Pablo Torre Finds Out

Who gets to take pride in football, even (and especially) if Sam Darnold is your quarterback? Who gets to lock the gates on excellence, even if you're snubbing Bill Belichick? Did Tom Brady only get better in the booth... because he couldn't get much worse? And do people only care when you're wrong? Plus: brrrtue-signaling, the pageantry of nonsense, The Polian Dimension and the Kraft family syndicate on Jason Whitlock's bulletin board.Further content:• "In the 'no' camp is a known liar...'" (Ollie Connolly)• "Sources: Bill Belichick will not be a first-ballot Hall of Famer" (Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham)• "Tom Brady knew he needed to improve on TV. So he channeled his 'quarterback' days" (Andrew Marchand)• Subscribe to "The Mina Kimes Show featuring Lenny"• Take a PTFO audience survey for your chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card

A dunking tech bro in Memphis. A drone massacre in Ukraine. How did America's backyard beams end up in Putin's network of underground buyers? And how on Earth do Ja Morant, Justin Timberlake, Kevin Hart and "The Grindfather" get us to an illegal trade war? Hunterbrook Media's Sam Koppelman breaks down how his reporters investigated from a bird's-eye view, to a high-end Moscow dealer, to undercover calls back home — and asks what the hell Adam Silver's gonna do about another billionaire scandal hiding in plain sight.• Read the full investigation at Hunterbrook Media (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 Hunterbrook Media and do not reflect the work or editorial input of The Athletic or its journalists.)

Golf can be for the people. But politics has come to the tee-boxes of D.C., as Trump literally takes a dump on public courses, with a gilded mission to re-shape the people's fairway — and a historically Black home of the sport — in his own image. Garrett Morrison of Fried Egg Golf explains the rubber-stamp meetings, pimp-my-ride addendums and bros in the ear of a president chasing faux-luxury waterfalls, A.I. logos and... asbestos?• Read more at Fried Egg Golf: "The National Links Trust's Battle with the Trump Administration, Explained"• Subscribe to "Designing Golf" with Garrett Morrison• Previously on PTFO: Why Golf Yalta Explains Donald Trump• Take a PTFO audience survey for your chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card

One of America's foremost cultural critics steps out of the writer's cabin and into the studio to predict the future of a game that seems too big to stop: What happened to the egghead prophecy of Peak Football? Is 11 minutes actually the perfect amount of hyper-connective, violent action? And, in a Post-Winning Era, will the relentless gold-mining of fandom threaten the NFL's dominance, as soon as 2070? Plus: best laid aquarium plans, killing your fake darlings, old love letters, the meaning of nostalgia... and becoming Don Rickles for Bill Simmons. • Read "Football" by Chuck Klosterman• Take a PTFO audience survey for your chance to win a $100 Amazon gift card

Deflategate. Sign-stealing. Lance Armstrong. The competition is stiff, but no dynasty comes close to trying this hard to get ahead. In a soup-to-nuts collaboration, The Athletic's Matthew Futterman reports from the nether regions of the Winter Games on a national nightmare, a Zapruder tape and a confidential investigative report that will redefine the integrity of sport — no matter how impossible it... seams.• Read more from The Athletic: "How Norway's ski-jumping scandal rocked a proud nation and bedrock Olympic sport"

Has the media establishment become so politicized that it won't let a beat reporter be human? What does "maybe" mean in the proxy fight for Warner Bros.? And did old white men change the trajectory of baseball... because they don't know how to use the internet? A shockingly woke David Samson and a Pam Bondi'd John Skipper join Pablo to test the limits of truth, screwing and their fiduciary duty.Further content:• "The Liam Coen-Lynn Jones Moment, the Backlash and Why Journalism Is Still Worth Defending" (David Aldridge)• "Merger Math: Paramount Suit Wants WBD To Show Its Work" (Jill Goldsmith)• "Disney Invests $1 Billion in MLB's Streaming Business, BAMTech" (2016)• Subscribe to "Nothing Personal with David Samson"

He is a god of Google Maps — an internet legend for matching a single image with a far-flung location, in the blink of an eye. But Trevor Rainbolt never wanted to be an influencer. And for a while there, he'd never even left the United States. The 27-year-old college dropout who helped us find Bill Belichick's Ring camera finally links up with Pablo to tell the sports origin story of a modern creator — from Steph Curry meme lord and KD DMs to Travis Kelce matchmaker and alleged CIA agent — while opening his aperture to the world he's been studying... then accepting a special assignment.

What do Darryl Strawberry, NBA YoungBoy and a plastic-surgery "slush fund" have in common? They're all beneficiaries of the president's cottage industry to sell access, buy freedom and redefine the meaning of crime. We explore an exclusive social network of dustbin characters, including a heavenly visit with Mel Gibson and Pete Rose.• Subscribe to "TrueAnon" with Brace Belden