This episode has been aggregated a bunch.

But I encourage you to please listen to the whole thing.

It is a conversation, fundamentally, about information. And how to get it:

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Thanks,

Pablo

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

PTFO is a show about journalism and also game-show film analysis.

And so it was a special treat when the latest episode of Celebrity Jeopardy! All-Stars involved not one but two Friends of PTFO:

Mina Kimes and Timothy Simons.

Unfortunately, as Tim found out, he had no idea what he was really in for.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Uranus,

Pablo

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

On Tuesday, we broke the news that The Onion had finally struck a deal — with the help of Sandy Hook families — to take over Infowars from Alex Jones.

A surreal sentence that deserves a full explanation.

This episode, with Global Tetrahedron CEO Ben Collins, is that explanation: of how they (we) got here; his personal connection to Infowars coverage; and why The Onion didn’t give up.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

GRAAHAHHGGHHHH,

Pablo

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

The all-seeing eye of James Dolan — notorious owner of the Knicks and Rangers — has been caught in glimpses.

But a new WIRED investigation, revealed in collaboration with Pablo Torre Finds Out, lifts the veil on the Orwellian scope (and occasional clown show) of MSG security: from The Garden and the Sphere to the streets of New York and out across America.

The sales pitch, of course, had been “safety.”

Because “terrorism.”

But for the first time, we hear from spooked insiders; read snooping group chats; scour a second-by-second confidential report; and view the facial-recognition database, itself.

It’s… a lot.

And it is incredibly strange.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Knickstape,

Pablo

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

I want to acknowledge that some of you may already be rolling your eyes right now at yet another lib dissecting the UFC and politics and Joe Rogan.

But our guest today, Morning Kombat’s , happens to come with a particular letter of recommendation:

Six years ago, Luke talked to Rogan, on his show, for three and a half hours. They discussed mixed martial arts in granular detail, and it went great. Which is what happens when you’ve been in a relationship with a sport for three decades.

But last Saturday, the same day Vice President JD Vance was in Pakistan, failing to end the war with Iran, there was President Donald Trump at UFC 327, in Miami, alongside Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Hobnobbing with UFC president Dana White and UFC commentator Joe Rogan.

At which point the story that Luke Thomas has been covering — the thing that has now cost him access to the sport he loves the most — became one of the biggest stories in the entire world.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Sincerely,

Pablo

You may be wondering why we’re doing an episode that seems to be about opera.

An understandable sentiment — as no less than Timothée Chalamet told Matthew McConaughey before the Academy Awards earlier this year:

But I didn’t book our guest today, Brandon Jovanovich, simply to get you to care about opera. (Even though sports and pop culture have stolen from the opera house for a very long time, as you’ll see.)

I booked Brandon because he happens to be a former college linebacker whose own dramatic arc is as remarkable as any I’ve seen.

And when this married father of three debuted last year, at the Metropolitan Opera, as Captain Ahab in Moby Dick, Brandon Jovanovich was hiding a secret.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Bravo,

Pablo

When we’re not taste-testing athlete weed, wondering if sports are gay, or Hamburgering with Hamburger, we often find ourselves investigating power.

I am endlessly curious about what the richest and most powerful people in America don’t want you to know — from salary-cap circumvention to the pardon economy. And how those tasked with giving a shit about the rule of law have effectively colluded to preempt accountability.

Take, for instance, this article from yesterday’s Wall Street Journal:

Which means that I’ve also been thinking a lot about why a sports fan with zero to negative interest in this field of study should give a shit about these episodes.

And the word I find myself organically returning to, over and over again, is the bedrock premise of sports itself:

Competition.

And so on today’s show, our guest is bestselling author and Friend of PTFO David Epstein — no relation! — who is here to talk about what he learned while researching his terrific new book, Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better. And we make something like the selfish case for rules, at all.

P.S. I recently learned that my Aspiration/Clippers reporting is part of the legendary Prof. Peter Carfagna’s syllabus at Harvard Law School. And so I was invited to speak about these issues at their Sports Law Symposium. It was energizing to be around young people who care!

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Bobble,

Pablo

As evidenced by our interview with the Honorable Tom McMillen… or the time we taped a secret whistleblower complaint to the underside of the NBA commissioner’s chair in Boston… we’ve been experimenting with how to do live versions of the show.

The McMillen interview, for instance, was taped and post-produced but premiered live on YouTube, which allowed me the personal pleasure of being in the chat with our audience. The Aspiration sequel we did at the Sloan Conference, on the other hand, was streamed live live, without a safety net of any kind.

But this week, we tried doing something else: our first live live episode, from the PTFO studio in New York, in which the people at the desk could react to what the audience was demanding.

And so we called up two of our favorite spontaneous reactors — Katie Nolan and Michael Cruz Kayne — as we waited for a nuclear bomb to drop. (Or not.)

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

WHO KNOWS,

Pablo

As much as we’ve become known for our various investigations — with more to come on that front — I’m happy that this aspect of PTFO has not gone unnoticed:

On this episode, we have the distinct pleasure of introducing two new friends that had not met each other until they walked into our office in New York.

And the docket for our conversation with Desus Nice and Elle Duncan includes, but is by no means limited to:

• Hosting Netflix’s inaugural MLB broadcast

• How dozens of NFL and NBA players got catfished by a guy in Georgia

• An Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System for restaurants

• Our exclusive interview with a squirrel expert

• An old guy who wants to smoke with you

• Choking out a kid at the library

Enjoy.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Welcome,

Pablo

It is no exaggeration to say that our correspondent today, film producer Sean Carey, has spent years examining what is, on one level, a pretty simple story.

Because there is no doubt that the murder of Hall of Fame basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian’s longtime confidante and agent, Vic Weiss, was a mob hit.

But the big lingering question we’re here to solve today is a lot more complicated:

Why?

Why did the mob really stuff Vic Weiss into the trunk of a Rolls-Royce — scaring Tark away from the Lakers and, in a Sliding Doors moment, ensuring the future of UNLV (as a program) and Las Vegas (as the new sports capital of America)?

Last week, Vegas just got named host of the 2029 Super Bowl. Weeks before that, the NBA announced that it was exploring an expansion team in the city.

In the last decade, Vegas — once the most dangerous sports city in America — has also become the new home of the NFL’s Raiders, NHL’s Golden Knights, WNBA’s Aces, MLB’s Athletics, not to mention an F1 race, and on and on.

This is the story of the unsolved murder that made it happen.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Viva,

Pablo

There was a specific guest star on a seminal television sitcom that has been lodged inside my brain for more than 35 years now.

And if you, like me, grew up watching Night Court on NBC… you may remember this tiny lil character, too:

In this particular episode, a child star named Billy shows up to shoot a TV show in the same Manhattan building where Night Court takes place.

But the more important thing to know is that Billy is a (memorably) tyrannical asshole.

Fairly recently, however, I found out something shocking.

I found out that the actor who played that child is not only someone I’ve known for years now.

I found out that Billy — Corben — is also a kindred spirit.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Gracias,

Pablo

Back in 2023, when our staff was still imagining what PTFO could even be, we kept returning to the idea of a podcast that is also a magazine that is also an independent newsroom that is also a YouTube channel that is also a TV show.

The problem: that show had never existed. (And definitely not three times a week.)

But here in 2026, I could not be prouder of what our team has become.

Last month, the Podcast Academy awarded us Podcaster of the Year and Best Sports Podcast. We are thrilled to be a finalist for a National Magazine Award in May (alongside institutions like NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and Spotify). And the latest update, from the world of television, is especially gratifying:

I did not know that it was possible to be two of the four finalists in the Outstanding Sports Journalism category.

It’s a surreal honor.

And it is really cool to see an independent startup competing — as intended — with shows produced by ESPN, Warner Bros. Discovery, Fox, and Amazon:

There is an alternate timeline, somewhere, in which we made a show with a safer concept. I can imagine that show not requiring a whole team of people who are constantly working their asses off to push the boundaries of what we can get away with in this business.

I am extremely lucky that we imagined this one, instead, together.

Thanks for joining us,

Pablo

If you’ve been paying even vague attention to our ongoing NFLPA series, then you know that this all started with the players’ union — led by then-president JC Tretter — celebrating the election of an outsider.

A real businessman, allegedly, who could speak fluent billionaire:

Former Booz Allen CFO Lloyd Howell.

This very special edition of The Sporting Class — featuring former NFLPA president Domonique Foxworth (!), alongside former Marlins president David Samson — pressure-tests the real logic of this strategy… even apart from the humiliating results of said process.

And we find out at least one reason why Domonique did not win the job of executive director (twice).

I loved this episode; I hope you do, too.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Thanks,

Pablo

We are living through a tragicomic era of rigged-casino capitalism, where America’s anti-corruption laws are simply not being enforced.

This month, according to Reuters, Margaret A. Ryan resigned from her post as the SEC’s Enforcement Division Director for this reason:

And in February, according to Barron’s, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s enforcement division in Chicago — the agency’s top cops — saw their last remaining enforcement attorney resign:

All of which leads us back to the financialization of sports, at all levels.

And our guest today: Senator Chris Murphy.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Thanks,

Pablo

The last time Pro Football Talk proprietor Mike Florio joined me on the show, it was August of 2025.

You may recall this cursed image from PTFO’s four-episode NFLPA series (which just got a fifth installment, thanks to the union’s former lead security officer, Craig Jones, last week):

Today, at long last, Florio returns to unpack how in the fuck the NFL players’ union got here.

And what the NFL might have been thinking, this entire time.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Confipentially,

Pablo

This is an episode that was inspired, at its core, by a question we received from a PTFO viewer back on Nov. 26, 2025:

Who funds PTFO?

It took a while for us to get to this, admittedly.

But I think it’s important for everyone to understand.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Gracias,

Pablo

Tom Junod’s range as a magazine writer is planetary, spanning a 9/11 jumper and Nicole Kidman and Mr. Rogers.

But ever since I saw that 2019 Mr. Rogers movie with Tom Hanks, which was based on the story of Junod’s reporting for Esquire, I’ve been wondering how Tom J. truly felt about how he was portrayed in the film, himself.

Tom Junod saw this movie and sobbed, it turns out.

But it wasn’t because his life story had been butchered.

He was sobbing because there was something in that dramatization that split open a part of his life he’d never sufficiently investigated:

His father, Lou.

Lou Junod was a man whose fictions have now inspired a work of stunning nonfiction, authored by his son, titled In the Days of My Youth, I Was Told What It Means To Be a Man.

The book speaks to how Tom reported some of his best magazine stories, as you’ll see… and what it means for a journalist to really find out the truth.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Thanks,

Pablo

One of the richest labor unions in America has just elected a new Executive Director: a seven-figure job that serves as the direct counterpoint to NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

Only a handful of people have ever held this office. And now it comes with a portfolio of total assets, according to the NFLPA’s latest federal filing, of more than $1.3 billion.

The man this union elected Executive Director, in 2023, was Lloyd Howell — who infamously resigned amid a corruption scandal, as reported on PTFO’s multi-part investigative series, last summer.

But it wasn’t only Howell who had to resign. His top lieutenant, former Browns lineman JC Tretter — the ex-player-president who engineered that 2023 election and served as Howell’s “Chief Strategy Officer” — stepped down three days later.

Yesterday, however… as predicted on PTFO… this happened:

I’ve been reporting, since last year, that JC Tretter has been angling for the job of Executive Director this entire time. It’s an essential lens that explains this scandal.

And it’s the reason our guest this week was one employee who refused, in writing, to be complicit with any of it.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Sincerely,

Pablo

You may have seen us scrutinize the incentives and unintended consequences of legalized sports betting and the rise of multibillion-dollar prediction markets.

We’ve investigated the gambling scandals that threaten the NBA; we’ve covered scams that touch the White House; you’ve heard me interrogate experts and call for actual regulation.

But part of the reason I wanted to speak to a 40-year-old partner at a quantitative hedge fund named Galen Hall is simple.

During March Madness — America’s longest-running prediction contest and also Galen’s “favorite thing in the world” — I keep thinking about these increasingly competitive and allegedly enriching pools of money.

I first met Galen years ago, through friends, here in New York City, where he lives with his wife, Sierra. And when I recently asked him how much he’s won — across all sorts of NCAA brackets and legal wagers and high-stakes competitions — his estimate was more than $15 million.

From various World Series of Poker… to the 2023 Backgammon World Championship, in Monte Carlo… to the record-setting 2025-26 Circa Las Vegas NFL Survivor Pool. Where only five entries — out of an unprecedented 18,718 submissions — made it to the very end.

And Galen Hall didn’t have one of those five winning entries, which shared a $18.7 million pot.

Galen had two of them.

Which is all to say that this episode is a case study in the type of brain that’s wired to dominate a game that so many of us don’t even realize we’re playing.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Thanks,

Pablo

You may have noticed that the U.S. government is mixed martial arts now.

In fact, the same day we published this episode, with our returning pals and Tim Miller (of ), FBI director Kash Patel made this announcement:

PLUS: Stephen A.’s campaign, Kristi Noem’s fuckplane, Corey Lewandowski’s halitosis, Chuck Lidell’s workout room, a re-patriated blankie, Benihana, Huggie Bear, Bernie Sanders, Dean Cain, and Frank Ocean.

YOUTUBE SPOILER ALERT:

Sincerely,

Pablo