You Can’t Zarf Someone in Pips with Ian Livengood
The Distraction: A Defector Podcast
Defector Media
4.4 • 2.5K Ratings
🗓️ 21 May 2026
⏱️ 54 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Drew and Roth are joined by Ian Livengood, an NYT puzzle editor who works on Pips (Drew’s true joy) and the Midi! Ian shares behind-the-scenes info on how puzzles are constructed, edited, and sent out to solvers. Then, they all give their takes on the NBA finals as they stand. And finally, they open up the funbag to help a listener with his mosquito problem.
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
- Crazy baby games
- Resident sports guy
- Zarfs
- Taking time in the fill
- Professional enabling
- Getting to queen bee
- The optimal way to kill (mosquitos)
Sponsors
- Reddit, where you can download the Reddit app for hot takes, fresh memes, and a group chat that never sleeps
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. |
| 0:06.0 | We're back. This is the drag shit. |
| 0:07.1 | That's Rob. |
| 0:08.2 | Are you? |
| 0:08.7 | Ross. |
| 0:09.3 | Pretty good, man. |
| 0:10.0 | How are you? |
| 0:11.0 | Good. |
| 0:12.8 | Yeah, that's all I got. |
| 0:14.0 | I don't know. |
| 0:14.8 | Can I tell you a brief? |
| 0:16.3 | I had a difficult experience earlier this week. |
| 0:18.5 | Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. |
| 0:19.6 | Let's do the opening anecdotal. |
| 0:21.6 | I was invited to give a commencement speech at a business school graduation ceremony. |
| 0:28.2 | And I worked on, I wrote, it's about 90 minutes of material about how AI is going to eliminate |
| 0:34.1 | entry-level jobs and everyone needs to fucking roll over and get used to it. |
| 0:37.6 | And the audience was not receptive to that at all. I got a very frosty to actually negative response. |
| 0:44.7 | Can you believe that shit? |
| 0:46.3 | You might have touched a nerve, bro. I think you, I think, ooh, I think you struck a chord. |
| 0:51.8 | I think if I offended everyone equally graduates and their parents by the shit that I was saying, I think you struck a chord. I think if I offended everyone equally graduates and their parents by the shit that I was saying, I think I'm probably doing something right, you know? I'm just going to, if I get hired to do a grad speech, I'll just, I'll just shit in a bag, and then I'm just going to throw it in the audience, and they're going to boo, and I go, wow, triggered much. Get used to it. |
| 1:12.2 | That's the real life of work. |
... |
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