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Speaker 2: And lovely to see you.
Speaker 3: You run the Federal Trade Commission, that's right, the whole shebang,
Speaker 3: and you are in charge of it's protecting Americans from
Speaker 3: monopolistic company practices, but also dealing with pricing and things
Speaker 3: like that, protecting consumers.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 5: I mean, the short of it is, we want to
Speaker 5: make sure that the American public is not getting bullied
Speaker 5: or coerced in the marketplaced, or tricked, and so we
Speaker 5: enforce the nation's antitrust and consumer protection laws.
Speaker 2: And how is well? Please, now, I'm just trying to
Speaker 2: make care it right, right, You were not bullied.
Speaker 3: Or tricked into applauding. No, I don't want to be
Speaker 3: accused of monopolistic How much pressure do these companies exert
Speaker 3: on the Federal Trade Comission? In other words, how much
Speaker 3: do they fight whatever regulation you're trying to put into
Speaker 3: place to keep them from becoming monopolies or from these
Speaker 3: types of business practices.
Speaker 5: Well, look, monopolies are not fans of enforcing the anti
Speaker 5: monopoly laws, and.
Speaker 4: So that type of pushback is baked in. But we
Speaker 4: have a fantastic team.
Speaker 5: We're a small agency, but we're mighty, and we play
Speaker 5: to our strengths being entrepreneurial, being strategic, and getting real
Speaker 5: wins for the American people.
Speaker 3: What are the companies? So these are separate things monopolies.
Speaker 3: The way I always view it was, oh, that's only
Speaker 3: one company, But don't we have oligopolies in this country?
Speaker 3: Aren't their industries? Consolidation has made it. For instance, the
Speaker 3: entertainment industry is controlled by like six companies. Is that
Speaker 3: considered not a monopoly but but a problem.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Look, we've really focused on how are companies behaving?
Speaker 5: Are there behaving in ways that suggest they can harm
Speaker 5: their customers, harm their suppliers, harm their workers and get
Speaker 5: away with it? And that type of too big to
Speaker 5: care type approach is really what ends up signaling that
Speaker 5: a company has monopoly power because they can start mistreating
Speaker 5: you but they know you're stuck.
Speaker 3: And what would be the metrics of that, Like, how
Speaker 3: would you judge that because I know you've shot Amazon,
Speaker 3: that's right, and that's for those practices.
Speaker 5: So our lass seat does allege that Amazon is a monopoly,
Speaker 5: that they've maintained that monopoly through illegal practices.
Speaker 4: And look, there are a variety of ways.
Speaker 5: That you can show a company is a monopoly and
Speaker 5: has monopoly power. One is you can try to figure
Speaker 5: out what's the exact boundary of the market, what's the
Speaker 5: market share. But again, the most direct way is to
Speaker 5: look at how is the company behaving. And as we
Speaker 5: lay out in our complaint, Amazon is now able to
Speaker 5: get away with harming its customers. So, just to give
Speaker 5: you a few examples, over the last few years, they've
Speaker 5: littered their search results page with junk ads, ads that
Speaker 5: internally executives realize are irrelevant and unhelpful to consumers, but
Speaker 5: they can just do it and it milks them, you know,
Speaker 5: billions of dollars in money. They've also been steadily hiking
Speaker 5: the fees that small businesses have to pay to sell
Speaker 5: through Amazon, and so now some small businesses have to
Speaker 5: pay one out of.
Speaker 4: Every two dollars to Amazon. It's basically a fifty percent
Speaker 4: monopoly tax.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 5: And so those are just some of the behaviors that
Speaker 5: we point to to note that this company has monopoly power.
Speaker 3: Is there anything in the company's leader that also suggests that, Like,
Speaker 3: for instance, if you were to go from being like
Speaker 3: sort of a nerdy dude who sold books out of
Speaker 3: a garage into let's say a Jack lex luthor type,
Speaker 3: does that also suggest either monopolistic practices or some type
Speaker 3: of injections.
Speaker 5: You know, we haven't tried to make those arguments in court,
Speaker 5: but it would be interesting to see how a judge
Speaker 5: would respond.
Speaker 2: I think quite favorable.
Speaker 3: How many lawyers do you like, for instance, So what
Speaker 3: are you up against? So you've got government lawyers. I'm
Speaker 3: assuming you've got a pretty good cadre. Like let's say
Speaker 3: you're going after Amazon. How many lawyers are they at?
Speaker 5: I mean, you know, if they have monopoly money, they
Speaker 5: can buy as many lawyers as they want. I mean,
Speaker 5: the FTC is around twelve hundred employees. But when we're
Speaker 5: going up against some of these monopolistic companies, they can
Speaker 5: outmatch us, outgun us sometimes one to ten, just if
Speaker 5: you're looking at lawyers, if you're adding paralegals and support.
Speaker 3: If you're just looking at lawyers, they outnumber you ten
Speaker 3: to one.
Speaker 4: Sometimes they can.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean we have lawsuits against a whole bunch
Speaker 5: of big company and ease and just in terms of
Speaker 5: sheer resources that they can pour into the litigation, we're
Speaker 5: pretty outgunned, but not outmatched, right, And this is where
Speaker 5: it comes to playing to your strengths being entrepreneurial.
Speaker 2: You know. So this isn't about just getting a fine.
Speaker 3: This isn't about going after Amazon and saying so because
Speaker 3: this is what the SEC does. The SEC, I think,
Speaker 3: is overmatched as a government ager saying you.
Speaker 2: Don't have to comment out that, but just nod your head.
Speaker 2: Utterly overmatched.
Speaker 3: So they go after groups and then they can't really
Speaker 3: prove it in court. So then they're like, how about this,
Speaker 3: You give us a cut of your profit and we'll
Speaker 3: all be done here. How do you handle that with Amazon?
Speaker 3: It's not just about a fine, that's right.
Speaker 5: I think we've seen look over the last couple of decades,
Speaker 5: we've seen how businesses can treat fines just as a
Speaker 5: cost of doing business, right, And we need to make
Speaker 5: sure that we're actually deterring illegal behavior, and so that
Speaker 5: can mean naming individual executives.
Speaker 4: We in our smol Oh.
Speaker 2: Snap, you just did not go there. I like that
Speaker 2: So have you had success with this?
Speaker 4: We have had success with this.
Speaker 5: I mean, we had a lawsuit against Martin Screlly a
Speaker 5: couple of years ago.
Speaker 3: All suddenly it turned into a pro wrestling match here
Speaker 3: and he went to jail. Do you do you have
Speaker 3: to refer things to the DOJ or do you have
Speaker 3: an enforcement arm?
Speaker 5: So you're right, we don't have criminal authority. But the
Speaker 5: remedy we were able to get against Martin Screlly was
Speaker 5: to effectively ban him from doing business in the pharmaceutical industry.
Speaker 6: Right now, I imagine that the practice that he did in
Speaker 6: the pharmaceutical industry, which was taking a life saving drug
Speaker 6: and like Jack and the price up I don't know
Speaker 6: how many thousands of percent.
Speaker 2: I mean, he did something crazy.
Speaker 3: Right, How do you keep that as a normal practice
Speaker 3: in the pharmaceutical industry?
Speaker 2: I mean, there.
Speaker 3: Are they colluding as a group to keep prices high?
Speaker 3: Why are we having so much trouble with them and
Speaker 3: prescription drug prices?
Speaker 5: I mean, look, there are a whole set of reasons
Speaker 5: why for too many Americans drugs are unaffordable, right. I
Speaker 5: mean I hear weekly monthly about American families who are
Speaker 5: having to ration life saving.
Speaker 2: Drugs absolutely, and shortages of those.
Speaker 5: Drugs, shortages of those drugs, and there can be all
Speaker 5: sort of tricks in monopolistic behavior that is leading to that.
Speaker 5: Just to give you one example, inhalers. They've been around
Speaker 5: for decades, but they still cost hundreds of dollars. So
Speaker 5: our staff took a close look and we've realized that
Speaker 5: some of the patents that had been listed for these
Speaker 5: inhalers were improper, there were bogus, and so we sent
Speaker 5: hundreds of warning letters around these patents, and in the
Speaker 5: last few weeks we've seen companies delist these patents, and
Speaker 5: three out of the four major manufacturers have now said
Speaker 5: within a couple of months they're going to cap how
Speaker 5: much Americans pay to just throw dollars.
Speaker 3: So it is their game, Like so you being entrepreneurial
Speaker 3: is their game. We're going to see how far we
Speaker 3: can push this and get away with it and do
Speaker 3: these different things in the hopes that we don't run
Speaker 3: up against an entrepreneurial or crafty FTC.
Speaker 2: Are they waiting you out?
Speaker 5: Look, it's possible, But that's why you need to think
Speaker 5: about tactics that are going to be around deterrence and
Speaker 5: so one big area of focus for US is understanding
Speaker 5: what is the root cause of these problems. Right, Let's
Speaker 5: understand who is the mafia boss here rather than just
Speaker 5: going after the foot soldiers.
Speaker 3: Right, And I think you'd probably there's probably a biblical
Speaker 3: sin in there that's probably the root cause of.
Speaker 2: The whole thing.
Speaker 3: But I want to talk about the tech companies because
Speaker 3: they are the new oligarchs. It would seem they are
Speaker 3: the companies that and you see this especially in Europe
Speaker 3: where they are fined considerable amounts of money for monopolistic
Speaker 3: practices or Apple just had to pay an enormous fine.
Speaker 3: Microsoft has always been found guilty of certain monopolistic practices.
Speaker 3: When it comes along, how do you handle enforcement for
Speaker 3: these new, incredibly consolidated and enormous oligarchies.
Speaker 5: So we have a lawsuit against Amazon. We have another
Speaker 5: ones against Facebook.
Speaker 2: What is the one against Facebook?
Speaker 4: So that one was filed before I arrived at the agency.
Speaker 5: But basically it alleges that Facebook, when it was watching
Speaker 5: the transition from desktop to mobile, it realized it really
Speaker 5: couldn't survive in mobile, and so it ended up and
Speaker 5: buying out Instagram and WhatsApp. And the lawsuit alleges that
Speaker 5: those acquisitions were anti competitive, that they violated the anti
Speaker 5: trust laws, that instead of competing organically, Facebook instead bought
Speaker 5: its way to maintaining its monopoly.
Speaker 3: Now, why why is that considered molodilists? Wouldn't they say, well,
Speaker 3: that's a sign of our success. We're so successful, we
Speaker 3: have extra money, and with that extra money, we make
Speaker 3: bets on certain companies and we turn those into successes.
Speaker 5: So look, one key tenant of the anti monopoly laws
Speaker 5: is that you can't go out and buy one of
Speaker 5: your biggest competitors.
Speaker 2: You're not allowed to do that.
Speaker 4: You're not allowed to do that.
Speaker 3: In fact, can I tell you something crazy? So I
Speaker 3: had put in an offer for last week tonight I.
Speaker 2: Had come out. Now it wasn't And I want to
Speaker 2: tell you so.
Speaker 3: Because it's Oliver I offered to him in the blooms.
Speaker 2: Is that what British people use. Obviously didn't take it.
Speaker 3: But you have to make the decision then of whether
Speaker 3: or not they are cornering the market. They used to
Speaker 3: call it cornering the market, But couldn't you say, like Apple, Microsoft,
Speaker 3: they are kind of working together to corner markets.
Speaker 5: Now, so look, we're investigating to understand whether some of
Speaker 5: the investments and partnerships that they're entering into right now
Speaker 5: in the AI space may in fact be giving them
Speaker 5: undue influence or giving them special privileges. If we get
Speaker 5: any hint that there is actual collusion happening in the marketplace,
Speaker 5: we take that extraordinarily seriously and won't hesitate to take action.
Speaker 5: One trend that we're especially concerned about is the way
Speaker 5: that algorithms may be facilitating price fixing. And so if
Speaker 5: you have a whole bunch of competitors in a market,
Speaker 5: be at hotels, be at casinos, and they all decide
Speaker 5: they're going to outsource their pricing decision to the same algorithm,
Speaker 5: they may in effect be fixing their prices, even if
Speaker 5: they're not getting in the back room and making secret deal.
Speaker 3: If that would be like if a hotel says, oh,
Speaker 3: you can get us on Expedia, or you can get
Speaker 3: us on Kayak, or you can get us on but
Speaker 3: all those companies are using the same algorithm. Would that
Speaker 3: mean that it flattens those prices and you are not
Speaker 3: getting the competitive advantage that you might get from those
Speaker 3: ten to fifteen apps that are searching for the cheapest
Speaker 3: hotel rooms.
Speaker 2: Is that the idea that's right.
Speaker 5: You may collectively see inflated prices because all of these
Speaker 5: companies are using the same algorithm, they're inputting the same data,
Speaker 5: and that algorithm is an effect allowing them to collectively
Speaker 5: raise their prices.
Speaker 4: So Americans are having to pay more.
Speaker 2: And it's not just pay more.
Speaker 3: I mean, you could look at a company like Walmart,
Speaker 3: where you would say, Okay, they came in to areas
Speaker 3: and they dominated all the competition. They didn't buy up
Speaker 3: the mom and pop shops, but because they had access
Speaker 3: to cheap labor and overseas goods and those types of things,
Speaker 3: they could undersell them and put them all out of business.
Speaker 2: And even at that moment, they might not.
Speaker 3: Raise their prices, but boy could they and boy could
Speaker 3: they exert their influence on supply chains, and boy could
Speaker 3: they depress wages and make sure that people, even if
Speaker 3: they're working long hours.
Speaker 2: Still have to have social assistance. Is that something that
Speaker 2: you could go after.
Speaker 5: Look, monopolies harm Americans in a whole bunch of ways.
Speaker 5: You're absolutely right that it's not just higher prices. It
Speaker 5: can be lower wages, it can be suppliers getting muscled
Speaker 5: out of the market or seeing their own payments drop.
Speaker 4: It can also be shortages. I mean, we've seen over.
Speaker 5: The last two years formula, baby formula IV, bags, adderall adderall.
Speaker 7: Basic forms.
Speaker 2: I see the audience has no use for baby formula,
Speaker 2: but has an interesting predilection. What do you do in
Speaker 2: that instance?
Speaker 5: So look, we want to understand are there dominant players
Speaker 5: here that are using their muscle to coerce in ways
Speaker 5: that's contributing to shortages. We've also seen historically when you
Speaker 5: concentrate production, that concentrates risk, and so a single disaster,
Speaker 5: a single contentation, a single shock, can lead the entire
Speaker 5: supply to be wiped out. I mean, the short of
Speaker 5: it is, don't put all your eggs in one.
Speaker 3: Basket, and then you guys are the ones that have
Speaker 3: to separate the eggs. It's curious to me that the
Speaker 3: government wouldn't have other methods of working with these corporations
Speaker 3: to ask them to curb their excesses in exchange for
Speaker 3: what they get, which is the stability of the American system.
Speaker 5: So look, we have a whole bunch of policies and
Speaker 5: laws in place that are actually designed to ensure our
Speaker 5: markets are more competitive. And not as subject to these
Speaker 5: withouctually innovation exactly, that's the balance. But forty years ago,
Speaker 5: under President Reagan, we've radically veered off course and undertook
Speaker 5: a much more hands off approach, and now we're living
Speaker 5: with the consequences of those disisies.
Speaker 3: Is industry more consolidated today, I mean, my gut would
Speaker 3: tell me it is more consolidated. You have larger companies
Speaker 3: that swallow up in the pursuit of growth, swallow up
Speaker 3: and consolidate. It feels that way to me. Do you
Speaker 3: have the metrics that suggest that that's actually the case.
Speaker 4: On the whole.
Speaker 5: Yes, I mean you always want to do a market
Speaker 5: by market analysis. But if you look at airlines, if
Speaker 5: you look at telecom, if you look at meat packers,
Speaker 5: if you look at you know, huge parts of our
Speaker 5: economy across the board, you've see in huge waves of.
Speaker 2: Mergers less competitive.
Speaker 5: Do you go from dozens of companies just to a
Speaker 5: very small number, and again that hurts Americans and American
Speaker 5: communities in all sorts of ways and even leads to
Speaker 5: for example, planes falling apart in the sky.
Speaker 2: Wait, what I thought that was just I always thought
Speaker 2: that was all just DEI are you telling me this
Speaker 2: gets us to our final point.
Speaker 3: So now they're saying this new algorithm, this new uh
Speaker 3: kind of machine learning model called AI, that's going to
Speaker 3: transform every aspect of American life in the American economies.
Speaker 3: It's already being consolidated. Apple has bought thirty AI models.
Speaker 3: Microsoft is pride bug, Google has bought They all buy
Speaker 3: AI startups and put them behind their paywell, and they're
Speaker 3: already having an arms race to see who will be
Speaker 3: either the monopoly or this will be in Oha, gobly.
Speaker 3: I got to tell you, I wanted to have you
Speaker 3: on a podcast, and Apple asked us not to do it.
Speaker 3: To have you, they literally said, please don't talk to her,
Speaker 3: having nothing to do with what you do for a living.
Speaker 2: I think they just I didn't think they cared for you.
Speaker 2: It's what happened. They wouldn't. They didn't.
Speaker 3: They wouldn't let us do even that dumb thing we
Speaker 3: just did in the first act on AI, Like, what
Speaker 3: is that sensitivity? Why are they so afraid to even
Speaker 3: have these conversations out in the public sphere.
Speaker 5: I think it just shows one of the dangers of
Speaker 5: what happens when you concentrate so much power and so
Speaker 5: much decision making in a small number of companies. I mean,
Speaker 5: going back all the way to the founding, there was
Speaker 5: a recognition that in the same way that you need
Speaker 5: the Constitution to create checks and balances in our political sphere,
Speaker 5: you also needed the anti trust and anti monopoly laws
Speaker 5: to safeguard against concentration and economic power, because you don't
Speaker 5: want an autocrat of trade in the same way that
Speaker 5: you don't.
Speaker 4: Want a monarch.
Speaker 2: But then it took them.
Speaker 3: I mean, it wasn't until the Sherman Act in what
Speaker 3: eighteen ninety some day.
Speaker 2: I mean, when did they first decide.
Speaker 3: Was it the beginning of industrialization when they finally decided like, oh,
Speaker 3: we should probably put a halt to this.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 5: You'd initially had some state level laws, but the first
Speaker 5: federal antitrust law was the eighteen ninety Sherman Act, and
Speaker 5: it was absolutely le a response to the industrial evolution
Speaker 5: and a lot of the power that that had concentrated.
Speaker 3: Can we just hold on for one second, Why can
Speaker 3: you take the camera real quick? I want to take
Speaker 3: a single real quick if I can, I don't know
Speaker 3: which one.
Speaker 2: Let me take this one. Now that Sherman thing didn't.
Speaker 6: I, I'm right, came out of nowhere.
Speaker 2: I think I might have learned that in like ninth grade. Stuck.
Speaker 2: Has that been updated since eighteen.
Speaker 5: Ninety So we had some follow on laws in nineteen fourteen,
Speaker 5: another follow on in the nineteen fifties, and then since
Speaker 5: then it's been a bit more sparse. So for the
Speaker 5: most part, our lawsuits are still based on those laws
Speaker 5: going back a century.
Speaker 2: What would you posit?
Speaker 3: What would you put forth to control this new AI
Speaker 3: technology that is looming?
Speaker 2: And I'm not talking about censorship.
Speaker 3: I'm not talking about government deciding you can't say that
Speaker 3: or you can't print that. I'm talking about in terms
Speaker 3: of business practices, these few companies controlling the entire mechanism.
Speaker 5: Look, the first thing we need to do is be
Speaker 5: clear eyed that there's no AI exemption from the laws
Speaker 5: on the books.
Speaker 4: We see sometimes.
Speaker 5: Business says try to dazzle enforcers by saying, Oh, these
Speaker 5: technologies are so new, they're so different, let's just take
Speaker 5: a hands off approach. And that's basically what ended up
Speaker 5: happening with Web two point oh. And now we're reeling
Speaker 5: from the consequences, and so we need.
Speaker 2: To make sure all of them was the web two
Speaker 2: point oh is.
Speaker 5: You know, the rise of social media, and you know,
Speaker 5: in the early two thousands, the initial set of companies
Speaker 5: that ended up innovating but ultimately becoming monopolistic, ultimately adopting
Speaker 5: business models that are premised on endlessly surveilling people and so.
Speaker 3: And hoovering up data and creating algorithms that are clearly
Speaker 3: harmful not just to children but to political discourse.
Speaker 2: And there's it's pretty wild how they're able to do that.
Speaker 3: And then every now and again they get called in
Speaker 3: front of Congress and Mark Zuckerberg, you know, do I
Speaker 3: goes like like and subscribe?
Speaker 2: You know, I don't know, but it.
Speaker 3: Are you Are you optimistic that we will be able
Speaker 3: to catch up to this in time before something truly
Speaker 3: catastrophic happens through AI?
Speaker 4: Well, look, there's no inevitable outcome here.
Speaker 5: We are the decision makers, and so we need to
Speaker 5: use the policy tools and levers that we have to
Speaker 5: make sure that these technologies are proceeding on a trajectory
Speaker 5: that benefit Americans and we're not subjected to all of
Speaker 5: the risks and harms.
Speaker 2: Right, boy, would you stay forever? Because it's incredib untract
Speaker 2: of what you've got much see chair later time.
Speaker 3: First question, obviously, how how are you? This was obviously
Speaker 3: a trauma experience. How are you feeling?
Speaker 7: I'm okay, you know, I mean surprisingly yes, But sometimes
Speaker 7: there are good surprises.
Speaker 2: This was one.
Speaker 7: I'm pretty much recovered.
Speaker 3: I have to say, and I know this, it's it
Speaker 3: sounds peculiar to say this because of the traumatic experience
Speaker 3: that you endured.
Speaker 2: I love this book.
Speaker 3: It's a beautiful work of introspection. I feel like I
Speaker 3: know now how your mind works. You know, I've read
Speaker 3: other of your books, but you really do a wonderful
Speaker 3: job of taking us through how you think.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it's weird how I think. I mean, I have
Speaker 7: this kind of free associating mind which goes from the
Speaker 7: moon to a movie, to a book, to a piece
Speaker 7: of mythology to a joke.
Speaker 3: I had to read this book with another book next
Speaker 3: to me to get just some of the references.
Speaker 2: It's but it's it allows you.
Speaker 3: You know, sometimes you'll read an author's memoir and there's
Speaker 3: a certain self consciousness to it. But maybe because this
Speaker 3: is about a traumatic incident, I feel like your defenses
Speaker 3: were down and it was very revelatory.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean there's there's a subject, right, I mean,
Speaker 7: it's what I felt is that it's starts off there's
Speaker 7: a love story which turns into a murder story, which
Speaker 7: turns back into a love story.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: The love story, by the way, is with his wonderful wife, Eliza,
Speaker 3: who is really the hero maybe of the book.
Speaker 7: Yeah, no, I mean she she did a huge amount
Speaker 7: and I wouldn't be here in good shape without her.
Speaker 7: And plus she's an amazing writer. Right, there's that too,
Speaker 7: I say, with a certain amount of gritted teeth.
Speaker 2: Yes, is there a competition in writerly families?
Speaker 7: Not really?
Speaker 2: Actually.
Speaker 7: The one of the nice things about this is there
Speaker 7: isn't really enormously supportive of each other's work.
Speaker 3: I thought a really interesting part of the book is
Speaker 3: spoiler alert at the end when you go back to Chautaqua.
Speaker 3: Chataqua is the famed community in upstate New York where
Speaker 3: they bring in speakers and where.
Speaker 2: This unfortunate event happened.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you go back to revisit the scene of it,
Speaker 3: but also the jail where they are holding this person
Speaker 3: that attacked you.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it was a last minute decision. We were actually
Speaker 7: on the plane flying up to because I had this
Speaker 7: desire to go and revisit the scene of the crime
Speaker 7: and show myself that I was standing up where I
Speaker 7: fell down right, sort of important for me. But then
Speaker 7: in the flight up there, I thought to talk was
Speaker 7: a really small town, and if he's in the county jail,
Speaker 7: how far is that from the institution? And it turned
Speaker 7: out it was like five minutes drive. So I thought, well,
Speaker 7: let's go to the jail.
Speaker 2: I just it blows my but you didn't have a
Speaker 2: desire necessarily to.
Speaker 8: See this, and I just want to see the jail.
Speaker 8: But I don't you get that it's a it's a
Speaker 8: really boring jail. It's a little cell block at a
Speaker 8: wall with some barbed wire. But I thought, you know,
Speaker 8: he's in there. I vouch here it feels good Win
Speaker 8: And what happened is a weird thing happened. My feet started, dadzig,
Speaker 8: you were dancing.
Speaker 7: My feet were Dodds.
Speaker 2: But what does that look like? It's just just shitting.
Speaker 2: But the body stayed.
Speaker 7: Well said stop doing that.
Speaker 3: I can't imagine this gentleman just glancing out the window
Speaker 3: for no apparent reason.
Speaker 7: Going is that the guy like, yeah, he's Dadsig at
Speaker 7: the Kow Park.
Speaker 2: You.
Speaker 3: You know, you talk a lot about your thoughts about
Speaker 3: this gentleman and whether you wanted to confront him. There's
Speaker 3: actually a really wonderful section of it, almost like a
Speaker 3: Socratic litigation that you do in four parts.
Speaker 7: I make him up.
Speaker 3: You make him up, but you don't make him defenseless. No,
Speaker 3: the litigation that you and the dialogue that you have
Speaker 3: with him is challenging.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well I thought you you know, you've got to
Speaker 7: give the enemy an even break. If you're going to
Speaker 7: have a serious conversation, then it's it can't just be
Speaker 7: me yelling get him, telling him what a bad person
Speaker 7: he is, which I think.
Speaker 2: Yes, but he wasn't.
Speaker 3: It makes you wonder about you know, you spent since
Speaker 3: nineteen eighty nine, this this fatois is put upon you,
Speaker 3: and it's these fundamentalists, and these are religious extremists who
Speaker 3: have decided they're going to punish you for whatever their
Speaker 3: reasoning was.
Speaker 2: You right though, that this gentleman is sort of a
Speaker 2: copy of a copy of a copy of a copy
Speaker 2: of that twenty four.
Speaker 7: He wasn't even born right when this thing happened, and he,
Speaker 7: by his own account, had read nothing I'd written, and
Speaker 7: yet he was willing to commit murder. I mean that's stupid, yes,
Speaker 7: but it's.
Speaker 3: I wonder if you think of it, does it strike
Speaker 3: you as a change in fundamentalism? You know, you say
Speaker 3: he was radicalized by iman YouTube, that he watched YouTube videos.
Speaker 3: And do you think this attack had more to do
Speaker 3: with like John Lennon's attack or with a religious attack.
Speaker 7: Well, I think I think in some ways it's a
Speaker 7: very American attack.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 7: He spent four years in a basement playing video games
Speaker 7: and watching videos and it kind of messed with his head.
Speaker 7: And also, you know, I mean he's born in Brendon,
Speaker 7: New Jersey.
Speaker 2: Slow down, I think I know where this is going.
Speaker 7: Well, then you know you're ahead of me. But you know,
Speaker 7: we live in in America where people killing each other
Speaker 7: every five minutes, right, you know, And I think maybe
Speaker 7: in his New Jersey brain, yes.
Speaker 2: That is how we describe it as well. By the way,
Speaker 2: Sid's get that New Jersey brain exactly. Do you think
Speaker 2: that there is a shift?
Speaker 3: You know, we think of fundamentalism as primarily a religious artifact.
Speaker 3: Have the algorithms made fundamentalism something different from that?
Speaker 7: I think maybe they have. I mean, I'm too I'm
Speaker 7: too old to know really, because I don't. Algorithms don't
Speaker 7: know what to do with me, right, give them a chance. No,
Speaker 7: I do, but they don't know what to do. So
Speaker 7: I'm not algorithmically influenced, right, But people are. People are
Speaker 7: all the time. And yeah, I mean I think he
Speaker 7: was something happened in him which made it possible for
Speaker 7: him to decide to murder a total strain, right, And
Speaker 7: that has to be brainwashing of some kind, right, whatever
Speaker 7: you want to call it, but I call it brainwashing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: As I read the story, I started thinking, you know,
Speaker 3: we're so used to this idea, that of violence with
Speaker 3: a cause, this idea that these you know, there is
Speaker 3: something deep inside them that can almost be noble or understandable.
Speaker 3: This is not that it struck me more as more
Speaker 3: in common with the school shootings we see here or
Speaker 3: the other things that you were just this thing he saw.
Speaker 7: And you know what's so strange about it is, first
Speaker 7: of all, he must have known that he was messing
Speaker 7: up his own life as well, right, you know, not
Speaker 7: just mine at twenty four, at twenty four, and you
Speaker 7: know the last thing he did before he got on
Speaker 7: the bus from Fairview, New Jersey to Chautauqua. Last thing
Speaker 7: he did he canceled his gym membership.
Speaker 3: Because he knew that he was prison had weights, he
Speaker 3: wasn't coming he wasn't coming back, and.
Speaker 7: Why should he keep his start new order going wow.
Speaker 2: So he's he's going through it and going like, I
Speaker 2: don't need serious radio anymore. I don't exctly. So this
Speaker 2: was he suicidal or was he?
Speaker 7: I don't know. I mean, maybe we'll find out if whenever,
Speaker 7: if this trial happens, we might find out more about him.
Speaker 2: But do you dread something like that? Is that something
Speaker 2: that still visits you? No?
Speaker 7: I mean I think you know, if I they if
Speaker 7: they need me to testify, I'll go testify and I'll
Speaker 7: be in the cult room with him. But my view
Speaker 7: is he should be scared about being in the coult
Speaker 7: room with me.
Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely. Do you wonder it? Sometimes?
Speaker 7: You know?
Speaker 3: And this is not not not to get but you
Speaker 3: and I are both getting older, and you write a
Speaker 3: lot in the book about saddle down. I was just
Speaker 3: on jury duty. By the way, I don't have to
Speaker 3: picture of my dappelganger, but there is there's mortality. You
Speaker 3: write about Martin Amos and Paul Osler and people that
Speaker 3: you've lost even during the writing of this book, lost
Speaker 3: to esophageal cancer. You had a cancer scare in the
Speaker 3: middle of rehabilitation.
Speaker 7: Yeah, in the middle of all this repair work, suddenly
Speaker 7: apparently I might have prostate cancer. I thought that's not fair.
Speaker 2: No, well, you're right, he writes, he goes to the doctor,
Speaker 2: or you can.
Speaker 7: Tell I mean I went to the doctor, and the
Speaker 7: examining your prostate is not fun.
Speaker 2: Again, speak for yourself. It's it depends on if you
Speaker 2: have a Jersey brain.
Speaker 7: Anyway, the first examination, they thought they found a bump
Speaker 7: on the prostate, and then I had to have an
Speaker 7: MRI scan. An MRI scan, you know, it grades from
Speaker 7: one to five, and five is really bad, and I
Speaker 7: came out at four. It's a cancer probable. And then
Speaker 7: it turned out that it was not probable that it
Speaker 7: was had this bump and that had been caused by some.
Speaker 2: Other infection and a medicine that they had actually given you.
Speaker 7: Yeah, exactly. And then a second doctor, the first doctor's boss,
Speaker 7: also examined by prostate more thoroughly.
Speaker 2: They lined up down the hallway. What are we doing here?
Speaker 7: No, this was very thorough. And also he was an
Speaker 7: Indian doctor and he was a fan of mine.
Speaker 2: Nothing more uncomfortable than that extra thorough yes, and.
Speaker 7: He said, no, I think this might be caused by
Speaker 7: this other infection, and so that to go back and
Speaker 7: have another MRI scout and it said one to five,
Speaker 7: it's one no cancer. So I had cancer for two
Speaker 7: months and then I didn't.
Speaker 3: It's so incredible because you face this, as you write
Speaker 3: in the book this twenty seven seconds, It was just
Speaker 3: twenty seven and seconds, and yet can't.
Speaker 2: Do you think about.
Speaker 3: And pardon the question, but do you think does it
Speaker 3: matter how you die? As you watched your friends and
Speaker 3: you thought about your fate and your brush with mortality,
Speaker 3: and then to have this cancer scared, did it make
Speaker 3: you think it mattered how you die?
Speaker 7: Do you prefer not to?
Speaker 2: I've got some bad news. It's come over all.
Speaker 7: The bad news for all of us. Yes, but I
Speaker 7: mean I don't know. My wife Eliza and I have
Speaker 7: decided to be planning a hundredth birthday Pozzy, my hundredth months,
Speaker 7: and I think it has to be a dance Pozzy.
Speaker 2: Yes, so it tried just your feet though not the
Speaker 2: whole body.
Speaker 7: So we tried to decide who should DJ and I'll
Speaker 7: pick somebody.
Speaker 3: But it strikes me because you, whether you've wanted this
Speaker 3: mantle or not, and I'm assuming you don't, you represent something.
Speaker 3: You represent a courage and a freedom of artistic expression,
Speaker 3: of the importance of artistic expression, and of the danger
Speaker 3: that artistic expression often visits upon the people who do it.
Speaker 3: It's a it's a noble shield to carry, but not
Speaker 3: an easy one.
Speaker 7: I don't not an easy one. And in a way,
Speaker 7: there's bits of me that would prefer to be well
Speaker 7: known for being, you know, good writer.
Speaker 2: Well, I have to tell you, I'm pretty sure that's
Speaker 2: in there too.
Speaker 9: Is that in that.
Speaker 7: I see? But you know, it used to be when
Speaker 7: I started out as a rise, when people would write
Speaker 7: about my books, they would mention that they were funny.
Speaker 7: And then after the attack on the Satanic Verses, everybody
Speaker 7: stopped saying I was funny.
Speaker 2: Really, And because that book is satirical, it's it's it's.
Speaker 7: People who read it. I get. I get two reactions
Speaker 7: who read it now? One is where's the dirty bit?
Speaker 7: Because we can't find it?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 7: And the second is who knew it was? Funny, and
Speaker 7: I say, people who've read it.
Speaker 3: But it's you know, with that on you do you
Speaker 3: feel there's an idea that you have to wear that heroism.
Speaker 7: I don't know the heroism, but I think I have
Speaker 7: to be part of the fight, right, I mean, I
Speaker 7: mean there is a fight about free expression in America
Speaker 7: too at the moment, and I'm I'm I feel like
Speaker 7: I'm in that fight. I have a dog in that fight.
Speaker 3: What what do you think that how that the nature
Speaker 3: of fundamentalism has changed, and how that affects artistic expression,
Speaker 3: Like even now when we see all the protests, you know,
Speaker 3: up at Columbia University, some students protests as others think
Speaker 3: that's going too far and they're threatening people and we're
Speaker 3: crossing all those difficult lines.
Speaker 2: You spoke at the.
Speaker 3: Penn banquet, yes, yeah, last year, last year, which is
Speaker 3: a consortium of writers and poets and a lot of
Speaker 3: people truly defenders of free speech.
Speaker 2: I just got a text today.
Speaker 7: They've canceled, they've counseled the prize giving because they're people
Speaker 7: attacking them for not being sufficiently anti Israeli, pro Palestinian
Speaker 7: or something.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 7: I mean, everybody's so angry right now, right that nobody
Speaker 7: can listen or talk to anybody else, so people have
Speaker 7: shout at each other. Listen.
Speaker 3: There was a critic, and this is going to sound
Speaker 3: like a joke, a critic of Taylor Swift's new music album,
Speaker 3: The Torture Post Society. They had to remove the critic's
Speaker 3: name from the critique because of.
Speaker 7: Death threats because he didn't like the record.
Speaker 2: I didn't read it because I love the reck of course,
Speaker 2: I don't want to hear any negativity, but so do
Speaker 2: I jump.
Speaker 3: But it speaks to in nineteen eighty nine, there was
Speaker 3: an Iatola and a Fatua and a group of religious
Speaker 3: muckety MUCKs who delivered the law from high above.
Speaker 2: And now we're all.
Speaker 7: Fundamentally everybody is an expert. Everybody's got an opinion, and
Speaker 7: hostility and hostility, the level of anger is crazy, right now?
Speaker 3: Do you think of you know, you have a dog
Speaker 3: in the fight in that creative How do we and
Speaker 3: I think about this a lot, how do we manage that?
Speaker 2: And is that just a function of the algorithm?
Speaker 7: It might be, I think to an extent it is, yeah,
Speaker 7: I mean I don't know, frankly, and I'm glad you asked,
Speaker 7: because I am the answer, have the answer to the
Speaker 7: world's problems.
Speaker 2: It's actually on page exactly. But you are thoughtful enough
Speaker 2: and you've been through it enough that I know you
Speaker 2: have an opinion.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean, I just think people have to draw
Speaker 7: stop having such thin skins. You know, at the moment,
Speaker 7: we're all very easily offended. And what's more is we
Speaker 7: also have been that being offended is a sufficient reason
Speaker 7: for attacking something, right, But actually everything offends somebody always always,
Speaker 7: I mean occasionally.
Speaker 2: You what how dare you, sir? I am offended? You see?
Speaker 7: Then if you go down that road, then we can't
Speaker 7: talk to each other anymore, right, you know.
Speaker 3: But having groups always had a way of policing language
Speaker 3: or behavior. I think I'm trying to think, has my
Speaker 3: perspective changed on it, or has the dynamic change?
Speaker 7: What's happened is the temperature has got arisen, right, I
Speaker 7: mean yes, of course people bolways disagreed, and people always said,
Speaker 7: you can't say that, You've got to say this, that's
Speaker 7: not new. What's new is the volume and the heat, right,
Speaker 7: And so what do we do about taking down the
Speaker 7: volume and taking down the heat? That's the question.
Speaker 3: I mean, and again not to make you the avatar
Speaker 3: of this, but this is coming from a man who,
Speaker 3: because of threats from fundamentalists, had to basically alter your
Speaker 3: entire life.
Speaker 7: Well, it did certainly have an impact. Yeah, yeah. I
Speaker 7: mean what it's sad is that I'd actually got my
Speaker 7: life back.
Speaker 2: Really.
Speaker 7: I mean, I've been living in New York City for
Speaker 7: getting on for twenty five years.
Speaker 3: Right, Well, you had made a decision I'm going to
Speaker 3: come out of this and make myself.
Speaker 7: And for twenty three years it was fine, right, you know,
Speaker 7: and I mean I you know, I mean I was
Speaker 7: doing everything that writers do, book tours, readings, lectures, you know.
Speaker 2: Oh, I know, I'm a writer. Don't stop. I've been
Speaker 2: there with the coffee clotches. Yeah. And Oprah.
Speaker 7: Yeah, well I haven't been with Oprah, none of us have.
Speaker 7: But anyway, so it was a shock when this thing,
Speaker 7: out of a quarter of a century ago, more than
Speaker 7: that thirty years ago, sort of came out of a
Speaker 7: crowd at me. You know, it was I really was
Speaker 7: very surprised.
Speaker 3: Do you find yourself now freedom that fear? Or is
Speaker 3: there still that PTSD?
Speaker 6: Like?
Speaker 2: What where's your what does that do? To you.
Speaker 7: Well, I mean it does you know, nothing good. But
Speaker 7: it's now been about twenty months or something. I think
Speaker 7: I'm pretty much back to myself at this point.
Speaker 3: Do you feel like you're you're in that writing rhythm again,
Speaker 3: does your has your mind started to dream again? Finish
Speaker 3: this And by the way, let me tell you something
Speaker 3: and I and we don't have people on where I
Speaker 3: don't either you know, read it or take It's such
Speaker 3: a beautiful and incredibly interesting and revelatory book. I really
Speaker 3: thank you for writing it because you had to endure
Speaker 3: something awful, but your insight into that experience is really
Speaker 3: a remarkable gift to give to other people.
Speaker 2: And I really do it.
Speaker 3: It's got funny bits, a couple of funny bits for
Speaker 3: a writer, for a but it really is a fantastic
Speaker 3: piece of work, and I thank you for doing it.
Speaker 3: The book is called Knife. It is available as we speak.
Speaker 3: Someone rushed you.
Speaker 2: It's so nice to see you.
Speaker 3: Everyone is aware there was a huge viral moment in
Speaker 3: sports reporting and you Monica were at the center of
Speaker 3: it concerning an appearance on Stephen A.
Speaker 2: Smith's show and a young.
Speaker 3: Basketball player on the Fever who's apparently generating quite a
Speaker 3: bit of controversy.
Speaker 2: Tell us a little bit about that viral moment.
Speaker 9: All right, So the conversation John, it started about the
Speaker 9: foul over the weekend that Kenny Carter for the Chicago's
Speaker 9: Guy foul Caitlin Clark of the Indiana Fever. And I'm
Speaker 9: not gonna lie to you, John, if I take you
Speaker 9: through my day that morning, I get the call or
Speaker 9: the text rather than I'm like, are we really leading
Speaker 9: sports with this?
Speaker 2: Are we really leading sports with a fowl? A person
Speaker 2: got knocked over in a marketball game in sports? All right?
Speaker 2: I'm like, fine, let's just do it.
Speaker 9: So we have the conversation with colleagues and friends, Steven
Speaker 9: Ni Smith, Shannon Sharp, And my larger point in the
Speaker 9: conversation was the tenor and the prevailing narrative that has
Speaker 9: been created around this season's WNBA play is that it's
Speaker 9: the league versus Kaitlyn Clark, and that is just absolutely false.
Speaker 9: It is unfair to the women that have been there
Speaker 9: building this league to this moment so that Kaitlyn Clark's
Speaker 9: popularity could take it to the next level. And so
Speaker 9: by the end of the show, John, the tone had changed,
Speaker 9: and I just kind of needed to put my foot
Speaker 9: down a little bit.
Speaker 3: There was some defensiveness on the part of the individuals.
Speaker 3: You've covered basketball for many many years, you played basketball,
Speaker 3: you follow the NBA for many years.
Speaker 2: You know what you're talking about.
Speaker 3: The tenor of the conversation, as I could tell, was
Speaker 3: they were saying to you, now, we know what we're
Speaker 3: talking about, even though we just tuned into this whole
Speaker 3: thing flashed Wednesday.
Speaker 9: And there it is, right, and so, as I have
Speaker 9: said about this, it was a little bit of a challenge, right,
Speaker 9: two gentlemen that I admire in terms of what they've built.
Speaker 9: Because if you haven't been here, I need three years.
Speaker 9: I need you to kind of have jumped in when
Speaker 9: Sodona Prince went viral for calling out the NC double A,
Speaker 9: I needed you kind of to be here as this
Speaker 9: league has seen its best viewership year to year.
Speaker 2: Now, yes, it has.
Speaker 9: Absolutely been taken over the top this year, but this
Speaker 9: has been a snowballing effect to get to this moment.
Speaker 9: And so, while Kaitlyn is fantastic and I think she's
Speaker 9: going to have an incredible career in the w NBA,
Speaker 9: there are women that were worthy of coverage prior to
Speaker 9: her arriving, and I just will not to be silenced
Speaker 9: when it comes.
Speaker 3: To that, right beautifully said now, and I'm going to
Speaker 3: tell you that coming. I have not particularly followed the
Speaker 3: w NBA on a day to day. I follow when
Speaker 3: it's basketball, sometimes more in college, I think, and in
Speaker 3: the old days down Staley and those players. I did
Speaker 3: follow that, yep. But I have incredibly strong opinions about
Speaker 3: it anyway.
Speaker 2: But what did strike me when I started watching the
Speaker 2: highlights is, you know, vicious, very physical league.
Speaker 3: You know, so many people complain about the NBA now
Speaker 3: as league is soft and they don't play like they
Speaker 3: did like the Knicks did in the nineties with Oak
Speaker 3: and with all Mason and all those guys. And then
Speaker 3: you see this physical league and now they're saying, hey,
Speaker 3: why so physical? And I guess I'm struggling to understand.
Speaker 3: Is it because so many new fans are being introduced
Speaker 3: to this who don't have the context.
Speaker 2: Bingo nailed that you can, you can have a talk show.
Speaker 2: Let's go get on, let's do it.
Speaker 7: I nailed.
Speaker 2: Let's do the first take, first take.
Speaker 9: On kidding aside, Yes, right, and listen again, I am
Speaker 9: by no means gonna be naive to the popularity of
Speaker 9: Kaitlin Clark, but there is a contingent that followed her.
Speaker 9: And if let's expand it out to bigger other women's
Speaker 9: college programs that have been cerrific South Carolina, LSU, we'll
Speaker 9: just go with those three Stanford if you will, Right,
Speaker 9: if you've only watched the college game for however long
Speaker 9: and not follow the WNBA, you don't know that not
Speaker 9: only are these one hundred and forty four the best
Speaker 9: women basketball players in the world, most of them in
Speaker 9: their offseason, they're not kicking it. They're in Europe playing
Speaker 9: in leagues that are arguably even more physical, and so
Speaker 9: the brand of basketball just has a level of toughness.
Speaker 9: Now to me, I think the part of this conversation
Speaker 9: John that has been daunting for me is sports is
Speaker 9: about competing.
Speaker 2: It is literally the foundation we need to score.
Speaker 9: We got to compete, and in the conversation around how
Speaker 9: we navigate the attention on the women's game, somewhere in
Speaker 9: there competition should be watered down to protect the asset.
Speaker 3: Yeah, now, that's but you know in your heart there
Speaker 3: is another layer of conversation going on beneath this that
Speaker 3: has been introduced onto the stage, and that is Look,
Speaker 3: we all know everything that underlines society in many ways
Speaker 3: goes along race, class and gender, and race, class and
Speaker 3: gender has entered the conversation in a very large way.
Speaker 9: And I think what is interesting, And I'm hoping that
Speaker 9: more folks are like, yo, this basketball is great, Like
Speaker 9: I want to learn more about these women. Race, culture,
Speaker 9: gender are things that the women of the WNBA have
Speaker 9: never shied away from. Right, a part of the bubble
Speaker 9: in twenty twenty, they impact the election that goes down
Speaker 9: in Georgia in terms of standing on their values. Right,
Speaker 9: but if we have a conversation about the societal totem poll,
Speaker 9: if you will, black women a large representation of queer women,
Speaker 9: like these are all things that sit at intersectional identities.
Speaker 9: That just opened up your show talking about valuing these
Speaker 9: things exactly. And so there are all these isms that
Speaker 9: have made the WNBA beautiful for twenty eight years, including
Speaker 9: this season, and even the WNBA has had to have
Speaker 9: its arc in terms of growth and leaning into who
Speaker 9: they are and who these women are both on and
Speaker 9: off the court. But it is at the base of it.
Speaker 9: If we first second, get take all that out. You're
Speaker 9: really about to tell women how.
Speaker 2: To compete and you just got here, right, we'll be doing.
Speaker 2: And what's so amazing about it is.
Speaker 3: What I have heard from some of the commentary are
Speaker 3: people who just got there saying this is so unfair
Speaker 3: to the sweet white girl. Now, first of all, Kaitlyn
Speaker 3: Clark looks like a competitor. She looks like somebody who's
Speaker 3: really a competitor. But the odd part is, I'm always
Speaker 3: interested in this idea that sports exists outside of the
Speaker 3: fault lines of regular society and isn't a reflection of
Speaker 3: those things and a continuation in some respects of those battles.
Speaker 9: That existence is for probably like twenty percent of men's sports,
Speaker 9: and then you got to deal with race, and then
Speaker 9: there's other things that you got to deal with. But
Speaker 9: like we said, women's sports sits right in the midst
Speaker 9: of all of that. We could be not talking about basketball,
Speaker 9: and we got plenty of women's issues that we know
Speaker 9: have our country on fire. And so I think it's
Speaker 9: a beautiful time. And I don't think anybody that is
Speaker 9: a part of this league or has covered this league.
Speaker 9: Sure we lament kind of keeping this little thing that
Speaker 9: we love to protect it from all of the noise. Right,
Speaker 9: But in the same of breath, the eyeballs and the
Speaker 9: visibility and the growth is better for all involved.
Speaker 2: I mean, frankly, John, like Gay mclar got me here, right,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, and it's not true. So
Speaker 2: let me tell you this. So I am going to
Speaker 2: tell you this. The viral moment maybe brought you to
Speaker 2: some national attention. I have been loving what you do.
Speaker 3: You are such a good basketball analyst and announcer. I've
Speaker 3: been following you on the New York Kates, you and Okee.
Speaker 3: Some of my favorite moments are.
Speaker 2: The two of you.
Speaker 9: Is the aatt o'keef my partner I play by play guy.
Speaker 3: I mean, you're so knowledgeable. I love basketball. I've been
Speaker 3: following the Knicks for one hundred and thirty years, all right, yep.
Speaker 3: I was in the stands in Madison Square Garden at
Speaker 3: the very top of it when they played the Celtics
Speaker 3: in double overtime, when they won the championship in seventy two,
Speaker 3: and that against the Celtics.
Speaker 2: When it looks like a I've loved it for a
Speaker 2: long time.
Speaker 3: Your voice, your knowledge, your passion has cut through it.
Speaker 3: For me, it's very rare that I turn on the
Speaker 3: radio or hear a new voice and go, oh, that person.
Speaker 2: They can explain this to me, and you really do.
Speaker 2: You're a wonderful wholeheartedly that's how you got yet. Okay,
Speaker 2: by the way, I'd have had you on every day
Speaker 2: during the playoffs? Oh wow, yeah, guy, we had fun.
Speaker 3: Is there some sense of like a little bit of
Speaker 3: like when an indie band hits it big? Are there
Speaker 3: people within the w NBA community who feel like, I
Speaker 3: don't want this to belong to everybody. I want it
Speaker 3: to belong to this band of sisters that have worked
Speaker 3: so hard to make it something.
Speaker 2: Whoa McNutt.
Speaker 9: I have had that moment a few times because as
Speaker 9: much as the conversation has been dictated by the audience, right,
Speaker 9: we still haven't really sat up and talked about the
Speaker 9: actual basketball of it. John, I don't know how many
Speaker 9: people just join the w NBA understand that the Las
Speaker 9: Vegas Aces are chasing down a three p which hasn't
Speaker 9: been done since the formative years of the league. In
Speaker 9: the Houston comments, I don't know how many people how
Speaker 9: many people know that the Connecticut Sun just lost their
Speaker 9: first game the other day. They were nine to know
Speaker 9: to start the season. Right, What names can I help.
Speaker 2: Introduce you to?
Speaker 9: I mean, if you pick up a rolling stone, Asia
Speaker 9: Wilson and Brandon Stewart are part of the next issue,
Speaker 9: I believe. And so we've opened the door, but we're
Speaker 9: still like looking in instead of walking in.
Speaker 2: If that makes if I may absolutely, right, absolutely, and.
Speaker 9: So I think it's a really unique time. And even
Speaker 9: with this Olympic team stuff, right. Caylen Clark, who you mentioned,
Speaker 9: is a tremendous competitor, said herself, that's the toughest.
Speaker 2: Team to make, right, not surprised. And she's a rookie,
Speaker 2: she's just coming out of Iowash.
Speaker 9: She can say that, and she can also feel as
Speaker 9: if something in her has been awoken in terms of
Speaker 9: making that a goal of her own, right, Like I
Speaker 9: would hope and I know this is not a thing
Speaker 9: in sports. We got to remember that two things can
Speaker 9: be true.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 9: She's been great for the league, but there were one
Speaker 9: hundred and forty four women prior to her and this
Speaker 9: class that had gotten this thing up to year twenty eight, right.
Speaker 3: No question, And I think one of the difficulties of
Speaker 3: it is because it's a small league. I think people
Speaker 3: don't realize small as the NBA is. There's still two
Speaker 3: rounds of a draft, and there are guys that get
Speaker 3: picked up out of a G league, and there's space
Speaker 3: on a team.
Speaker 2: There's a big roster.
Speaker 3: When you're in the WNBA, boy, there's just not that
Speaker 3: many teams, and you're talking about a draft. Even when
Speaker 3: it's eight deep, twelve d some of those people may
Speaker 3: not make the team. There's a women that have been
Speaker 3: playing the game for a very long time to that point.
Speaker 9: John likes the conversation about marketing. Yeah, sure, got it
Speaker 9: makes sense, right, But there's also got to be a
Speaker 9: realization that these women that have made this thing, they're living,
Speaker 9: they are not necessarily chasing the financial benefit the w
Speaker 9: Your highest played player is max two undred fifty.
Speaker 2: Thousand dollars, right, you know what I mean? And so
Speaker 2: there is not how Britney Griner ended up in Russia.
Speaker 2: She was playing overseas, because it doesn't make that that's
Speaker 2: exactly it.
Speaker 9: So many of these women supplement their income in the
Speaker 9: league that they play out of love to play at
Speaker 9: home with their teammates in front of their families and
Speaker 9: they go get their real money overseas. That is changing.
Speaker 9: I do think that this class and Clark is all
Speaker 9: a part of it changing. But I think just to
Speaker 9: slap on do this because of the money again is
Speaker 9: disrespectful and unfair to the women that have gotten its
Speaker 9: lead to this point.
Speaker 3: As a broadcaster, in your story in some ways mirrors
Speaker 3: the story of the WNBA in terms of having to
Speaker 3: fight for attention with people who, in some respects are
Speaker 3: not particularly humble about their position and slightly defensive about
Speaker 3: those who may come at it from a different perspective.
Speaker 3: Do you see that reflected in how what you had
Speaker 3: to go through and your journey to get to the
Speaker 3: desk that you're at now, and does that give you
Speaker 3: hope for the WNBA's future.
Speaker 9: I am, first of all, I'm thrilled about the WNBA's future.
Speaker 9: And yes, right, I didn't go to the WNBA, but
Speaker 9: I played sports all the way through college. Shout out
Speaker 9: to my Georgetown hoyas, right, And so that foundation, that base,
Speaker 9: that understanding hard work, improvement, that understanding of competition, all
Speaker 9: of those things have helped me to be able to
Speaker 9: stand tenttos down in these various rooms, in these various conversations.
Speaker 2: Right, it's intimidating, it is, and in the.
Speaker 9: Same breath, the people that I'm having conversations with, whether
Speaker 9: they are well established television personalities or former athletes, they
Speaker 9: have done the same in their own way.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 9: But it is a reminder because of my background in sports,
Speaker 9: shout out to keeping young girls in sports for this
Speaker 9: exact reason, I too can be confident in the work
Speaker 9: that I've done to get to this place and for.
Speaker 2: Me, that has been beautiful. Who it is beautiful and
Speaker 2: it really brings out the interesting question who does have
Speaker 2: the worst takes? He ain't given day, ain given to day?
Speaker 3: All right, final question. I am an enormous Knicks fan. Yes,
Speaker 3: we know, and I want desperately to know if what
Speaker 3: I'm seeing, if the love that I am feeling.
Speaker 2: I have opened my heart again, you know, Monica, It's
Speaker 2: been so long. Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: I've opened up my heart again to a basketball team.
Speaker 3: I never thought it would happen again.
Speaker 2: I'm proud of you.
Speaker 9: I'm so proud of you.
Speaker 2: That was a big move. But Monica, I have to
Speaker 2: tell you something. Tell me I'm afraid to be hurt
Speaker 2: and will will the Knicks hurt me.
Speaker 9: Life is full of That was a hesitation, Monica.
Speaker 2: That was not That was a hesitation. I want them
Speaker 2: to be great.
Speaker 9: I look at I think they are on the right track.
Speaker 2: All right, But you gotta play the games. That's why
Speaker 2: we go to them.
Speaker 3: And I don't want to be in sad meme anymore,
Speaker 3: which is always what happens when I'm at the games. Monical,
Speaker 3: what a delight to meet you, and I'm such a
Speaker 3: fan of yours and I wish you all the best
Speaker 3: and continue success.
Speaker 2: Monica McNall you John