HoS: Jay Caspian Kang

Jay Caspian Kang of the New Yorker drops by and we revisit his tremendous Barstool Sports New York Times article from 2017. Jay was around the Barstool operation during the infamous blowup of what was to be a merger with ESPN/Disney. Now, there’s a new connection point between the companies as Barstool’s main gambling sponsor leaves to join ESPN. We look back on the article and ask the following: Did Barstool win in the end?

But that’s merely a jumping off point. Many topics were covered in this pod, as outlined by the astute Sam Schuette. Those topics include but aren’t limited to…

1. Revisiting Kevin Durant’s exit from Golden State

   1. Why Ethan has sympathy for Durant

2. The NBA Dark Web

   1. The group of fans who love Monta Ellis and call Kevin Durant’s rings fraudulent

   2. The race to be the most normie

3. The James Harden Daryl Morey Duel

   1. Why Jay wanted Harden to be in the right

   2. Harden’s Chinese wine selling

4. Barstool’s Big Move

   1. Revisiting Jay’s Barstool article six years later

   2. Why Barstool’s broad political reach worked in their favor

5. Why content doesn’t drive gambling as much as people think

   1. Penn leveraging Barstool’s gambling-eager audience still couldn’t compete with the gambling titans

6. The importance of authenticity on betting apps

   1. How BetMGM made bad PR because they didn’t want to pay a teacher $200k

7. The difficulty and ethicality of sports betting

   1. Being good isn’t one big secret, it’s 1,000 little secrets

   2. How many people actually win big?

8. Jay’s move to Berkeley

   1. Why he enjoys it despite weird residents and stressed out students

   2. Ethan thinks Berkeley is a “spiritually dark place.”

9. Self-segregation at UC Berkeley

   1. The illusion of shared understandings

   2. What drives people to choose who they hang out with?

10. The lack of interest surrounding Asian-Americans

    1. Why do Asians get overlooked in cases like Affirmative Action which concern them?

11. The controversy surrounding Jay’s book

    1. Understanding why people disliked it but not understanding why they didn’t 

12. Getting less hostile on Twitter

    1. Jay’s history of “bullying” on Twitter 

    2. How not being the underdog anymore makes him argue less

13. The “Redhead Beard Guy Song”

    1. How the right uses music to own the libs

    2. Why it’s effective because the left gives it attention