Both Drew and I can sense when we are overdue for having Rohan Nadkarni on the podcast. In the way that an old prospector's knee might start barking before the storm clouds have even appeared on the horizon, we both feel a twinge when it has been too long between detailed descriptions of various sandwiches and gentle reminders that we are old as hell. It doesn't really matter who sends the text first. In a deeper sense, the universe sends it, and all of us receive it at the same time. Friends, it was time:
As always with Rohan episodes, it moved along some strange but soothing currents. Before we got into talking about sports, we discussed our childhood crushes on various goofy infomercial products, awful ice trays we have known, and a young-adult Drew specialty that I described as Minnesota Jambalaya. The sandwich stuff comes early this time: Drew talked about a bunch of seagulls executing a well-designed heist on half of his Italian sub, and Rohan remembered being pickpocketed by a dog named Byron for his work dinner.
How we got from there to Giannis Antetokounmpo joining the Miami Heat is honestly pretty hard to say; I've listened to the episode and still am unclear how went from talking about which birds are jerks to Rohan holding forth on Giannis as a problematic immigrant-success story, why he thinks the Heat are being slept on, and mounting a decently heated defense of ca. 2026 Andrew Wiggins. Other questions addressed here include "Punching Tyler Herro: is it fine?" and "Tyler Herro DMing random fans: Why is he doing all that?"
After the break, we considered the Los Angeles Dodgers' recent acquisition of giga-ace Tarik Skubal alongside their many other previous superstar acquisitions, and why fans seem to have taken it as the last straw. I wouldn't say that I defended the Dodgers, exactly—buddy, I've got problems of my own—but I made my case for why they are not inevitable, and how they are able to keep doing this, which includes but is not limited to having more money than other teams. I talked about the capacity to take risks that a great farm system gives them, and credited them for a willingness to take those risks. We also introduced a new segment called Rohan's Utter Woke Nonsense, which surprisingly was a plea to bring back MLB's waiver deadline. I also gave myself a little treat by introducing Drew and Rohan to the choreographic stylings of Jefry Yan, which I have since blogged about.
We helped ourselves to a hefty portion of Funbag this week, and were rewarded with some fairly thrilling questions. The first of these was about fun leisure-time activities that are harrowing as actual jobs. Rohan dealt firmly with a question about other people pressing the same button that you just pressed on the elevator, and we considered the simple satisfaction of pushing buttons. A voicemail which reopened last week's question, about whether the Michigan accent really is the worst American regional accent, led us to consider The Haley Stevens Gambit. We also got the debut of Rohan's long-awaited Chicago accent. Maybe you had felt that twinge, too. Maybe you hadn't. Either way, we really needed this rain.
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