[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Edgar Markov is a weird. And Brea. Yeah, because Edgar Markov is one of those cards that's just like so strong. And it's fun to play, but it's not fun to play against.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think, I would question whether it's even fun to play anymore because it's so formula and so kind of repetitive the same way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's my biggest fear that at some point commander is going to be 60 cards that were, you know, pre-made specifically for commander and then 30 flex slots that you can just play around with.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think that Witch of the Coast is trying very hard not to let that happen. You do? Okay. Well, it's, it's my hope, my optimistic hope that they understand that this is where we're going because we don't want them to just give us a deck. Like that's not the fun of commander. I mean, yeah, commander precons are great. I love them. But I think that there's a whole.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, block of these cards that are so strong and overwhelming, and do such specific commander things, that there's a danger in uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't want to say competitive, but just strength of your deck just gets way out of control.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, because, in terms of competitive commander, in terms of CEDH,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The most impactful commander only cards were specifically the partner commanders because that gives you two fixed spells that you always have access to with independent commander attacks so you can still play them super cheaply and you can get crazy busted with them. Like the combo that is the most obscene is Thrasios and Tymna.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So Thrasios is the, uhm, merfolk that cost a blue-green. Yes. And he's got, uh, pay four and you can look at the top of your card if it's a land you put into play, otherwise you draw the card. And there's so many different ways to go infinite with that thing and just get your whole deck into your hand or into play.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then Timna lets you, uh, draw cards and, uh, gain life based on the amount of damage you did. And because those four colors are, uh, gives you blue, green, white, black. So it gives you those four colors. It gives you access to a huge array of cards.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But because those two cards are so strong, anything you put underneath them, that deck is just going to be absurdly strong.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think that, especially at CEDH level with things like Flash Hulk or Demonic Consultation or these other kind of combos that you can run, having access to


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Here is just, these are the slots for this deck. Right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We explicitly don't want commander to be that way because the joy of commander is that my Braya deck and Olivia's Braya deck are fundamentally different decks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I, I don't think that's true though. And I will contest that because of the fact that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For one thing, Urza, not a lot of people run Urza. People will build the Urza deck and play it once. Realize how powerful it is and how little fun you're having. Urza's a good card in the 99, but not leading your deck. Because everybody will just immediately target you and you become the arch enemy and then, that's not fun. Unless you are, unless that's what you want, happy birthday. Sure, arch enemy is fun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I think that there's so many legendary creatures and so many ways to express yourself. And the tens of thousands of people who play commander are doing, like, how many different aristocrat sacrifice decks you can do? You can do Korvald, you can do Slimefoot, you can do, like, there's a billion different ways to make, I mean, Sir Conrad. All these different decks you can build that are flavored differently.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Um, or even Yawgmoth or like, I mean, Chainer, you know, there's just millions and millions of cool, I think there's so many choices.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Even though there are some very good float to the top, like cream of the crop choices, like Edgar Markov.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think that the commander fan base, the casual player base is going to gravitate to the cards that they like. Yes, the, the top end of the commander deck will be trying to say like, look man, Thrasios and Tymna is just the best commanders. We're going to play them because they win. Okay, fine. That's what you want. Knock yourself out. They're right there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I'm going to be playing like, you know, Calemni, the giant, or some random just, you know, Rafiq, or I don't know, Lady Orca, whatever, something from 12 million years ago. Why? Because I can.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's commander, man. There's nothing on the table. As long as I'm having a good time, then whatever. Like, Atraxa.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Is one of my least favorite cards in Magic because it makes things too powerful too quickly, proliferating every turn, making your Plainswalker super good. I think that card is busted and unfriendly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I also don't think that that card is stopping anybody from playing like gave or gave or whatever to be able to do your tokens and plus one plus one shenanigans even though a tracks would just be better at that. Right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Playing attractive is going to stop you from playing Djeru for being, making your kind of like planeswalker deck. Right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I dunno, I think that there's a lot of options available still, and I think people's creativity and the fact that-


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Commander encourages you to play the kind of magic you want to play, even without being the most powerful deck. I think that will keep Commander from becoming just three or four different


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The whole point of my podcast is to explore the fun side of Magic the Gathering that isn't just commander, isn't just brawl, isn't just like popper, but is the whole panoply of the ways we play from pre-constructed decks, to chaos drafting, to multiplayer formats, to plane shapes, all the weirdo fun things we can do in Magic.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And because I feel that there's been so much content generated for


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Higher, competitive, spikier players. And not enough for us who are just sitting there like, my favorite way to play is all the cards I own in a pile.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh yeah, dude. Cause there ain't no bandwidth on my kitchen table. It turns out I've got black lotuses, plural. You do not. I don't even have one. But I had Nick's lotus. That's almost the same thing, right? Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Casual Magic, though, and you can find it on, uh, basically anywhere you get podcasts, iTunes and Spotify's and what have yous. And at my Twitter feed of GearpootyGears, which I'm sure you'll put a link in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where I post my new episodes every week and also just talk about commander all the time because frankly.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like I said at the end of my podcast, it's not about magic without the gathering.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What a weird idea. It's weird, huh? Why would you put more than one of a card in your deck though? Like I don't understand. Like what do you need two cards for?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But yeaah, I feel like we all inspire. As basketball players, we inspire people all across the nation.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well said. Yeah, I love this place. I really love this place. You know, I'm not just saying that cause like, everybody's here, but like, it's just like...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I accidentally Ubered to a Target in Chapel Hill and I walk in there and I get booed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So now I'm just ready. Really, I'm just locked in now, just, just for that game. And uhm, yeaah, it's gonna be a great, a great time at UNC.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Me and C Phos got yoga together. There's a yoga club, like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hey, today in our episode, we're going to be talking about exercise and other what you call adversity memetics. But before we get to that today, right after we stopped taping in the last episode, you went, oh my God, iron.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and then we had this really great conversation about iron, and so I wanted to bring us back there before we could move forward today. Is that alright?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, yeaah, but iron is essential, right? We all need iron. In fact, people supplement with iron a lot of times.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so what about just, I mean this plays into your idea about why people should limit their meat intake though, because meat intake, meat is high in iron, red meats especially are higher in iron.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let's, let's back up for a second here because I think we're going to talk more about senescent cells in a coming episode, but, uh, we have mentioned free radicals before, and I think, uh, that's a word that gets thrown around a lot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and maybe not everybody understands free radicals. Right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this is going to be different for different people. 10% of the population in the United States has the, uh, HFE gene, which makes them more susceptible to hemochromatosis, which means they have to be even more concerned. You can't know this without knowing if you carry this gene though, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so just to like go over what we talked about last time really quickly, uhm, you advocate for a plant-based diet. You advocate for low iron levels. What am I missing?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And this leads in really well actually to what we're talking about today because what we're talking about is, uh, bringing your body into a state of perceived adversity as a way to turn on these genes. Before we can do that, we've got some business to take care of.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Alright, so let's get into this. Uhm, in this episode we're talking about some of the things that people can do to create and mimic in their lives the biological adversity that's


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We call these that. I mean like when you say we call these that is like you and I call them that because I know we call them that but is it like is that a term that scientists use that people actually use right now?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so, so, and the reason why adversity is important ties back to this idea that you've proposed of a survival circuit. So before we move forward in this, let's talk about the survival circuit. We don't have to go way, way back in history.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, you can't, you can't go back four billion years and that's in the book.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But we're gonna start in the 1990s with, uh, Cynthia Kenyon and her work on Sea Elegance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And these genes, there's a few of them now that we've identified. Uhm, and they, all of them seem to work on a very similar circuit that all starts with adversity.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Jeans, for lack of a better word, no. How do they know that the conditions are adverse and they need to turn on her?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So our body is this always active monitoring system. We're perceiving the world around us and the world around us is constantly throwing different stressors at us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or at least it was in human history, right? We've always been a little cold or a little hungry or a little scared or having to run from this animal or that animal that wanted to eat us. This is the environment that our species evolved in. That all species evolved in, right? Is this constant state of adversity.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Put stress on us, which, which causes our body to feel like it needs to protect itself because if we're not.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Filling it with all of the nutrients and calories we want.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It perceives a need, it perceives adversity, and it turns on these, these genes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and when we're talking, you know, we've already talked about like the real key effects that come from eating less often to basically turn on this adversity memetic effect. Uhm, there's another really easy way to do this though.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we really have to work hard at this because, I mean, you're saying this as we're sitting in these chairs, right? A couple of days after I sat down in a chair for a long time in an airplane to get here, right? We've got a nice comfy couch over there that we've been working on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We actually have to actively like pursue opportunities to do this, to get this, to get exercise to promote this adversity memetic effect.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because our lives are built around comfort and sedentariness.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The thing that you just said, I love this idea of connecting the idea of all-cause mortality with aging because as we've presented here, as you've been arguing for quite some time,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, most diseases uhm, which bring us toward the end of our lives are really just an accumulation of the symptoms of aging. And so if you bring down the disease rate,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Across various diseases, which is bringing down all cause mortality, you're


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Really just, it's just another way of saying we're bringing down aging.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And any kind of exercise is good. Uhm, this is why the 10,000 steps a day goal is popular. Uhm, generally speaking, it's good. It's not a magic number. I think there's, somebody came up with 10,000 and actually some studies have shown health benefits that are, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Exist at four to six thousand, kind of peter out from there. But, but the basic idea here is that when we move we burn calories, we're putting our bodies into a, at least a low state of adversity.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a great goal. It's a round number. It's fine, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which relates to this, we were talking about this old Chinese proverb, like 99 steps after a meal. No, a thousand steps after a meal, you'll live to 99. But walk after you eat. Right. Because...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we can, we can turn on a MPK just with a low level of exercise. Just start that adversity.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, we also know that it's really not enough. You need to also be getting a pretty consistent dose of vigorous exercise too. It doesn't have to be a lot, a lot of these studies show.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, 10 minutes a day, 15 minutes a day, even 15 minutes a week if you're getting started, it's gonna have health benefits. But vigorous exercise, the easiest way to think about it is


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your breathing, your breathing rate goes up and your heart rate goes up, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Can we, can we talk about that electro? Cause it's really fascinating how this thing works. And it was like, it is a little circuit around.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We keep going back to this idea of, uh, a little bit of adversity is good for you, like a lot of it's gonna, like a lot of anything's gonna kill you, but a little bit of a lot of these things that might in...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you can see this in a mouse. I mean, when you take, when, when you pull the mouse apart, not to be too graphic, but you can actually see these thing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which can be turned on by exercise because exercise upregulates an AMPT.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So let's add one more piece to this. Uhm, and that is, uh, how exercise impacts the epigenome.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There are other clocks as well. Uhm, one of them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so our, one of our researchers, Adiv Johnson, was involved in a study that used the proteomic clock,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Similarly, let's talk about that really quick because it's another way to measure biological aging.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And one of the things we can treat them with is exercise. Exercise, in the study we were just talking about, uhm, they looked at aerobically active people versus sedentary people, and the aerobically active people were five and a half years younger on average according to this proteomic biological clock.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Presumably we'd see the same thing if we used a Horvath Clock or an Immuno Clock.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, we use car analogies a lot, you and I. I think a lot of people do these, but it bears mentioning, like, you know that your car is not gonna last forever. There's a shelf life for any car.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And to that end, one of the really cool and exciting developments that's happening right now is there's this sort of race.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So much so that the price point is, uh, predicted to be, well, like a buck.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A lot of people hear all of this and they go, okay, I get it. I have to exercise, but, and I hear this a lot, but I hate to run.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like everybody thinks of like, that's the only thing they're allowed to do. And I think doctors may contribute, physicians may contribute to this a little bit by saying like, okay, well I need to get you running and jogging and whatever. It's not just running, right? Like, what's the best kind of exercise?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We did look this up, we were really hopeful when we looked this up, but it burns like four calories a minute or something. It's, it's not as good as...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You can make it part of your exercise regimen, but you have to have a partner, a consenting willing partner who also wants to make it part of their exercise regimen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And however you get your exercise, be it running or sailing apparently or sex, uh, both the World Health Organization and the Mayo Clinic recommend at least 75 minutes of vigorous exercise a week. So that's 15 minutes a day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, yeaah, don't do it all at once. Uhm, but that's, that's the starting point. And most people can do that. You can be the busiest person in the world. You can be the most unhealthy person in the world.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You can get your heart rate and your breathing up for 10 minutes a day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right, right, uhm, because in addition to the fact that it's a single


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a single assessment at a single time. It's highly subjective. It's self-reported. It's just crap data.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And we are going to get into this, but I do want to, like, I've got a friend, Nate Price, who helps people do this, uh, at the Institutes for System Biology, and uhm, they, uh, help people, like, create these charts that they can then bring in to show their doctors.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and to bring this all back, to tie this all back to exercise and these other adversity memetics, which we're gonna get to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Having this data, I'm a big soccer fan, the first time I saw a soccer player try a coffee shirt and he was wearing a bra and I thought what the heck is going on, but it's actually holding these


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, arrange your exercise routine so that you're getting the most out of it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let's move along here, uhm, because we've got a lot more to talk about, but before we get away from exercise and start talking about these other adversity memetics, uhm, there's another form of exercise that I know you enjoy, that I enjoy, that a lot of people enjoy, but maybe doesn't get as much attention as aerobic exercises, weight training.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah. Building muscle mass also helps maintain youthful hormone levels.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, maybe doing to cause cells to go senescent, but let's talk about that as one of the key aging, what are called the aging hallmarks. Um, exercise prevents senescence, it turns back senescence. What's exercise doing in terms of these zombie cells?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cause these 12 weeks to like, destroy some senescent cells seems like a pretty good deal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's the study that was just out this year in, uh, aging cell, uh, England at all. We will link to that in the show notes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Have a few takeaways here. And there's really, there's three big ones. Uhm, the first is a low level of exercise and this is just steps, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you don't have to hit 10,000 steps, but shoot for four. Four. Four. Four is great.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, alright. And uhm, then that's the low intensity exercise that everybody should be getting throughout the week, every single day. You should also get high intensity exercise.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, alright, and then, uh, muscle building.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, and all of this is, the goal is, it's not just we want to look good, we want, right, all of this is aimed toward the goal of longevity through putting your longevity genes into, or alerting your genes, your cells, to a state of adversity.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But this is not the only, exercise is not the only adversity memetic. There are.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Others, we're going to talk now about a few other categories. We're going to talk about cold temperatures. We're going to talk about heat. Uhm, but there's a really exciting one right now and it is related in some ways to exercise or the effects, the genetic effects, the cellular effects that we get from exercise.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it's really fast moving. The latest studies are only out in the last couple of years and this is hyperbaric oxygen treatment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We should say what a hyperbaric chamber is. A hyperbaric chamber is a room or sometimes just a little tube where the pressure is increased. And when the pressure is increased, the amount of oxygen that you get when you breathe is increased.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you actually got wind of this before while they were working on it and you went to kind of like peek in on what they were doing.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But at least what we have right now are some studies, most of them fairly small in scale, but human studies. Memory.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Improvements, uh, telomeres, key helper cells.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the really cool thing about this treatment, even though, look, like, not everybody has access to a hyperbaric chamber, obviously, but it is a pretty easy intervention, and it's easy to treat people this way, it's easy to test people in this way, uhm, so if it works.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it's still early. It seems like these things are working across a variety of ways that we can measure aging and the problems of aging. If this is working, why is it working?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So it's not so much the oxygen, the like explosion of oxygen that you're getting, but it's like once you like temporarily get used to that, then you come off of it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Before we move away from, uh, hyperbaric, uh, oxygen treatment, uh, I know you're most familiar with this Israeli study. Let's talk about the protocol in that one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, so 60 sessions, 90 minutes. This is not something anybody, most people can do every day right now. This is not going to be a common part of people's longevity regimens anytime soon.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let's shift now to talking about cold therapy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, which is another thing that, uh, a lot of people are experimenting with now. Another thing that there are centers for all over the place, but that the research is still sort of catching up to the excitement.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Our understanding, but we do know some things about what coal does to the human body and actually what coal does to organisms across the spectrum.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Why is that happening? When we go back to like thinking about the survival circuit, what's happening?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Cold therapy, people call it cryo therapy, uhm, is this like short term, acute, super intense. You've done this before, right? You did this with Rogan, didn't you?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just like right now we need to be doing vigorous exercise. We can't wait until we're old to do vigorous exercise.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Okay, and maybe that's like the cryotherapy stuff is sort of akin to a vigorous exercise, but you still have to have that low level of perceived adversity, just like we have to get like lots and lots of steps in every day. Uhm, but we live in these environments, these temperature controlled environments where it's like 68 to 72. That's not how our ancestors lived at all.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The opposite side of this is heat, which is also something that throughout our evolutionary history we've had to deal with. We didn't always live in temperature controlled buildings. Uhm, and we're, we've got some emerging research on that as well.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This isn't happening for the same reason as cold therapy work. This has nothing to do with brown fat. There's another thing that's going on here, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For sauna baths at this point, or like how much, how hot, not a ton of research in this area.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And again, you don't necessarily need to have access to a sauna to do this. I mean, some people can build them into their home. Some people have them in their gyms. That's kind of a point of privilege. Most people have a bath.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There is uhm, for some obvious reasons, there's a lot of questions I want to ask about hair growth. Uh, we're going to be discussing hair growth, skin care, all these like sort of like cosmetic aspects of aging things in a future episode.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of the commonalities that I'm kind of sensing in all of these things, right? You, you do vigorous exercise and you get what?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We turn our runners high and you talked about doing the cryotherapy and you felt like, what did you say? Like blessed to be alive or, um, I've done, uh, sweats and sweat lodges and you come out of those things and it's just like it's the best drug in the world.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What, what do you think, why are these things so similar? This happens in the hyperbaric chamber too.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So let's talk about a basic protocol, uh, with the caveat that we always make, which is everybody's gonna be a little bit different.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We've already talked about the exercise protocol. Actually, I don't think we need to reiterate that you need to exercise to get off your butt.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But that's not the only thing in the future. There's a lot of really cool things coming down the path right now that are going to be a fundamental part of people's lives.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pretty soon we're going to be talking about a lot of those in upcoming episodes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So next episode, molecules, supplements, longevity. That's, that's going to be a lot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What's up Duke fans, uh, we're back here, uh, for episode 11 of the Brotherhood podcast. We have a unique set up today, uh, with a guest coming back.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'll be passing the mic over today to Mark Mitchell to host this episode. So, uh, we'll get a little unique perspective there, but they have an awesome conversation, um, about the past few months, what that's looked like for, for Derek and his process, uh, getting over to Dallas. So super exciting, uh, to hear.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, for all you to be able to hear how that's been for him, um, and his perspective looking back on obviously his time at Duke, but moving forward as well. Uh, but before we get into that, uh, I wanted to provide you all with a little bit of, uh, perspective and insight into what these past few weeks have looked like for our team. Uh, we're entering.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, middle of September here. Uh, so we're still on eight hour weeks. Uh, we're going four hours a week in the weight room and four hours a week on the court with the coaches. That's what we're limited to by the NCAA. Uh, so this past few weeks has just been a ton of.


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[Assistant] Of getting in the gym and working hard as a group, uh, coach Shire has been emphasizing.


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[Assistant] You know, the two major things of coming together as a team. Uh, we have a lot of returners and a lot of talent coming into the gym at all times, but you know, we really want to take this time to learn to mesh together and become a group and be one unit. Uh, once real practice starts in a couple of weeks here. Uh, and the other thing is just conditioning and weightlifting. Uh, we've been.


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[Assistant] Obviously becoming in the best shape and, uh, and strength that we can as a group and individually, but also just mentally, uh, coming into the mornings, running the mile while it's dark out, um, is something that, you know, we hope to be able to back up on late in the year in March, uh, in April, because that's when.


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[Assistant] You know, we want to be able to look back and say we were doing these tough things in the preseason when nobody else was. Uhm, so.


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[Assistant] Overall, the team's really coming together. Young guys are getting acclimated to what it takes to be a college student athlete with, you know, multiple classes a day and then coming and being in the gym for multiple hours a day.


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[Assistant] So it's been an awesome few weeks of the preseason, uh, and we'll get going here for, for real in about two weeks when we start, uh, the actual season. So.


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[Assistant] That's a little something for me about, you know, kind of where we are, uh, and hopefully you guys appreciate a little bit more perspective into where the team is currently in this moment.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and yeaah, that's, uh, that's about it there. Well, again, really excited for you guys to get to hear, uh, from Derek and Mark. Uh, they had a great conversation and super exciting stuff. So, hope you guys enjoy episode 11.


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[Assistant] Yay! I love that. Thank you so much, Mrs. Prof.


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[Assistant] Oh, hello. Many Magic the Gathering players ask the question, how do I pick a modern deck?


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[Assistant] If we're interested in getting into modern, how do I go about picking that first modern deck? Well, I have with me here the one and only Alex Kessler of the Masters of Modern. Tell us.


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[Assistant] That's also problematic because Burn is in just about every format, save perhaps Commander, the best way to, on a budget, get into that format.


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[Assistant] Let's, let's, let's talk about this. Let's talk about this. Uh, uh, let's say that I am someone who is either interested in getting into modern for the first time or maybe I was someone who played modern back in the day, uh, uh, perhaps pre-splinter twin band.


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[Assistant] And, or, or, or shortly thereafter, and I've taken my hiatus, I've come back, I like the way modern looks now, and I don't...


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[Assistant] Well, and that's also because, uh, that your modern, your old modern cards are likely to have retained value. And that's not always going to be the case, especially if something gets banned out. I mean, I feel really bad for anyone that bought a playset of Hogax right before the ban. But for the most part,


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[Assistant] Those cards retain value. That's actually something where for people who maybe are only used to playing standard, uh, aren't as used to that idea that while prices will fluctuate and sometimes, wow.


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[Assistant] Yeah, that was the one big shakeup was it was like maybe green will get us there. But actually, there are modern decks available.


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[Assistant] So, uh, I do agree with you on the premise that


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[Assistant] If you're gonna continually have to be buying for standard, that that really does add up. So if you think you're playing Magic the Gathering for more than say,


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[Assistant] Just a year and you're playing standard and you're going to keep up with standard that ends up being


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[Assistant] And let's say I maybe do have some standard decks. Are there any standard decks that can translate over into modern either now or maybe over the last couple years? Because maybe there's somebody watching now who played standard.


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[Assistant] Two years ago, one year ago, something like that and standard rotated and they, and like many of us do, fell out of standard and now that deck's sitting on their shelf.


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[Assistant] Is there any way to come over into modern through standard?


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[Assistant] So if you're a sicko who wants more to fairy, Modern might just be for you. Uh, you also get to play with Stoneforged Mystic next to it. Right.


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[Assistant] And I think that I don't want to get into a whole thing about pioneer. I've done lots of pioneer content on my channel. I do think that ultimately, and I'm going to be talking more about this, that modern is going to beat out.


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[Assistant] And then working your way from having played standard, even if your standard deck doesn't directly...


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[Assistant] Have a version in modern. You can start just simply trading to other standard players for


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[Assistant] Some modern staples that they might have or for cards that other people who play modern might want and then just


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[Assistant] But you know, if you've got 300 bucks worth of standard cards that you can convert into modern, then you're only talking about a couple hundred dollar more investment.


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[Assistant] On your part, which for a deck that never rotates and only has to worry about a potential ban really isn't that bad. What if I am on


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[Assistant] So, what are some modern decks you might recommend people look at if they are on a budget? And so let's say I say to you, I don't have Standard right now, uh, I, I, I literally, I've come back, I know how to play Magic, I wanna play Modern, I just do not have any,


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[Assistant] I'm buying in from scratch. I want to do it on a budget.


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[Assistant] Mono Red, we know Mono Red. Besides Mono Red. Besides Mono Red, what am I looking at?


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[Assistant] Storm is actually putting up really good results and first of all the fully


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[Assistant] So rogue decks are a thing in modern, so people who feel like maybe even they like to brew their own decks, or they like to play decks that are off the radar decks, they don't need to feel that modern is a format where you're either in one of three decks, one of four decks, or you're just out.


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[Assistant] As someone whose I've always approached modern


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[Assistant] As an enthusiast, I don't want to say casual, but just as


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[Assistant] A format that really is kind of there for someone who, I don't grind GPs, I'm not looking to top 8.


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[Assistant] I'm looking to have a deck that I can keep and learn how to play and enjoy and I've always felt from that perspective that a lot of people approach modern as having kind of tunnel vision where they do think that it's just these top three decks and that nothing else is viable when in fact


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[Assistant] A lot of people piloting those decks, as you said, they're expecting Jun, they're expecting, well, up until recently, Affinity, they're expecting, you know, these, these classic decks, and you can come out of nowhere with a rogue deck, or with a tinkered deck. Maybe you took an established deck, and you made alterations,


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[Assistant] To its strategy, you can do clever things in modern. It really does.


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[Assistant] Have room for brewing and engineering and home brewing and things of that nature. I mean, you were talking about, uh, Zach Elsick and I, I know that one thing about him is he just does not want to play Magic Online and he only plays with cards that he can own and have and go down to a game store and play and that's why not only did he invent


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[Assistant] Lantern control, but why lantern control was actually the budget built for a while. You could put lantern control together for one two hundred dollars.


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[Assistant] And that's because he was just like, he's not gonna drop too grand on experimenting with a deck to win, and he was able to dive in there, and I really wish more people would approach the format that way, and can approach the format that way.


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[Assistant] Is there a difference between say investing into staples versus investing into archetypes and what does that even mean or what do I need to know about that if I am buying into modern to a certain degree?


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[Assistant] One of the classic things I always look at is look at especially if it's a two color deck.


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[Assistant] Literally, when you're on MTG Goldfish, say, and you're looking at prices, if you are looking at a two color deck, uh, just take the land base off of that deck and see the cost, and then say to yourself, I could build with shocks only.


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[Assistant] A two color, but nevermind all the fast lands and the fetch lands and all of that stuff. That is ultimate efficiency, but honestly,


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[Assistant] You know, six mountains, six islands, and, and, and, and four, uh, uh, shock lands, or what have you. And, uh, it's not the best, and there might be some games where that bites you in the rear, but,


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[Assistant] You have just cut 80% of the price tag off of that deck and you can work your way towards I'm gonna get a fetch land, a fast land, what have you.


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[Assistant] Over the years, over the months, and meanwhile you're still showing up, you're still playing, you work on up trading, you work on finding someone who, yeah, I've got the, the, the Kaladesh red blue.


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[Assistant] Uh, fast land and I will trade it for a whole bunch of standard guards. That's a great trade. Get it. Stick it in your deck. Now I got one. I did that early days when I was into merfolk.


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[Assistant] Uh, it sounds crazy, but one of the most expensive components of merfolk early days, uh, uh, were mutavolts before they saw the reprint. Uh, it was mutavolts and athervials. And I literally built merfolk on pennies by building it with zero athervials and zero mutavolts, and then,


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[Assistant] When the mutavolts got reprinted in standard of all places, I aggressively went after them. I got them for pennies as a result because not everybody, uh, uh, was doing mono black then and so I got those mutavolts.


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[Assistant] And my deck got powered up, but I had been playing with merfolk leading up until then. I didn't have to wait. And then Aether Rose got reprinted in a couple of the Modern Masters. I was able to go after them there.


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[Assistant] And I did it bit by bit. And it doesn't have to be an all at once sort of strategy. You can go for 90% of a modern deck and then leave the other 10% to be gold.


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[Assistant] I cannot encourage viewers enough to go look at modern decks and cut off the mana base and just honestly look at their cost, scroll down and just see, oh my goodness, there are all these


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[Assistant] And you know what? If the worst thing that happens to you is you sit down to a game where you only have blue mana open and you need red for a lightning bolt and you end up losing and that's what saved you $500.


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[Assistant] Then that's what saves you $500. You know, at least you still got to play some magic and it doesn't come up every single time.


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[Assistant] How much do I have to be worried about things like bands hitting my deck? Uh, how much do I have to worry about bands that don't hit my deck but that change the meta in such a way that my deck is no longer going to be as viable as it was? That's one thing that can definitely be off-putting is the idea of


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[Assistant] Okay, I go ahead, I trade all my standard cards out, I put in a couple hundred dollars, or maybe I am gonna invest in a larger deck.


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[Assistant] Well, it's a great budget deck. I'm not saying Storm is doing great, but I'm saying that somebody with 80 dollars in their pocket can build a budget Storm deck.


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[Assistant] I don't know great win, I don't know that you're gonna take down a GP, but I think in terms of there's a modern event every Tuesday at my local game store, we get, you know, 16 plus players in there. I wanna go in and play.


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[Assistant] And I don't have Jund money. Uh, Storm is a really good budget option.


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[Assistant] What are some other resources besides your podcast that people could look to when deciding, you know, which deck to pick and how best to understand the current climate of modern? What are some of your go-tos?


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[Assistant] Yeah, I think Seth does not get enough credit for those budget decks because people don't realize just how much testing he really does put into them. Yeah. There are some real diamonds in the rough down there that kind of get brushed off as like, yeah, you know.


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[Assistant] Very cool. While I have you here, uh, I do wanna shift gears really quickly to Pioneer. Do you believe, honestly, honestly, do you believe there is any reason to play Pioneer?


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[Assistant] They unban all fetchlands from pioneers. Is there any reason, if fetchlands are legal and pioneer, to play pioneer over modern?


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[Assistant] Yep, burnt my hair clean off, but no matter, I looked pretty good bald. Also, I bought up every copy of Fetchlands that I could get my hands on while I was back in the past. I'm gonna be rich as long as Wizards of the Coast never reprints them in a meaningful way.


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[Assistant] Kywood, Nurse Ratched herself. If Mr. McMurphy doesn't want to take his medication orally, I'm sure we can arrange that he can have it some other way.


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[Assistant] Alright, so what do you want to talk about on the podcast today, Vince? Uh, I'm not Vince.


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[Assistant] Oh, yeah. Hey, weren't you one of my students? Yes, actually. Yeah, you were in like my class when I, when I taught.


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[Assistant] Boy, those English classes really didn't have much point to them, did they?


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[Assistant] So, y-you play commander a lot now?


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[Assistant] So hello, many Magic the Gathering players asked the question, why does standard suck? Or why did standard suck? Did it suck? And if it did suck, how to make it not do that?


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[Assistant] I've brought in here today my former student from when I was a real teacher, but now I suppose you're the substitute of Grixis Studies.


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[Assistant] Right, right, right, you just play a movie. Exactly, exactly. So the title of today's episode, I don't know if this is going to be the actual thumbnail, I'm feeling nervous literally calling it


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[Assistant] Why does standard suck? But that is the spiritual topic of this because you play a lot of standard and we were actually just talking last night when we came up with the idea for this about how much standard you play and where you felt the golden era was and you feel it's been bad lately and I agree. And I want to kind of dissect that before we get into it, two caveats. Number one.


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[Assistant] We are not discussing Zendikar Rising Rotation. So we want to talk about Standard as a closed book. Rotation, when this is posted, has just happened or is just about to happen depending on how fast I am with the edit. So we're not discussing Zendikar Rising Standard. We want to talk about everything leading up.


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[Assistant] Yeah, it's huge. Somebody did a graphic just comparing.


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[Assistant] 10 years worth of bands to, I believe, 2 years worth of bands or something close to that range and it's astonishing when you visually see that.


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[Assistant] That's, I mean, that's depressing on two levels. One is, is you open a sweet card, and it's like, well, if, if it's not capable of beating Euro, or it's not Euro,


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[Assistant] Then Euro out of luck. And, uh, or God forbid you open up a banned card. Now on Arena, that's not going to happen, but in paper, which still exists, that is going to happen. And that's a couple of feel-bads. So is it just that there's been...


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[Assistant] A lot of bands, is that all that there is? Cause for those who don't know, there's been a change in design philosophy. They call it fire.


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[Assistant] Fire stands for F is for fun. Above all else, our game should be fun to play.


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[Assistant] I is for inviting, ooh la la. Our games should be accessible to many people.


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[Assistant] Alright. R is for replayable. The key aspects of replayability are balance and diversity. Hey, Crim, what does that mean?


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[Assistant] Yeah, no, it's not exciting. I find it, joking aside, I find it amazing that Wizards of the Coast will look at cards like, for example, and uh, yeah, I'm gonna go there, Lord of Atlantis, which gives Ulmerfolk plus one plus one, and Island Walk, and they say Land Walk is no fun. That's broken. That's no fun.


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[Assistant] We need to do something like that's gonna draw out the game for a million years where you just slam concede out of frustration as opposed to oh well then they resolved mountain walk and swung in with all their goblins and won and we moved on with our lives.


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[Assistant] That's when I quit altogether. So I agree with you. So, so, and by the way, we never finished just explaining that fire, uh, uh, what all that


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[Assistant] Weird acronym equals is a change in design philosophy that ultimately is


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[Assistant] Part of that might be tied to thinking on Magic Arena, we can ban a card, you just get a wild card replacement, and then it's no longer in packs and so it's trying to lean into digital flexibility, but it seems to be tied to this massive increase in bans.


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[Assistant] You mentioned a minute ago that when War of the Spark first dropped, it was a lot of fun, and I will acknowledge, even though I have my issues with Planeswalker cards in general, and especially the passive effect Planeswalkers, I think, like, that might be hitting my list of design mistakes this year.


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[Assistant] But I will admit that War of the Spark in isolation, especially in draft for a minute, and just a smidgen of standard was a very exciting shakeup.


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[Assistant] But then, it came in to be week two, and week three, very very quickly, and, and it


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[Assistant] I mean, I remember the draft I quit on where I was sitting there and my opponent had four planeswalkers on the board and I had a goblin.


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[Assistant] And I was just like, well there's, it just, it felt unfun. It was just like this, these are not things I can interact with properly. They're doing so much each turn.


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[Assistant] And, and I, I didn't, I did not like it, and I remember, I remember that particularly as like, I'm done with this, and I went and played a different format, and, and, and went into Popper and had a great deal of fun, because there are no Planeswalkers at Common, thankfully, despite, yet.


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[Assistant] And, uh, yeaah, I mean, I quit Standard right around that same time as well. I liked Standard right around when, uh, uh, the first couple of Ravnica sets hit, so that wasn't too far before War. I think War might have been a real big...


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[Assistant] In a world, uh, like- You're literally listing everything that's wrong with standard and saying I liked all of these things, but you're also simultaneously saying I didn't enjoy standard. Yes. You realize that what you're lacking- It's a contradiction. Yeah, it's a huge contradiction. It is.


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[Assistant] Well, when you look at a lot of cards that were banned prior to this current era, by which I mean the last few years,


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[Assistant] Extra mana early, things like that. And so, it's interesting that a lot of the cards that got banned,


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[Assistant] Were the mistakes and they should be taken out or going forward. Your advice would be stop.


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[Assistant] Go, like, you know, Lanowar Elves, fine. Don't go nuts beyond that.


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[Assistant] I also think that some of it, I agree with all of that by the way, but I also think that some of it is from the gameplay experience, so not just


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[Assistant] That over efficient card, but when I think of what was frustrating me to no end,


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[Assistant] I don't know if, if, if prison is the right word for, for standard and what we were encountering, but it felt like a prison to me where I would end up in games where essentially it wasn't so much that my opponent was going to win, but that I was just going to concede because there was no hope of my winning. And if I did play it out for the next


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[Assistant] God knows how much amount of time they would eventually eke out a win, but there were so


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[Assistant] Many decks that I was going up against, or perhaps there were so few decks, but they were the dominant ones. It just felt like nearly every game.


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[Assistant] It just ends up being that my opponent is gonna stall me out, I can't do anything, I mean, Wilderness Reclamation was a big part of that, uh, Nexus of Fate prior to that was a huge part of that, and a lot of other things that, that made it feel like I was in some kind of prison or lock sort of situation, and I wasn't getting to play the game.


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[Assistant] Uh, uh, uh, again, my philosophy has always been that I don't care if you combo off.


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[Assistant] And win, and then we sh- shuffle up and go on to the next round, but when it's going to drag on forever, and then I eventually have to make the call, which is not a lot of fun, I know for the pros it's a lot easier, and they recognize, alright, you've got this, we don't have to play it out.


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[Assistant] But for us casuals, we don't always know, oh, am I going to be able to get a counterspell for that or an enchantment destruction for the reclamation and then get ahead again. And so it feels just miserable overall. And I think that it's really funny when I was mockingly reading the fire acronym.


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[Assistant] None of that, to me as a casual player and standard, was really embodied in that gameplay experience that I was receiving. It was just these long, dirty, drawn out, locked down games. The idea of like,


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[Assistant] If anyone from Wizards of the Coast is watching this and you're looking for someone new to be hired into design, do not hire this man!


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[Assistant] It's best thriving. When do you, what do you think of when you think of a thriving standard? And what are the characteristics that make it that way?


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[Assistant] It also felt like a period where you could experiment more and I remember


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[Assistant] And I, during cons, could show up with a bizarre little, you know, like home tinker sort of build and have a shot with it because it opened up all this possibility. Unfortunately, it sounds like Wizards of the Coast looked at


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[Assistant] Cons of Tarkir and said we don't want that to happen again. They literally have said we're never reprinting fetchlands into uh, standard because of cons.


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[Assistant] Uh, and I'm not saying that that's the only reason that cons was so great, but it certainly helped. Uh, and it also made it exciting to open up packs and all that stuff. It did. Crack a foil-polluted delta, you know?


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[Assistant] Yeah, I hate that feeling too because it's just basically, it resolves and if you can't answer it immediately, you have to kill it, you have to get rid of it, you're done for.


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[Assistant] Looking at Theros, and again, you're much more of an expert on this than I am, but looking at Theros, I would say,


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[Assistant] Is it fair of me to say, I should ask, that this is perhaps a powering down that we're seeing? Should I be that optimistic to think that this is, that Theros is going to be an attempt to power down standard? And if it is, is that a good move on their part?


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[Assistant] So do they need to ban it? Are they gonna ban it? Isn't that the plan? The plan is make this card and then ban it so that we can be interested in the new cards? And then people who spent 40 bucks a pop on Euro, you know?


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[Assistant] I, I, I feel kind of the same way, especially as a Merfolk fan, that I didn't really have much fun with the Merfolk in Ixalan. You would think! Yes.


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[Assistant] What a concept. What a concept that that way those decks would have a weakness that might discourage every single person on the planet from just jamming Euro into a pile.


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[Assistant] The Lord was kind of a let down. The Lord was a let down. Capala was a let down. Capala should have been, as a merfolk, as the merfolk studies resident here at the college, I would say that Capala should have been just cure a great glass spinner, but for merfolk.


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[Assistant] And, and that, that would have slotted in so nicely into Murphodex. It would probably, you know, and it's just like that little bit more would have given it some oomph.


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[Assistant] So that you, maybe that it was a viable try, but it didn't really end up being that way. So if you do have R&D's ear now that you also just praised them and, and, and gave them that compliment, if you do have their ear,


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[Assistant] What would be one or two pieces of, uh, uh, I don't want to say advice, but maybe requests about what they should pay attention to.


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[Assistant] Going forward in terms of trying to get standard back on the right track.


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[Assistant] I definitely don't like the philosophy, though, that it's okay to


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[Assistant] The, uh, enabler instead of the actual target, because maybe the target is in the most recent set. Or it's the face card. Right, or it's the face card, and I think no, it's better.


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[Assistant] To get rid of that, but it's even better to not have to do it in the first place, and now of course you then come back and say, well, they don't know, and sure, but I think that the current design philosophy is saying it's okay if that happens.


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[Assistant] And I would rather say no, it's, it's not okay if that happens. It still might happen, but let's not just say since arena is so popular at the moment or was popular when we developed the system.


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[Assistant] Is Arena popular at the moment? That's another episode. But, uh, that it's okay to just say, oh, we'll ban it and give them their wild cards back because there is still the paper component and I think it's the most important component of Magic and it is the biggest tie-in to people's enjoyment and fun.


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[Assistant] But stop trying to be like Hearthstone, or that's also my comment, is don't try and figure out how you can do what Hearthstone is doing. You're not going to be the Hearthstone killer.


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[Assistant] Be magic. Do what Hearthstone can't do. Hearthstone doesn't have and will never have. They had and it didn't work. A paper version.


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[Assistant] So lean into what you do that other games can't, instead of being obsessed with what other games do that you cannot. And I think that all of this goes back to that. I think that that's where that came from. What you described there, like, if only we could do that, maybe we can, maybe we can find a way to get away with it. And I just do not think that, uh, that is a good direction to go.


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[Assistant] Uh, that, that's just not going to happen. I worry though that just at the corporate level, it's just Hearthstone, that's the target. Hearthstone, that's the target. Why can't we have their numbers, their performance, their viewership, their, their, their mechanics, their, all of this and...


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[Assistant] Just going away from what makes magic magic and trying to make magic Hearthstone.


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[Assistant] Well, Karim, thank you so much for joining us here today. Would you like to tell people where they can find you if they want to find more of your awesome Magic the Gathering work and presents?


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[Assistant] Alright, we'll put all those links down in the doobly-doo as it were. Uh, oh! But, while I have you here...


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[Assistant] We've got Zendikar rising, coming, and Merfolk are a tribe in that, so is this going to be my hour? Are we going to see Merfolk Tribal in Standard? Finally, I can play my favorite tribe, Merfolk, right? Right? There's some really cool Merfolk, and we should talk a little bit about the Merfolk. Should we, should we tell them? Get the hell out!


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[Assistant] If you hold up 7 mana and a player is playing blue, what do you suspect?


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[Assistant] But uh, one thing I'll notice specifically about Newmont, I'm not scared of Cyclonic Riff when Seven Man is up. He has Angel of the Dire Hour.


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[Assistant] Uh, before you even got there, I'd already pulled up, like I'm reading the story on the LPGA's website, just cause I was curious, like it is amazing that we're, we're at this inflection point.


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[Assistant] Right now in sports like you and I both sat up last night or sat up this afternoon and watched the NCAA tournament finish up Iowa lost to South Carolina. I think like a lot of people, we were captivated by the entire tournament. And I think you could say the same thing about women's soccer.


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[Assistant] And across the board, I think women's sports have become much more captivating than they've ever been. Even more so...


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[Assistant] Then men's sports, and again, this goes to, I would argue,


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[Assistant] That what we saw today between Iowa and South Carolina is probably going to be more entertaining. It's going to be more riveting. It's going to be, it's going to resonate with fans much more than what we'll probably see Monday night with the men's finals. Not saying that's right or wrong. That just seems the way, the way we're tracking right now. I'm curious why this hasn't taken on a foothold.


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[Assistant] Because you're right, this is historic what she's doing and she doesn't seem to have any interest in slowing down. I will be fascinated in the next coming weeks to find out because I think they have a major in two weeks in Houston.


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[Assistant] Like, can she continue this pace? This is a Tiger-esque pace. And if that happens, will we see the same sort of...


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[Assistant] Boost, let's call it, that we've seen in other women's sports that suddenly elevate this, not just to a new level.


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[Assistant] But does it elevate it beyond the men's game? And when we consider where the men's game is right now, you and I have talked about this ad nauseam, the idea that there is fan fatigue that people don't want to hear about.


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[Assistant] How much purses are, how much guys are getting guaranteed. They don't want to hear about equity shares. They don't want to hear about deals. They want to see the best players playing against each other. Other. I can imagine a scenario where three or four weeks from now, if she continues this historic pace that the women's game starts to draw more attention than the men's game. And I don't think we've ever seen that before.


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[Assistant] Was Embi Park when she was going essentially for the Grand Slam and she was doing it, I'm not mistaken at St. Andrews, right? At the, at the women's open championship.


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[Assistant] And I remember talking to our colleague Doug Ferguson from the AP.


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[Assistant] And look, Doug's schedule is very much like yours and mine. Like, he covers...


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[Assistant] Men's golf primarily and he hit those majors and those big events are where he was going to go. And I remember him telling me like, I've got to change my schedule. I have to be there for this. Like this is a historic moment. I can imagine something very, very similar and to your point.


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[Assistant] And not to be, again, myopic or jingonistic or whatever the case may be, but you're right. This is an American. This, she's tall.


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[Assistant] Uh, she's easy to watch on TV. All the things you could sit here and say like this could possibly resonate if she continues this run.


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[Assistant] I'm not, because I get scared just like you do when we start talking about gambling, then I realize that no, it's gambling, I like gambling, it's losing that I don't like. Then it comes crashing down and I realize that no, I don't like to give away my hard earned money for free. I will say, as soon as you mentioned his odds in Houston, I actually covered that event.


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[Assistant] Must have been three years ago, four years ago, maybe now, four years.


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[Assistant] And he was trying, Scotty was trying to win his first event there. And I remember going into Sunday and talking with Randy Smith on the range, like, oh, this is like, no one can touch him. And even Randy, I remember telling me at the time, like, I, I,


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[Assistant] Golf's a funny game, man. And so in Randy's famous words, golf is a funny game. Don't bet on it. It's a funny game.


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[Assistant] And now that dude has become dominant. You have to like his chances just based on what he's done.


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[Assistant] And his last two starts winning Bay Hill as dominantly as he did winning the players championship clearly with an injury that didn't seem to slow him up coming down the stretch.


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[Assistant] And he's played well here, so you have to like all of those things. I think at this point though, he's got his eye ahead, just like the rest of us, three weeks. I'm not saying that takes away from him being the favorite or not, but I think everybody pretty much has their eye on the master.


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[Assistant] Well, and that's fair. And if we're going to sit here and do the proper handicap thing, you do want to see what his health looked like on Friday or Thursday. Didn't even address it. Didn't even address it. Wasn't even asked about it. Yeah, that was a little on the weird side, given how much of the narrative that was at the player's championship. But since he wasn't even asked, he didn't volunteer anything about it. My guess is he's going to be fine. But anytime.


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[Assistant] You have a top player and he dismissed it pretty much from the moment it happened on Friday all the way through Sunday is the importance of it. I think Ted Scott probably gave a little bit more insight when we talked to him after the round at TPC Sawgrass and he said on Friday he was in pain just to hit chip shots.


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[Assistant] So you get an idea when these things happen to him and he says, Scotty said it had happened to him before. It's just whatever he wants to define it as. He never gave us, he never gave us the technical term. Like it wasn't.


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[Assistant] Tiger Woods going down the desk talking about which ones have been fused and which ones haven't. This was very, ah, it's just a pinched neck. Well no, I don't think your trainer would call it that, but alright, like I do like.


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[Assistant] My guess is that's a big part of it, but on the golf course, you can just see it's part of his demeanor. He doesn't get upset. He doesn't get sideways. Even if he has a bad bounce, he doesn't get mad at a poor swing. Now we saw over the last year him get a little aggravated with his putting, but even that didn't create a whole lot of emotion.


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[Assistant] Uh, I, I'm following the lead of our friend, Mark Schlabel, ESPN. I'm doing tiers for tiers. Uh, no, I'm, but I'm doing tiers. He's clearly in that first tier, whatever you want to call it. The A tier, the first block. Sky Shuffler's in his own tier. So, uh, I mean...


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[Assistant] Yeah, I mean, I think Scottie Scheffler is in his own category right now, just overall playing the game, but you're probably right. Just based on his experience on that golf course, like if you took everything else between January and now that Scottie Scheffler has done so far this season, even if you took that away out, I would still argue at the Masters going into this year's event, he should be in his own tier, but I would put


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[Assistant] When them right there behind my put zander right there behind you just on the thing.


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[Assistant] That's the type of golf course there's a bit of a learning curve to it. And if you played well there and you know the golf course and we see it year in and year out. I mean, I think Tiger is probably a good example. Freddie Couples, not sure if he's playing or not, but if he's playing, I think it would be a safe bet that not only does he make the cut, but he finishes


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[Assistant] Somewhere on the upper third of the leaderboard, because that's just what he does. I don't think Bernard Langer is playing because of a pickleball accident. Speaking of which, this is, this is going to be terrible.


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[Assistant] Apologies to the, to the audio audience. What happened Monday night playing pickleball? And this will be quick because I know you guys hate it when we digress and ramble like this. But according to my doctor, uh, Yakatina, Dr. Yakatina, who was a very nice gentleman, tear of the medial meniscus of right knee unspecified type of tear initial encounter.


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[Assistant] What was the, what was the play? Can you, can you set the scene for us? It's, it's, I don't even want to say cause I wasn't even playing. It's, I don't know how your courts are at your place at Fancy Nakate, but like our courts are kind of stacked next to each other. So every now and again, a random ball from another court will come bounding on.


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[Assistant] Tars and you just ball and you grab it and you throw it back to him. I was just pivoting real quick to get the ball that had bounced into our court.


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[Assistant] Literally, I wasn't even doing a pickleball move. I was, I was just sort of making a pivot to grab a ball that had rolled onto our court and like felt the pinch. Ow, that hurt. Just kept going.


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[Assistant] And I kept thinking we're like halfway into game one and I kept thinking for another four and a half games. No, no, no, it's just a pinch. This happens all the time. It'll be fine.


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[Assistant] Well, I wanted to get the ball out of our court quickly, like we were kind of on a bit of a roll, so I like to move fast when I'm on the court. But no, I'm all about the honesty here. Full disclosure, full honesty, I'm not trying to hide it like Langer did.


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[Assistant] I hurt myself just picking up a ball. However, I played for four and a half more.


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[Assistant] And the doctor this morning tried to explain to me that, oh, this is, this is not, um, how did he, how did he put it? This was, uh,


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[Assistant] He was explaining it that this, this is, this just didn't happen on Monday, that this has been going on for a bit of a time. This has been building for a while. I'm like, no, no, no, I was fine until Monday, as soon as I pivoted. And like, he kept trying to tell me that no.


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[Assistant] Like this builds up over time. Chronic. Thank you. That's the word I was looking for. This is a chronic.


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[Assistant] That he was happy with, there is no, well, there's wear and tear on the other one because I had the, uh, I had the, uh, ACL replaced in the other one. You can actually see the hole in the other one that they drove, drove, drilled through the knee. The one on the, the, your stage right is the one.


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[Assistant] That had the ACL surgery. That one has no, uh, he didn't see anything that concerned him there. There was no arthritis or anything worrying.


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[Assistant] Yeah, so both of them are, he said, relatively healthy knees for a 56 year old.


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[Assistant] I don't think so, because all I gotta do is, you know, I can limp around. Like no one's expecting me to perform, so I don't think it's going to be an issue. My pickleball is out for the next six weeks, and I have to go to...


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[Assistant] Therapy before I get on the road, because I'll be on the road for the better part of three weeks.


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[Assistant] So that was my only concern that I needed to get this taken care of before I'm-


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[Assistant] Bouncing from San Antonio Hotel to the Augustus Hotel to Hilton Head Hotel. So I think I'm on a, I'm on the path to recovery. Me and Wyndham both are.


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[Assistant] And I remember writing as a preview piece going into the players, probably on Wednesday afternoon, that no winner had ever done it in back to back years. And there was like a really good reason I asked a couple players.


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[Assistant] And like, there's some pretty legitimate reasons why that had happened before Scottie Scheffler finally did it. It's the first time it's ever happened. And it's because the golf course is a little quirky. You usually end up getting much different conditions. It doesn't really suit one style of play. All the things we could say about TBC Sawgrass. The flip side of that.


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[Assistant] Going into this week to your point, if Wyndham Clark wins, I don't think, I mean, it's going to be the narrative on Sunday afternoon, but I don't think it's going to be the driving.


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[Assistant] narrative, not in my mind, for all the reasons you pointed out. Like he has all the tools and all the skills.


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[Assistant] To be able to perform well on that particular golf course. The only thing he doesn't have is the experience. And I think you're right. It's probably a little bit overrated at this point.


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[Assistant] No, I think it's a great idea. I think I got the first taste of it is and I should look this up. It was when the US senior open was played at Cades Valley, which is just outside of Baltimore, Maryland. And it's such a good golf course. And I remember this was really early in my career and it was like a Monday media day, essentially thing.


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[Assistant] And I remember how just impossibly difficult that golf course was where I think if you cover enough tournaments, you get an idea of, oh, okay, this is a hard golf course relative to that golf course on the PGA tour. But this is similar to the conversation you and I had, I think about JT last week. Every time I say something like, oh, JT is struggling with his putting, I always try to throw the footnote in there and that's relative.


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[Assistant] To the other 68 players in the world who made the cut who are the 68 best players essentially in the world. So you always have to put that in context and this particular.


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[Assistant] In this particular conversation, it's really, really hard. You're right and tell you, and I went like the idea of doing it with scratch golfers is one thing. I just think you get a handful of get 12 golfers from that area.


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[Assistant] To come out and do it and let the handicaps run the gamut because you're going to get someone like myself who's a 14 handicap that's going to realize really early, really quickly that nope, I shouldn't be out here. Like this is really, really tough golf and I'm probably not going to enjoy this process. That's what always gets me about Pro-Am's to be honest with you because it's you're playing on a tour caliber golf course. It's not quite.


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[Assistant] Dialed up to that point yet, like they usually wait until Wednesday night to start dialing it up, but you're still playing on a tour caliber golf course and you realize man.


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[Assistant] These guys are so good. And you're right. I think sometimes we can underappreciate that, especially if it's Sahih Tughgala and he has a four eye on his hand on a par three. That's just an impossible four eye for you and I, well, certainly.


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[Assistant] I played in, I was lucky enough to play Hilton Head Media Day a few weeks ago. And Wesley Bryant was on the 17th hole at, uh, Harbor Town. This, the par three.


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[Assistant] And he made it look really, really easy and he'd been doing it all day long. I don't think he'd missed the green yet. And he talked about how that tee is so much easier and he points of course to the tee they played during the tournament, which is another 30 yards back. And you're right. You don't realize how good those shots are until you can hear it from someone who actually has to execute it.


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[Assistant] And I think the USGA has probably done a better job of this than the PGA Tour has because I think over the years, really the last three or four years, probably since Mike Wan took over to be honest with you.


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[Assistant] They've done a good job of showcasing, and I would expect them to do the same thing at Pinehurst this year, showcasing the venue for that year's U.S. Open and putting players on it in that situation. Now it's not the Monday after the U.S. Open, that's for us in the media. You can't take our tea time.


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[Assistant] But you do it, you know, you do it the week or two beforehand leading up and that actually gives you an opportunity to let them go out.


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[Assistant] With the tour pro, whether they're in the field or not, because again, what you want to do is see this relative to.


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[Assistant] How difficult it is to a PGA Tour player versus how difficult it is to, and let's call it the best player at your club challenge. Like you pick out who the best player at your club is and send them out and you decide what you think he's going to shoot at Pinehurst two weeks before the open. Cause my guess is it's going to be close to a million.


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[Assistant] Uh, well first and foremost I want to touch on the idea they didn't need the live guys last year.


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[Assistant] So John Rahm would be the outlier here because he walked away, Terrell Hatton, you know, since they played the Ryder Cup the last time around. So I know it's going to be a little bit different dynamic.


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[Assistant] Mark that, that's gonna be good for, uh, the social media. Uh, I disagree with you vehemently.


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[Assistant] Like I could not disagree with you more, because we probably said the same thing going into the last Ryder Cup in Rome. I'm sure we said the same thing, that this is.


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[Assistant] Well, they didn't turn out they needed him either. I would say Terrell Hatton is always going to be on the fence simply because I'm not even quite sure he would have qualified for the event.


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[Assistant] I think Ram can be partners with anyone. Ram is going to be the one they miss. And so I guess in the 30,000 foot view that Luke Donald and the rest of that committee is going to have to take is, is there any way for us to find an avenue back for John Ram? And if so, then, then you start looking at the rest of them are going to want to come along as well. I would argue that at this point in time, I would much rather see.


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[Assistant] These very learned individuals walk in this room and come up with a solution that does allow the live golf guys to come back. It's going to be difficult because to your point, there's a lot of personal feelings and people have very, very strong feelings.


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[Assistant] When it comes to this, but absolutely not. I think the United States team is going to be favored for Bethpage just like they normally are when it's a home game. I think the United States team is probably should win.


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[Assistant] That match, but the idea that there's no chance because they don't have John Rahm, that's the only name I'm willing to grant you. I think that's ridiculous.


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[Assistant] And I don't know what that would be. Like I don't want to be sitting in that room. I think both of us understand how difficult some of these decisions are going to be. I think there has to be a path back for the left guys. I think there has to be a deal between the PGA2 and left. Like I believe these things and I believe that those European players are going in that room.


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[Assistant] Adrian Maroc has never played on a Ryder Cup team. Stop throwing his name out there. He's never played on a Ryder Cup.


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[Assistant] Let's, let's put Luke Donald on here and have him explain why for whatever reason.


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[Assistant] Adrian Moranque was the first guy out. I don't think he should have been the first guy out. If you look at his resume going into that particular Ryder Cup, what he had done, he'd won.


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[Assistant] The Italian Open on that venue in Rome. He'd won the Irish Open. I think he'd won one other national open. Like he really should have been on that team. Didn't make a difference.


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[Assistant] But it didn't make a difference, is my point. And look, John Rahm will- But it will!


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[Assistant] John Hook will make a difference. Adrian Marant not being on a team that he was never on, you're trying to prove a negative here.


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[Assistant] It's Schrödinger's box. We don't know if he could have made a difference or not because he's locked in a box. Like, so that's a, that's a, that's, that's a bad argument. Like I'm not buying that. And the idea that Terrell Hatton is somehow going to swing the balance, I don't buy that one either. John Rahm is going to make a difference. And I do believe they're going to go in the room and find some way to do this. I'm not quite sure it's going to make that big of a difference if they don't though.


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[Assistant] Because I still think it's going to be a well fought match. I still think the United States, if I had to pick, has better than...


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[Assistant] Better than average chances of winning, and I don't know if that's bad for the Ryder Cup at this point.


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[Assistant] Uh, it was shortly after last year's Ryder Cup and I had a member, a previous member of the European team of the Ryder Cup team reach out to me just with, you know, what are your thoughts and what did you think of it? And don't get me wrong.


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[Assistant] His argument though was, and I think it applies to what we're talking about, that the European Ryder Cup team is only hurting itself by not having a John Rahm, or maybe to a certain degree a Terrell Hatton, or


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[Assistant] Open up the door to future team members like adrian moran. It's only hurting himself and they're hurting your most important product. So if you're looking at this just from a commercial aspect, if that's the only thing you're kind of looking at here.


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[Assistant] And you need to have the competition to be close. And the only way to do that is to make sure there's going to be some sort of crossover. You're also probably going to make everything that's happening in the universe right now in the golf universe right now between the PGA toy and the public investment fund.


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[Assistant] You're probably going to make those negotiations a little bit easier if the European Tour, the DP World Tour is the one that steps up and finds a way to allow those players to cross over. They've already done it to a certain degree. You have players playing in European Tour events on a pretty regular basis. So all you're doing essentially is doing away with the penalty, which depending on who you ask.


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[Assistant] There probably isn't going to be any kind of significant penalty for these players to come back anyway. So I see this as a net positive if the players in that room can figure something out.


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[Assistant] Well no, if we were having this con- if we left this up to the PG of America.


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[Assistant] I think we have a pretty good idea of how the PGA of America wants to lean in this direction. They've been on the PGA Tour side since pretty much the beginning. Seth Wall, the CEO of the PGA, has been pretty outspoken on this. If this was left up to the PGA of America and the players on the US team, I think it would be a much higher bar.


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[Assistant] To clear, I think it's going to be a much higher bar to clear, to get those Lib players back when an FAE deal is done between the Tour and the PIP. I think because the DP World Tour has shown a degree of flexibility, not a lot of flexibility, I mean they're still charging players an enormous amount of money, finding players, an enormous amount of money who went to Lib and broke


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[Assistant] I think they're going to be more open to the idea that this is something that not only can we do, but we probably should do.


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[Assistant] Like this is our most important property as a tour is the Ryder Cup when it's on European soil. Cause that's essentially the engine that makes everything work on the European tour. That's where they get the vast majority of their funds. So you need to make sure that's the best product possible. And that means making sure that those players who want to live not only.


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[Assistant] The ones like John Rahm, who are clearly an important part of the team, but also those players that you just pointed out.


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[Assistant] The ones that are the up and comers, the ones that are every two years that most Americans haven't heard of and they end up winning four points and we're all sitting and saying, they're going, what happened? What just happened? Like those are the players you also need to watch out for.


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[Assistant] I found out I'm a, I'm a hoarder of things. I don't know how to put this without sounding weird. I'm, I'm a hoarder. Is that, is that what you're going to say? Yeah, I guess that's the only way to say it. I was trying to avoid that. It didn't, I feel like it's not a little uncomfortable. Does that sound well?


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[Assistant] No, no, it doesn't sound like I'm doing something well. Don't Google that. Please don't Google that. Uh, I, I feel like because I was just going through my freezer, just trying to find something over the next couple of days I could cook and I found, uh, two racks of ribs.


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[Assistant] I found a whole bunch of chicken and I found half a pork butt. And so between now...


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[Assistant] And when I leave on Monday to go to San Antonio for three weeks, I have to figure it out. I'm going to figure it out. So I'm going to spend a lot of time. Tomorrow is my shift on, uh, on the desk. I'm covering all things golf related tomorrow. So I think, uh, I'll be on the back porch.


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[Assistant] Uh, no, cause we do Easter over at my in-laws house. So they do a big Easter egg hunt for all the grandchildren who are all grown and large people now. So it's turned into quite the affair.


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[Assistant] With usually there's some sort of injury, there's usually some sort of crying, there's blood involved.


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[Assistant] Okay, so you're bringing up whatever fuel we need for that grill in the backyard that didn't work last time. So we don't burn down that poor man's house like we tried to last year.


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[Assistant] Uh, and I did want to bring up one more thing before we bounce out of here because after Steve Sands was on the podcast last week and you got a little, uh, little hurt by some of the content, some of the comments, someone did point out something that Steve Sands has a lot of behind the scenes TV stuff.


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[Assistant] That he was sort of talking about that people seemed to like. But I wanted to do this one because I actually felt bad.


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[Assistant] I didn't even think about it. I went back and watched our roundtable for Monday and there was a moment which it happens in TV all the time. Sometimes people notice, sometimes people don't.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Where you were just supposed to pick up on the back end of me talking. I was gasping and I assume that our producer Chloe had gotten your ear and just said just pick it up on the back end and just start talking. There's a little bit of delay, so it's always weird when we're doing those roundtables. Apparently the co-host, Matt Adams, who we both like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yes, yes, you two start talking at the same time and it was very awkward and then you both gave each other a pregnant pause and then you started talking again, just like you see in the movies with old people on zoom calls. I realized in that moment, having watched it again.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Those moments just make me laugh on TV, even when it's me that's doing it. Like, and I, I know it's not an appropriate time to laugh because you, you should be appropriate. I mean, you, you should be professional, but when we were four wide.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In that screen, the look on my face is like someone just told me the funniest joke in the world. I didn't laugh out loud. Luckily I stifled that back. But like the look on my face is I have a huge smile and I'm so happy that this just happened to you and Matt. And now I feel bad about it because I'm like, it's just.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't think they were. I don't think that's what's happening at all. I think that somehow the traffic got crossed and you two just stepped on each other a little bit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, I just realized in that moment, I was being a really bad teammate because I was laughing at what happened between you and Matt and I probably could have been a little bit more sympathetic. Certainly I've been through it enough times. I know how horrifying that can be on TV, but it was like as it's happening.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm watching it and I start kind of giggling then I kind of glance the other side of the screen and I realize, oh, I was doing the same thing on live TV.


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[Assistant] I have a dog bed, I've got all this stuff being kicked out of my office, like it's mine's no better.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You say it was ridiculous, I would argue that's actually the most important metric. Is, is popularity? Is, is the Q score? Is the recognizability of fans to those players?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What stood out is I just made the commissioner laugh, which I feel like that, that should stand for something given what he's been through over the last few weeks. He was walking by the media center and the new to the player's championship this year is something called the PGA Tour Recovery Center. It's just off here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To my left and John McInnis, former PGA Tour player, was looking out of the SiriusXM tent where he had just got through doing an interview and John said, uh, I wish they had the...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The recovery center when I was playing on the tour and without thinking I said that's not the kind of recovery center that John McGuinness needed.


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[Assistant] I think if anybody knows John, you know exactly what I'm saying. Gotta chuckle out of the commission room so I feel like that.


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[Assistant] My week is off to a good start because his was not. It was Tuesday. It lasted 57 minutes and it was tough. And we just got through talking with him about it. I mean, he's in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Negotiations with Saudi Arabia's public investment fund and suddenly he's put in front of the spotlight and he's expected to have answers and twofold. One, he doesn't really have any answers. There's obviously no deal. I don't, I didn't get the impression they were even close to a deal. And two, even if he did start spouting off opinions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was only going to hurt the negotiations. You're better off not saying anything at all. I think we could read between the lines a little bit, but for a guy that clearly had his hands tied.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like there was nothing he could say. We had to ask the questions and he had to not answer them. There was a couple of nuggets in there that I think we can sort of dissect and get into a little bit, but by and large, it was very underwhelming, which is what we should have expected.