From working title, producers of Bridget Jones and Love Actually I'm looking for this girl called Emily I'll help you find her Comes the truly feel-good British rom-com that's being called a five-star instant classic Tell me you didn't have the school email, what message every Emily? Hailed as hilarious and original Hey Emily It's Notting Hill for a new generation I don't think that's the wrong number Just didn't write number you, did you? Finding Emily Only in cinemas May 22nd Book tickets now Love don't cost a thing But wedding sure do I would say every single person I go to and I'm like, so how much over budget are you right now? And I've never heard someone say they were under budget Matrimonies rising price tag That's this week on Explaining To Me Find new episodes, Sundays, wherever you get your podcasts Welcome to Raging Moderates, I'm Jessica Tarlove and I'm so pumped to have Pablo Torre here The host of Pablo Torre finds out What is it? Three Emmy nominations? Who's counting? Miss Tarlove, who's counting at this point? You definitely are And I am to make this intro as splashy as possible It's so cool to have you here Well, thank you so much External validation is a poison I love to drink So thank you so much for having me And for stating all the things my mom wants me to say Even louder than I already do Yeah, I mean, I'm a Jew So I totally understand about the moms That want to talk about all the accolades all the time But no, it's really exciting I've been, you know, consuming you in a not creepy way For a very long time Likewise Like, allow me to say as much as my mom is disappointed That I haven't gone to med school or law school Doing a show like this with you really is something that I appreciate So I appreciate that If you aren't already, make sure to subscribe to our YouTube page To stay in the loop on all political news I want to start off by talking about the blend of your world and my world So you do these incredible investigations And the aspiration one into Steve Bomber Who owns LA Clippers Former head of Microsoft, Rich's owner in the league Was paying his star, Kauai Leonard, through essentially a shell company To get above the salary cap So you got an extra $28 million, I think it was And, you know, you really blew the roof off of the story Got a lot of ire from the billionaire class, to say the least And it feels very similar to what's going on in politics today Not only the straight up comp between what Bomber did And how Super PACs and dark money works But also this world in which billionaires seem to get away with whatever they want Can you talk a little bit about the relationship between the two worlds? Yeah, I think about this all the time now The question of accountability and how does it get imposed And who gets to matter when it comes to, oh, there's a report Or there's something resembling shame That a really wealthy, powerful person should feel And in this case, sports is a fascinating sort of like laboratory for it Because a guy like Steve Bomber, you know, it's interesting When he was running Microsoft and he was the CEO at the time of the, I would say, most infamous at that point Anti-competitive scandal in the history of the US government And our country, he was so unmoved, I would say By the idea that you must be regulated And your monopoly must be broken up Sports is fascinating because there are lots of the same desires of, wait a minute We're the biggest and the richest, Steve Bomber is the richest owner in sports By orders of magnitude in the world He basically is richer than all the other owners combined And so the question that he is asking himself, according to my reporting is Again, why can't I use all of my powers to their full extent? Why am I being regulated and suppressed by lesser beings? And in sports, because he's a basketball fan In sports, because he can't just buy the thing he wants the most Because there are rules around competition that in sports we are sincere in our cliches about Fair play, right? He has to answer for this stuff You know, it was fascinating to see Steve Bomber, the aforementioned guy who at that point had $150 or so billion dollars It was fascinating to see him go to Bristol, Connecticut to sit down with ESPN the day after this reporting that I published came out And he did it because he knows how important the rules are in sports Or at the very least, he knows how much he's supposed to care about the performance of caring about the rules And so if only, if only in politics, there was that level of sort of like built-in mechanism of public attention Now the question, the follow-up question of course is will there be punishment? And so there is the question of should he care about this? Clearly yes, and people will ask about it The secondary follow-up is now will the institution, which is empowered to punish him In this case, the NBA, which is to say his own employees in a sense, will they actually do the thing that will provide anything resembling accountability? Yeah, I mean, you say that there are mechanisms there in the NBA and Adam Silver has, as the commissioner, a lot of latitude, right? And what gets enforced and what doesn't But bringing this out to like a larger American question, we are supposed to be governed by laws And the court system is supposed to be a check, right? And Congress is supposed to be a check on the executive as well, but that shift really sailed a while ago And I'm thinking about things like, you know, a judge just halted Trump's plan to build the ballroom So now you just have a big dug-up mess, right? On the lawn and, you know, following where that goes But it really doesn't feel like there's much accountability in this moment whatsoever for sports and certainly for our politics Yeah, I think what you're seeing in sports as this metaphor for politics is public demand for accountability being expressed in ways that, frankly, a lot of mainstream institutions are not necessarily encouraging due to various conflicts of interest But then the question of, well, who's going to do the punishing? Who's going to meet that out? Look, I was studying and reporting on the outside independent investigation that the NBA has started with Wachtel Lipton, an incredibly well-regarded law firm And what the various former employees of this tree planting carbon credits shell company have told me is that they're not being asked by that firm At least five of them have not been asked by that firm about Steve Ballmer directly And so there is this thing of, like, well, there are fall guys according to this logic as well, right? We're not going to touch the big man, but we might get to have someone lower on the org chart take the fall for him, if that But it's, look, it's depressing. It's depressing to live in an era in which the owners of these teams are richer than ever from industries like tech that are less accountable than ever And I think it all redounds to this notion of people feeling like their heirlooms, whether it's, I don't know, whether it's the emotional attachment they have to the premise of like, ah, we're a country with laws, we're a civil society, or it's, hey, in sports you gotta play by the rules It's depressing to not immediately know that those things are being prioritized when you're paying money into a system that is effectively telling you we're going to care about these things Absolutely. And the comparison that pops up right away to me from the language that you're using is what's going on with the Epstein files and you've talked about the Epstein files on Your show, um, we just had Julie K Brown on Raging Moderates, you know, the pioneering journalist who's been on this beat. She's unbelievable and Not gonna lie. It was pretty depressing hearing her talk about Her hopes or what's realistic to think could happen in terms of accountability because they're definitely not touching the Steve bombers or like the trumps of the world in this but they're They don't even have a fall guy. They have like fall one fall woman, but she earned that right sitting in prison. Otherwise, it's nothing And and and what a what a prison it is, right? The the the sort of club med right idea there look and this is a the Epstein files to me are also like a sports story and in real ways I mean, it was interesting to see bill gates after the first I guess it was months ago now, but like that wave in which he was really now a protagonist in the files The first public appearance he made was sitting next to his partner at Microsoft Steve bomber at a clippers game That was the first place he was like, I'm gonna be out in the world again And what I'm reminded of and we also interviewed a former three-time democratic congressman, tom mcmillan the six foot ten ish Uh guy in the video where he's walking in with Epstein shaking hands with trump at mara lago We interviewed him on the show and it was an uncomfortable interview. I'm very glad we did it But it was tense and awkward at times and it reminded me that Sometimes the only thing we can hope for is some notion of public reaction That feels maybe like we're imposing something like shame Because again the legal recourse is not necessarily available or close to guaranteed. So what happens when you don't have Uh, the repercussions that you're outlining even though julie k brown has been doing incredible work like this as well as other journalists Who are on the story now as well? What might you get at best? And it's the idea that when you talk about this public figure, you got to mention this stuff now And is that enough is that nourishing? You know when we're starving for something like consequences Yeah, I mean the line in the wikipedia entry, I guess is something um, but probably not for the highest ranking people Um, what you're describing, you know, makes me think of last weekend was no kings protest Round three eight million people out 3300 rallies across the country. Um, we saw, you know, the brave people of minneapolis They got ice out essentially they showed up enough in freezing cold temperatures Um to advocate for their rights and for the rights of people who are here illegally too um, do you feel like we are seeing Cut a broad based swell of people demanding Change or something better or do you still feel like it's too quiet? You know, it's been really encouraging. Maybe because the bar has been on the floor It's been so encouraging to see people demand Both consequences as well as journalism Um, I think that's something to unite all of this something that I've been just feeling You know to your first initial question is that it is It has never been easier for a very wealthy and powerful person to hide the reality of what they're actually doing And I think about this of course in all the ways that are obvious in our politics all the ways in which this administration has been using I mean from cryptocurrency to uh shell companies to All these other mechanisms that don't require disclosure up the prediction market insider trading Yeah epidemic all of that stuff. Um, it's really easy to get away with with uh opacity But over and over again like the lesson I've learned By doing my little show has been My god, we're underserving the public appetite that wants to see something like a reckoning and so look the no king stuff Which is orders of magnitude beyond? um I think what I What I expected at the outset and I simply say that because um numbness and something like resignation, you know That tends to follow cynicism And I think if nothing else the pendulum has been pushed and abused to the point where They have gone too far. Uh the epstein class broadly speaking has gone too far and you're looking at Frankly the the the patards the patards that this sort of ruling class has hoisted themselves upon There's some of the most on-the-nose classic examples of just like comic book corruption talking about pedophilia. We're talking about Um a lack of judicial accountability. We're talking about all of the obvious things around the funneling of money in in in of any previous standard of like well, how much is how much is being won and lost secretly it might be billions of dollars In coordination with foreign governments. I mean, that's the the heat check that I think We're watching happen and that's the thing that we're watching, you know Explode in the streets of this country. It's so weird how this stuff that's the most obvious and out front feels the hardest to deal with like That you know stab me in the front versus the back like the front appears to be more difficult to prosecute Then the kind of work that you know, you're doing or you spent a year looking into something, right? Yeah, I mean there's also I also think about the the bed of nails metaphor, you know When there are so many scandals like how does any of them puncture any one person and and trump himself is the Greatest embodiment of this like he can just lie across a bed of a thousand scandals um, but something that I like to remind myself about is that you know, I think we are for peter and often for worse, we're living in a pendulum of a civil society And we will see the physics of this demand a counter balancing reaction Um, but structurally, you know, and you see this all the time. I hear you talk about it all the time structurally, um I think we need to have a level of alarm that is still Not in direct proportion. It's still being underweighted compared to It's one thing to say. Ah, the public attitude demands change. It's another thing to say and now we got to rebuild institutions that have been actively, uh, you know, uh Suicide bomb from the inside out not just rebuild Reform like we have to burn it down too. And I think that's something, you know as a democrat that I've really struggled With and to communicate with lawmakers who are like, we're gonna go back to how it was like we'll be respected on the world stage and I'm like Like it wasn't that great before for people especially for poor people In america who are telling you like they want an arsonist with a d on their shirt or an r on their shirt And they're gonna pick whoever is gonna make the most change. Yes. And you know, it's it's it's That's a way better way to put it. I'm the thing that I was thinking about also with of course like this fbi and this um epstein files investigation, um Look This administration is the dog that caught the car, right? They ran on we're gonna tear down the system You are anti political not just a political but anti political. We will be your avatar We're going to do all the things that the populist Will of the people has long demanded And it turns out they they caught the car They got it and the car turned out to be full of epstein files and they were like, oh no We don't want to open the door of the car now uh, and and so Look, I think it's really important to your point for democrats for people on the left Um people who are just simply not associated with this administration to also hold their own people accountable Because the credibility question we are at an inflection point And so if there are and there certainly are lots of democrats in here, I'm not opposed to bring in bill and hillary done under of course non-ridiculous sorts of uh Conditions, I'm not opposed to that but it must also clearly be Trump as well. It must also clearly be less wexner and leon black as well. Um I think that if anything else we have a moment to say, yeah, I'm also here to reform and tear down the system and as proof We're going to We're going to reform the people that also we didn't love who are perpetuating the same system Absolutely, and I think part of that tear it down or showing that you're really serious about change links to The prediction markets that you mentioned so it seems like you know, this is just a massive hub for insider trading You know anytime Trump is going to do something vis-a-vis a ron You know, you see the spikes going around and someone's getting rich and the people who are supposed to investigate it are actually resigning because They won't even be able to carry out their work and maybe they're better, you know served on the outside I know you had chris murphy on to talk about this. Um, can you Tell the raging moderates audience a bit about what you think is going on with these prediction markets? And if you think there's any chance for regulation Yeah, and this has been an ongoing subject of our coverage because it's fascinating and deeply corrupt spitting is obviously like A huge issue. It's like 90 percent sports betting still. I mean, which kind of gives away the game You know, um, it's uh, if nothing else economically, it's a way for sports betting to happen And to circumvent State by state laws. Um, the cftc is so fascinating as an institution because this federal agency has said we are going to regulate event contracts, which we consider commodities, which are What prediction markets offer they're not bets Keep that in mind. They're not bets. They're event contracts and these are commodities, you know so the reason I say that is because The federal government is basically saying we want A thousand prediction markets to bloom. We love this stuff And in the process while don jr. Is on the board of both cal. She and poly market the two which seems like a conflict of interest I'm surprised that That you would do both that you would get to do both I think it's so again, it's a bit on the nose, right? It's like what if what if we had him work for both apple and microsoft? It's like, well, why would that be? Well, it's because they know the transactionality of government is actually incentivizing this and so nobody seems to even Pretend that anything else is happening But it leads to the follow-up question of if it's 90% sports betting great, okay? Um, a huge problem But let's leave it off to the side for now in politics. The question becomes well If everything is sports betting you can make a market out of literally anything including caroline levitt's press conference How long is that going to run as well as will the price of oil? you know react to a parent alleged piece Being imposed on on the middle east right now Well, who who knows about that? and so a prediction market just the history of it is fascinating because There's a Logic to it that makes sense if you have skin in the game You can have lots of independent experts who know things to create something like a consensus around what will happen in the future And that is really interesting to know as a matter of forecasting What is less cool? I dare say is when the people who are insiders Now have the ability to share that knowledge With a small number of people who will all profit at the expense of the public And so the question you have to ask yourself when you're betting on anything political on a prediction market is Am I more likely more likely to know more about this than whoever don jr. Is telling? It's just the question right like you have no edge actually you have no Inside information you are going to be the pat see that someone else profits off of because this is a deeply unregulated space Where inside information is still being reckoned with as almost a novel concept even if it's the general thesis for why? We have to regulate the stock market right? It's just like the very basic logic hasn't yet caught up because everything is Move fast and break things and so Look the implications of it Are are vast It's not only deeply corrupt. It's not only a way to funnel money It's not only a way for insiders to profit is also something that I think is deeply even more dystopian Which is if you consider these markets as sources for accurate forecasts of truth You also are seeding to these markets the power to legitimate Whatever The market is favoring which is to say if the question is are we going to go and invade Venezuela? Which was literally a question on the prediction market Um and the money is saying yes, we will and the consensus around the public response is well Of course, we're going to do it. Look at the prediction market now You've given to these insiders or to people with money broadly the power to actually change public assumptions about what is reasonable to expect in our world and war assassinations terrorism Whether jesus will come back from the dead before 2027 which is literally a market On polly market and there's also a derivative market based on whether that number will ever hit 5% It's all it's all pretty fucked. I dare say I dare say The uh my recommendation to people who are trying to track these things is to follow the dominoes tracker of With there's pizza going to the pentagon or I guess tomorrow lago which is now our new pentagon because we live in the 50th circle of hell. Okay, let's take a quick break stay with us This episode is brought to you by Expedia and visit scotland start your story in scotland experience the pull of wide Untamed landscapes and fresh cuisine that feels rooted in place Discover castles steeped in legend and feel the genuine warmth from locals you meet in a place that will stay with you Long after you leave start planning your own scottish holiday today at expedia.co.uk slash visit scotland I'm midge first two-time india brucell champion championship mvp and forward for the us women's national team Before I went pro I graduated from harvard with a degree in psychology Which comes in handy more than you think any athlete pursuing greatness knows there's a certain mentality you have to have What people don't know Is what that costs in my podcast confessions of an elite athlete I sit down with the best athletes in the world and explore the psychology mindset and unseen battles on the path to greatness so take a seat And learn from the confessions of an elite athlete on youtube or wherever you get your podcasts I'm rhea sherpova and i'm hosting a new podcast called pretty tough Every week i'm sitting down with trailblazing women at the top of their game to discuss ambition Work ethic and the ups and downs that come on the path to achieving greatness We'll dive into their stories and get valuable insights from top executives actors Entrepreneurs and other individuals who have inspired me so much in my own journey Follow pretty tough wherever you get your podcasts Welcome back there's a big oval office addressed tonight about iran. Um, I'm curious as to what you think Trump is going to be saying there It's you know rumored online that he's going to go after the nato alliance and you know Put them on notice as if that hasn't already been going on for a while But that you know, maybe they're serious about leaving this time. Um, what do you think look? I think that trump Is so deeply inconsistent outside of his own self-interest that you could tell me uh, he will continue to escalate the rhetoric whereas like, hey, uh You know england and france you go navigate the straight of horn moves. How do you like it? You know like go do that. Um, he could do any number of things that always sort of like project blame away The thing that I keep on returning to that I hope he has held to account for from a political campaign perspective is again dude promised no new foreign wars And when I think about the again, I come from sport, so I can't Help but think about what has been deemed the mannisfyr, right because I wanted to go So thank you for getting me there. Well, well you see that what what was the mannisfyr into they were into no new foreign wars They were into accountability for the epstein files. You know, they were into uh, Frankly, like we shouldn't let billionaires be lying to us and what is our conversation resembled so far It's been a repudiation of each of those major planks from people who were again not merely a political but anti-political And so the Iran thing is hugely I think a lever on the destruction of The campaign promises of this administration I think that when j.d. Vance releases his new book about faith And he wants to go talk about it to all of the dudes online You should not merely notice that that church apparently Is seemingly like an episcopalian church and not a catholic church and as a catholic I can sort of value one of the few high horses I will get on as a catholic in 2026 is Stolen valor like what are you doing? Like that's not even a good cosplay of Catholicism Um, not only talk about that but also talk about why Why and how can you possibly be? Um Smiling as the number two person in this administration while you're going back on literally everything you said and so Iran is complicated But it's also very simple And I imagine that trump's campaign messaging will be unpersuasive to a bunch of dudes So I think by the way spoiler alert the the left can also access not merely by promising what feels like conspiracy But what actually might be accountability and if you can use sports as a As a bit of cheese to melt down the broccoli of accountability and accountability journalism and consequences I think you have a way to speak to what actually is uh a desert a relative desert of of that audience of these dudes Feeling like they're getting what they've asked for Yeah, I mean I would hope so because I certainly you know working in conservative media. I've Basically just heard about how neutered All democratic men are and that like no man worth their salt or who'd like get a woman pregnant would ever be a democrat I don't know how we possibly have all these children. But anyway, um, so I well Can I ask you about that because I look I want children Yeah, how are how are how are babby formed? How girl get pregnant? Um, yeah, no, what I wanted to ask about was what something I admire about you is that you go into hostile a hostile arena and you are Unbound and it's really impressive to watch because you're living in a state of perpetual conflict um I actually think your perspective on like what? is even worth uh strategizing around when it comes to convincing those people with those views versus Um going to this audience that I think is still up for grabs and actually I guess the question more broadly is How up for grabs do you think? The audience is uh that you are speaking in front of even as all of the stuff I'm saying is potentially Pulling at the threads of a political coalition Yeah, well the audience Like the four million that sit down at five o'clock or you know access their dvr to watch the five About 50 percent are republicans 20 percent dems and 30 percent independence So there's a good amount of talking to people who have at some point voted like me Um, and I think in the trump era everything is scrambled, right? Like the hardcore maga can't hear you but normie republicans can so I've always felt like it's a great place To try your hand at persuading but you know, you know better than anyone that like your audience for who tunes in at the moment versus what you can do on social when your clips invade another universe like our worlds I mean because of what you investigate they sync up but like we live in two different stratospheres essentially right? But I see you all the time and I'm sure that you see me maybe not all the time but like it gets into the feeds and um, that's where I think The real opportunity is and to that group of young men that you're talking about the ones who fell into the manasphere The andrew schultz devotees, right or the dana white fans They feel totally up for grabs to me and absolutely. I'm wondering if you could unpack a little more like the relationship Or the fissure I guess between like the sports world and politics because it feels like there has been a bit of a Boomerang back where it's like this actually isn't that cool For us to be in bed putting aside the UFC fight that's going to happen on the lawn and mark mullin um Yeah, but do you are you sensing that too that there is a bit of a breakup there? Oh, yeah, look the number one Well, there are lots of hypocrisies to power rank here But one of the top hypocrisies has always been that all this administration wants is for people to stick to sports No one has more cravenly and more transparently tried to infuse Their political messaging into sports than the trump administration and the reason why they do it, of course Speaking and harkening back to the rhetoric around like the transactionality of all of it is because it's not a bad strategy It might actually have a return on the investment simply because as you pointed out, we're so fragmented That sports is like the last big bipartisan tent left in american life in that way like uh The reason why I think sports is so valuable is because it's a vector to reach people who are not merely in my audience Politically, it's a vector to reach people who are just here for games And then they come for the sports and they stick around because I've again cynically speaking I perhaps tricked them into thinking that This is just going to be all cheese and no broccoli. In fact, I think there's some there's some stuff that they might even enjoy eating um Underneath that and so for me I think that it's number one clear that this administration as much as they say They are the number one whatever sports fans in our country and all these Beta cucks. They don't know what they're talking about. I think it's also pretty clear as per the jd fans example They don't really know as much as they pretend You could put in a former mma fighter and mark wade mullen to head, you know To head homeland security, but if you look and hear how trump and jd fans certainly are talking They're not so much sports fans as they are people who are deeply self interested and know that they should appeal to people Who like sports and I think for sports fans there has been a difference. I think the cynical manipulation of sports in a way that is so overt Is in excess frankly of What had been characterized previously? As political but was really about race You know like I think about even just the Colin Kaeperdic stuff and that's a whole other Part podcast series obviously Well like the whole idea of like what happened it's like well a super majority of nfl players are black And they felt like their experience was being trampled upon in ways that were Unfair and in violation of anything resembling their first amendment rights and there's a debate there certainly But the notion of like well, this is the democratic party. It's like no no hold on I think that what we're seeing with the trump administration Administration is something that is so clearly campaigning by a party versus a reflection of like what is a perpetual stew of Yeah of sociological tensions that can result in protest. Anyway, I'm now rambling officially But my point is I think sports is absolutely the number one culture war territory That is available for both parties And if the left abdicates it they are making a grave mistake because that attention Is going to be captured by somebody absolutely. Um, and you've done really great work also on Riley Gaines, um and the kind of culture war mash-up of sports, um with her and lia thomas the penn swimmer, um, that was really fascinating I'd recommend everyone go look at that. Thank you. Yeah, birthright citizenship is at the supreme court today I've seen some like trickles out so far that it seems like Chief Justice John Roberts is skeptical of the case that the government Is making pushing back on things like birth tourism and you know, how often it happens Do you have a feel for you know, how you think it's gonna go? But really More like what it means for the country that we're Even having this conversation. Yeah, look, I'm a first-generation american. My parents came from the philippines Legally and I was the first one born here and I got to be a citizen because I was born in the state of new york and the united states of america um Look, I grew up And it's funny to think of new york as like the embodiment of a bubble because in some ways, of course it is It is also though the america that I fell in love with uh, and still like a door And the reason is because it is a genuine multicultural society And I think all of this redounds to this larger question of do we still consider a multicultural society to be a concept Worth fighting for or is it? In the eyes of this administration and its various enforcement arms Is it in fact the degradation of what america ought to be? And so look the supreme court is going to handle this on a constitutional level on a legal basis and I am hopeful that uh, yeah the wisdom of relative normalcy And I say that knowing that samy lolito and clarence thomas exist um, I I say that with the hope that in fact It still is a popular idea that america engenders love for itself by bringing in people who visually and even uh audibly Don't sound like what used to be the movie idea of what an american is but America ends up being so sincere in its protection of its freedoms that People still fall in love with it from the outside in And so yeah, I'm hopeful that that's that's still the case I too would like in america like that and we're both new york city kids. Um, I don't have the same immigration story But I I know what you mean about it. Yeah, it would lose a lot of magic. Um, if something like that changed uh, publicly Exceeded expectations, which were already so high. Thank you for joining me anytime. I'm a fan and uh, Yeah, I hope to pop into your algorithm whether you like it or not You are welcome invade all the time because it's pretty red-pilled right now. That's elan musk. So I was gonna say you're both Our phones are in a pretty bad place. I'm guessing. Yeah, very unhealthy. All right before we go a reminder that not only is raging moderates five days a week We're also on sub stack subscribers get ad-free episodes Which I think you guys really like live streams and a place to connect with me and scott and the rest of the prof g community Find us at raging moderates.profgmedia.com also Big news nominated for a webby award for best news and politics podcast. Can you believe it? We need your help to bring it home head to vote dot webby awards dot com and cast your vote show us some love scott and I really appreciate it and Like it is a big deal just to be nominated But like everyone really wants to win of course. That's all for this episode. Thank you so much for joining today
