Welcome to the Audible.

I'm Stuart Mandel, joined by Bruce Feldman.

We are going to spend most of this episode answering your emails, which you always appreciate, send them to theodible pod at gmail.com.

But first, Bruce, I think we should probably address the elephant in the room,

the big topic in our industry, the massive ESPN layoffs.

Yeah, it's, you know what, it's pretty, uh, kind of heartbreaking to see it.

Yeah.

I mean, look, and we're not, we're not fools. We know that there's a lot of

people in a lot of other industries who have fallen on hard times and got squeezed in layoffs

or don't have opportunities. This obviously, and we have respect for that. This, this,

it's close to home because there's a lot of people were very close to who have,

you know, kind of seen their lives and their family's lives kind of thrown into chaos.

And just the way it happened, you know, that it was, you're watching it in real time on

social media. This person is announcing it. I think the first person I saw, uh saw on Wednesday when we tape was Ed Werder,

who'd been there for a long time, was kind of a stalwart for them on the NFL beat. And then,

you know, Dana O'Neill, who's, I think probably hit closer to home for you because she's,

you know, her a lot better. And she's college basketball writer and really well respected

in, you know, by everyone.

So it was, and it just deteriorated even from there.

Yeah, it was like watching a day-long funeral.

I mean, I've been in a days ever since, and obviously I was not personally affected.

I think what surprised both of us, because there have been a lot of reporting leading up to this from people like Richard Deich and Jim Miller who cover ESPN.

...