Best-selling author Jeff Pearlman joins Mac to talk about his new book "Only God Can Judge Me," about late hip hop artist, Tupac Shakur. Jeff's background is in sports, but he wanted to write a book about Tupac. Pearlman interviewed nearly 700 people for this book, which included a funny anecdote about trying to talk to Tupac's high school classmate, Jada Pinkett Smith.

Plus Mac and Jeff exchange horror stories about book signing events.

0:00:01 Cold Open: “Do I Look Like My Dad?”
0:00:15 Meeting Your Heroes (And Why Jeff Pearlman Isn’t a Letdown)
0:01:17 Rocker, Rangers & First Impressions of a Bestseller
0:02:02 From Locker Rooms to Lakers: Pearlman in DFW
0:02:26 Building a Brand in Longform (Press Box Chronicles Shout-Out)
0:03:35 The Hits: Showtime, Three Ring Circus, Boys Will Be Boys & More
0:04:30 New Drop: Only God Can Judge Me (Tupac)
0:05:03 “Please Don’t Check Conversions”: Author Promo Pain
0:05:37 Book Tour Horror Stories: Fort Hood to Empty Chairs
0:06:25 Signing Sadness, Barnes & Noble Blues, and Surviving the Crickets
0:08:14 The Author Economy Is… Weird (Hello, Amazon Stockouts)
0:10:02 Reinvention Arc: TikTok, Haters, and Making It Pay
0:13:10 Accountability vs Clapbacks (Kurt Warner, Defector & Doing the Call)
0:16:08 Hats, Nostalgia & Jets Misery vs. Bengals Pain
0:17:49 Why Tupac? Myth, Mortality & The Power of 25
0:21:24 Fame vs. Formation: What Dying Young Does to a Legacy
0:22:41 Selling the Tupac Pivot (Agent Doubts, Publisher Greenlight)
0:28:28 Can You Hear the Words? Rap, Mumble, and Live Lyrics
0:30:17 “Culture Vulture?” How Jeff Earned Trust & Access
0:33:14 Sunset Lounge Roll Call (Ad Break)
0:35:20 700 Interviews Later… What Jeff Still Didn’t Get
0:38:52 Afeni’s House & A Hidden Grave in North Carolina
0:39:47 A 240/10 Childhood: Poverty, Chaos & Survival
0:41:03 The N-Word, Audiobooks, and Knowing Your Lines
0:43:31 Sports as a Doorway Out of Small-Town Racism
0:46:20 Eric Davis, Barry Bonds & Learning Empathy the Hard Way
0:51:01 Saddest Book Yet: The Cost of Telling Tupac’s Story
0:52:01 Dream Get: How Jeff Would Interview Donald Trump
0:53:44 Next Book: A Nashville-Newsroom Memoir
0:54:44 Be Nice. It Works. (Industry Karma FTW)
0:56:41 Outro: Fade to Black in the Sunset Lounge

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