Secret salary caps. Accidental email attachments. Truth-serum texts from owners. Slide decks for ESPN. If anyone knows how to dork-out on billionaires taking your money — and documenting their greed — it's the former NFL Players Association boss who negotiated $100 billion for athletes... and sued the sh*t out of The Shield. With his union now plagued by scandal — and America as unregulated as ever — De Smith enters the studio in Gladiator Mode.

• Read "Turf Wars" by DeMaurice Smith

Previously on PTFO:

• Part I: The NFL's Secret Collusion Case, Revealed

• Part II: We Sparked an NFL Union Crisis. Here's the Sequel.

• Part III: We Followed the Money in the NFL Union Scandal. So Did the FBI.

• Part IV: We Investigated the Hollywood Cover-Up the NFLPA Ignored 

• Part V: The Silenced Top Cop and the Cabal of "Strip-Club Dreams"

• Plus: The State of the (NFL) Union, with Mike Florio

• The Sporting Class: Are NFL Players Ready to Strike?

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What are the business ethics of sh*tting where you eat? Can you be a journalist and an "insider" at the same time? And what happened after the Knicks' owner doxxed the man threatening his arena's beer? David Samson — the Marie Kondo of sports infidelity and the watchful eye of Florida baseball — helps Pablo decode the messy stories of Dianna Russini and Mike Vrabel... and James Dolan versus his enemies.

• Subscribe to "Nothing Personal with David Samson"

(Pablo Torre Finds Out is independently produced by Meadowlark Media and distributed by The Athletic. The views, research and reporting expressed in this episode are solely those of Pablo Torre Finds Out and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists.)

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How does the game-show game clock move so fast? Why do you become 30% dumber when the cameras roll? And is Mina part of a sociopathic conspiracy with Ken Jennings? Plus: Andy Richter, button analytics, the dais height advantage, Daily Double anxiety, tanking board games for your kids... and a Stat Boy cameo.

• Subscribe to "The Mina Kimes Show featuring Lenny"

• Watch "Nobody Wants This" with Timothy Simons on Netflix

Previously on PTFO: 

• Share & Jeopardy! & Tell with Mina Kimes and Dan Le Batard

• Behind the Scenes of Pablo's History-Making "Family Feud" Adventure

• How "Veep" Predicted Trump, with the Real-Life Jonah Ryan

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The notorious conspiracy theorist profited from his vile Sandy Hook conspiracy. Then America's finest (fake) news source decided to troll the world's greatest troll. Ben Collins — who transformed from reporting on the historic Infowars defamation trial to buying out his "ideological enemy" in a Storage Wars-style auction saga — tells Pablo why The Onion committed to the ultimate bit: doing the right thing.

(Pablo Torre Finds Out is independently produced by Meadowlark Media and distributed by The Athletic. The views, research and reporting expressed in this episode are solely those of Pablo Torre Finds Out and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists.)

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Tracking players. Monitoring kids. Allegedly watching a fan enter the bathroom. The panopticon of notorious owner James Dolan has been caught in glimpses. But a WIRED investigation — revealed in collaboration with PTFO — lifts the veil on the Orwellian scope (and occasional clown show) of MSG security, from The Garden and The Sphere to the streets of New York and out across America. Correspondent Noah Shachtman and Pablo hear from spooked insiders, read snooping group chats, scour a second-by-second confidential report, plus view the facial-recognition database itself — only to discover that paranoid billionaires... are all around us.

• Read the full digital cover story at WIRED

• Subscribe to Pablo's newsletter for exclusive access, documents and invites

(Pablo Torre Finds Out is independently produced by Meadowlark Media and distributed by The Athletic. The views, research and reporting expressed in this episode are solely those of Pablo Torre Finds Out and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists.)

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Donald Trump's comfort zone. Coercive deals. Saudi funding. In the era of American favor-trading, a company called TKO Group Holdings is dominating the fight game. (Welcome, Zuffa Boxing.) And as longtime MMA dean Luke Thomas dares to explain, UFC boss Dana White may be in denial — and it may not be good for fans or fighters — but it pays to be in bed with a transactional regime.

• Subscribe to "Morning Kombat" with Luke Thomas

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We get it: As Timothée Chalamet said, "no one cares" about opera. But you should listen, instead, to former college linebacker Brandon Jovanovich — whose impossible rise from cater waiter to Captain Ahab proves that the artform that used to rule the world has way more in common with sports than you realize. (And that's even before you realize what he's been playing through, onstage.) Also: what a castrato is, Bugs Bunny, actual divas, Modell's and monster trucks.

Further content:

• "Inhabiting Ahab" (Patrick J. Sauer)

• Vote for PTFO at The Webby Awards: Best Sports Podcast + Experimental & Innovation

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Whether it's A.I. companies pirating millions of books or NBA owners violating the salary cap, the most powerful entities in America are trying to circumvent laws created to restrain them. Bestselling author and investigative journalist David Epstein (no relation!) makes the case for why rules are not obstacles to progress, but the opposite: the very things that make a society — and a market — free. 

• Pre-order David Epstein's new book, Inside the Box: How Constraints Make Us Better

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America's best documentary filmmaker spent nearly five years making a nine-hour masterpiece for Netflix. Which you'll never see. Edelman sits down with Pablo in search of catharsis — if not closure — in the battle for truth and control over the life story of one of the biggest control freaks ever.

(This episode originally aired March 4, 2025.)

• Previously on PTFO: When Docs Cry 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Qi6x3QF-v8

• Subscribe to Pablo's newsletter for exclusive access, documents and invites

https://pablo.show/

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Civilization had a pretty good run. Will the astronauts be the last ones living? Will Jordon Hudson sue Pablo and/or beat him in a foot race? Could Sam Altman be bigger than Madoff and/or complete our curse on A.I.? And is your fiancé in the Epstein files? WHO KNOWS? But we f'd around and took your questions, live. So, come with us if you want to live. So mote it be.

• Vote for PTFO at The Webby Awards: Best Sports Podcast + Experimental & Innovation

• Subscribe to "Casuals with Katie Nolan"

• Watch Michael Cruz Kayne's special, "Sorry for Your Loss" — now streaming on Dropout TV 

• Further reading: "Sam Altman May Control Our Future — Can He Be Trusted?" (Ronan Farrow & Andrew Maran

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