I first typed Jeremy Lin’s name in 2007, back when he was a Harvard freshman.

I first interviewed him when he was a senior, after pitching a Sports Illustrated feature that ultimately got published in 2010.

Then, two years later, this happened:

Linsanity, obviously, did not end the way Knicks fans wanted it to.

But this week… after 14 long years… Jeremy Lin returned to Madison Square Garden, as a spectator, for the very first time.

And he found a connection with this team, during this miracle run, that has provided something missing: closure that he — and the Garden — deserved.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

BANG,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

Welcome to, yes, Part XI of our Clippers/Aspiration series.

As NBA commissioner Adam Silver calls for his Kawhi Leonard probe to finally wrap up… and Aspiration’s co-founder, Joe Sanberg, gets 14 years (!) behind bars… we investigate how Steve Ballmer covered his tracks on another secret side deal with the carbon-credits company.

A side deal which illuminates the true story of his relationship with Sanberg.

Former DOJ prosecutor Lou Manzo — the man who launched the federal investigation into Sanberg and Aspiration in 2023 — returns to render his own cap-circumvention verdict. Longtime securities lawyer Pierce Han helps us decode potential SEC exposure. And David Samson helps us make sense of the relationship between a billionaire owner, a fraudster, and a sport.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Allegedly,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

The legendary went from working in a bell factory to ringing the alarm on masters of the universe and (finally) winning a Pulitzer.

The Miami Herald reporter visits us, in person, to shed light on the culture of silence that protected Epstein for so long, the legal dream team that struck his secret deal, and how Epstein pulled out all the stops to stop her investigation.

PLUS: the whistleblower who gave away the A-Rod steroid scandal, sneaking into a hospital to interview Joe Frazier... and the maddening therapy of Philly sports.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Thanks,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

One thing about Pablo Torre Finds Out is that we are unapologetically based in my hometown of New York City. Which also means that I did not have a yard growing up. And that I love getting out of our studio to touch grass.

But while previous journeys have taken us bird-watching in Central Park, and to death row in Texas, this was different.

This was a trip to the highly secure backyard of a 227-year-old house on 88th Street with yellowish clapboard, right by the East River, called Gracie Mansion. Where the current resident happens to be living a sports year, while running a sports town, that justified a rare sensation these days:

Optimism.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Shit,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

I’ve been meaning to Share & Tell with two noted Friends of PTFO:

’s Tim Miller and our friend Stephanie Ruhle, whose career pivot from finance to cable news means that I can continue to mine her for insights into the (social) network she has somehow preserved. On the docket, in part…

• Can Trump ruin the Knicks?

• Why are billionaires so sensitive?

• Just how much of the White House is for sale?

• Should we be calling this “capitalism”?

• Is the pope radical?

PLUS: the joylessness of a luxury box.

P.S. After taping this episode, Tim and I could not stop making content:

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Amen,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

Ten years ago, the death of a gorilla in Ohio broke the Internet.

And now, as the Trump administration tries to claim Harambe as its own…

…I’ve been waiting to tell you a different story.

A story we’ve spent months reporting, thanks to a tip from the strangest whistleblower in the history of PTFO (which is saying a lot, at this point). And the forbidden videos that the Cincinnati Zoo does not want you to see.

But this is, rest assured, a sports story.

And Katie Nolan and Desus Nice were the perfect people to walk into our studio — without a single clue about what we'd be discussing — and help us tell it.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

RIP,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

This program contains multitudes.

Among them, as you may have noticed: a game-show film room.

And on this momentous championship edition, with Mina Kimes and Domonique Foxworth, we discuss, among other things:

• How is preparing for a game show like playing in the NFL?

• What’s the first rule of Jeopardy! Fight Club?

• Why purchase equipment on the dark web?

• And what happens if you bet zero dollars with a million on the line?

PLUS: Katie Nolan’s secret pep talk, Daily Double brain glitch, Spygate... and a buzzer bibliography.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Friendship,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

Perhaps the greatest find in the saga of Dianna Russini and Mike Vrabel was a Spotify playlist uncovered by an independent journalist named David Covucci.

We’d previously asked David to help us investigate that story. But rather than holding onto this playlist for a future episode of PTFO, he did something else.

David… just tweeted it out:

Which, in the end, was completely fair.

Not only was it David’s scoop: as the proprietor of a truly elite newsletter called FOIAball — which is worth paying for! — he also chose to scoop himself.

All of this is my long way of saying that I’ve been wanting to inject FOIAball into the PTFO universe. Ideally alongside another online appreciator of both college sports and the Freedom of Information Act: Notre Dame’s own Jessica Smetana.

Who will make her own form of history in this episode.

Whereas the comments section looks, in part, like this:

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Go Irish,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

What happens after sports franchises get too expensive for individuals to own?

Are crying Liverpool fans actually the cure for male loneliness?

Would you get married during the Super Bowl on Valentine’s Day?

The co-authors of Big Fan, Mike Schur and Joe Posnanski, help us find out.

PLUS: Jim Thome’s farm adjacency, Regis Philbin analytics, Gerry and the Pacemakers, institutional investors, Ted Danson on Hollywood Boulevard... and feeding a sandwich to Stugotz on Microsoft Teams.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Aaaaaaaalooooone,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

I didn’t work at newspapers.

I started my career in journalism as a Sports Illustrated fact-checker, some 19 years ago, before continuing on as a senior writer at ESPN The Magazine in 2012.

Candidly, in other words: the National Magazine Awards were the dream.

And not just because the physical trophy — modeled on the sculptor Alexander Calder’s Elephant — is in desperate need of child-proofing:

To me, making a magazine was — and is — the coolest thing you can do.

Anyone who’s ever talked to me about launching this show has heard me say the word “magazine.” The different types of episodes we do, from Share & Tell to these unboxing deep dives, clumsily approximate the section at the front of the book and the long feature in the back. The topics we cover reflect the interests of idiosyncratic human editors. And if you appreciate the way we structure things — or absolutely hate the lengths we make our audience travel in order to get to some final kicker — you have the traditions of that medium to blame.

Anyway: PTFO won the National Magazine Award for Podcasting last night.

Thank you to the American Society of Magazine Editors.

We are extraordinarily lucky to find a way to make a magazine, still.

A great mentalist and a great plastic surgeon share something in common.

They are so skilled that they successfully deter the audience from lingering on a potentially explosive question:

Is this real?

And if you watch Oz the Mentalist, as I have, for hours, you will hear him disclose that he does not have secret superpowers. In his very popular TED Talk, Oz Pearlman explicitly says that he performs these viral revelations by noticing things: clues about a person’s body language, eyebrows, pupil movement, nonverbal cues.

This, he says, is mentalism.

A learnable skillset which Oz — who used to work on Wall Street, at Merrill Lynch — also sells, in book form.

And so Oz the Mentalist has become part evangelist and part Sherlock Holmes, barnstorming into locker rooms and television studios all across the country. Daring someone like our guest today, Stevie Baskin, to notice some things, too.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Honestly,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

On this episode of The Sporting Class, we finally reunite our two ex-presidents, David Samson and John Skipper, in order to find out:

What do the tech titans of Silicon Valley and the old heads of traditional broadcast television have in common?

Will the NFL get too greedy in their continued pursuit of maximum return on their media rights?

Why is Rupert Murdoch secretly meeting with Donald Trump?

How much is… enough?

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

THE WEEKEND,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

This episode, with Wyatt Cenac and Amin Elhassan, is not going to be about unmasking Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious founder of Bitcoin and creator of a multitrillion-dollar cryptocurrency industry.

This episode is going to be about unmasking the social team of the man who has now claimed, repeatedly, to have met Satoshi back in the 1990s:

Scottie Pippen.

Because recently I was sent this:

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Thanks,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

The reason I wanted to bring journalist Alan Shipnuck back on the show is not to throw dirt on the apparent grave of LIV Golf, the subject Alan literally wrote the book about and has covered as closely as anyone.

I wanted to have Alan on because by understanding how boring old golf became a geopolitical soap opera, I suspect we might find something out about the future of sports, in general.

Because when LIV first launched, the premise of spending $5 billion in less than five years in order to destabilize the PGA Tour wasn’t an indictment. It was an advertisement.

But by the end of February, golfer-in-chief Donald Trump — who was scheduled to host two LIV events at his courses, this year — chose to wage war in Iran. And so the president who helped save Saudi Arabia’s most famous sportswashing project helped end it.

The conversation now is whether there’s any high ground left.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Thanks,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

We talk a lot about whistleblowers and basketball and secrets on this show. And there is no one more qualified to discuss the collision of all these topics than a hardcore Knicks fan named Ben Wizner.

One of my favorite things about Ben is that he, like me, thinks a lot about the unique power of sports.

And this fact, when I first found out about it, caught me by surprise. Mostly because I’d only thought of Ben through the lens of his most famous client — National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden — and Ben’s day job: director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Center for Democracy.

The thing that’s so remarkable about the ACLU, in case you’re not familiar, is that it does not fear power or party politics. Ben Wizner has literally sued the CIA.

But there is one figure that has intimidated Ben into silence…

Until now.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Thanks,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

So this is a Share & Tell with our old friend Michael Cruz Kayne and our new friend Sam Reich, the CEO of Dropout, which is an amazing comedy company that you should really know about.

But it begins on an iconic red staircase in the middle of the New York Times building. And if you’re a journalism nerd like me, you may have seen this scene before, in photos or movies: this annual gathering of all these reporters and editors and dignitaries across multiple floors of an enormous, open-floor-plan newsroom — the largest newsroom in America — to hear speeches from the winners of a truly overwhelming award.

And you, the listener, may also be wondering what many have been asking in the days since our staff won this thing during an ongoing NBA investigation.

What about your old debate partner, billionaire Mavericks owner Mark Cuban?

That’s in this episode, too.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Thank you,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

We didn’t plan to drop Part X of our ongoing Clippers/Aspiration investigation the day after it won the Pulitzer Prize.

This particular episode, in fact, was in the works for months.

You may recall that in Part IX, taped live in March 2026, we obtained a crucial document from March 2023: the confidential complaint, submitted to the federal government, under penalty of perjury, by two Aspiration whistleblowers.

This complaint is what started the Department of Justice’s investigation. It provided the detailed roadmap for the successful convictions of Aspiration co-founder Joe Sanberg and Aspiration board member Ibrahim AlHusseini.

And crucially, for our purposes here, it also detailed Steve Ballmer’s Clippers using Aspiration to pay Kawhi Leonard and “circumvent the NBA’s salary cap”:

All of which reminded me that there was a lead DOJ prosecutor who’d already vetted this whistleblower complaint… and many of the same documents… and many of the same sources… that I started studying, years later, in 2025.

That prosecutor’s name, it turns out, is Lou Manzo.

And Lou — who has since left the federal government — has become a fan of the journalism PTFO has been doing. An “avid listener,” even.

So I asked him to help us decode what Steve Ballmer has been most recently claiming. And what might happen with the sentencing of Joe Sanberg: the guy that the richest man in American sports may fear the most.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Relentlessly,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

If you subscribe to this newsletter, it means that you got in on something like the ground floor of a show that launched in September 2023.

And so I am rubbing my eyes at the website containing the above screenshot.

And at what The Poynter Report published this week:

And at this physical newspaper:

Back in 2023, when I joined Meadowlark, my friend Dan Le Batard agreed to let us build a staff of people who wanted to fight for a strange new approach to sports journalism.

By 2026 — with the help of Amin Elhassan, David Samson, a depth chart of sources, and more than 3,000 pages of documents — that staff of people did this.

Thank you to everyone who believed.

Pablo

In 2020, Harvard University published the results of its “full” investigation into the university’s ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

But we have now obtained dozens of internal documents Harvard never disclosed.

Part II of our new investigation — in collaboration with The Harvard Crimson and its managing editor, PTFO correspondent Dhruv Patel — tells a very different story from the one Harvard’s administration released for public consumption.

This is an episode, in part, about two Harvard presidents: Lawrence H. Summers (former U.S. Treasury Secretary under Bill Clinton and OpenAI board member) and Henry Rosovsky (eminent economics professor and former member of the Harvard Corporation).

And the people who helped Jeffrey Epstein sell himself to the world.

P.S. I’d just like to spotlight the original podcast art for this series made by human PTFO producer Clare Taylor:

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Gracias,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)

Of all the superlatives you could use to describe Harvard University, the one you should know immediately is that it is the richest academic institution in the entire world, by far.

Harvard’s endowment hit a record $56.9 billion last year, a reflection of the university’s incredibly meticulous approach to donors and donations.

But the focus of our new investigation is a related superlative.

Because according to The New York Times, the school that received the most money, via donation, from Jeffrey E. Epstein, was — you guessed it — Harvard University.

And what the Harvard administration knew about Epstein… and when, exactly, they knew it… is the question I’ve long wondered as a proud alum who was on campus, it turns out, when the billionaire pedophile was, too.

This quest to find out ultimately led us back to my old college newspaper, The Crimson, which helped us investigate internal Harvard documents I acquired — our alma mater’s own Epstein Files — that had never seen the light of day.

Here’s Part I.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Thanks,

Pablo

P.S. You can now watch us over on Apple Podcasts (!)