Pablo Torre

Is why you get the prizes.

So we talk a lot about whistleblowers and basketball and secrets on this show.

And I think there is no one more qualified to discuss the collision of all of these topics.

Then Ben Wisner, who really did have to put his cell phone away when documentarian Laura Poitras first connected him to his future client, National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden.

All of this because the government itself might be listening in.

But one of my favorite things about Ben is that he, like me, thinks a lot about the unique power of sports.

And this fact, when I first found out about it, caught me by surprise, mostly because I had only thought of Ben through the lens of his day job as the director of the American Civil Liberties Union's Center for Democracy.

not through the lens of the team that is up 2-0 on the Sixers right now, and whose players we will separate here for the purposes of this episode, from Knicks owner James Dolan.

But the thing that is so remarkable about the ACLU, in case you're not familiar, is that it does not fear power.

Ben Weisner has literally sued the CIA.

The ACLU does not abide by party politics, as you will see.

Although Newsmax host Michael Savage

In fact, the full video and transcript of that riff from Michael Savage, which went on to praise European Americans while discussing hellholes like China and India and the disloyalty of immigrants, was reposted on Truth Social by at real Donald Trump himself, making news about two weeks ago, which must have been fun, I thought, for the ACLU and a certain diehard Knicks fan to see.

It's one of the more interesting and important parts of working for the ACLU.

For people who are not familiar with your work, it's that Bill O'Reilly, on the one hand, will say in 2004 that you guys are, quote, the most dangerous organization in the United States of America right now, second next to Al Qaeda, which is an actual quote he said on his radio show.

And yet, you are the guys who will infuriate the left because you dare to say that freedom of speech as a principle must apply even to the people whose speech we find devastating and unconscionable on some personal level.

All of which is to say that your conscience has been consistent in ways that are, I think, unimpeachable, except for one topic.

You have had the stones to go after everyone except for who then?

Yeah.

Noah Shachtman, who we collaborated with on our investigation into Madison Square Garden, of course, with Wired Magazine three weeks ago now.