Hello and welcome to group chat.

I am Justin Varyer and joining me live in person in Los Angeles where it is hot as Mordor in the end of September

for whatever reason, Big Waz, Rob Mahoney. We are here for part three, part three of the preseason

NBA power rankings, an annual tradition like none other doing it in person, we're doing it a little earlier than we typically do here. We are. I'm surprised you're leading with Mount Doom. We're just going straight for the volcanic core, really the true source of the piping hot takes, if we're being honest. That's true. We haven't gotten to the one ring yet. Or the teams that are in competition for it. Not as a... I really don't know what y'all are talking about.

Y'all might as well be speaking Mandarin.

Elvish in this case.

But, you know what?

Because we are pre-taping,

we cannot have our timely news-oriented banter.

I have proposed,

venturing into the New York Times

is 36 questions that lead to love.

This seemed to confuse you, Was.

The premise of what we're doing with these questions.

Yeah, because the first time we did this,

you talk about questions that lead to love,

then you immediately asked,

have you ever contemplated your death?

It got pretty dark.

What that means?

I'm like, oh, okay, this must be a different kind of love. Well, first of all, I didn't write the list. Don't blame me. Yeah. My favorite part about this whole exercise, just to interrupt briefly, is that we're doing this almost as like a little bit of a placeholder in case there is news in order to put at the top of these podcasts. Yes. So it's possible

that you listening at home don't get any of this. And this is specifically for us. But they would

...