Shane Gillis, Mark Normand, Ari Shaffir: Protect Our Parks 17

The episode opens with the group settling in with drinks just after one participant has come off a flight. IPAs come up first. One participant says they used to drink them but gained "like 45 pounds in like a month," calling the beer "a milkshake" and describing finishing a show and having "10 IPAs."

They taste great, but they're heavy as shit.

Guinness is the next topic. One voice assumes it is the heaviest beer because it is so creamy. Another says it has fewer calories, jokes that "It's all vitamins," and claims Budweiser is "way fatter." Nobody gives figures to back these claims, and someone half-jokingly asks to "leave the Anheuser-Busch family out of this," calling it "a fine product." The talk then drifts into wondering who first worked out a trick like this, guessing "Some serious drunk," and noting that before phones people "figured out a lot of things."

Nicotine pouches take up a long stretch. One participant says they couldn't fall asleep the night before after chewing pouches in the green room, on the way home and again in front of the TV. They say each pouch was six milligrams and that by bedtime they were "wired." Nine-milligram pouches are also mentioned, and the group agrees that "A six is a lot."

The same participant contrasts nicotine with caffeine, saying espresso before bed is no problem and "It's just the nicotine gets me." They mention a guideline they read, without naming a source, and say they had been using pouches before workouts and while shooting their bow. They say they plan to quit, or "try at least." Someone else jokes that you have to stop at seven or eight.

Like, I've read something you should only have like three milligrams or six milligrams a day.

Another participant, Norman, has never tried a pouch and takes one on air. The others predict a buzz, nervous hiccups and sneezing. Soon Norman's side reports "My legs are tingling," and the others tell him not to take it out.

The way Norman agrees to things and then instantly regrets them reminds the group of an earlier night when two of them took Molly together. One of them panicked, partly because "Big Jay wouldn't stop talking," and took a bolt bus, also called a Chinatown bus, from Philadelphia back to New York. They explain the bus choice: they were poor, it was late, it was cheap ("like a dollar"), and it ran "downtown to downtown."

The conversation turns to a man the group calls Cantor, who wants to qualify for the WNBA and recently appeared on the podcast Trigonometry. They recall his earlier moments: confronting LeBron over human rights and China, and an earlier controversy over Turkey's leader, after which, as the group remembers it, his family disowned him and he couldn't go back to Turkey.

The main argument of this section is that his stunt works as a satirical demonstration. One participant calls it "very smart" and says a public figure doing this shows "how ridiculous it is" that someone can claim to be a woman and "knock women over on the court."

Look, they've painted themselves into the most loony position where they can't define what a woman is.

Someone brings up a transgender woman described as dominating on a French team. The details are unclear in the discussion: one voice is unsure what league she plays in and doesn't think she is a pro, and another says she plays for France. The group also says the league is getting more attention than ever, with ticket sales up and nobody talking about it "More than the last two weeks."

Pay comes up next. Someone jokes about going "for 75 grand a year," and others say player salaries are low and most of the money comes from endorsements. A'ja Wilson is named as the best player and Caitlin Clark as probably the highest paid. One participant gives a cynical account of the league's finances: it "hemorrhaged money forever," then racial division brought in viewers, and now there is the transgender storyline. In this view, controversy is what brings audiences in.

Someone corrects the premise: "the transgender thing's not real yet," and there is "not a real transgender person in the WNBA." The point then shifts to how physical the games have become, which the group likes. They compare it to 80s basketball, Larry Bird, and a player the transcript renders as "Bill Ambers."

They cite Stephen A. Smith comparing Michael Jordan's era with today's athletes and stressing how physical the older game was. One voice complains that the hands-off treatment of stars today "sucks." They add old-school stories: a joke that ushers were told to cheap-shot fans at a jersey retirement, and Oakley telling an opponent to meet him outside after the game to actually fight. Their conclusion is that the WNBA is now doing the same thing.

One participant offers a thought experiment: imagine the NBA had the WNBA's "sexual dynamic." The argument is that sexuality is "not even a thought in the NBA," while the group sees the WNBA as having many openly lesbian players. They frame this as a driver of on-court tension and say the league has "become like real housewives." These characterizations are the group's own and come with no supporting figures.

The reversed scenario makes someone think of NBA arrival fashion, and they pull up photos of players' pregame outfits. One voice calls it black culture and fashion, citing Larry Bird and Stockton as players who never dressed that way. Dwyane Wade and Draymond come up as examples. A participant then clarifies that this is "not the kind of gay that I was talking about" and describes an Instagram page for hardcore music made by and for gay men to show what they meant.

The talk stays crude. There is a riff on gay men without children who "just fuck all the time," and a story about a Comedy Store acquaintance whose boyfriend asked him not to give him AIDS. That leads to a claim that "A's doesn't even scare anybody anymore" and a mention that "Prep is big."

The group then makes health claims about transgender people. One voice says testosterone makes trans men infertile as a side effect. The next segment adds trans women, with the qualifier "At least potentially." They speculate about whether weekly estrogen injections cause hormonal spikes and dips, and they put these as open questions. Nobody cites a source.

After a brief apology about leaving cans around, the group returns to the dilemma: if the league turns the man away it looks bad, and if it lets him play "he's going to dunk." One participant pushes this into a broader argument about definitions.

if you can't define what a woman is, then you're an idiot.

Their argument continues that the ideology treats self-identification as reality, and that people go along out of fear of being canceled.

So everyone's agreed to nonsense.

Another voice partly disagrees, saying most people quietly see it as a non-issue. They cite AOC recently calling "woke 1.0" crazy and say "defund the police" talk is now widely seen as ridiculous. Someone estimates "like 80%" of Democrats don't support trans women in women's sports, hedged with "I think." The reply is that the most radical activists still go after anyone who doesn't agree completely, so people won't say it out loud.

The proposed rule is chromosomal: XX for women's leagues, XY for men's, with people free to call themselves whatever they like. The group notes the asymmetry that nobody objects to a trans man trying out for the NBA. Someone mentions a rumor, which they call a "solid one" but don't name, that a WNBA player might come out as a man. That raises questions about record books, which they illustrate with Caitlyn Jenner's Olympic win as Bruce. They then joke that dead naming once got people banned from Twitter for life, which might have been good for them, "like banning you from heroin."

The group describes Twitter under Musk as "wilder" and "more fun" but still "never fun." A participant explains a reported policy change: creators can now only be paid for original or accurate content. They describe the problem it targets. People posted invented headlines, with "Shane Gillis murders six in a bar" as the made-up example, and collected payouts from clicks. The participant adds that foreign companies ran "thousands of fucking fake accounts and then maybe millions," and that a post with 600,000 views makes people assume the story is real.

One participant suggests a silver lining: if so much news is fake, maybe people can stop caring about it so much. A DraftKings sponsor read with its legal disclaimers interrupts here. After it, the point continues with the participant saying they can't tell whether any article is real and proposing "Let's just go outside."

That remark leads straight into an example. A participant says Israelis lit part of Patagonia on fire and that Argentina is now giving land to Israel. They quote the area as 100,000 hectares at one point and "100 hectares or whatever" later, and admit uncertainty about whether it is Chilean or Argentine Patagonia. Another participant, recalling a trip there, says campfires were banned in a national park because an area had burned about seven years earlier.

The fire talk widens to the Palisades and Malibu fires. One voice says the Palisades fire was arson, the suspect is in jail, and he was "inspired by Luigi." Another says people were caught on video setting fires in Malibu with gasoline and torches. Asked whether this was orchestrated, a participant says no and blames letting mentally ill people camp on the streets, which ties back to their Protect Our Parks theme.

The group looks up the Patagonia claim live, and the result reads on air undercuts the viral version. It says no one has been publicly identified or proven responsible. The chief prosecutor rejected claims against the Mapuche, and reporting says prosecutors did not consider the claims against Israelis a credible lead.

Investigators in Chubat have said at least one blaze appeared to be deliberately set, but the investigation has not established a named perpetrator.

The participants notice that their own conversation has just shown the point they were making about invented stories.

It's a perfect example where they create these stories.

They don't settle it, though. Someone says "there's probably something to this," and they pull up a post from an account with 760,000 followers. The post claims protected rural land in Argentina can be sold to foreign private entities once a fire has passed through it. The group admits it doesn't know whether the accounts are accurate. The land-sale claim is never checked in the conversation, and the only verification they read found the allegations about who started the fire unsubstantiated.

An image of Argentina's press room reminds the group of their own trip to the White House press briefing room. They say they were walking around DC when a friend of Shane's offered to bring them in. Their hosts told them the president was away at a UFC event, first placed in Tennessee and then corrected to Florida, which they take to be the Miami card.

Then they discuss the UFC event at the White House. One participant says they accepted and canceled about four times, the last time the day before, because they didn't want "the heat." Seeing dirt bikes on the front lawn and practice flyovers changed their mind. Another participant says they had argued it was a one-time event.

When we were talking, I'm like, this is never going to happen again in human history.

On the backlash, the group argues that the criticism of a participant named Nate didn't hurt his ticket sales. They say he "sells out two fucking stadiums a night" and that it was "the same newspaper writing 10 articles." Their broader view is that critics target anyone loosely connected to the White House, even though "It's just sports."

The highlight for the group was Gaethje's fight (transcribed "Gaichi" and "Gage"). They say he beat an opponent many considered the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world, a two-division world champion whose name the transcript renders as "Deportia" and "DePore." Gaethje then did a backflip off the top of the cage with the White House behind him.

The group rejects critics who called it "human" cockfighting, noting MMA is not a new sport, and claims Teddy Roosevelt held fights on the lawn. They point to a past White House event where, they say, trans women posed topless for photos, and to critics who now say the UFC desecrates the lawn. One voice calls both ridiculous, and the group lands on the view that the lawn should be used for fun events, with the fighter jets and fights as the best parts.

This part of the conversation picks up with talk about a reported terrorist attack plot connected to a large outdoor event. The participants recall hearing about it afterward, with one saying the details came up on Bennington's podcast the next day. The description in the transcript is fragmentary. It mentions someone steering people in one direction, then another, and "bombs on drones." The group doubts the plot would have worked on that crowd. They describe the people around them as fighters and soldiers, and one participant says the section they sat in held "like ten Medal of Honor winners."

The security was obvious. The group remembers rooftop snipers and guards everywhere, and calls the event "so heavily protected." One participant admits to not wanting to attend at first. That reluctance came from worry about a chaotic "zoo" and from concern for the fighters, who had to compete outdoors and risk rain or heat. A teasing video message from someone else in the group changed their mind, along with the thought that "it's never gonna happen again."

There were snipers all over the rooftop.

The participants describe the night as surreal: "we're on the lawn of the White House." One mentions that TMZ caught them after many beers. The talk then moves to a winning fighter who called Michelle Obama a man after his victory. The fighter is not named in this excerpt; he is identified only as "the guy" who "just beat the fuck out of Derek Lewis." Someone notes that people criticized Joe Rogan for saying nothing in response. The reply in the transcript is a joke about being afraid of the fighter. Another participant says the remark looks funny "on paper," and adds that the fighter makes the same claim every time they interview him.

The group disagrees about the remark. One participant calls it a bad look and an embarrassment in front of an odd crowd. Another argues that it was rude but worked as a deliberate tactic for attention. This view is tied to a comparison: another bout that night, in which, by the transcript's account, Diego Lopez knocked out Steve Garcia, got little mainstream coverage. The provocative winner, meanwhile, was being talked about "all day long." The same participant predicts a big crowd reaction at his next UFC appearance and compares him to a pro-wrestling heel. Others push back, saying the stunt gives his targets what they want, and the exchange turns into jokes about the WNBA and about defining a woman.

He did a smart thing. I mean, it's very rude. It's very rude, but it's a smart thing because we're all still talking about it. Otherwise, it's just another fight in the night.

And if he wins, he's a superstar and he probably doubled his income by saying Michelle Obama's a man.

The White House event reminds the group of an earlier fight night they went to with Rogan, held on the grounds of the Playboy Mansion. They are unsure which promotion ran it; one says "I'm pretty sure it was Strike Force." They describe the event as badly organized. Their sharpest memory is how dated the mansion seemed, down to "an old button phone on the grotto," and a general sense that "Everything's in the past." They also remember the elderly magazine owner coming out several fights into the card.

They try to find themselves in an old photo from the event. They also joke that the magazine founder "died at the right time," saying that if he were alive today the Me Too movement would have "come for him," and they mention a documentary about him. The faded estate is compared to visiting a 1980s movie star's Malibu house and finding it run down. The comparison then expands to Steven Seagal's house and a visit to Elvis's house, where the multi-TV setup is described as once "cutting edge."

Someone looks up whether the mansion is for sale, and the results are read out in pieces. The figures read aloud include "100 million" and an "original listing price" of "200 million." The group asks whether a Hostess executive bought it, phrased as a question rather than confirmed. Other details read out are "Five acres," "Twelve bedrooms, 21 bathrooms." One participant argues the land alone in that area, which they guess is near Brentwood, might be worth about $100 million.

Their memories of the visit are hazy. The participants say they had taken edibles, recall an aviary, and admit they don't remember whether there was a party afterward because "We were nobody's back then." They insist they took a shuttle, watched the fights, and left. They describe the venue as rented out like a conference location, and say the brand was "sold" off "little by little." A participant also places the event around the first or second year of Fear Factor, before the Ultimate Fighter era.

Memories from that period include buying cannabis in Englewood when it was only available with a medical license. One participant stopped going to a dispensary after a worker they knew was shot in a robbery. They explain that the business dealt only in cash because banks treated the proceeds as drug money.

A search result about the mansion sale adds a condition: any buyer had to let the then-89-year-old Playboy publisher keep living there. The text read aloud says "Anyone who wants to live like Hugh Hefner will have to live with him." The group finds this funny, imagines it as a buddy-cop show, and thinks about the position of an old man with a big house and little cash who wants to sell it and stay until he dies.

The talk moves to Larry Flynt. Participants recall that he was shot and paralyzed, which is why he used a wheelchair. A lookup confirms during the exchange that "he passed away in 2021." They remember him as a big free-speech advocate, mention that Norm was in a related film, and contrast Hustler's harsh, racist humor with Playboy's more polished image.

The group does not remember why Flynt was shot, so they search for it. The results read aloud say the shooter was a white supremacist who was executed in 2013. One participant guesses the motive was the magazine featuring Black women, but this is offered as speculation. The search text also says Flynt was fighting a misdemeanor obscenity charge at the time, and that "Local attorney, Gene Reeves, was also shot on the sidewalk" as the two men walked back to court.