Don’t Tell Anyone How I Live with Leander Schaerlaeckens

The Distraction: A Defector Podcast

Defector Media

Society & Culture, Sports

4.4 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2026

⏱️ 59 minutes

🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Leander Shaerlaeckens (author of the book The Long Game: U.S. Men's Soccer and Its Savage, Four-Decade Journey to the Top, or Thereabouts) joins the show for a World Cup preview! We’ll get the skinny on the unique challenge that is hosting a soccer championship in Donald Trump’s America, and how much each team’s homegrown sense of play might contribute to the American style of play - imitation, of course, being the most sincere form of flattery. And we’ll dig our snouts into the Funbag, and get some thoughts about how to name your dog.

Do you want to hear your question answered on the pod? Well, give us a call at 909-726-3720. That is 909-PANERA-0!

Stuff We Talked About

A tray of lemons to absorb negativity
The calves we’re looking for
Tying our feet behind our back
André 3000 (the dog)

Sponsors

- Raycon, where you can get 15% off

- MeUndies, where you can get up to 50% off your first order, plus free shipping

Credits

- Hosts: Drew Magary & David Roth

- Producer: Brandon Grugle

- Editor: Mischa Stanton

- Production Services & Ads: Multitude Podcasts

- Subscribe to Defector!

About The Show

The Distraction is Defector's flagship podcast about sports (and movies, and art, and sandwiches, and certain coastal states) from longtime writers Drew Magary and David Roth. Every week, Drew and Roth tackle subjects, both serious and impossibly stupid, with a parade of guests from around the world of sports and media joining in the fun! Roth and Drew also field Funbag questions from Defector readers, answer listener voicemails, and get upset about the number of people who use speakerphone while in a public bathroom stall. This is a show where everything matters, because everyone could use a Distraction. Head to defector.com for more info.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Before I bring it back, Roth, is there a meeting this afternoon?
0:02.7	No.
0:03.2	Okay, really.
0:04.2	I'm going to nap like a motherfucker.
0:06.2	Go get him, King.
0:09.8	Back, we're back.
0:10.8	It's a distraction.
0:11.6	I'm Scott Pelly.
0:12.6	That's Roth.
0:13.3	How you do, Roth?
0:15.0	It works for me.
0:16.7	I'm Scott Pelley.
0:17.6	What did you say?
0:18.0	It's working for me?
0:18.9	Oh, yeah.
0:21.2	It's working for me. Oh, yeah. It's working for me. We, I'm not going to get in all that right now. How are you doing, Paul? I'm true. About Scott Pelly dragging those asses in a meeting. The bit that I keep coming back to, check post it. I would have to give actual background here. Scott Pelley is a 60 Minutes anchor who called out his new
0:39.6	executive producer, Nick Bilton for being an absolutely unqualified medium talent in a meeting.
0:45.8	He was then promptly fired in a very, very squishy, weasley little memo from Bilton. Pelley
0:51.5	after getting fired, went ahead and kept on leaning in. And when he was
0:54.9	rude to Bilton in the CBS meeting, I think Billen was the one who was like, well, let's keep the
0:59.7	civil now. Or someone else was like, oh, I don't get personal. Some hog. Yeah, yeah. And Pellie was like,
1:05.5	well, it's working for me, which was just beautiful. Yeah, it's, I feel bad for the fact that Scott Pelly was fired for having integrity and being good at a difficult job.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Defector Media, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Defector Media and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.