Nothing But Anarchy
"Nothing But Anarchy" hosted by Chad Sanders explores and subverts sports, media, Hollywood, and culture. Chad's vulnerable and raw commentary creates a fresh podcast experience you don't want to miss. Tune in Tuesdays and Thursdays at 12PM ET on Youtube Live.
Subscribe to the "Nothing But Anarchy" Youtube channel for full interviews and more anarchy!
Game analysis, social commentary, and music.
Instagram: @chadsand
Executive Producer: Chad Sanders
Producer: Morgan Williams
Music: Marcus Williams
Nothing But Anarchy
Eps. #80 Authenticity in the Spotlight, Emmanuel Acho and Integrity of Content Creation, the Value of Shame, the Future of Streaming Sports & Storytelling Tips
In this episode Chad questions the recent tweets by sports analyst and author, Emmanuel Acho about a fake news article, the importance and value of shame, streaming services, and answers questions from his Instagram.
Tune in Tuesdays and Thursdays at 12PM ET to watch the show live on Youtube. Follow @chadsand on Instagram and subscribe to the Nothing But Anarchy Youtube channel for full interviews and more anarchy!
Executive Produced by: Chad Sanders
Produced by: Morgan Williams
This is Nothing but Anarchy, the show that explores and subverts sports, entertainment, media, Hollywood, a bunch of other stuff. Whatever you think is interesting, let me do it here. Welcome to Nothing but Anarchy. Welcome to Nothing but Anarchy. Morgan, what's hard about having a bob? Morgan was just starting to tell me why it's hard having a bob. She has a bob.
Speaker 2:Because when you leave the salon you look one way and then when you try to recreate what they did in the salon, it's impossible.
Speaker 1:OK, I relate. I'm going to the salon this evening to get my the salon to get my hair twisted on Notion Avenue in Flatbush, where they do it the best. All right, let's start here. I'm I am of high energy, although I lost a lot of steam just now. Ok, here's we go. Transparency we are in a different studio than we are Usually. We have been in here for what is this week three in this studio. We've been in here for a couple of weeks to two. We've been in here for the last. This is the fourth episode in here and a learning from being in a different studio Actually, I don't know if it's a learning just as much as so much of my job as Speaker.
Speaker 1:I suppose let's just call it that is like having the instrument myself in the right position and environment, like to do the thing and it. I think it would be surprising to anybody who has not done this sort of specific job, and I don't just mean like podcasting or speaking or some sort of performative exercise, but everything from the type of coffee that you drink to your commuting parking, like the physical space, the layout where the people are oriented in the room, like these are all things that matter I took. I spoke to like a performance coach recently as I was talking to this person about actually, a couple of people have given me this advice. As I was talking to this person about starting to do our live shows, I was given the advice Plant the people in the room who you are close to, who you feel a connection to, exactly where you want them seated in the room for your shows as you, as you ramp them up.
Speaker 1:And what's interesting is for me, I don't think that's like right in the front, I think it's probably somewhere in the middle, because in the front, this, this is actually going to dovetail well into a conversation I didn't expect to have, but we'll start here and then we're going to get into a manual. Okay, so anybody who knows who a manual is and anybody who knows who I am know that that's going to be fun. So, um, why are you laughing?
Speaker 2:Because I could see how that's true.
Speaker 1:So I grew up with parents. I grew up as a coach's son. My dad was my basket. My dad was a D1 basketball player. I talk about that all the time. I was very far from a D1 basketball player, but I was pretty good ball player. My dad was the type of coach, the type of my friends call my dad scout that is his nickname because he would literally post up in the hallway and watch our practices. Sometimes in high school he was, you know, right on top of me as my coach from the time I was probably six until I was maybe 12 or 13.
Speaker 1:Um, my dad has spoken to me in basketball and sports metaphors basically my entire life. Uh, and almost. You know, think about it as hyperbolically as you can Like when you think about the coach's son. Um, I represent so many of those things.
Speaker 1:All these ideas about like focus and leadership and action and practice and preparation and like all those things are some. A lot of those things are why I'm how I am right now. A lot of those things are why I was texting Morgan last night at 11 o'clock about a Vimp right Is and you know what. And it's also probably why I like Morgan so much is because she is an athlete Like she is. She is, she was like a high level division one athlete. So she I think many of these forms of communication are native to Morgan I think I can actually just feel from Morgan is seems to be more comfortable with the idea of I'm using this term definitionally, no sauce on it, like chain of command, in a way that a lot of Gen Z people are not in a lot of way, in a way that a lot of millennial people are not.
Speaker 2:That's a whole other conversation, because I feel like my senior year the freshmen were not into chain of command at all and you probably hated that. It's going away, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, and and and. So what's refreshing about that is that you know where you stand on stuff, like you know. You know when things are going to get done, you know when things are not going to get done, you know when things are going well, you know when things are fucking up. Morgan has, like, that sort of attitude. Everybody doesn't have that sort of attitude and I am getting more. It's funny I'm getting, I guess, because I'm getting older, maybe, but like I used to be so anti chain of command when I worked like at a tech startup you know what I mean I was like fucking herding cats.
Speaker 1:We all were all of us millennials working for the Gen Xers we were all like herding cats. We all wanted to do whatever we wanted. We had so many feelings, you know, oh, you know I, I know you told me to do it like this, but I chose to do it like that because the fucking shockers and the crystals told me that I felt better when I do it like this and I'm all moody and my vision is so important in my future and I'm getting because so much has to get done right now. I'm getting a lot more enamored by the idea of we communicate directly. We say what's going to happen and we try to make it happen, and if it fails we try something else. But there's not a whole lot in the way of like. I think, morgan, in our communications there's not a whole lot in the way of like fuzzy gray area. Would you agree with that?
Speaker 2:Like you mean like room for confusion.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, yeah, and we're, and we've gotten better at it, because six months ago we had a conversation where it was like we got to get better at this yeah.
Speaker 1:We were like what's going on? Anyway, that's not the point, that's not what I'm even trying to talk about, um self, what I actually wanted to say was back to the point I want. This is why I started down that path, because I got I started to feel I can feel too hot on me the point of view of the people who I know best in the room. I I can read them too well and I don't want to be reading them while I'm doing my job, so I want them in the middle of the room. I want the people who are sort of new to me in the front of the room. I want the people who actually feel like they're getting a pretty cool experience to be there with me. I want those people in the front who have never seen me speak before, who have never felt my you know what I'm like in real life before, who have never, like, met me and vice versa. I've never met them.
Speaker 1:And why this is important. Why this? Why I'm talking about this, is because I often find I'm realizing something which is something that's just a normal part of my life right now is if we don't talk on a daily basis, if we talk on a semi-regular basis, like, let's say, we, we connect, we text or talk, maybe like once or twice a month. If we're on that sort of relationship, it is likely then that if you hit me up, um, and I'm kind of in the middle of something and by the in the middle of something I mean I'm in the middle of this whole thing right now it can be like two weeks before I get back to you and most people, I would say, actually are quite comfortable with that and quite understanding and like they understand that's just like a part of life and a part of a rhythm of someone who is doing a job and who's trying to build something, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. The people who do not get that are and this extends to something further that I'm about to speak to the people who do not get that are the people who you once were extremely close to, are the people who you once did talk to every single day and that relationship has changed. They, they expect that you will be available to that sort of contact immediately, at a moment's notice, three years after you guys had that relationship, just because that's how they remember it to be last. And that extends over to this idea of doing this live show in my hometown, where I am very grateful that it seems like many people have started to buy tickets.
Speaker 1:But I know there are some people who will hit me up the day of or the day before the show when there are no more tickets left on sale and they will say yo, what's like? Where's the link for the tickets? Again, like, oh shit, like I'm running late from this thing, from that thing, this thing. First of all, 85% of them are going to send me that text and the text is going to turn green. That's the first thing. Okay, like most of y'all are going to realize, at that moment you don't have my number. The remaining 15%, who do have my number, are not going to get a reply from me until probably, not even just until after the show's over, but until I want to talk to them again because they will have frustrated me by not being there, because they thought listen, my sister is buying tickets to this, my brother-in-law buying tickets, my cousins buying tickets. Okay, my cousins are bringing their friends, they're buying tickets.
Speaker 1:So, if you are under the sound of my voice and your name is not Mr or Mrs Sanders, literally, literally If you want to come to the show. This is from now until forever. Okay, starting now, if you want to come to the show, if you want to be at the live show, you got to buy a ticket. And I say this I know you guys want me to make myself small for you, so I will. I say this so humbly.
Speaker 1:I say this with the greatest gratefulness that you would even want to be there, that you would even try to show up late without a ticket on the day of. But if you do that, you are going to encounter a locked door and I don't and I'm saying this because I don't want you to be mad at me about that so if you're in that camp, please this was not even meant to turn into an appeal to get the late folks to go get your tickets, but like somebody I've never met is going to have that ticket, I would love for you to have that ticket. So please go buy tickets to the live show. At the link of my bio or at shanklinhallcom S-H-A-N-K-L-I-N-H-A-L-Lcom. That's where you can find your tickets. You should use you. You, I would say you can and should get them right now, because we're about to turn up the promotion and they will sell out Like we sold. I don't know. We sold a nice handful of them without really doing any promotion, so please go and buy your tickets. That's it, yes, morgan.
Speaker 2:I was going to say that is correct, like at spelling these.
Speaker 1:S-Thank you, Morgan S-Did that make you-.
Speaker 1:S-Thank you, morgan. I feel like I have much better energy today than I have for the last couple episodes. Here's a few reasons why One I did not eat bacon, cheddar waffles with jalapeno, hush puppies and cheese grits last night, which is so good for my performance the next day. It means I get to sleep through the whole night. I put Penny in her pen last night. Sometimes I let Penny roam and then she like annoys me at early in the morning.
Speaker 1:I'm excited about our live show. I think I'm getting paid today. I'm really excited about that. I'm excited about a lot. I'm just like there's just like so much. We have live show coming. I have a sub-stack coming very soon. I had just got the first trailer last night from my interview with Nina Gloster, which I think is gonna really have a nice little local buzz around our combined community. The show's growing.
Speaker 1:I have a book coming out. We're gonna start working on like covers and typeface and I'm very excited to reveal the title. I just like there's a lot of good stuff happening. I'm learning a lot right now. I'm learning about marketing and it feels really good for me to like, for me to nerd out on something again a little bit. I remember when I learned how to read a screenplay and it felt like I was opening a new door in the matrix and I feel like learning about marketing right now is kind of like that. I'm learning a lot about advertising spend and percentage of paths through rate and clicks, click rates and all kinds of shit. I just feel kind of like back in the lab. But let's talk about this and I'm gonna take my time with this because there's a lot. There's so much to say here. So there's a lot to say here.
Speaker 1:Emmanuel Acho, do you all know who that is? Not at home in front of your computer, if you know who that is or on the train, or wherever you're listening to this? Where do you guys listen to this show? Tell me, manuel Acho, how would I describe this person? He is a boy, do I not wanna get this wrong? But I'm gonna say he's Nigerian. Is that correct? Anybody know he is a former football player. He is Nigerian. Okay, great, I knew that he is a former.
Speaker 1:And listen, why am I even contextualizing? Just to start, I'm gonna go. I'm gonna really take my time with this one because I have a lot of shit to get off here. Why am I contextualizing by saying that he is Nigerian, because and boy is this an opinion that will get you incinerated and barbecued to a fricassee at brunch but it is my point of view that the experience of black Americans whose ancestors were slaves is in this country and also like in other parts of America, like South America, central America, brazil, which has more black people than anywhere else in the world except for Africa. It's my opinion that all these experiences are different, of course, but like the experience of African immigrants, descendants of African immigrants, here in this country, as I've actually heard Emmanuel Acho say himself and I'm gonna paraphrase what he said in an interview that I heard, maybe a year ago, of his oh, it was one of his follow-up interviews to his book, which is called.
Speaker 2:The Uncomfortable Conversations.
Speaker 1:It's called Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black man. He was saying that and again I'm paraphrasing, but this was the nature of the statement. These are conversations that a Nigerian man can have with white people because he doesn't have the same debt of anger and resentment and pain that a black American person might have as a result of slavery. Okay, woo, I'm gonna take my time here, because this one is a fucking. This is like a fucking tongue twister right here, because you guys are gonna be ready to be assholes about this.
Speaker 2:Also we can specify that he's Nigerian-American.
Speaker 1:Nigerian-American. Yes, indeed yes, but I'm trying to like. I don't wanna be the show that fucking walks with such a little tippy toe that I don't actually end up saying anything. So I just wanna be clear. What I'm saying is, like the people whose grandmas, grandmas, grandmas, grandmas, grandmas were slaves, have a different experience in this country than the people's, than the black folks whose grandmas, grandmas, grandmas, lived in Africa. Different is what I said. How can you even attack me for that Cause? All I said was fucking different Doesn't mean that they don't encounter racism here, like here in this country, because quite the to quite the contrary, like, if you, if you bear the mark, if you got the dark skin of any hue, you are going to face that in this country and throughout this entire world, pretty much Okay. That's why I included the context. That's really just for anybody who cares to listen to things the way that I care to listen to things.
Speaker 1:I like to really know what's up with people when I'm hearing about what they got going on. I like to know how old they are, how tall they are, how much they weigh, if they're married single, who they're married to. I just found out last night Tony Gonzalez, the former NFL tight end. His ex-wife is engaged to Jeff Bezos. Blew my mind. That is irrelevant here, but I just think it's interesting. Okay, don't you all think that's interesting? That is interesting, that's interesting. Is that interesting to you?
Speaker 2:I don't really know who the fuck is this?
Speaker 1:Okay? Well, you don't know. Tony Gonzalez Okay, he was one of the best tight ends in NFL history. His ex-wife cheated on her husband with Jeff Bezos, who cheated on his wife. The two of them are now engaged and someone tried to blackmail Jeff Bezos about having that extramarital affair with her and then they came out and now they're engaged. So she went from Tony Gonzalez, rich to this like newscaster guy, I wanna say, or producer, probably pretty rich to the richest person in the history of the world. All right, I think. Emmanuel Acho Okay, emmanuel Acho, if you bring up his name around blacks, as it were, I mean, we're blacks If you bring up his name around blacks, I told you we're gonna have some. We're going to have some fun here because there's a lot to do with this. Okay, this is a.
Speaker 1:There are some times when I feel like when I was in high school, especially my junior year, I wanted to get in the game so bad we all did, but our coach only really wanted to play six guys Brandon, dominique, germain, kelvin, kevin and Ashile as six man. Okay, those are the guys who got all the minutes. The rest of us would sit on the bench doing our little legs like this. Every time, coach, something would happen in the game and he needed a sub, he would look down the bench and we would all look at him like this, like this, and he's like, look, be me, be me, be me, pick me, pick me, pick me. And when he actually one time would pick me every now and when he picked you, it's like you feel like you're floating up to the scores table. Okay, that's when I saw this story about Emmanuel Acho. That is how I felt like God had picked me to float to the scores table.
Speaker 1:Okay, I only get that feeling here and fucking there, and I have it right now, because when you bring up Emmanuel Acho's name around blacks and when there's no cameras on, when there's no one recording I'm just talking about when motherfuckers are kicking it, okay, and this is a cautionary tale. This is what I never want to be the case for myself. When his name comes, what are you laughing at, morgan? No, because you're being funny. When his name comes up around blacks, motherfuckers suck their teeth, roll their eyes, and mostly what you just get is that nigga, because he has become known for being someone who will really tiptoe along and cross that line of tap dancing. That's what it is.
Speaker 1:Y'all want me to say it different? I have the commenters in my head like y'all think it's this, y'all think it's that. Look, if you think I never come for white people, you just met me. Go do your homework, get out my face, get out my fucking face. If that's how you feel, wow, I feel so good today, I'm gonna go do my homework. That's how you feel. Wow, I feel so good today.
Speaker 1:I have to say this about this because I have never spoken on Emmanuel Acho. I have never said not one single solitary word, because, for the most part, when people like Emmanuel Acho arise in culture, what I mostly want to do is ignore them. I don't want to fuel the fire. That is what I see of Emmanuel Acho. Let me tell you what I see, nevermind what other people say. When they roll their teeth at brunch, roll their teeth, when they suck their teeth and roll their eyes at brunch and say that nigga, because I know what they're saying and I'm saying the same thing. This is what they're saying. I told you guys there could have been a faster route from the time my book dropped to a million dollars, from the time my book dropped to a million followers and it would have looked like exactly like Emmanuel Acho's route had I. It was right there, it was paved in gold, it was standing. It was like, ah, it was shimmering right in front of me and on the other end of it is white people going like this. They're like playing tug of war with my identity, with my person, okay, with my humanity. They're trying to pull me down this little golden path and into a piranha's mouth by doing this.
Speaker 1:Emmanuel Acho's book is called Uncomfortable Conversation with a Black man. I've seen him do many interviews on it. I saw him do it. I have a contentious conversation with a black man named Van Lathen on higher learning with Van Lathen and Rachel Lindsay, and the contentiousness was because of this exact phenomenon, which is people think Emmanuel Acho be doing a dance for the mother folks, that he be selling us out to make money, to be the one who is chosen to come to the corporation and do the talk, to go to the event and do the talk, to build relationships with the white power players in media and be seen as a black translator to white people.
Speaker 1:When I went to go sell black magic to Simon and Schuster, okay, I forget about even when I got to that meeting. But let's keep that meeting in mind. Actually, let's not forget it. Do the opposite of what I just said. Imagine this meeting. Okay, because this? I went to several book publishers and had similar meetings. I took six or seven book meetings to sell. My book Just got signed brand new off the street no money 2017. Got a book agent so excited Eve Aderman. Shout out to her she's a fire ass book agent. I really enjoy working with her.
Speaker 1:We go to Simon and Schuster. I sit down in a room. It's me, it's the head of the Simon and Schuster imprint at Simon and Schuster White man 50s. I wanna say there's a couple other editors in the room. My agent all white folks, me at a table, broke, black t-shirt. You guys know what I used to look like. The same thing every day black t-shirt, long one from Urban Outputters Feathers, black jeans, ripped up, black boots. I was really selling it. Okay, I was really selling Ryder guy. That's what I was going for. Okay, I was pulling it off. Black glasses, warby Parker's.
Speaker 1:And they asked me what books about? Oh, it's about black magic. It's like lessons that black people learn from suffering in this country and how they can apply it to this, this, this, this. Okay, cool, sounds great on premise. Great time for that in the market.
Speaker 1:Okay, what's your following look like? Uh, nothing, I got, you know, probably at that time, 1500 followers on Instagram, maybe I don't know. 900 followers on Twitter, maybe Nobody, I got nothing. Okay, I'm doing my best, guys, I'm broke. I'm doing my best. Shit took the train here, everybody takes the train here, whatever. Blah, blah, blah. I'm gonna ask you all these questions.
Speaker 1:Then they land on the most important question. Most important question who is the demographic for this book? You haven't written the book yet. Tell us, who are you going to be talking to when you write this book? That is an existential question for a creative person. That is the I've been trying to tell you on these last few sessions in this room. That is the whole thing. Who are you talking to? Because, as a communicator, I know what I have to communicate, but if I'm talking to someone who speaks Portuguese, I need to speak Portuguese. Or I need to make a song so everybody can understand it, but if I need, I need to know as I sit down to write every single day at some level, I gotta know who the fuck is this book for? I'm saying these are tactics for black people to be able to navigate what is a poisonous, treacherous workplace, to get somewhere in life. They're asking me who is the book for? If I now say white people, that is going to create an existential conflict in me that I'm gonna have to unravel. I'm gonna be grappling with for the entire creative process of this book.
Speaker 1:I said this book is supposed to be tactics for black people, but I'm writing it for white people. I'm gonna tell you guys something, as someone who has been communicating with tons of black people my whole life and tons of white people my whole life you don't talk to those two people the same. Anybody who's seen this show and has seen quitters knows exactly what I'm talking about. You don't speak the same language to black folks and white folks. That's how I feel, and every time I had to give this, I had to while being broke, while understanding that maybe there would be a bigger market for this book if it was written for white people.
Speaker 1:I wanted to stay solid right here and say I wanted what I still want for the duration of my career to remain true, which is that, as Jay-Z puts it, I wanna be good on every MLK boulevard. That's part of my dream. Morgan's laughing. My people love me. I want them to keep loving me. Okay, I did your book, saw all these white folks pop out of the corners of the universe who I'd never seen before strangers, old people hitting me up on my phone that I don't even fucking know anymore from middle school and stuff. Great, happy to have you guys here.
Speaker 1:But you cannot take the seats that of the folks that have already been sitting here since I was a little kid. Okay, you cannot take the seats of the people who started fucking with me when they saw a press release for me and Spike Lee about a black genius. You can't take the seats of the people who started following me because I wrote on grown-ish rap, shit, black magic. You can't have their seat. There are other seats here. It's like when you go to those churches in Harlem and you got the congregation here on the floor. You got the grandmas who have been worshiping here for 50 years and then in the balcony the Spanish immigrants can sit up there, the visitors, the tourists, and if you stick around long enough you can get a floor seat. Am I, is this comprehensive Coherence is what I meant to ask. Is it coherent?
Speaker 2:Very visual.
Speaker 1:Okay, thank you. I had to decide then while broke am I about to start off down this journey, punting on my own people as the audience for my creativity? Am I about to try to do that out the gate? Because and I didn't know it, know it, but I had enough smart people around me. People had seen things enough to tell me, once you set intention, like once you start, once your boat leaves the dock, you can make incremental shifts in the direction, but it's really hard to turn that shit 90 degrees. Okay. So I kept saying over and over and over again this is a book for black people and I'm going to write it in a way that it will resonate so strongly with black people that white people will cup their ear to it. Okay, so if you want those white people to care about it, they will, but they will be the secondary audience, because that's what happens when we make fire shit. We get excited about it. First we think it's cool, people start looking over our shoulders ooh, what they looking at? And now they want some of it and I had a sense that, like, that could work for me. I didn't what I didn't realize, and so I don't want to come off as a fucking hero, like I didn't know that would make the road take much longer than a different path.
Speaker 1:Mayu Acho has taken a different path. Mayu Acho is a former NFL player. He's in his 30s, I'm going to say he's 38. Formerly the boyfriend of Yvonne Orgy, which is just an anecdote that I'm just going to throw in there and just leave it right there. I have nothing else to say about it. He's 33. 33, wow, he's young. Oh boy, well, that's crazy. Yeah, that adds some context here. Actually, okay, wow, According to Wikipedia.
Speaker 1:Okay, I want to be like 20% nicer about this then. Why is that? Because he's young. Yeah, why is that Because he's young? I mean because he's, for all intents and purposes, he's my age like and younger. I mean he's younger than me and, like I do think that over, like every few years, you get a little bit hipper to the game of what's happening here. You get a little like you get these moments where you're like, oof, I did something, got a big check and it did not feel good. Why didn't it feel good? And you examine like, oh, it didn't feel good because I worked with the wrong people, or oh, it didn't feel good because the audience was a little, maybe a little nauseous, or oh, it didn't feel good because whatever. So I want to shoot him a little bit of bail for being 33, but that's not that young. So fuck it. Here I go. I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:He decided and he stood on this and he has doubled down on this in his interviews, in his talks. He is a face jumping up and down on Fox Sports, but he wrote a book called Difficult Conversations with a Black man Uncomfortable Sorry, uncomfortable, I gotta stop calling it that Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black man and it buzzed and he toured it and I believe it buzzed. I of course have not written the book, so I don't even ask that Read the book or bought the book. He toured it and there was a wave as I watched it from a distance. There was a wave of celebration first.
Speaker 1:That happened Sort of just. There's a general wave of celebration just any time a Black person gets a book published, because that's difficult to do. Then there was a following wave which was like almost a mini celebration. All this happens before anybody reads the book. Right, this is because of marketing. Everybody's like oh, interesting subject, title, interesting subject matter, whatever, whatever. And it quickly became clear through the internet conversation around this book that this was a book written to inform and appease white people.
Speaker 2:Do you wanna just say the year that it was published, sure 2020.
Speaker 1:2020, meaningful right. 2020 is that's George Floyd. That is what we call, ladies and gentlemen, product market fit. He wrote a book to help white people have conversations with what he was portraying to be angry Black men, and the book had success and he has since been sort of riding a wave of a watered down Jason Whitlockian presence on the internet and in media, and I haven't even gotten to the most recent thing that he did, but the point that I'm laying out here is that he is a person who is willing to do the thing, who is willing to go. I don't know what his like intercompice tells him to do, but he is willing to do the thing for the money. He is willing to do the thing for the click. He is willing to do the thing that white folks require of him to get a check, and I'm like the 1,000th person to say that into a microphone, like his own colleagues have said things like. Now I'm gonna hedge away from saying the names, but you can go look up, just go Google. What do Black people think about Emmanuel Acho? Okay, you can go to that Now. The most recent thing Emmanuel Acho did and I'm ready to stop talking about Emmanuel Acho, because now. This regards all of us.
Speaker 1:Caleb Williams, likely to be the number one pick in the NFL draft this upcoming year. Now, like in a few months, when's the draft? April, two months, three months. I have a bias. He's from DC. He went to Gonzaga High School. He's the number one player in the country. He's been a star for USC black kid father's, very involved in his life and in what he does. He is a story that I think can be celebrated. There's a lot of conversation right now about his draft stock, his draft status, what kind of prospect he is like. That's the state of that's what it is when you're the number one pick is. People are gonna pick at you and pick at you, and pick at you all the way through until you're drafted and then all the way through your career, just like what just happened with Bryce Young this past year and Bryce Young sucked. Sorry, bryce Young, but you sucked. But I'm rooting for you.
Speaker 1:The internet tricked Emmanuel Acho. Okay, a fake story. There are a lot of fake stories out there. There are a lot of fake accounts out there. There are so many people who are just manufacturing bullshit for clicks. This is not news to anybody. We know this. You can sell those clicks for advertising dollars. You make money off of making something fake. It was a fake story that came out about Caleb Williams refusing to go and play for who the Chicago Bears if they were to draft him. And the Chicago Bears have the number one pick. Manuel Acho saw that, jumped on it, made a TikTok, responding to it and basically said if that's the kind of person this is like, you shouldn't want him as the number one pick more. You're looking at the story. That is accurate, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna read to you guys.
Speaker 2:I also. We have the TikTok if you wanna play it.
Speaker 1:Oh, please.
Speaker 3:I've never seen anything like this. No, not this freaking pimple. The fact that Caleb Williams he says he wants assurances that the Bears are going to trade the number one overall pick before he declares for the draft, Caleb Williams lost nothing to do with the Chicago Bears. Here is why the Bears have yet to have a 4,000 yard passer in the history of their illustrious franchise. Never have they had a 4,000 yard passer in their franchise history. So what Caleb Williams is saying is the gravitational pull downward of the Bears is too strong for him to lift that franchise up. This is wild stuff from a college quarterback. I'm gonna keep y'all updated.
Speaker 1:Okay, all of that straining and hard breathing in response to that video. It was fake. I mean, in response to that information, like it was fake. He got fooled by the internet and the first thing I wanna say about that is we all get fooled by the internet. It happens to all of us.
Speaker 1:Like the internet is, it can be a tricky and treacherous place. There's so much misinformation flying around. It's why you have to be very specific and thoughtful about what accounts you follow. You gotta read, you really gotta read with a fine tooth comb, like who tweeted what? The headline shut up my minute.
Speaker 1:She'll just sent me some fake news yesterday from the internet. Okay, she'll just sent me something about something like what's his name? What's his name? What's his name? The Stroud, cj Stroud, and his comments about Jesus after the game and that NBC was trying to shut, like, shut down his comments about Jesus. And then I go to the Twitter account and it's like a whole stream of fake shit about Jesus and I'm like I'm like it's Sheel, don't send me this, but she'll just my guy Boy being. You can be fooled by the internet, but before we actually get to, I'm not mad at Emmanuel Acho for being fooled by the internet Like that can literally happen to anybody. Somebody could tell me today like this is Chad. That was a deep fake video. It wasn't really Emmanuel Acho but blah blah blah.
Speaker 1:You know what I would do. I would come back one Thursday and I would have popped and I'd be like, damn, we got that one wrong. We're actually creating a list of shit that I get wrong so I can come back and tell you guys how wrong I am, cause I think that's, I think that's good content. But Emmanuel Acho did the thing that I think most people do when wrong, when fooled by the internet, when embarrassed, when called out by Twitter and other people on TikTok for being wrong about this story and responding to a fake story, the thing that he did was be a strident jerk about it and try to, and in a moment of embarrassment, when being told, ha ha, look, how silly you are for believing that information, he wanted to then punch back and say I'm not silly, I'm so much smarter than you. And this is how he did it. He said in response to a tweet yes, in response to a tweet calling him out for being wrong, emmanuel Acho responds. Or for being fooled by this, emmanuel Acho responds.
Speaker 1:In the event, it was fake. I posted it to the least serious website because no lives are being lost based on that post, wrote Acho in response to being called out about knowing the story was fake. Either way real or fake the video would garner traction, which would increase followers. More followers equals larger brand deals. Understand Wow, what a blow hard. Wow, god, I'm so sorry. Wow, guys and so.
Speaker 1:When I like wow, that's like some George Santos type shit, yeah I mean he's saying the quiet part loud while also being an asshole about it, while also trying to step on somebody with it and act. And act like he was in front of this play or whatever, like yes, we know, you wrote Uncomfortable conversations with a black man. You didn't have to tell us that you're doing all this for brand deals. You didn't have to tell us you're doing this all for sponsors. You didn't have. We are yet understand.
Speaker 1:Yes, we already understood that it didn't need to be made clear that was an annoying way to end the tweet understand question mark but like I Guess the thing that I respond to here, like some of my friends have asked me recently, it's it's been coming up over weeks at this point now, except for Leon. I'm gonna say what Leon said, but my friends have been asking me over weeks if I have seen American fiction, which I know from the marketing is to be like the horror story of the black writer who sells out on their actual vision and creativity To appease white people. And what happens there.
Speaker 2:It does have comedic elements, though.
Speaker 1:Thank you, morgan. Um and Leon was the only one on the front end of this whole thing. He probably saw it before anybody because he's very inside Hollywood and he saw it before it came out and he, like I Could tell he already knew the idea of me going to see that movie was laughable, like I was never going to. I Don't think, I mean just, I'm just gonna be frank. From the marketing itself, I did not look, it was not enticing. I wasn't like, oh my god, I gotta go see that. That looks really smart, but on top of that is that mean, that's a little mean. It's what it is.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's how you feel.
Speaker 1:Okay, thank you, not mean. The Morgan mean meter is important to me, but he also knew, as I think many of my friends have known, I was going to feel too close to the main character story to be able to stomach watching what it looks like when they lay down that gold path in front of you. That looks just so. It's like, oh, it's just so easy. Just show up and yakity, yak and talk about bullshit and and say whatever the fuck they want and fucking, you know what I mean. And just like, do your tap dance and like, make eyes wide and tell you know, say, tell the same stupid ass jokes over and over again, like it's so right there, and Sometimes the people who have taken the bait are so glaring. It's like they're not even, like he's not even lying to us, like he won't even lie. That's crazy, it's. Please respond. Does anyone else feel this? He won't even lie, he won't even be like, oh yeah, he won't even.
Speaker 2:Is that respectable, like not him, but I'm saying, is it respectable that he's at least like honest about being fucked up like that?
Speaker 1:Where does it? I mean respectable, about being honest, about being fucked up? Um, I, okay that's. I'm glad you said that, because I Actually think that's what the conventional point of view is right now, which is as long as you are spitting in my face but looking me in the eye while you do it. It's okay, yeah and, and I man, I don't think that's okay, it's not okay, I don't think that's okay.
Speaker 2:It's not, but it is funny.
Speaker 1:That's like so true, that's the conventional wisdom. Is like Abuse me, be disgusting, take, take whatever money. Is like sell out, sell out, sell out, sell out and Damn. I was actually literally gonna try to avoid using the term sell out the entire time and I said it like 15 times, but I'm sorry. Also got a book coming in February about selling out so exciting but tell us the title.
Speaker 1:I will not say the title yet soon, but um, I Thought okay One is, I just didn't think that was honest. I actually don't think what he said was honest. I really just think he made a mistake. Like I don't think it was this mastermind plan that like, oh, if it's fake, then this, and if it's not fake, then I'll get clicks, and this is. I thought that was like that's what I think.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was like a knee-jerk, you know, excuse, or or him trying to Whatever, him trying to intellectualize why he made this mistake. But beyond that, I Feel this way and I don't know if other people feel this way, but like, yes, we are engaging with people's internet presences. We're engaging with people's music, movies, athletic personas, avatars, you know, like we are engaging with the Internet form of human beings, but just like a stock, I like to know that there is an underlying asset, there's somewhere like a human being underneath it, all that stands at the bottom of it, that all of these streams outward Actually represent. Like I like to know that there's actually a person at the foundation of that. And if this dude is saying his whole, his whole being like his whole, all of his actions are just mechanical reactions to what the algorithm favors, then like that is useless to me, like that is not even something I can connect to at all, which is why I have avoided ever speaking this person's name, ever engaging with his content, because it's it's just like, you're just that at that point, you are just the internet and there's. There's nothing else there. That's what I think. But yeah, I don't give him any point. He was caught like there was nothing else. I don't know, there was nothing anyway.
Speaker 1:Moving on, a comfortable Concepts with a black man, y'all go get it on Amazon Morgan. Is Moby Williams on Instagram at Moby Williams Morgan. Are you getting some new Instagram followers?
Speaker 2:I have gotten a few yeah okay, great, we're gonna keep.
Speaker 1:We're gonna keep promoting Morgan against her will. Josh asked a question while we were at the break as a response to the last segment. Morgan is allowing us to backtrack, backtrack into that segment again because Josh asked and not because it's my will. Thank you, morgan.
Speaker 4:Josh, please ask your question again so we were talking in last episode about cheat codes and you, with this whole Emmanuel Acho thing that you were just talking about, like, to me it's very clear that like he's very shameless and my question is to use like, do you feel like being shameless in this day and age, especially as someone who's creating content or just being a creative in general, is being shameless, a cheat code in this world now?
Speaker 1:I Think A cheat code that I'm paying attention to right now is being clear with yourself about your intentions and your point of view and Moving and Moving directly toward said intention. If your intention is simply to have Fame and Perhaps a following Brand deals, as man said I think I'm done with his name for the rest of the episode but If that is your intention, then yeah, I would say shamelessness is a cheat code. I would say I think shame is important. I think shame like I think you said it at the break I think shame like Do like penny has shame when she pees in the house. It's okay, guys, you can be shank, you can have shame sometimes. Shame is a. It's a reminder to us that our intention is something different and we are stepping outside of our character. That's, we can overdo it like. We can hold on to it too long. We can let it, we can.
Speaker 1:What he did in a moment of shame? He? What he did with what with this? What a manual author did in a moment of shame was he tried To step on somebody else's head and he tried to act like he was smarter than them and he tried to act like and I've actually I was just watching this morning I saw another Twitter interaction he had with one of his former teammates when he wanted to poke at his ex teammate to say you only get engagement when you use my clips.
Speaker 1:You only get engagement when and it's like now when people talk about athletes in a way that is reductive pro athletes, football players specifically in a way that is reductive, and they say why do we pay these guys millions of dollars, like they, just like they're just their action figures, their gi jose, their airheads, that you just tell them what to do and they just do the thing? This is gross, guys, but that's what this looks like. That's what just doing the thing looks like it doesn't. My nephews, if you just told them the whole job is just get engagement, and you just say keep pressing this button, like, oh look, everybody thinks it's this. Say this instead, regardless of what you actually feel, actually feel you will get engagement. You will blow up. Maybe you will become the president, like you said, but like Is that sure? Is that your own is your only intention in life. To just Get bigger is your only intention in life.
Speaker 1:This is why I'm learning how to take advice. Okay, I did not love taking advice in years previous to this. I'm learning how to take advice, and what Used to be difficult for me with advice is so much of another, like there's so much projection in people's advice they're capable of doing that there can be. People are trying to Almost manipulate the way that you see yourself and how you see them, sometimes with advice. I used to fucking hate advice, but I'm now learning.
Speaker 1:I now am starting to feel like I have a constitution within myself where I can withstand other people's advice and get some good stuff out of it, and I have some people who offer me advice who come from a very specific I'm gonna I'm gonna be reductive and call it like a Silicon Valley lens, and that lens, as I see it, is Valuable in that it has such intense focus on scale, growth, profitability, making something just like making something that is potent and makes money and and gives you power. It completely devalues, if it acknowledges at all, artistry, heart, humanity, what feels good, like, what you will enjoy doing, who you already are like. Those things are left to the side, and so it's important to me to have people who give me that kind of advice, people who give me artistic advice, people who give me. I love having some friends who just truly don't give a fuck like, who do not care about any of this, this dumb shit, who are like I got my life, I Do what I want, I Kick with my friends. I see my family play video games, smoke, we chill, do it. I like I like my life and I don't care about any of that other silly shit. Like I love having friends like that. I need all of it. But the the, the, the lens of the sort of Growth only mindset like when I listen to Tim Ferriss I gotta go listen to I don't know, I gotta go listen to something on the other side of the spectrum afterward, because that growth only mindset, that mindset of like bigger, bigger, bigger, more, more, more, over everything else, there's no there there on the other end.
Speaker 1:I was actually thinking about my Hollywood friends this morning. Like not and I don't mean like people I've met through Hollywood, I mean like people who are my friends, who moved to Hollywood. I've had a couple of tough conversations with some of them lately who are depressed, sad, anxious. We're like 12, 13, 14, 15 years into this game, all of us now, because we're about the same age, we started in our early 20s and we're like in our mid to late 30s. And there's a similar mindset there in Hollywood which is just access, green lights, money, status, prosthetic body parts over everything. Prostetic, I don't know, make believe body parts, no shame. And my friends who are there I think part of why they're unhappy is they actually got what they came for and they're still realizing like, oh, what an emptiness. Like, oh, my God, I worked so hard for this thing. I wanted to have this Hollywood LA life. I wanted to have the cool job at the big studio and for people to know, people back home who I never get to see ever that I have this car and I do this thing. But on the other end of it is just emptiness. Like same problems. Now I hear myself saying shit that old people had already told us. But it's like same problems. Same not knowing who you are. Same, oh, like I guess I gotta go play golf with so-and-so because I need to be in his network. No, thank you, fuck outta here. Okay, no, thank you. I wanna go walk in the woods with my nephews, all right. Moving on Sports Sports. Okay, sports are pure. So, all right, I'm gonna bang through these Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang bang, because there's a bunch of them and they're all interesting. All right, chiefs Dolphins Many people were up in arms including your boy about Peacock having the Chiefs Dolphins game on Saturday night.
Speaker 1:I was like not only just like how am I gonna be able to watch this, but like how's my dad gonna find this? You know what I mean. And I think he figured it out. He didn't even hit me, or maybe he was just like I can't find it, fuck it and watch the movie. I don't know. But as it turns out, here's the thing 23 million people watched Chiefs Dolphins, which is a solid number for that game. It's not like huge, but the NFL gets crazy numbers. Okay, in the last year, out of the top 100 watched programs on television, like 87 of them were NFL games. That's how powerful this product is, as Morgan writes here. Actually, I'm gonna come back to that. So Peacock had 30 million users before this game. 16 million people watched this game on Peacock. That is by a billion, not a billion, but that is by a landslide their largest watch program of their existence. And I don't know how many of those people are people who just signed up for Peacock before the game and then got rid of Peacock right after it, because I'm sure there were quite a few of those.
Speaker 1:But the whole thing about subscriptions by the way, I have a subscription product on Substack coming out on February 14th, valentine's Day. You can find the link in my bio if you want email updates. The whole thing about subscriptions is you're hoping people will forget that they subscribed, like you want them to subscribe $12 a month oh, it's $12 bucks. Like I spend $25 on Uber Eats every night, or 100 if you live in New York. But you want them to subscribe and then forget. And I bet they got so many people to subscribe for this thing. Who will forget that Peacock is taking? I have no idea how much Peacock has cost. Let's say $10 a month $5.99.
Speaker 1:$5.99, oh, that's nice and cheap.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's not bad $6 out of your.
Speaker 1:It's not bad because there's nothing on it. $6 a month out of your account every month. They want them to forget that. That's what's happening, but here's what's important to me. Okay, this is what I actually think the future looks like. Yes, maybe bundles will stay around for a little while and bundles will look just like the cable package, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. I am moving into a, I'm moving in a direction where it's like because I think this is where it's going If you want Chad stuff, you just pay for the Chad channels.
Speaker 1:You pay for the Chad sub-stack. You pay for the Chad live show, you pay for the. I'll still who knows what the hot social media will be five years from now. I assume I'll still have an Instagram presence, because that's sort of like a big billboard to tell you where all my other stuff is. But it's like it's all a cart. If you want the stuff, you pay me for the stuff, because these deals are so lopsided for the studios it doesn't make sense for me to go through them to get to you guys.
Speaker 1:Now, peacock just proved to ESPN, nbc, abc that these little itty bitty, little itty bitty by comparison streaming networks can do ridiculously not ridiculously but competitively large numbers on one individual football game that it makes it worth it for the NFL to do business directly with these streaming networks. I think I'm talking in a way that's confusing. I'm gonna be super, super specific as to what this means and what's gonna happen. It means that it is likely that at some point, whenever the current TV deal ends with, I think, probably ABC and the NFL I don't know who has the Super Bowl, you're gonna have to pay pay per view, like you're gonna have to pay for a subscription service like this one to watch the Super Bowl soon, because the NFL now knows the NFL has the best crack on earth. It has the hottest drugs on the street. They can charge what they want when they want. They can move to any corner and we will pull up and find them and give them the asking price for their crack. I've been thinking about drug dealing a lot lately.
Speaker 1:You love using crack specifically I do, because it ties several things that I like together. It ties a hot product hip hop music, walter White, tony Soprano it ties all these things together that I have learned. I didn't go to business school, guys. I didn't. Okay, I didn't. I didn't like. I worked at Google, I worked in HR guys. They didn't teach me, they didn't try to teach me. Anything about business. Like this is. We're hacking this together through however we can and there's a lot to be. I'm working Boardwalk Empire right now.
Speaker 1:There's a lot to be learned about economics through pop culture, conversation about drugs. Drugs are hot. I've never sold drugs, but drugs are a hot product. I'm so guys my friends know this like I'm so scared of those types of nefarious dealings or I don't even call them nefarious like I'm just so scared of that kind of stuff, like I won't even let my like I will be hesitant to even let my friends in my car with weed in places where weed is legal. I'm that guy, but I do think that I do think the whatever. I don't want to over talk it. I've said it. I do love talking about drug deals. I like talking about drug economics when we talk about these things. Anyway, you guys are gonna have to pay some streaming servers for the Super Bowl pretty soon. Next thing wow, I am really yelling today, yeah damn.
Speaker 2:You have a lot of energy on the mic.
Speaker 1:Great. That's the point. That's kind of the point. I don't know. I hope I can be like this at the live show. That's the point.
Speaker 1:The Pacers there was a trade, so there are a few. I'm not even gonna call these blockbuster deals. There's a few trades of like very middling NBA stars who actually have no real consequence as to who's gonna win the championship or not. But there are gonna be some trades between now and the trade deadline, which I think is in maybe three or four weeks. It's in February. But Pascal Siakam was traded from the Toronto Raptors to the Indiana Pacers for Bruce Brown, jordan Wara, three first round picks for those who follow closely or not closely at all. The important thing here is one NBA teams do not know how to value a star player right now, so you'll start seeing weird trade packages that don't actually make sense for these guys like Pascal Siakam has. What is it? January? Pascal Siakam has like four months left on his contract, which is to say Indiana may have just traded three first round picks for a guy that's not even gonna be on their roster at the start of next season. Pascal Siakam is.
Speaker 1:I also don't like this trade for the Pacers. This is about to be really inside baseball-y, but I'm just gonna do it real quick. I don't like this trade for the Pacers because the Pacers already have, with Tyrese Halliburton in the lineup, the number one offense in the NBA. They do not really need help offensively. They're not the kind of team that gets stuck at the end of games without a way to create shots. They have the probably the premier shot creator in the NBA, and Tyrese Halliburton and they have a couple other guys who can sort of create like ancillary shots. Pascal Siakam is the kind of guy who I think is better for a bad team than he is for a good team, even though he was on a championship team. He catches the ball. He sort of like jab steps, holds the ball, tries to get into his back down game. He's kind of a very awkward game. It's almost like a skinnier Julius Randall, but I think even less fluid than Julius Randall, would just saying a lot and I'm worried that he is going to. I think that the Toronto Raptors offense will take a couple steps back. Actually, with him in the lineup they're already like a game out of the four seeds, so they'll probably land somewhere between four and seven seed after this trade. But I just don't think. I don't. I just think it's a reach. Sometimes you just gotta wait. Sometimes you just gotta wait for somebody better to come on the market.
Speaker 1:Okay, next thing, I watched a video today. It was a video of LeBron in the locker room after the game last night. They won, I think they're 500 now Lakers and as it is, I believe he's shirtless, scrum of like reporters around him with their phones out and their microphones out and they're asking him questions about the game and he's answering them, but while distracted by watching his son Brani play for USC. On the screen you can't see the TV, but he's watching a TV while having like a conversation back and forth with reporters. They're asking a question about Anthony Davis getting better at passing out of the post.
Speaker 1:Lebron like kind of like smirks and he's like yeah, I taught him that, like he learned that from me. He's also like giving he's doing the thing of being basketball dad to his son while doing the interviews, which is to say they'll ask him a question. He's like oh, yeah, well, he really rebounded the ball well today, and they'll be like shoot it, shoot it, like that kind of thing, like yelling out directions to the screen. I've been around a lot of basketball parents, sports parents. Morgan, I'm certain you have been around a ton of sports parents. I sent that to my friends this morning the video because I know. I know I feel influenced now to think everything LeBron is phony. So I wanted to ask someone who is un-un-unjaded on this.
Speaker 1:Did that seem authentic or phony to you?
Speaker 2:No, okay, because when I watched it you were in my head because I knew that this is what you were going to bring up. We didn't talk about what you were going to say. You just sent me the clip and you're like add it to the docket, and I just knew. And it is like I don't know, because I don't know, it did feel a little, a little like for the moment Not that he's not really like that, but it did feel very like, bro.
Speaker 1:It was performative.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:It was. It felt a little like what A little bro, it was performative, um. And I actually put the phone down after watching it and I was like I was aware of my feelings. I was like, am I, am I seeing something that's not there, or was that fake? And then I sent it to the group chat and a show response SMH and a show likes LeBron. So I thought, but like all my friends who like LeBron, they also acknowledge he's a Bama. So maybe, maybe we need a segment where, when LeBron does things, we decide if they're authentic or fake or real?
Speaker 1:authentic or fake, but uh, yeah, I don't know if you think it's phony and you support that, you know, sit with yourself. Um, next thing, kyrie Irving, first player in NBA history, just go 40 plus points with different teammates, three different teammates. 40 plus points with three different teammates meaning 40 points along with, in the same game, a teammate three times. He's done that. He did it with LeBron James in 2016. He did it with Luca Nanshich in 2023 and he did it with Tim Hardaway Jr just last week, in 2024. Maybe that was this week. Um, that's pretty cool.
Speaker 1:My friend, tj Theo Josephs, he he coined I think he coined this, unless he stole it from somebody, but he coined a term that I really like, where he talks about an NBA player playing above the synergy, below the synergy or within the synergy, and playing above the synergy. Kawhi Leonard is an example of this type of player. It means like, regardless of sort of what the team scheme is or what else is happening on the floor, kawhi can always just like decide it's Kawhi time, and it's almost as if it's just Kawhi and the basket and nobody else on the court exists, including the defense, like there's nothing they can really do to like stop him from doing what he needs to do. Um, there are players who are very much within the synergy or like, who are the synergy, like Tyrese Halliburton is the synergy. Like, whatever Tyrese Halliburton decides is going to happen on the court, that's the synergy.
Speaker 1:Like that's that's the whole team is like connected to and playing off of Tyrese Halliburton. And then there's guys who are below the synergy and it's like no matter how connected the team is, their own individual, their own individual actions can sort of tank the offense. And an example of a star player who's like that to me is like Julius Randall. It's like everything can be going great and then all of a sudden Julius Randall is like it's Julius Randall time and he just gets the ball and he's just like. It's just like all right, now we just watch the Julius Randall show, no matter how much Jalen Brunson's cooking or whatever it's an awful show.
Speaker 1:It's a terrible show. It's a terrible show. Um, I really like guys. I really love players who play above the synergy. I think of. Actually, steph Curry kind of is the synergy. Kevin Durant can be the synergy or be above the synergy. Allen Iverson, I think, was above the synergy. Russell Westerberg can be above or below the synergy. Um, he kind of is never in the synergy, like. But I think LeBron is the synergy, like. He he's probably the best example of someone who of all time, of someone who like is the synergy.
Speaker 1:Um, kyrie Irving I think of as like man. Kyrie Irving, just like. I mean this in an. I mean this in the most complimentary way.
Speaker 1:Kyrie Irving plays basketball like he is autistic. He plays basketball like Rain man. He plays basketball like everybody else is out here playing a different sport and he's like he just like sees the whole thing with his head on a tilt. He like he's like the meme with the numbers and the and the graphs and the uh things swirling around his head and it just looks like. Sometimes it looks obvious the things that he's doing. It's like someone's in front of him and he just goes around them or like somebody like you know, he can't get it to his left hand, so he just uses his right hand to do a crossover to his right hand or like he just he can just kind of do anything. And he's not tall and he's not like big.
Speaker 1:I'm sure he's strong, um, but this is there are very rarely like real and true firsts in NBA history. This one is pretty cool, that he's been able to get 40 on a court. If you're getting 40, it's so unlikely that somebody else is out there getting 40. It's so unlikely that someone else there is out there getting 30 because you have to use so many possessions to get your 40. I was trying to think of like real life examples of this.
Speaker 1:Who's an artist who can lay down like a timeless verse or a timeless production on a song along with another artist who also has a timeless verse or a timeless production on that same song and who can do that with three different artists at an elite level? Or an actor who can act beside or act across from another actor? Who's an actor who can act against another actor or with three different directors, having like a timeless experience? Somebody who's coming to mind is like Denzel Washington, spike Lee, malcolm X, antoine Fuqua, training Day, I don't know. I'm sure there's a third Denzel joint that, like, has another director at their peak in that thing. I'm going to guess that somebody like Tom Hanks has been able to accomplish that. It's really special to be able to do your best work while also elevating somebody else's best work Like that is. That is a very unique and special talent. That's something that I'm going to be thinking about a lot. Okay, man, so much yelling Questions from Instagram. Here we go.
Speaker 2:Do you want to put on your graphic tee?
Speaker 1:I'm doing a wardrobe change. Do we want to break?
Speaker 2:Do you want to break? Oh no, It'll take two seconds. Sell an ass. Sell an ass.
Speaker 1:I mean, I'm not getting shirtless guys. I am trying to eat more healthy, though, guys. No more From now, until the live show, because I don't want to have chipmunk cheeks at the live show.
Speaker 2:I don't think I've ever seen you wear a graphic tee shirt. This is not mine. Oh, what do you have against graphic tees? Nothing.
Speaker 1:I just I don't do a lot of shopping, morgan, okay, remember when you said you could never see me just going in the store and being like hmm, I was like what does that even mean, Morgan? But I think I understand what it means, okay. Also, how ridiculous. That is the rock.
Speaker 2:I know it's kind of funny. It's a WWE the rock shirt too.
Speaker 1:Nice. It's pretty cool, though. Somebody told me like years ago, I was just like so frustrated with my agency and I was just like when are they going to like care about my thing? And blah, blah, blah, like when are they going to care about my stuff as much as me? And they were like when you're the rock? Oh, so never. Okay, cool.
Speaker 2:What did you ask me? I said do you want me to read it?
Speaker 1:Okay, Can you do it in their voice? Can you make a voice for these people?
Speaker 2:Sure, okay, thank you. So this is questions from your Instagram. This first one is from at let's go with Julio, and the question is talk us through or talk us through the creativity Morgan, what happened? Talk us through the creativity experience and writing process of yearbook. Break it down.
Speaker 1:All caps, all caps, let's go with Julio. I know to be a former Googler also. He DMed me something about having worked at Google. Shout out to let's go with Julio. The creativity, experience and writing process of yearbook Alright, break it down. He says so.
Speaker 1:How did it start 2021? I, okay, let's. Let's go way back, like 2015,. I sat in my Crown Heights apartment with my friend Shaka and recorded my voice on GarageBand, just talking shit, trying to learn how to do a podcast, never picked it up or touched it again until 2021, where my book was about to come out and I had learned to the. I got I kind of got my book deal, I think.
Speaker 1:First because there was press about me and Spike taking this show out, and so there was a building. There was a building snowball of like make sure that each time I was telling myself, make sure every time you go in front of a mic or in front of cameras or to a pitch meeting, that you have already lined up your creative vision for some other things that you want to get done. And this show yearbook that went in question here. I had a different name for it then, which I can't even remember, but I had the concept in tow when I was doing press for Black Magic in 2021. So when I went on Dax Shepard's Armchair Expert Network, I already had this is the first step I had like a one-sheeter for the show. It was like a description of, you know, these events that took place my junior year of high school. This, this, this, this is what it meant to me, this is how it happened, et cetera, et cetera. And so when Dax and I made contact after that, after that interview, I pitched it to him and Monica and with a few other ideas, and that was the one that they were most into. And another one of those ideas, I believe, was Quitters, which I made with Julie Bowen. Another one of those ideas, I think maybe was the bare bones of direct deposit, but I can't remember.
Speaker 1:So, once we got in bed together, me and Armchair Expert, it took months we, you know, finally came to an agreement on a deal and the next step was for me in 2021, later in 2021, november to go travel to Maryland where I lived for a month in an Airbnb in, like the White Oak area actually right next to White Oak High School, middle school got an Airbnb with a giant yard. That was the most important, like the biggest yard, so that Penny could run around and not be freaking out about being in a new environment. And I spent a month. I probably did 20, 25 interviews with mom, dad, sister, best friends from high school teammates, my basketball coaches, my principal, alicia's parents, like just I mean I had. I had another Airbnb in Tacoma Park which was just a one bedroom apartment where people came and sat in the room with me for a couple hours with masks on because of COVID and I just had.
Speaker 1:I came in, as I do to most conversations, with a starting point like where I want the conversation to go, and then just followed the energy of the conversation and the curiosities around what they saw, what they remembered, what they felt, what I saw.
Speaker 1:You know, back and forth, part of the part of the creative process of this show was and it's a skill that I'm learning to develop which is sharing something, the way that I saw it with someone else to bounce off their memory back against mine. I just interviewed, as I mentioned, my high school prom date, you know, for another project two days ago, three days ago and so much of what I learned in that conversation was wow, we saw this experience that we both had together, like over years, we saw it so differently because we were each the heroes in our own stories and that's what was. That was really the creative breath of yearbook. I mean, even to this moment, I'm seeing all the ways that that story resonated with the people who were there for it and, at the same time, in in including in some pretty, like you know, fraught ways, people who have memories that are different from mine, or memories that are different from the other people who were there, who are like that's not how it happened and like I think, sometimes, when, when you are telling a my, my high school prom date, my ex-girlfriend said this in our conversation the other day.
Speaker 1:She said when I read your book and I wasn't in it, I started to feel like you were trying to write me out of your story, like out of your life, and I am noticing that as a response. I'm noticing that, as this platform builds, people care more about how I'm telling stories, which means they care more that the stories reflect what they think the story is, what they remember the story to be. I've gone away from the creative process. Let me come back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, do you want to try doing three actionable things that you did?
Speaker 1:Yes, is this for real?
Speaker 2:Huh, no, I mean, it's just like it's easy to listen to, like yeah.
Speaker 1:The first step was I did all the interviews, like all these conversations 25, 30 of them which included trying to chase down.
Speaker 2:I was going to say what about question prep? How prepped were you?
Speaker 1:I came in with the process I would use now and I think this is mainly what I did was like coming with like five strong questions that will lead you down the right path, where you can just keep uncovering new things. Like anytime somebody says something in a conversation that I think lends a question mark. I just want to make sure I ask the question because that's going to you don't know where you're going. Like you, the whole point is you're trying to get it, you're trying to shake the whole bag out before you, like um, before you line the pieces up to tell the story. Yeah, so one, I guess. Step one was question prep and travel. That two was to actually have the interviews and then step three was and it's a big step, I mean, um, a two years long process, pretty much of like coming to Josh's studio and recording voiceovers to lay down over and between the interviews to tell the actual story.
Speaker 1:I mean, there was a lot of writing involved. There was a lot of working with Amanda, the producer, who, like helped me really like shape these into episodes, and going back and forth with Dax and Monica about, you know, their high level notes on what story exactly are we telling? Whose stories deserve to have the big set pieces in this show, like what themes do we wanna pull more at? What themes do we wanna leave alone? I mean, there was a big and collaborative process among, I would say, six or seven people of like really turning it into what feels like an audio docu-series, you know, like really making sure that it tells a story and that all these little layers that need to be uncovered get their proper due. And there's many more steps in that which I could get into, but we don't have time for them right now, so that you wanna do a second question real quick. Sure, four minutes.
Speaker 2:Can you make it in television? This comes from Dasha W N J or Dashaan J. Can you make it as a television writer without living in LA?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I thought this was a funny question because I have never lived in LA. I don't. I'm like are you, where do you see me in this? Like, do you think I have made it or haven't made it? Or if the question is like, can you get a job as a TV writer without living in LA, the answer is 100% yes, you can.
Speaker 1:Your greatest assets right now, if you want to be a TV writer, are one do you have a written pilot that you can stand behind? That is your sample that says, like I can write and I have a point of view and I can write. This part's really important to me. I can write by myself. I don't need a co-writer. Like this is I can sit down in front of a computer and craft the opening episode of a TV series. That's important.
Speaker 1:So one is just like a straight up. You need proof of your ability. But the second you need people to know you exist. And when I started this whole thing, boy did I chase agents and managers and PR people and all these people who I thought could get other people to know I exist. And now, as I am deeper into this, I realize those people all serve an important job, but that job is much more valuable once you already have people who want to hire you. Like they do not make they do not, like they do not find people who want to hire you they take the people who already wanna hire or who already are interested in you and help turn it into deals. That's really what their job is. So what you gotta do is make sure people know I'm here and I have ability, and the way that you can do that is by making a short film and distributing it on YouTube or on Instagram, like building your storytelling presence on your socials. However you can. Maybe you maybe every day you sit in front of your camera and you make a TikTok where you just tell a one minute story about the character that's in your pilot or your own life or another story that you wanna tell, and you build a snowball of people knowing that you have this ability and then, all of a sudden, like you start shooting off DMs, they start coming your way, you start having these conversations and then one of these people who's been keeping an eye on you and I'm one of these people who is keeping an eye on the people that reach out to me Like all of a sudden they have an opportunity.
Speaker 1:My opportunity came because at the time, my friend Elaine got hired to go right on Gronish by Kenya Bears, who was a friend of hers, and she had not, at that point, written a TV pilot and so she needed me to come with her, to go sit in the room. And I shouldn't even say she needed me to. She asked me if I wanted to also go and sit in the room, in the writer's room, with her and collaborate on this TV pilot, and that was my first credit was because somebody else got a shot, who knew I could do the job, and brought me along with them. So you wanna make your like. You need people to know you can do something Like.
Speaker 1:You don't have to live in LA for that. In fact, I would say LA is the place where there are tens of thousands of people trying to be noticed, just like you are, probably hundreds of thousands of people trying to be noticed, just like you are. I think it's more valuable to be a big fish in a small pond like New York City. Okay, that's it. That's it All right. So much yelling, I'm gonna go drink tea. This has been Nothing but Anarchy. And, yeah, we did the show.
Speaker 2:Buy tickets to the live show. Go buy tickets to the live show.
Speaker 1:If you try to text me the day before the live show. First of all, the tickets are so easy to find. I'm already like. Why y'all asking me where these tickets are? Like, the tickets are there in my bio on my Instagram. Open Instagram, go to my profile, go to my bio. It'll be at the very top of the stack will be the tickets. Or you can just go to shanklinhaulcom. I'm yelling, but I mean this nicely. If you text me on the day of and we haven't texted in the last few, whatever text is gonna turn green. So go buy your tickets. All right, get out of here.
