his fund. The piece is called What I Learned Managing a Crypto Fund for Five Years. And because I am recording my sixth podcast of the day, I am going to enlist a little help from AI me, but I will be back as regular old NLW with some wrap up thoughts at the end. I've been running a crypto fund for one thousand eight hundred and twenty five days. ARCA just achieved a major milestone, reaching a five year track record of managing outside capital in our liquid hedge fund. Five years in any other industry may not seem like a long time frame, but in crypto, we often joke that one crypto year is equivalent to five normal years. And with twenty four seven trading hours, it's not untrue. During these past five years, I have seen many of our peers come and go, leaving a bit of survivorship bias as it pertains to crypto asset management. As chief investment officer overseeing this fund, as well as three others under the ARCA umbrellas, I experienced firsthand the evolution of this industry through good times, bad times and constant innovation. The five year anniversary provided a natural timestamp to reflect upon what I learned about managing money and about the industry. Here are five of the most important takeaways from managing a crypto portfolio for the last five years. In short, investing in these markets is very challenging. One tweak assumptions and risk models. This perhaps goes without saying to any person who has invested in this market, but this is not an easy asset class to invest in. For starters, the frequent booms and busts creates a false sense of liquidity and an often accurate depiction of expected beta and returns. All risk models, expected loss provisions and sizing parameters are based on historical data and correlations, which change incredibly quickly. There is a reason why most funds in this space are early stage venture funds, where many of these real time market related issues are not relevant. For those like ourselves who manage liquid funds, it is a constant game of tweaking assumptions and risk models to interpretation over speed. Contrary to popular belief, just because crypto markets trade 24 seven globally does not necessitate 24 seven trading coverage. Overtrading every tick is costly in any asset class, and the additional hours of crypto trading often try to lure you into more activity. But the reality is that the fragmented global investing landscape actually gives you more time to react to news and information. While there will always be bots and algorithms that react immediately to news, much like after hours equities trading post earnings, these initial knee jerk reactions are often wrong. And since one third of the world is sleeping at any given time, it often takes days for the true market reaction to play out. A correct interpretation of information is much more important than the speed with which you react. Three, careful documentation is crucial. On the flip side, the 24 seven workday does lead to difficulties not seen in traditional markets. In TradFi, even your worst day week eventually comes to an end, giving you ample time to reset and think through decisions while markets are closed without price gyrations clouding or influencing your thought process. In crypto, these natural resets often don't exist. Take the events of Terra Luna, for example. The entire unwind of a 30 billion dollar ecosystem happened within three days, with continuous trading and new information flow over the 72 hour period. We made decisions during this stretch that in retrospect would not have been made with more of a grace period. And we have since learned how to better implement risk management during a future period like this. In hospitals, mistakes don't often occur because doctors are overworked or tired, but rather because of improper handoffs to the next doctor who lacks that full set of information because the previous doctor failed to document fully. Crypto asset management requires similar knowledge, handoffs and documentation for balance between short and long. In debt and equity markets, quiet periods of time, summer holidays often lead to slow grinds higher in price. It is expensive to stay short and dividends and coupons continue to accumulate, adding more buy interest to the market. The opposite is true in digital assets, since the majority of crypto projects accrue value through network activity, slower periods of time tend to slow momentum of an asset. And since most assets have no distribution of cash flows, the cost to short is minimal. As such, negative price action tends to be more prevalent when markets are slow, leading to difficult decisions with regard to hedging and long exposure. As a result, active management continues to trump passive indexes. Rules based passive index strategies simply cannot keep pace with the innovation and changes to these markets. Similarly, these indexes can't take advantage of the volatility, which creates quite a bit of alpha. Over time, this will likely change as the market matures, but we're not there yet. Building a good team is fundamental for success and incredibly challenging. I've worked for seven different financial firms over the past 25 years. I've seen thousands of resumes and have interviewed hundreds of people. I've worked personally in just about every financial department, banking, trading, research, sales, business development. If a TradFi Wall Street firm asked me for a candidate, I could find them one pretty easily that best fits their needs. Five, hire people passionate about the industry. But what are the best attributes and qualifications for a research analyst in crypto? What makes the best trade ops person? Who is best suited to handle investor relations? These are still not easy questions to answer in crypto. During the first few years of our fund, we took what we could get, which is to say, whoever wanted a job. The pay sucked, the hours were long, and the future was very uncertain. Anyone who wanted a job in this industry in 2018 shared a true passion for blockchain success and was willing to learn any part of the job necessary to succeed. Most people who joined this industry pre -2020 are still working in this industry, and their job responsibilities evolve in real time. But in 2021, I could have handpicked any person I wanted from every major bank, brokerage, and hedge fund, who all had zero crypto experience but saw big money ahead. The resumes were pouring in. Many of these employees didn't work out. In 2023, we're back to the passionate souls who will do anything to work in this industry. Six, everyone wears multiple hats. This is a very hands -on business where research analysts have to test functionality of applications, challenge status quo financial modeling, and network live with other industry veterans at conferences. Traders have to navigate back and forth from US macro to Asian currency markets to crypto -specific on -chain wallet movements depending on the current correlation du jour. Back office employees have to test new service providers every three weeks to keep up with changing regulation, best practices, and LP demands while navigating constant bankruptcies, closures, and hack attempts. The common denominator seems to be a real willingness to test new theses. If you give 10 equity analysts the same inputs, they will give you largely the same answer and will present the same homogenous modeling techniques to arrive at this answer. If you give 10 crypto analysts and traders the same inputs, they will most likely give you 10 different answers using entirely different analyses. That's refreshing and often leads to outsized alpha, but also creates challenges when it comes to creating a repeatable formula for success. Seven, trade ops is the most important department. When I worked at credit and equity funds, the back office was overlooked. They were usually young kids eager to move into a real trading role as soon as they could. The job was basic blocking and tackling. Make sure trades settled, make sure your brokerage statement was accurate, and make sure the fund admins did their job. Compliance teams were there simply because they had to be. We all knew the rules, we obeyed them, and if there was any doubt, we checked with compliance but knew the answer would be, don't do it. We should be so lucky in crypto. Trade operations is the single most important job in crypto. You have to touch the assets every single day and a single mistake could cost the firm millions of dollars. As a result, not only do these need to be the most trustworthy people in the firm, but they need to build redundancies that can still operate even if they themselves vanish. Getting into a trade ops role is more glamorous than getting out of trade ops, and those who build their careers in this subset of the fund business end up learning the most about blockchain. Similarly, compliance is not an afterthought in crypto. Unlike in TradFi, it cannot be assumed that your employees know the rules, as most come from completely different backgrounds than Wall Street. Constant education and monitoring is a must. Further, a compliance officer can't just read the rules and assume compliance since there are few clear rules to follow, despite Gary Gensler telling us otherwise. To do your best as both a fiduciary and a law -abiding company is a Herculean effort. 8. The sell side is getting better. In traditional finance, the sell side offers a pretty valuable role. They underwrite new transactions, create novel financing ideas, advise companies on how best to participate in the capital markets, facilitate trading in existing securities, write research on new and existing securities, and pass along market color between participants. Both full -service investment banks and niche broker -dealers exist, but regardless of whether you use a one -stop shop or piecemeal the services with multiple firms, the services themselves are all covered. While the sell side is getting better in crypto, it is still incredibly fragmented and many of these services still do not exist. As a result, fund managers are often on an island, forced to manufacture its own deals, structure its own financings, and do its own research from scratch. Written research from OTC trading shops has greatly increased in volume and improved in quality, providing a necessary channel check on the state of the markets. But the trading itself continues to be very exchange -based, black box, and therefore lacks natural axes between investors. Trading color about flows and activity has improved, but there are fewer market participants to glean information from. There is still no full -service investment bank, and in fact, true investment banking services for underwriting and advisory of token launches is probably the biggest white space going forward. I'm constantly shocked at how few well -known Wall Street capital markets tools are utilized within crypto. Most token launches are doomed from the start. From low float, high fully diluted valuation, FDV token launches, to direct listings at insane prices, to poorly written tokenomics, token issuers, who are often developers and lack financial knowledge, continue to have to come to market without the assistance of those who know how to do this best, which subsequently leads to worse investment opportunities for asset managers. Some service providers are getting a lot better, like Custody Solutions, OTC Trading, and Options Liquidity. Still, others are getting worse, like fund admins and auditors, who in the wake of FTX are pulling back from these offerings. On the tech and research side, it's amazing that Bloomberg's crypto services continue to be irrelevant. The coverage list, their index, and all functionality is still from 2017 and does not take into account how much this industry has grown and evolved. Fortunately, newcomers like Nansen, Masari, Glassnode, Dune Analytics, Telegram, and others have innovated fast enough to take this corner, and we are grateful for these companies. It is entirely possible to run a crypto fund in 2023 without ever logging into a Bloomberg terminal. Overall, fund management is still challenged by the lack of sell -side tools. As the sell -side improves, so will the number and breadth of funds. 9. The investor base is getting smarter. When we began our fund five years ago, we knew the educational journey for prospective LPs would be slow. We were learning constantly as we invested and doing our best to educate interested investors in real time, but it was not practical to expect anyone who wasn't focused full -time on this industry to keep pace. Questions from prospective LPs tended to focus more on how we invest versus what we invest in, and there was definitely a bit of a leap of faith by investors. Fast forward to today and the script has completely flipped. LPs are getting much smarter about the asset class and the investment universe, thereby asking better questions. In some cases, the LPs now know more than we do as they are exposed to different areas of the industry that may not be in our everyday focus. That said, the amount of bad information that continues to flow effortlessly through the media and influencer accounts continues to reach LPs as well, often surprising us in regard to certain topics of interest that we deem irrelevant, but our investors believe are topical. As investors start to become more digital asset savvy, they want far more control over investments and specificity has increased. Asset managers in this space have launched highly specialized funds based on investor demand, including DeFi focused funds, NFT funds, etc. Many asset managers, including ARCA, have started creating funds of one inch that allow for more specificity, but provide the professional team to manage the investments. In 2018, if you asked us, we would recommend going with a professional investor, but as information is more readily available and UI UX of projects get better, we encourage retail investors to research and invest. However, to generate alpha where information asymmetry exists, it's still valuable to have professional fund managers who can take advantage of the 24 -7 news cycle, market volatility, and a murky regulatory environment. Overall, running a fund in this new and innovative space has been incredibly rewarding and we look forward to the next five years. Fund managers will continue to straddle the line between becoming more TradFi -like and adopting best practices of Wall Street, versus finding ways to take advantage of crypto -only opportunities, yield farming, airdrops, testing new applications. The most important factor for success in the digital asset space is faith in the future. We have to believe we are at the frontier of building a new financial system that has the capacity to transform society. While we fully expect bumps in the road and pushback from incumbents benefiting from the status quo, we know that as long as we continue to move forward, fight for the necessary changes, and adapt as needed, this industry will succeed. Okay guys, back to regular old non -AI NLW. The thing that stands out to me after reading that article, as trite and as cliche as it sounds, is just the how early we are theme once again. Every cycle it feels like we see it as the mass flow of new institutions into the space and to some extent it's true. We obviously got a lot more market participants from the traditional sector last time around than we had before. It feels, however, now that we're inching ever closer to a period in which those traditional actors aren't just tourists, but are long -term participants in the space. Certainly right now you have an interesting jockeying for position where the Blackrocks and Fidelities and Franklin Templeton's of the world are laying the foundation for what seems like a much more proactive end -to -end from the beginning of the cycle on through whatever happens after kind of approach. I've said before and I'll say it again that I think Blackrock's ETF application will mark a significant pivot inflection point of this cycle when we look back at it historically. I think we will see it as a firewall that stopped whatever further slide might have happened and reinforced for market participants that crypto, despite being as down as it was in every sense of the word, was going to come back. And so I think about Jeff's next five years running a fund and how different they'll look. The different participants that will make up the market. The different ways in which people will engage. It's pretty hard to imagine from where we are, but it's certainly interesting to think about. Anyways friends, that is going to do it for today's Long Read. I hope you are having a wonderful fall weekend wherever you are. Until next time, be safe and take care of each other.
What Bitcoin Did
A highlight from Orange Pilling Through Sport with Steven Nelkovski & Patrick O'Sullivan
"The beautiful thing about Bitcoin is if it works with baseball, it works with anything. If you think about value for value, the model, it changes everything. Right. Hello. How are you all? Hello from Lebanon. What a cool country this place is. It's really strange. As I travel around the world, sometimes I go to these places where you worry about the economic situation, you end up meeting the most amazing, incredible people, most amazing resilient people, and Lebanon is exactly that. So I cannot wait to get this film out. Anyway, welcome to the What Bitcoin Did podcast, which is brought to you by the legends at Iris Energy, the largest NASDAQ listed Bitcoin miner using 100 % renewable energy. I'm your host Peter McCormack, and today we have Perth Heat on the show. We've got CEO Stephen and chief Bitcoin officer Patrick, Patrick O 'Sullivan. I was going to try and say Stephen's name. I think it's Nelkowski, Nelkowski, I think Stephen Nelkowski. Danny, what is it? Nelkowski. We've never had Danny on an intro before. Nelkowski. Yes. CEO Stephen Nelkowski. Now I've known Stephen for quite some time. When we announced Rael Bedford, he'd already announced his Perth Heat Bitcoin project, and then I met him out in Miami. He gave me a jersey, and we've kind of been knocking back DMs on Twitter for this whole time sharing ideas, talking about what they're up to, what we're up to. There is so much alignment between the Perth Heat baseball team and what they're doing in Australia and what we're doing with Rael Bedford over in the UK. And so yeah, I've been keeping an eye on their progress, been impressed with everything they're doing. They're definitely a little bit ahead of us, but there's so much alignment between us and them. And I know not everybody loves the football side of things, but this Bitcoin and sports thing, I'm telling you, it's so important. It's important on so many levels, there's so many chances to orange pill people by meeting them where they're at. And I'm telling you, Bitcoin and sports is going to be big. So give me your feedback. Let me know what you think. I hope you enjoy the show. Absolutely loved it. Steve is a legend. Patrick is absolutely beavering away like a legend trying to get all the Bitcoin stuff going for them. I'm going to be nicking some of their ideas. Hopefully, we will have some cool ideas. They can nick as well. But yes, let me know your feedback. Let me know what you think. It's hello at whatbitcoindid .com. Welcome, brother. Good to be on. Who's your friend? This is the chief Bitcoin officer of the Perth Heat. You actually the chief Bitcoin officer? That's it. That's the title. Chief Bitcoin officer. That's all I do. That's what I'm trying to get Ben Ark to do for us. You know Ben Ark? Yes. He doesn't even like football. But he comes along. He gets the whole thing. Great role to have. Emerging role. Yeah. You saw that job ad for that Bulgarian team. Yeah. That's amazing. Yeah. We've got a call with them. Joe Hall's trying to get me to talk to them. But there's two upcoming Bitcoin football teams, young whippersnappers. The league is expanding quickly. We've had a couple of recent inquiries from teams in Europe wanting to speak about what we've done with the baseball team. But as we've said so many times on Twitter and in comments that the Bitcoin sports league is a lot closer than what most people think. There's a lot of interest. Yeah. You beat us to it. I think you beat us to it. We had a couple of weeks between us, I think. Was it that close? It was. There was a nose between, I think, the two announcements. We were early November. I think you were late November, early December, something like that. We're talking 21, aren't we? 21? 20 said? Yeah. It was 21. Because I think I announced - November 21? Yeah. I think I announced December 21. Yeah. And we took over the team in April 22. Yes. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You just beat us. Justin. So many things have changed since then as well in so many ways. What we thought we'd be doing in two years has just dramatically changed so quickly. It's awesome. There's loads we can get into and we're going to. But let's just do a bit of background stuff just for people listening so we can build the picture of what we're doing. So, like, introduce yourself, what you do, and yourself. I know we know you're the Bitcoin officer, but like, and then just tell people about Perth Heat, who they are, and then we'll build from there. Yeah, easy. So my name's Steven. I'm the chief executive of the Perth Heat, who are Australia's most successful baseball team. We've won 15 national titles. We've had 34 players who have played Major League Baseball. We've got an exceptional relationship with the Tampa Bay Rays, who send us out six to each eight players Australian summer. And these are top end draft picks. So one of the players they sent us last season, Junior Caminero, is on the verge of playing in the big leagues right now. So they send us the best of the best in terms of their young talent. And we build a squad and we play a season in the Australian summer. We've got a history of winning. We've got a history of producing great players. We're also the Bitcoin baseball team. And it's been, yeah, it's been an incredible ride. How big is baseball in Australia? It's big. It's look, it's obviously we've got the big sports in terms of Aussie rules. You've got rugby. You've got strong national teams with the Australian cricket team. You've got the Socceroos, you've got the Matildas. So it's not a tier one sport. But in terms of the quality of the competition, if you look at the fact that Perth Heat have had 34 players who have played for the Heat and then gone on to play Major League Baseball, there's no other team or competition that could produce that sort of statistics. So if you looked at one of the football teams like the Perth Glory, they haven't had 34 players who have played in the Premier League. So it's the competition is extremely tough and would be one of the best winter leagues in the world, especially with our association with Major League Baseball. So they send players out to you to get game time. And they also scout players that you have got of your own. There's a bit of scouting. There's international scouts in every city. But the idea of sending them out to us is they will see how the players will react in a foreign environment, a different style of baseball, different time of year. How do these players go in an environment over Christmas, New Year? Some of them are coming back from injury. Some of them have had interrupted seasons. That's a good chance for some of them to also build game time. But it's a program now with Tampa. Then in the last five years, we've had five players already play Major League Baseball. Jacob Lopez was the last just a couple of weeks ago. And as I said, Junior Caminero is knocking the house down, his 27 home runs this year. It's just a phenomenal generational athlete. And what kind of crowds do you get? Yeah, they vary across the weekend. We play a series. So we'll play Friday night. We'll play two games on a Saturday. Two? Two games on a Saturday. And then we'll play another one on a Sunday. So there's four games in the space of 72 hours. And the crowd's roughly between 5 ,000 to 7 ,000 over the weekend. OK, wow. So two in a day. What kind of demands are put on the players? Well, it's different. So baseball, if you're a pitcher, the demands are extreme. Every time you throw the ball, it is logged. It is monitored. It is counted. If you're an outfield player or an infielder, one of the batters, then that's what you're built for. You're built to play every game. So all the pressure's on the pitcher? Pitchers, yeah. Good pitching will win you championships. You need a really strong pitching lineup to bring in the different times of the game. And that's the part of your lineup which you really have to monitor so carefully. Because you could start a series with a pitcher. And if he doesn't perform well, when you bring him out of the game, when you introduce someone else. And then if they don't perform well, how quickly do you run through your rotation knowing that you've got four games to get through? So there's a lot of analytics that we look at, we monitor. And as we said, that pitch count is very, very closely watched. I've been to a few baseball games. I've been to see the A's. I've been to see the Dodgers a few times. I've been to see probably your team. Yes. We went to the Yankees. Yeah, we went to the Yankees. It was too hot, wasn't it? Yeah, it was so hot. It was so hot. Our knees were burning. There's not many roofs on the stadiums, yeah? So you're sitting out in the sun, yeah, baking. But there's heat, but it was too hot. Our legs were in shorts, our legs were burning, so we just went and stood at the back and drunk beer. Then the Yankees get absolutely back. I think they were 10 down within two innings. It was like insane. Yeah, but it's a crazy game. It can be 10 down, and you can still win. My wife has now accepted that no matter how far in front we are in a game, she won't relax until that last out. You can be 6 -0 up, 8 -0 up, and you can still lose a game just like that. It's very, very different of football. In football, if you're 3 -0 up, it's effectively game over, yeah? But in baseball, a three -run lead, a four -run lead, it can change with just one pitch if a batter walks, and then suddenly things just change. It's taken a while to understand and to even get comfortable with it. When I first started in the role five years ago, baseball traditionalists would say, well, that's baseball. It's like, no, it's not. It's bad game management. But yeah, it's baseball. It happens in the big leagues. It happens in Australia, and sometimes it happens with Perth Heat. And so your wife, is that because she's got into the baseball, or she's planning for what your move's going to be like? Bit of both. She has to be into it, but I'm not a good loser at all. Yeah, I'm not probably the best person to speak to if we lose a game for a good 24 hours. After we lost the championship series, that 24 hours was probably four months. Mate, honestly, I know exactly how you feel. We lost three games last season in the league. We lost one cup game, and then we got thrown out of a cup because we played an illegible player should have been suspended, administrative error. Every single one of those, I was not good for 24 hours. I spent the next 24 hours saying, what did I do wrong to contribute to that? Even though it's the team and the manager, it's like, what could I have done more? Could we have prepared the team better? Did we not provide the right resources, or did we not get the balance of the roster correct? There's so many things that go through your mind, but yeah, I'm certainly not a good loser. Were you a Perth Heat fan before? No, with a surname like Neil Kobski, you grew up with a round ball in my household. I was a football fan from an early age. This is a true story. Before I took the role with Heat, I had not watched a baseball game from start to finish. I had not watched a full nine innings. I'd watched parts of a game, but I hadn't watched a whole game. That first year in charge was challenging because you'd be with corporate partners, and I didn't know all the rules, and something would happen during a game, and they'd ask, why did that happen? I'd scratch my head and say, I'd have to find out for you. I'm obsessed with it now. My wife loves watching players steal bases, just running from base to base or trying to steal. Then I look at my family, Grey Caritage, and they're all into it and enjoy coming to the ballpark. Most people I introduce do enjoy it because, again, it's a different sport in terms of the pace of the game. You can relax a little bit more and then sit back and enjoy the menu of the hot dogs or the crackerjack and see some home runs in the background. Well, you don't understand the sport. It's a bit like cricket, right? Most Americans, almost every American does not understand cricket. Are you trying to explain test cricket, that it's five days, two innings each, it could rain and end in a draw? Nobody understands it, but when you understand the game, you understand what brilliant test cricket is. Like my son, he watched the Ashes with me, and I had the first two tests, I was explaining how this works, why they might declare, what the follower knows, which never got used. Trying to explain the strategy of it all. And then once he understood, he got into it, and I was mentioning going to watch baseball. I said to you before we started recording, I was dating that girl in LA, so we were going to watch the Dodgers. It was a playoff season, and I must have gone to maybe five games. I went to the game, I don't know if you know the one where Justin Turner hit a walk -off home run in the playoffs. I think it was against, it might have been the Cubs, but by the way, that itself was an unreal moment. The great finish there. Unbelievable. But I had a guy who was sat with me each game explaining it to me. And one of the things I'd never known about is the whole pitcher strategy. My from assumption the little I'd watched here or there, it was just one guy all game. And if somebody came on and it was injury, I didn't realize you're strategically placing different pitchers in the game, especially towards the end of the seventh, eighth, ninth innings. I didn't know any of that. And so once you understood that, you understood the strategy. And then there's huge strategy, whether you're bringing in a left -handed pitcher to pitch to a right -handed batter, left -handed batter, or someone that can face up to a curveball better than a slider, et cetera. Explaining the game to someone in baseball is a lot easier in the ballpark. If you're watching it off the screen, it's a bit harder to pick up. If you sit in the ballpark and you've got someone that can explain the rules, you will understand it a lot quicker than watching it at home. But the strategy behind pitching is nuts. The movie Moneyball and the strategy behind the analytics is spot on. There's so much you can gain out of the numbers. And that's a big part of our relationship, even with Tampa, is the Tampa front office and what they have in terms of identifying talent and how they use it is something that is a great benefit to an organization like the Perth Heat as well. There's a whole Moneyball thing that started coming to football as well. I know specifically teams like Brentford and Brighton have used it. But they're using it in a different way. They're trying to identify talent, which they sell out. I mean, Brighton. Can you look up their sales of players? I mean, Brighton. They have a profit of 130 million pounds, was it, this summer? I mean, historically, they weren't ever a Premier League team. No. It's only in the last, what, five, six years did they become Premier League? They're now established. But the volume of players they sell and the rates they sell their players for, have they got recent sales? Yeah. Let me pull it up. It was the same with Southampton. They kind of had that strategy as well. So there we go. Okay. Caicido, 160 million euros. McAllister, you went to Liverpool, 42 million. Sanchez, 23 million. But there's more in the previous. I mean, is that just this season? Yeah, that's this season. Did you have last season as well? I don't think it was on him. What was up at the top when you scrolled to the top? That was people who had come in. Right. Okay. But this is their whole strategy. I mean, they're now talking, this guy just got a hat -trick. The other Ferguson got the hat -trick against Newcastle the other day. People are starting to talk about him. And they've managed to have this rotation of players. Even though they're selling their best players, they've got these new ones coming through and they've got like an identity, which means it's a profitable business. Luton were the same. So Luton Town managed to get back in the Premier League from going into non -league, which itself is incredible. But they had a whole strategy of bringing players through and it's part of their revenue model. Does that perform part of your actual revenue model to develop players? For Perth Heat, it's a little bit different because if we have players that we continue to develop, they'll get drafted. And the draft system works a little bit differently to football where the club doesn't take the profit. The actual transfer fee goes direct to the player. Oh, wow. It's one of the first questions our board of management asked when they took the license over. How can we develop players and on -sell them? But it doesn't work like that in baseball, unfortunately. So, yeah, we've got a great farm system of producing young Aussie talent to go and pick up minor league contracts. But there's no return there to the club, unfortunately. Were you a baseball fan before you joined? I mean, I played when I was a kid. But not much of a fan. No. No, it was strictly because of the opportunity that came up that I joined. And when did you join? When? Same time. So about a year before, when the talks happened about, well, maybe this is something that we might be able to do. And then what the details look like for making it a possibility for a team to embrace Bitcoin as much as the team has. And then suddenly realizing that it's going to be significantly more work than what it first appeared to be. Because I didn't really have a role there to begin with. I didn't have a job. I wasn't working there at all. But then sort of trying to orange pill the board after Steve got it and to show them what we could do with it. It was very much, this is the idea. This is what we think we can do with it. And their attitude was, OK, go out and prove it and show them exactly what we could do to kick things off. And then from there, it was just small win after small win. And then realizing, well, if we're going to actually do it and announce things in November about just how far down the rabbit hole we were going to go, that we couldn't just, you know, Bitcoin is not at the point now where you can just launch and say, OK, everything worked perfectly. I mean, you know, it's so hit and miss with things that will work and things that won't work. And that's integration with systems that are already in place, especially when you're talking about a business of this size. You know, it's not your micro strategy. We don't have teams and teams of lawyers or people that can look after all of the various elements. And to go all in on Bitcoin means really restructuring how you do everything. And eventually that came back to me as my sort of ability to transition and see what will work, what's going to work now, what will work in 90 days from now and what it's going to look like in 180 days from now. All of that has changed and just somewhat to stay on top of that and to help integrate it into the systems that Steve is already looking after. Yeah. So I'm going to be interested to compare and contrast what you've done to what we've done, because like we're tiny. You know, our crowds are tiny. When we take, if you want to pay with Bitcoin on a match day, we're talking a handful of transactions. You got up to 7000 people there. So that's that's an entirely different beast. What were you, sorry Steve, what were you doing before you joined? My background is media marketing, so I used to be a sports reporter on one of the commercial networks here in Australia with Channel 7. I was there 14 years as a broadcaster, used to commentate to football games. But after being a reporter for the best part of 15 years and seeing how sports organisations run, that's where the real appetite for running a sports organisation came in and wanting to win championships. So I went and worked for a local football team, which is the Perth Glory, who play in the A -League. I was in a media marketing role there for a few years. Is that where Robbie Fowler played? He did the great man. God. Yeah. He used to come over to Mum's house every week for dinner. Shut up. Yeah. Are you serious? A gentleman. One of the most beautiful men. Yeah. We're always on the text to each other. He's a... You're friends with Robbie Fowler? Yeah. There we go. You're in. I want an interview with him. He's one of my childhood heroes. Oh wow. Yeah. And you know what? He's just a lad. He's just brilliant. He came and played for the organisation. And yeah, it was Monday night's dinner at Mum's house. He loved the Greek food, so we kept to a winning formula. That's unbelievable. Do you know the song the Liverpool fans sing about him? About we all live in a Robbie Fowler house. Do you know about this? I don't know. So Robbie Fowler is one of the footballers who was very smart with his money. He just bought just properties all over Liverpool constantly. And see, he's got this huge property portfolio in Liverpool. And so the Liverpool fans sing, we all live in a Robbie Fowler house. Yeah. He's a... He's God. He's God. He's just an awesome guy. Good fun to hang out with. And yeah, made so much time for the people of Perth. We had a great year together. And he's also very cheeky as well. There was a time where we weren't performing too well. We'd lost, I think, five games on the trot. And it was the time that Wayne Rooney was having a whole heap of issues with Manchester United. And we were about to do this live TV cross for Channel 7. And we knew the chairman wasn't too happy at the time. So I said, we've just got to try and deflect here. And Robbie had been in the UK for a week. And the presenter said, so Robbie, what was the trip to the UK all about? And he said, it was to chat to Wayne. And my phone had been, the media marketing guy just blew up, Fleet Street just went mad with this. It was just an off -the -cuff joke that we were trying to sign Wayne Rooney. And it was just everywhere within hours and we had to put out a press release and it was great because it deflected off the five losses that we'd had, but it was just a bit of a piss take. What was his scoring record like at Perth? Look, it wasn't as good as what it was at Liverpool. We would have been nice for him to score a few more goals, but the team struggled a little bit that year. And I think he ended up maybe with a dozen goals from memory somewhere around there. But it was a good year. And then again, I remember him taking out a little urn when England won the Ashes out before a game. And he put it up on his head and there was photos of it. He's just a great prankster in a lot of ways. He's an awesome person to have in your change room. And yeah, I'm really happy to call him a friend. So I went down the Robbie Fowler rabbit hole with my son the other week because, did you watch the Liverpool Newcastle game the other week? No, I missed it. Right. So I said to my son that there were two games when I was a kid when Liverpool played Newcastle. There were four, three consecutive years. The first one was a back and forth. I think Liverpool went 1 -0 up, then Newcastle went 2 -1 up, then Liverpool got it back to 2. Then they went 3 -2 up, then 3 -0. Liverpool went 4 -3. Stan Collimore in the 90th minute. It's an unreal game. And then a year later, Liverpool went 3 -0 up, Newcastle got it back to 3 -0. And then in the last minute, Robbie Fowler scores ahead of this flying header to go 4 -3. And so I then just had to explain Robbie Fowler to my son, why everyone said he was God. And we went down this kind of rabbit hole of Robbie Fowler goals. I was always really sad, though, because when he left Liverpool, I'm trying to remember, was it Leeds and Man City he went to? Did play both, yeah. Yeah, and I just couldn't accept him, not in a Liverpool shirt. Not in a Liverpool shirt, yeah. It didn't make sense to me. No, iconic to that club, and yeah. Absolute legend. Sorry, there's a bit of a tangent. OK, so going from commentator to chief exec, that's quite a jump. Did you have to kind of prove yourself you were capable? Did you have to pitch yourself for it? Look, I did the four years at Perth Glory in a media marketing role. I then stepped outside of sport for the first time in my career and just did some sales, what they called home and land packages here in Australia, selling some land in the house with it, and quickly went into a management role there with one of the companies. And then the opportunity came with the heat, and I was given the chance to run my first club, which was good because at the time I'd just started as president of a football club as well. So the management position was quite similar. I've run both roles now for the last five years, which has been brilliant. What is the mandate for the chief exec? How does it compare to, say, a chairman in a football team? Just look, every club's structure can be a little bit different, so yeah, a chairman for us is one of the shareholders, majority shareholder of our club, so he's who I report to. I've got the day -to -day running of the organisation, and I report to our chairman. What are the main things that you're responsible for the team in ensuring they've got the resources they need? Everything, yeah. Everything, yeah. I run the organisation. So it's basically probably almost identical to my role. Correct. Yeah, absolutely. Bigger numbers. Yeah, there's bigger numbers, but I don't think it really matters, and there's probably a good contrast with a football club. Whether you've got 10 members, 100 members, 1 ,000 members, a million members, the communication is still the same. You still treat your members the same way, regardless of how many zeros are involved. It's the same if you do a social media post, whether your club's only got 50 members or 50 ,000, you're still putting out information. So in some ways, don't get scared by the numbers. It's treat the position with respect and your members and partners, et cetera. Again, corporate partners, regardless of what the partnership value is, they're a corporate partner.
THE EMBC NETWORK
A highlight from Dr Fitness USA The Show Presents The Magnetic Abundance Mentor Rebecca Whitman
"Hello, and welcome to Dr. Fitness USA, the show, exercises, medicine, strength training and stronger medicine with your host, Batista Gromod and myself, Steven Hersey, aka Dr. Fitness USA. Welcome to Dr. Fitness USA, the show, I'm Batista, your host, and I'm here with my co -host, Steven Hersey, also known as Dr. Fitness USA, the foremost expert in the world in strength training and body design, the Dr. Fitness USA show aims to inspire a society of stronger people. Today, we have an amazing guest for you, Rebecca Whitman. Oh boy, are you in for a great surprise. Rebecca is the magnetic abundance mentor, graduate with honors from Princeton University and author of internationally best -selling books. She was awarded life coach of the year and empowered woman of the year by the International Association of Top Professionals. She hosts the top 5 % globally ranked, balanced, beautiful, abundant podcast, which won the positive change podcast award. Her philosophy divides life into seven pillars of abundance, which include spiritual, physical, emotional, romantic, mental, social, and financial, all that you can imagine to have a fulfilling life. She helps people achieve balance within these seven areas to experience more fun and freedom in life. In addition to her appearances as an expert on ABC and CBS, she has spoken on multiple podcast at Columbia University, UCLA, and has shared virtual stages with great thought leaders like Grant Cardone, Jack Canfield, and Les Brown. Today, the topic of our conversation is the seven pillars of abundance. Rebecca, welcome to Dr. Fitness USA, the show. It's a real honor to have you with us today. Thank you. It's so wonderful to be here. I love talking to you guys already in the pre -show. We could have kept that conversation going, and now we get to do a podcast together. So I'm excited to be here. Beautiful. So listen, before we get started on the whole seven pillars of abundance and all this great stuff that you're going to share with us, we kind of want to know you a little bit, who you are, where you come from, and how did you get to where you are today? Sure. So I moved to LA about 20 years ago to pursue my childhood dream of being an actress. And I had small parts on big shows like Friends at CSI and 24, but I never quite made a living at acting. So I found myself working at children's acting schools, which I love because I don't have any kids, so it was fun working with them. And I had a lot of free time to study with great spiritual teachers like Michael Beckwith, Abraham Hicks, Wayne Dyer, and Miriam Williamson. And I really mastered the law of attraction in a lot of areas of my life. The one area that eluded me was my romantic life. And I had a really tough year in 2015. My dad was dying as my marriage was unraveling. And a year and a half later in 2016, in my last conversation with my dad, he said, Rebecca, I think you should write something. I think you're living life in a really different way, and I think you can inspire people. And I had no idea what I was going to write. My dad was buried on a Wednesday, 72 hours later, my marriage was dissolved and divorced on a Friday. And a few months later, I was sitting in my financial planner's office in workout clothes. And he's like, Rebecca, you always come in here like in workout clothes in the middle of the day, and I know you lost your dad and you lost your marriage, and you always come here with such great energy. And I'm looking at your financial portfolio, and you had the best fiscal year ever. So I think you should write a book inspiring people how you're living your life and how you're so resilient. And I believe that God speaks through other people. So I said, that's exactly what I'm going to write about. So I wrote a book called How to Make a Six Figure Income Working Part Time. And it's not a business plan. It's how I lived my life and live my life to make six figures working part time. And in that book, I divide life into seven key areas, which I call my seven pillars of abundance. And now I'm coaching women. I'm helping them go from burned out to balanced, beautiful, and abundant. I have a podcast called The Balanced, Beautiful, and Abundant Show, where I interview experts in each of these seven areas. You guys are going to be on the podcast talking about fitness. And I just love my mission of taking overworked, stressed out women and transforming them from burned out to balanced, beautiful, and abundant. So that's how I got to where I am today.
The Bitboy Crypto Podcast
A highlight from XRP Has New Competitor?!
"That's what he said. He called crypto and Bitcoin. Everything was a pet rock back in the fall of 2022, early 2023. All right, let's talk about JP Morgan here. Big bank enters the crypto game, everybody. JP Morgan launches a blockchain -based deposit token. You maybe heard of that bank. Kind of big. There's Jamie Dimon right there. Bitcoin price has a long history responding to changes in the banking industry. A recent development on the 8th suggests that JP Morgan is preparing to make a significant impact on digital finance. According to Bloomberg, the bank is on the verge of completing a blockchain -based deposit token, but it is pending approval from US regulators. But I mean, after State Street, after BlackRock, after Vanguard, JP Morgan is going to be high on that list where maybe they're more likely to get a yes than you are or than I am or just, you know, regular regional bank and just boom f Egypt. All right, finally, blockchain and banking. A new start in contrast to stablecoins issued by non -bank entities. This new token will be introduced by traditional depository institution. This token will complement JPM Coin, which is currently limited transactions within the bank itself. However, the new token will enable transactions not only within JP Morgan, but also within other financial institutions, particularly for settlements involving tokenized securities here. Their new system alongside the existing system XRP has raised questions. Some believe it may be impacted by regulatory issues, allowing the SEC to allow new crypto players while retaining Ripple. So yeah, JP Morgan and Ripple are semi -competitors now. Yeah, he got tired of everyone else's pet rocks making money, and so he decided it's time to make some pet rocks of my own, I guess is what we're seeing happen here. I miss the pet rock craze, but I guess I was an NFP, so it's the same thing. Yeah, that's what he said. He called crypto and Bitcoin. Everything was a pet rock back in the fall of 2022, early 2023. So it's pretty classic JP Morgan move here. Again, I've said this before. I think it's a requirement when you're applying to be the CEO of JP Morgan that you have to commit to at least three misdirections a year to tell your clients to do one thing while you do the other, and Jamie Diamond's doing a great job. He's definitely earning his bonuses in that category. All right, we got some big Mackie fans in the chat. Captain Kirk can't stay for the whole stream. He's off today to go ride his motorcycle with some friends on the beach. Hey, that sounds pretty good. Guys, it is the weekend. Make sure you touch some grass. Some point, some point over the next 72 hours. Just at least one blade. All right, let's talk about BRICS here. JP Morgan predicts the future of the US dollar. The world's leading bank and financial institution analyze the de -dollarization efforts initiated by the BRICS Alliance. The dollar is at risk of losing its reserve status as the BRICS countries use local currencies for trade settlement. In a recent analysis, JP Morgan predicted the future of the dollar after facing threats from the BRICS block. The institution studied the risk of de -dollarization as other currencies look to become the global reserve. JP Morgan predicts how long we can remain as the said that the Chinese Yuan is the only contender that is looking to topple the US dollar outline two scenarios. First is global financial situation turns worse, making the dollar lose stability. The second scenario would be external factors outside the US when other countries boost their native currency. So just think, uh, you know, we're stagnant while they move ahead. The first scenario includes adverse events that undermine perceived safety, safety and stability of the greenback and the US is overall standing as the world's leading political and military power. The second factor involves positive developments outside the US that boost the credibility of other countries, economic political reforms in China, for example. However, the chances of these two occurring on top of each other remains slim. The dollar remains the de facto Supreme currency and the Yuan comes nowhere close to threatening it. Therefore BRICS block might not be thrown the US dollar anytime soon. According to JP Morgan, the bull case scenario against BRICS would be, uh, some of these countries do not really get along. Folks, uh, China and India are literally in a land war today. They're shooting guns at each other. And so there's, uh, some of these countries, you know, traditionally speaking, they don't want to do business with each other, but you know, the trade is pretty heavy amongst them. But you know, the, the agel is saying the enemy of my enemy is my friend, so they can put differences aside if they decide that the dollar is the bigger enemy and US is the bigger enemy. So yeah, you're right. There's that, that happening, but it's going to be interesting to see what BRICS does with, especially, I mean, no, no, no currency in BRICS and BRICS nations is a good currency. I think they are going to have to go the blockchain route to create something to actually compete with the dollar. Does that happen anytime soon in terms of actually giving the dollar problems? I don't know, but that's gotta be the only solution for them. Uh, Deezy, where's your hat? Crank. It is gone. The wind blew it away. The wind blew it away. Uh, channel is still chill. Thank you. Uh, evil mist will touch some grass. Well, don't do no evil misting on your yard outside, or at least wait till it's dark. Top ramen better than hospital sandwiches. I don't know. Some hospitals probably got good food. I mean, there was a hospital out in Tampa that had fantastic food. All right, chat, type in your favorite ramen topping that you add. What's your secret ingredient? Me, probably, if I had to choose one, going with hard -boiled egg. Going with hard -boiled egg. JP Morgan, though, final thing on JP Morgan. Guys, they're not exactly a great actor within the space. This is the violation tracker of banking here, and the penalty since 2000 that JP Morgan has paid, $38 ,000. No, no, no, sorry. I missed a comma. $38 million. Wait, I missed another comma. $38 billion, folks. $38 billion, basically $39 billion. And they've made $100 billion in all those illegal activities, so they are sitting nice and happy. Oh yeah, they're still in the green, baby. They're still in the green. Number of records, 266.
Crypto News Alerts | Daily Bitcoin (BTC) & Cryptocurrency News
A highlight from 1380: Bitcoin ETF Will Send BTC to $1,000,000 - Michael Saylor
"In today's show, I'm going to be breaking down the latest technical analysis as the Bitcoin difficulty jumps six percent to a new peak as miners ignore the Bitcoin price dip. We'll also be discussing one metric hinting at an opportunity of a lifetime to be accumulating BTC. We'll also be discussing the 20 billion dollar delay as the appeal court pushes back the decision on Grayscale spot Bitcoin ETF. We'll also be sharing Bitcoin still on track for a huge bull market despite losing critical support. According to top crypto analyst Dave the Wave and quoting Max Kaiser, gold prices are provably manipulated. Arresting these guys hasn't stopped it. Bitcoin futures ETFs, not spot price ETFs, allow similar price suppression scams. This is why futures ETFs are getting approval, but not the spot price ones. We'll also be discussing Michael Saylor's one million dollar price prediction. He says it looks like a spot ETF will probably get approved, sending the Bitcoin price to one million dollars per coin. We'll also be taking a look at the overall crypto market. All this plus so much more in today's show. Yo, what's good crypto fam? This is first and foremost a video show. So if you want the full premium experience with video, visit my YouTube channel at cryptonewsalerts .net. Welcome everyone. Just tuning in and joining us. The crypto market is pumping once again, which we love to see. Bitcoin's on the cusp of recapturing 27 ,000 and the entire market is back in the green. If that excites you, let me know in the comments below. Checking out our market watch right here and shout out to everyone in the live chat. You can see Bitcoin trading at 26 ,700, up three and a half percent for the day. We have Ether trading at just about 1 ,704 % for the day, and some of the top gainers in the top cryptos include Solana and Cardano. And checking out coinmarketcap .com, we're back on the climb with about 37 billion in volume in the past 24 hours. The Bitcoin dominance at 48 and a half percent and the Ether dominance at 18 .9 % and checking out the top 100 crypto gainers for the past week. AC of green, finally, it's about time. Only a handful in the red, massive gains across the entire altcoin market. And checking out the crypto greed and fear index. We're still stuck in fear, unfortunately, but I have a good feeling this will be updated tomorrow, probably back in neutral. Last month we were in greed. And now let's check out our Bitcoin technical analysis for the day. Check out the charts and what is happening. And again, welcome to everyone just joining us. Make sure to say hello in the live chat and let us know where you're tuning in from. For the technicals, we're using trading view today. You can see the oscillators overall. The signal is neutral and we have a strong sell for the moving averages at this current time. You can see relative strength index on the left neutral. The majority of all of these indicators are neutral, but on the right, most of the exponential moving averages are currently in sell territory as a lot of people have been selling, I'd say in the past 48, 72 hours. But guess what? We're pumping and back in the green. So hopefully we can climb back above 27 ,000 and eventually recapture that 32 ,000 level, which is the current high for the year. And a quick reminder, there's not much resistance in between that 32 and 40 ,000 levels. So do you guys think we're likely to continue dropping down as everyone was preaching doom and gloom the past two, three days in the market when we had like over a billion dollars liquidated, et cetera? Let me know your honest thoughts in the comments right down below. You already know you're tuned into crypto news alerts. I am bullish every single day, 365 days out of the year, because I understand Bitcoin. I understand the long haul trajectory is up because I have a long term investment mindset. I'm looking at this thing five, 10 years plus out. I'm not looking, what's the price going to be tomorrow or next week? Let me know if you guys can relate. But with that being shared, fam, now let's discuss the Bitcoin difficulty adjustment, which just occurred, which is always a good sign as the network continues to get stronger and stronger. And this is a very strong fundamentals. Bitcoin's network fundamentals are in no mood to follow bearish Bitcoin price action this week. The latest on -chain data confirms that difficulty hits yet another all time high with the hash rate not far behind. And as Max Keiser commonly shares, the Bitcoin price follows the hash rate. That's facts, fam. Keeping that in mind, let me know if you are currently bullish. Despite dropping 10 % last week, the miners appear to be taking the price downturn in their stride. This was cemented in the network activity August 22nd as difficulty increased 6 % at its latest biweekly automated adjustment. Not only was this enough to take the difficulty to the new record highs, but it also marked Bitcoin's sixth largest difficulty uptick of this year and figures for monitoring resource BTC .com show. Difficulty is a reflection of both miner capitulation and the Bitcoin network security, and its upwards trajectory suggests that the miners are not yet struggling when it comes to profitability. That means the miners earn profit. The next automated readjustment is already due to continue the trend, taking difficulty over 56 trillion for the first time in history. And here you're looking at that all time high chart for the difficulty adjustment, showing the Bitcoin network fundamentals stronger than ever. Now, a similar story concerns the hash rate, the estimated hashing deployment by miners to the Bitcoin blockchain. And while not possible to calculate exactly, so depending upon the source, hash rate is already challenging existing all time highs of over 400 exahashes per second. Let's freaking go. Responding to the data, we have the MACD, a contributor to on -chain analytics platform CryptoQuant, referenced high confidence in the security and reliability amongst network participants for both Bitcoin and the largest altcoin, Ether, quoting them here. Recently, the prices of Bitcoin and Ethereum have fallen by negative 10%. However, the network security and reliability have increased. Go figure. First, the Bitcoin hash rate shows higher figures during the decline, which shows that miners are more active in Bitcoin mining. And second, the Ethereum staking rate shows that more ETH has been staked, even though the price has fallen, quoting them again. This means that investors have high confidence in the security and reliability of Bitcoin and the Ether networks. The fact that the price had fallen, despite the increase in the intrinsic value of the two assets, means that they are undervalued and it can be considered a time to actively accumulate those assets. So you're already no fan, keep stacking them sass. And isn't this a sexy chart showing you the Bitcoin hash rate as it continues to climb? And separate data from on -chain analytics firm Glassnode shows little tangible change in the amount of Bitcoin held by mining entities. This stood at just over 1 .83 million BTC as of yesterday, up by a steady 0 .08 % since the start of the month. So there you have it. I mean, let me know in the comments, how many of you are currently bullish on the King crypto and anticipating that price climbing as we inch closer and closer to that Bitcoin having right around the corner, estimated to be sometime in April of 2024. We also are going to be talking about the spot Bitcoin ETF as upon approval, we can send the Bitcoin price North of $1 million, according to the one and only Michael Saylor, which will be covered in great detail a little later on in the show. Now let's discuss some mass accumulation going on. We've been discussing this as the whales continue to huddle and continue to stack sats while the short term hodlers are the ones with the weak hands, the paper hands who are selling to the strong hands. But anyways, let's discuss this accumulation crypto data platform Santiment is offering insight into signals that could indicate the right time to accumulate Bitcoin as well as the alts. Santiment marketing director Brian Quinn volian says that buying opportunities for crypto assets have historically presented themselves when trader sentiment is neither pessimistic or optimistic across the major social media platforms such as Reddit and X, quitting them here when all four social media platforms align and have settled back down to mentions of buying the dip. This is when the actual opportunity has historically presented itself for patient traders. Patience be thy name. What's up, sages? Now, believe it or not, it is a good sign that people are no longer certain that this is a buy the dip spot. It means that pessimism is beginning to take over again as the market caps fade. And according to the analysts, optimism in the crypto community was high immediately after Bitcoin fell close to 26 ,000 the first time since June. But the sentiment quickly changed, quitting them again. What has happened following the Bitcoin dropped to 26 ,100 and subsequent altcoin bloodbath for starters, it is no surprise. We saw a huge rise in buy the dip mentions. This indicates that trader optimism was quite high and there could be a quick market recovery. But look at how the wishful thinking has died down considerably in the past few days. Now on the level of discussion that Bitcoin and the alts are currently experiencing, Santiment's director of marketing shared the following. We can also see that the percentage of discussions related to Bitcoin spike to its highest level of the year on the tail end of the market crash. However, instead of Bitcoin social dominance staying high, it quickly dropped back down to relatively normal levels as traders appear to be showing some greed in relation to whatever the hot altcoin on the block are currently. Now, we could actually like to see the social dominance stay quite high as this scenario is usually correlated with thriving and healthy crypto markets. High discussion related to the number one asset coincides with fear, whereas discussions about more speculative assets tend to coincide with greed and fear is when the markets rise. Facts. So there you have it. Let me know if you are currently accumulating or are you getting rid of your bags in hopes that the price drops lower? I know a lot of people were like very bearish in the past few days in the show. They're like, we're going to be dropping back down sub $20 ,000. Some people predicting a new low for the cycle. Current low is sitting at roughly $15 ,700. And I'm skeptical of all that. There's always a probability that anything could happen, but I just do not see the price action dropping sub $20 ,000, but we'll see how it plays out. I'm just too bullish coming with that halving around the corner. All the ETFs and the apps from the likes of Fidelity and BlackRock and the list goes on and on. Obviously, that's the smart money and we like to follow the smart money and not the dumb money as we discuss often here in the show. Now let's discuss in more detail the Spot Bitcoin ETF and what is happening.
Capstone Conversation
Kerry Hillis, Moraga Council Member, Talks Fire Preparedness
"You've talked a bunch about fire safety as it relates to a community that has limited access to ways in and out. A cul -de -sac community, as you described it, you're surrounded by open space, hills, trees. What tips do you have for your residents or anybody regarding fire safety and preparing for the upcoming fire season? The Moraga -Arinda Fire District is great. They have drive through Long -Arinda, particularly in Orinda and Moraga and Lafayette. You will see a significant difference between the clearance, the vegetation clearance that's been achieved in Moraga and Orinda versus Lafayette. The difference is Lafayette isn't an MOFD, Lafayette has their fire service handled by ConFire. So ConFire has different regulations. They haven't required as much clearance. We are required to do very similar levels of clearance to what, you know, my mom had to do with our cabin up in the Sierras for the last 30 years, where, you know, you have to clear debris. You have to limb trees up to six feet above the ground to prevent fire. So my advice is to, you know, to, to look to your fire district, to your fire department for what their requirements are. If they are not as forward thinking as our fire district in terms of requiring them, do what you can to meet those requirements. In addition, just like you have to have an emergency go bag in the event of an earthquake that has supplies for your family, water, food, potential clothing, to sufficient to last for 72 hours, you should develop that because you never know. We have one, my wife knows where it is. The, our nanny knows where it is. I'm at work and if something happens, and this, we came close to that point two years back where we were at our other property and we saw the hill that was less than a quarter mile from our house. The one that has the graffiti all over it, ConOnFire. And I was at a business event across the state and my wife is sending me pictures of helicopters coming in and dropping flame work hardened, like right outside of our master bedroom window. And we had to be, and they were ready to go. We had walkie talkies that were charged. We had our backpack with our emergency supplies. We knew our evacuation routes to get in and out of town. And that's the other key thing. It's not always the best, even with seeing that it's not always the best idea to evacuate unless you hear that from first responders. And part of the reason for a community like ours is everyone hit the road at the exact same time to get out of town. No one would go anywhere because we, our fire chief, Chief Winokur has told us that our road system in Merage is already insufficient to handle just the people we have here now. You have a mass casualty or catastrophic event and everyone gets on the road at the same time. No one's going anywhere. So pay attention to law enforcement, public safety. We're also going to be funding for our communities and evacuation study so that we know, so we can better inform our residents what group you're in when you need to get out of town and what other modifications need to be done to ensure that we can keep people safe. Also, if your fire district, fire department has not imposed new fire standards, MOFD, I would say they have one of some of the best fire building standards in terms of what plants are safe to plant in front of your house. What safe distance there should be two feet from the property itself, whether or not you need to have sprinklers on your roof, on top of your roof, not inside your house so they can put out embers. So all of those things, they're expensive, but there's a lot of things that folks can do to prepare.
THE EMBC NETWORK
A highlight from Life Support, Surviving Guillain-Barre Syndrome with Author, Rare Illness Advocate and Survivor Holly Frances
"And that's it for this video. Holly, write us through that one. Give us that whole concept of what happened and what it is, and then what was the symptoms, you know, the whole thing, and then the experience itself. Sounds good. So, this all happened back in 2011. So, I was 26 years old at the time, and I was completely healthy. I had a great career. I was newly married, and I'd actually just given birth to my daughter. So, I had a wonderful nine month pregnancy. I was really looking forward to my future and being a mom and just creating all these new memories and starting this new chapter of my life. And so, it was a really, really exciting and happy time in my life. And, you know, you have your whole life planned, but sometimes life has a different plan for you. And that's what happened with me. And so, I was at home recovering from a c -section. I had a baby, and, you know, just adjusting to life as a new mom. And it was tough, breastfeeding and getting up in the middle of the night, but I loved it. And I was just, like I said, just really, really happy. But then suddenly, I got this weird pain in my neck. So, that was one of my first symptoms that I had. And at the time, I thought it was just like a pinched nerve or something like that. Later, I got some tingling in my fingertips. I kind of just ignored that. And then later that night, it progressed to kind of weakness in my legs. So, it kind of felt like I was getting the flu. And I was walking up the stairs, and I remember thinking, I'm really tired, and I'm really drained, and my legs feel really heavy, and thought that I was just getting sick. And I also thought, you know, I'm probably just really tired, need a good night's sleep. And especially me, I'd been healthy my entire life. So, I certainly didn't now. Unfortunately, everything really progressed very quickly. And within a few hours after that, the pain was so severe that I was in tears. And I was taking pain medication, and it wasn't helping. And I'm going on Google, and I'm Googling like these symptoms, and it's saying I have a pinched nerve. Because that's what you do when you have symptoms, right? You Google. Yeah, WebMD, exactly. So, of course, that's what it says, I have a pinched nerve. And so, I'm trying to ignore it, and I'm trying to do massages and stretches, and nothing's helping. I go to bed that night trying to ignore it. And my daughter actually woke up in the middle of the night to nurse. And when I stood up to go to her, my legs actually gave out on me. And so, I fell to the floor. And it was then that I knew that it was much more severe than a pinched nerve, or maybe it was a pinched nerve, but it was very serious. It was affecting my ability to walk, basically. So, I went to the hospital. I had my had him drop me off. And I said, you know, I don't want my newborn coming in with me. Just come back in a couple hours. I'll call you once I'm ready. And unfortunately, things progressed so quickly that within 12 hours of arriving at the hospital, I was completely paralyzed, breathing on a ventilator in the ICU. That's how quickly it came on. What? That's ventilator. I mean, I got the paralysis piece, but the ventilator, I mean, so the whole body was not functioning. This is not just the extremities. Yeah. So, basically, what happened? So, once I went into the hospital, I was lucky that I saw a doctor that he admitted, I don't know what's wrong with you, but I'm going to try and find somebody that might. He noted that I was very weak, and I was losing grip strength, and I was losing the ability to walk. And he brought down a neurologist to come meet me. And he had seen a case of GBS before. And he said, I think you have this rare disease called Guillain -Barre syndrome. And I remember just looking at him going like, I don't know what that is. I've never heard of that. Most people have never heard of GBS. And so, what it is, is it's a rare autoimmune disorder. And it's very similar to multiple sclerosis. So, a lot of people know what MS is. And MS is affecting basically the brain and the spinal cord. And GBS is very similar, but it basically affects the nerves in the body. And so, your immune system sees an attack on the body, and then it sends out your immune system to basically, you know, attack or fight whatever it sees. And the body then begins to attack itself in GBS. And so, that's what's happening to me. It started to attack the nerves. And basically, it stopped my body from being able to transmit signals and causing weakness and eventually paralysis. So, the paralysis for me spread so quickly. Within 72 hours of my very first symptom, it spread all the way up my diaphragm and affected my lungs and basically paralyzed my diaphragm. So, it affected my ability to breathe on my own. And so, that was when I was rushed to ICU, put a tube in my mouth, and basically, basically on my deathbed, not sure if I was going to survive.
The Dan Bongino Show
Enforce the Bongino Rule Over Soldier Detainment in North Korea
"Eric Bolling Show, so check that out. Folks, his story about our military man who is now in North Korea in custody at the I am applying and I'm strictly enforcing, Jim, Bongino the rule. Strict enforcement, meaning before you derive a final conclusion about a story, not suggesting you shouldn't talk about it. Give it 24 to 72 hours or it's because you're probably gonna get spin first. So, was this person taken by the North Koreans? Was he a defector to North Korea? Was there some mental thing going on? I don't know. I'm just gonna tell you this. I've been there and I'm gonna let you formulate your own opinion when the facts come out over 24 to 72 hours. I have been to the DMZ. I was there, I guess, over 10 years ago, more than 10 years ago, in my capacity, in my prior line of work. The village that the militarized zone is in is called Panmunjom, although I always say it wrong. And it is the actual border between North and South Korea. On that border, there is a literal line on the ground that is the North Korean border. Now, it's the North South Korean border. They tell you, do not mess around. When you go there, you collect this little briefing in this room. And they tell you, don't screw around, because they show you what happens if you screw do around. And on the wall in this room are pictures of, this is a military guy, I forget when it happened, getting attacked by from North Korean military people
KCBS All News
"72 hours" Discussed on KCBS All News
"Enough to make it safe. Officials say they will let people in the area know when it is safe and until then to avoid using the water even if it's just to brush your teeth or wash the dishes. As the Bay Area braces for another round of rain this week, it looks like the heaviest rainfall and the strongest winds are expected Monday and Tuesday, Eleanor do veterans meteorologists with the national weather service and says we expect the bulk of today's reign to fall around the bay with some lingering showers in the north bay, more is expected in the next 72 hours. Watsonville currently continues to flood. We're still continuing to see them flood. They're currently there's river stages at 27.63 feet right now, and that keeps them in flood stage. We still have the flood warning out for them. They're going to have a forecast for them dipping down a little bit below flood stage. Just briefly, but with the rains coming in, they're going to jump right back up. And we have forecast right now crushing at 28.9 feet, which keeps them at flood impacts for that area. Do better tells us high winds are set to arrive early on Tuesday morning, maybe even late tomorrow night and bringing 20 to 30 mile an hour winds across most of the Bay Area, mountains could get gusts upwards of 50 miles an hour. We're in county has again activated warming shelters ahead of the forecast for rain and winds, the overnight severe weather emergency shelter is at Marin health and wellness campus that's on kerner boulevard, in San Rafael, and that will be open both Monday and Tuesday from 5 p.m. till 6 30 in the morning. Officials warn that more than four inches of rain is forecast in San Rafael
News-Talk 1400 The Patriot
"72 hours" Discussed on News-Talk 1400 The Patriot
"Of the Senate with control of the U. S Senate at stake, the president told Georgia voters at a rally here to keep extreme liberals from gaining the majority. He urged voters to return Republican senators Kelly Leffler and David Perdue to Congress. And keep the Senate under GOP control. Party officials hope the president's rally of the base will lead to strong voter turnout in Tuesday's critical races. Great Clugston with the president in Dalton, Georgia, Federal health officials say the U. S ramped up covert 19 vaccinations in the past few days after a slower than expected start, bringing the number of shots dispensed to about four million. Over the weekend at 1.5 million shots administered in 72 hours. While the House started making some new changes after they swore in the 117th Congress House adopted a new set of rules for the 117 Congress and the 2 17 to 2 or six party line vote. The package includes language that would make significant changes to the motion to recommit procedural to lose by the minority to alter bills at the 11th hour on the floor instead of amending legislation ahead of the final vote. Republicans slammed the move as a power grab. In an attempt to silence debate. House rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern maintained that the motion to recommit quote can no longer be used to hijack the legislative process for political gamesmanship. Edie Bennett in Washington. Representatives of the Indian government protesting farmers and failed again Monday to reach agreement on the farmers demand that new agricultural reform laws be repealed. And with that refusal to revoke the legislation, the farmers were complaining to continue blockading key highways linking the capital with the country's north. Two sides agreed to meet for more talks on Friday and Iran's begun enriching uranium Monday to levels unseen since the 2015 nuclear deal.