The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz
The Best of SBS: 2025 (ft. Patton Oswalt, Tony Reali, Hasan Piker, Josh Johnson, & William Shatner)
25 Dec 2025
Chapter 1: What unique way did the guest honor their late wife?
Kings Network. I thought it was beautiful that the way that you honored your late wife, super unique to be able, I mean, to catch it, to help catch a serial killer.
I mean, all I did was shepherd that. I mean, I handed that book over to an investigator and a journalist and go, please help me do this because I was still so wrecked. and they helped see it through. But she definitely, it was very funny, we all had a lot of laughs watching at the press conference, because she came up with the name, the Golden State Killer.
Before that he didn't, and this is gonna sound really sick, but another cop, this guy Paul Holes, was like, yeah, he was never given a cool name, and that does hamper investigations. If there isn't a name that lands with the public, Zodiac, Night Stalker, then sometimes these cases fade away.
So when she came up with Golden State Killer, something very evocative and weird and creepy about that name that she came up with, that did help reopen the case. Now, obviously, yes, other investigators brought that case home. She also did suggest using familial DNA, which they ended up doing, but whatever. But it was very funny to watch them at these press conferences.
Someone was like, what about the work of Michelle McNamara? And he was like, Michelle McNamara's work had nothing to do with us catching the Golden State Killer. And we're all like,
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Chapter 2: How does the naming of criminals impact investigations?
You literally just used the name that helped. Anyway, but yeah. But that was like satisfying for us to watch.
I mean, all of it, I mean, to the degree to find any funny around any of it is a tribute to your ability to find comedy wherever it is it presents itself. But as a way to honor her work and her passion and enter in a new form of entertainment, really, that has just become really popular during dark times, it must have been gratifying to you somewhere in there to be a part of that.
However, tangentially, to honor her, something she cared about like that.
Yeah, I just... The thing that I... The thing that I wish was more, that she really wanted to be more focused on, and I'm seeing it in a lot of these, but not in all of them, is what she wanted the focus to be on was the investigators and was the victims, rather than making these serial killers have to be these dark anti-heroes. Serial killers are zilches.
The reason that they're killing people is because they're a zilch in life. They're not contributing anything, so I'll take something. So the fact that she was able to do something to put the focus on the people that are trying to bring justice to the powerless, or the voiceless, in this case the dead, or the people that survived,
or, you know, survive to testify and and still put themselves at risk with these because a lot of these if you really look at the Ted Bundy case, like the way that he was treated, like, oh, my God, it's so tragic, this bright young guy with a Could have been a lawyer. He was a fucking idiot.
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Chapter 3: What role do investigators and victims play in true crime narratives?
He flunked out of every, but he's a good looking white guy. And everyone's like, oh my God, we got, you know. And when the judge sentenced him, he's like, I feel terrible. Like, you know, you just took a wrong path, buddy, but I would have loved to have had you in my court. Like, can you imagine being one of the survivors going, what the fuck is going on here? This guy is getting all the...
You know, and his final statement was like, this is like a Greek tragedy, you know, like the wrong guy. You're like, what fucking world are we living in?
Well, what do you make the world we are living in? What do you make of the social commentary that you could form around murder as a podcast form? You know, serial series, mysteries and investigations, all of this dark, dark material for a dark time.
I mean, one of the reasons I think we love mysteries is because at least the ones who have a solution and we can see, oh, there was a form of justice was served here because right now in our world, very blatantly and very in our face and very flagrantly, justice is not being served and evil, opportunistic, just weak villains are being rewarded day after day after day.
And no one seems to be willing to do anything about it. So yes, I'll take a fictional world where yes, even though evil's done, evil gets punished.
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Chapter 4: How does grief influence the ability to find joy again?
People need that.
How did you go, and this is a complicated question, how did you go from the depths of grief to being able to fall in love again and, you know, help heal yourself some at least?
I mean, I had a lot of help from other people that had gone through this, you know, the grief group that I went to, and they just said, this is going to sound really weird, but Right now, all you feel is despair, and that's all you feel like you can feel.
And then you're gonna get to a point where you go, well, I can function, and thankfully, you will be thankful for the fact that you can't feel anything. That will feel like a relief. And you'll go, this is how I'll exist. I can exist at this point, and that's how I was. I'm like, I'm just gonna take care of my daughter, and I don't need to feel anything.
And then they said, and despite all of that, you will feel joy and hope and love again. You don't know when it's gonna happen, but when it happens, run at it, like go run at it. It's there for a reason.
you know there were people in my group that are like i i remarried six months after my spouse died and everyone judged me for it and there's people going i remarried eight years after my spouse died and everyone judged me for it so there's so get all that out of your head it doesn't matter you know there's gonna there you're not you're not grieving to make them comfortable you're not recovering to make them feel comfortable you have to live whatever life is being put in front of you and i met this
genuinely extraordinary woman that I don't think I would have realized is as extraordinary as she is if I hadn't been in love with and spent all those years with Michelle to really show me what extraordinary in a person means, you know? So there was almost like that was the gift from her.
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Chapter 5: What challenges do content creators face regarding mental health?
That was the one gift was losing her having that torn away from me so horribly but in a way the tearing away burned the memory of what a truly amazing person looks and feels and acts like and I was able to recognize it when it came around again
you felt numb for how long or the relief of pain free or like how long a period was this where you viewed it as an accomplishment to simply not be in crippling pain?
I felt numb for like half a year, just nothing. And before that were a couple of months of just, you know, April, April, May, most, some of June was just, it's not pain, it's, C.S. Lewis put this so well, grief feels like terror. I was in terror 24 hours a day. I was terrified of everything. Terror. And then, so that's why I was so happy to hit numbness. And I was like, I'll live here forever.
I'll take numbness over terror. And then it just turned into meeting someone who I was not, again, I wasn't, it was just, it was a weird, we had friends in common. I didn't know who she was, but we have a friend in common, this actress, Martha Plimpton.
Chapter 6: How does the pandemic relate to the epidemic of loneliness?
And my wife, Meredith Salander, they've been friends since they were teenagers, you know, like acting. They were both child actors. And so Martha would do these dinners where she would gather various people, different people just to bring them together and just have a salon. Everyone just talks and meets. And so I was invited to one and I didn't, I was traveling or something.
And then Meredith like posted or she messaged me and said, you know, that was, you missed the best fucking lasagna, dude. And then I just said, ah, story of my life. Maybe we'll go to Arby's or something like, just joking. And then we would just, this is all on Facebook, just messaging back and forth for like three months. Just, we never spoke on the phone, never met in person.
It was just somebody at the end of the day that I could talk to in the dark, lying in bed, which is what I would do with Michelle. We just lie there and just talk in the dark and go about our day and go over our day and go over the world. And it was just, and then that without it, without it becoming romantic or anything, it then became romantic.
Just having someone to talk to and then it turned into, and then we finally, God, I don't, we didn't meet face to face till May 20th. And we started talking, texting on Facebook at the end of February.
Chapter 7: What insights did the guest share about their experience in space?
And it was just, and there was a time where like, maybe we just should never meet. Let's just talk like this. And then we was like, oh no, we should meet. And then that's just how it went.
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Chapter 8: How can art and storytelling influence societal change?
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I think a network would love to have a show as successful as Around the Hornets. Absolutely. I think the network...
ESPN, that I've enjoyed working for all these years, should want an expanse of shows, many, many different, they should want many, many different voices, they should want shows to get great ratings, they should want shows to not have controversies, they should want shows, and then they get other shows that could be more performative in some ways, and this show could be more feeling in this way.
You can say this show became one thing or not, too serious, more, more, more, whatever. less about stars and more about journalists, and we didn't want journalists anymore.
What it became is more and more yours. And you were fitting within the confines and the limitations of television, and I don't know what... And I was pushing it, too, because I wanted to push it.
I wanted the show to... I thought there was value in being a differentiator.
Your growth was obvious in every way on the show. Your adult growth as a creator and as an adult was obvious on that show in many different ways over... over the 23 years, 24 years?
23 for the show, yeah.
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