The Nerd Who Knew Too Much

Le Batard & Friends Network

Dan Le Batard

Sports

4.9 • 8.3K Ratings

🗓️ 21 August 2025

⏱️ 44 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

He was the Bill James of basketball. A cocky forefather of sports analytics who saw numbers as colors. Whose book, "Basketball Heaven," helped usher in the three-point era. And who failed. But Martin Manley also left behind a map, ranging from X-Files to his mother-in-law to the path toward the most efficient life... and death. Reporters Nick Altschuller and Rich Levine adapt their new "30 for 30" podcast — produced by our parent company Meadowlark Media and Adam McKay's Hyperobject Industries, in partnership with ESPN. (If you are in crisis, please call, text or chat with the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988, or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.) • Listen to all six episodes of "Chasing Basketball Heaven": https://30for30podcasts.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to Pablo Torre finds out. I am Pablo Torre, and today we're going to find out what this sound is.
0:07.1	Barbie and Phil, he addressed it to both of us. I hope this is the first you are hearing of it. Today is my 60th birthday, the last day of my life.
0:16.6	Right after this ad.
0:23.9	Look, we have two Pepsi.
0:25.8	When's the last time you had Pepsi out of a two-liter bottle?
0:28.6	God, sixth grade?
0:30.2	Yeah, I was going to say.
0:30.8	A birthday party at Pizza Hut or something?
0:32.7	Pre-pubescent.
0:34.3	I might even venture.
0:36.2	We kept Mountain Dew in the fridge at home in high school.
0:39.3	You used to drink a lot of Mountain Dew.
0:41.1	I did.
0:41.7	Then diet, and then I was just done.
0:43.3	I was done. It was my 20s, long time.
0:45.9	Mountain Dew is, so Diet Mountain Dew, total side note, is the juice that so much of the sports nerd world runs on?
0:56.4	I was addicted.
0:58.3	Oh, he showed up at the office every day with a diet mountain dew.
1:01.8	And I would walk home from work not being able to wait to get inside and open a cold one from my fridge.
1:07.2	I understood what it's like to be addicted to a beverage.
1:10.6	So the reason why I marvel at that, as we get into this now, completely of course,
1:15.8	spontaneously, is that the man who is most addicted to Diet Mountain Dew, who I have interviewed
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