Yo! Welcome into the House of L podcast. I am Lawrence Holmes. Thank you so much for hanging out with me.

If you were listening in the 24 hours since this pod is being put out, there's going to be a lot of cool stuff this week.

I think this week will put out four podcasts on House of L. My guy Joe Kilgallon just finished his latest episode of my favorite cub.

I just finished my latest episode of my favorite white socks and obviously sports adjacent will be out. So this is going to be a four pod week for House of L.

I'm sorry that the subject matter that I'm talking about today is kind of sad, at least for me.

But I did want to try and bring some clarity to some stuff because I think people are being very careless with some of the wording that's happening here and being that I've gone through this.

I think that I mean, I won't lie to you. I've been triggered by what's happened at ESPN.

One, because I have a couple of friends that are on that list and friends of friends on that list. And two, because I went through something similar at NBC.

So I can I think help at least kind of get the wording right and try to give some perspective on this.

The most important thing that if you don't take anything else away from today's podcast, the people that were at ESPN were not fired.

They were laid off. Those 20 people who were on air were laid off.

Fired has the connotation of their being cause. This was a money saving thing and creative accounting because you're doing it at the end of the fiscal year.

And most of them, I would suspect most of them that weren't out of contract.

I think Jay will is actually out of contract, but I'm not sure.

But those who are not out of contract who are laid off are probably getting paid through their contract. That's what happened with me at NBC.

I was paid through. I think I had a little over a year on my deal when I got laid off and Laila was one of the people that got laid off as well.

So you know, we joke about being in lifeboat together and all that stuff, trying to figure out what our next move was.

I was lucky. I still had my full time job over at the score.

So the fact that I was laid off from my other full time job was a blow, but I was still getting paid for it.

So it didn't hurt as bad, but still it's so public that everyone knows like everyone knows your name.

There's another thing that really, really bothered me. I forgot who did it, but one of the someone I saw on Twitter.

And I want to say it was like one of the people who cover media was like, why doesn't ESPN just hurry up and tell us who all got laid off?

...