The Italian Word for Waluigi with Rohan Nadkarni
The Distraction: A Defector Podcast
Defector Media
4.4 • 2.5K Ratings
🗓️ 29 January 2026
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rohan is back! And promising future Italian sandwich talk, because he’s going to Milan to cover the Olympics. Drew and Roth talk with him about his Italian food plans, the situation in Minneapolis, the Dolphins, and the saddest new coaching hire of this cycle. Then, they open up the funbag to answer – are sports broadcasters entitled to any dignity when it comes to brand tie-ins?
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Stuff We Talked About
- Outeating non-GMO flour
- It’s-uh-me, Rohan!
- Minneapolis
- Belichick not being in the Hall of Fame
- A nuclear Dolphins take
- Bob’s Big Boy in a suit
- Revenge bedtime antics
Sponsors
- MeUndies, where you can get up to 50% off
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
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| 0:00.0 | We're back. We're back. It's a distraction. I'm drood. That's raw. Are you doing Roth? Oh, you know. How are you? Awesome. Just so, I really so awesome. Yeah. I'm also awesome. I didn't want to say it first because I didn't want to put the pressure on you to say how awesome you're feeling. Yeah. It's just like, wow, could life get any better? I submit that it |
| 0:22.3 | cannot. I can think of one thing that it improved my day. Yeah, I'll tell you why I'm so pet |
| 0:27.6 | because Rohan's back. He's back on the podcast. I'm Rowan. NBC Sports. How you doing, brother? |
| 0:34.8 | I'm great. True. It's so funny because I was just thinking like a week ago. I was like, man, I've not done the distraction in a minute. And I don't want to ask to put myself on, you know? But then when they got the text, you know, I was thrilled. People ask. And I'm like, okay. Because like, I don't want to have to like, I don't want to have to ask. Like, I don't have to do the booking. If people do the booking on my behalf, like, hey, can't come on your show? |
| 0:57.8 | Like, I don't want to have to do the booking. If people do the booking on my behalf, like, hey, can't come on your show? Like, yeah. I'll come on whenever. Also, just a quick point of clarification. I do actually work for NBC News. Oh. You cover sports for NBC News, which is a separate entity from NBC Sports. What, what you've been doing for NBC News lately? What are you going to be doing for NBC News? Oh, my gosh. Well, as I was just, I don't know how I didn't tell you guys this, but I'm going to Milan next Tuesday. In Italy? By God. It's the most... I'm going to Mylan, Ohio. |
| 1:28.0 | It's bad. |
| 1:29.3 | It's not good. |
| 1:31.0 | It's obviously the most excited I've been for anything in my entire life. |
| 1:34.4 | Have you ever been to Italy, bro? |
| 1:36.1 | I've never been to Italy. |
| 1:38.0 | So what I'm most excited about, if we can just go back for a second, |
| 1:43.0 | sandwiches are high up there. |
| 1:44.5 | Okay, okay, okay. |
| 1:45.2 | So, okay, let me preface this by saying that one of my, like, biggest pet peeves is |
| 1:51.2 | every journalist has to have like an origin story now, you know? |
| 1:55.7 | So it's like, anytime somebody gets a job on Twitter, they're like, oh my God, like, I'm just a kid from the suburbs of like this really rich town. |
| 2:06.9 | Like, you know, I was just a kid from Shaker Heights. |
| 2:12.1 | Yeah, exactly. |
| 2:12.9 | Who could have dreamed? |
| 2:14.3 | And it's like, all I did was go to this elite university and, you know. |
| 2:19.1 | My brother's college application, he wrote and word for word, he said, I'm just a simple |
| 2:23.3 | lad from Minnesota. |
... |
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