About a year ago, you guys did a truly unfathomable thing. Something that completely blew my mind… You gave The Life of a Showgirl the biggest first week for an album in history. I took a trip to Sweden to celebrate with Max and Shellback, my two collaborators on this album. Really we just wanted to reflect and take in how grateful we were for the moment we were in, but there was a studio there and we did what we do when we feel anything at all: We wrote more songs. I hope you love them, because they were born out of pure gratitude for your exuberance for and celebration of the album we made. The Life of a Showgirl: The Encore including four new songs is out on Friday and available to pre-order and save now at https://t.co/bWaNOQ6OmT ❤️🔥
📸: Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott
Shohei Ohtani was cleared by the federal government two years ago, and his name is going to keep appearing in gambling headlines for the rest of his career. Not despite the exoneration. Because of it.
Start with what was actually established. Federal agents read 9,700 pages of text messages between Ohtani and Ippei Mizuhara and found no discussion of gambling. Prosecutors put it in writing: let there be no doubt, Mr. Ohtani is truly a victim. Mizuhara pleaded guilty to bank fraud and filing a false tax return, was sentenced to 57 months, and was ordered to pay $16,975,010 in restitution. He is currently in a federal prison in Pennsylvania.
There is no ambiguity left in the record. There is enormous ambiguity left in the marketing.
This week ESPN launches a six-part podcast called The Betrayal of Shohei Ohtani. The title concedes the entire case — betrayal of, not by. Then the promo copy calls a $17 million federal felony a "break-up," and puts his name directly beside the phrase "illegal sports gambling." The one thing he was cleared of is the thing loading the headline.
That is not an error. That is the product.
Here's the mechanism. A scandal is only worth telling if the audience cares about the person at the center, and people care about Ohtani because he is the most admired athlete alive. His cleanliness is the raw material. If he had been a known degenerate, the story would be a shrug. Because he is beloved and provably innocent, every retelling gets to stage the same moment — the possibility, however briefly, that he wasn't.
The public doesn't want the verdict. It wants the 24 hours before the verdict. That window, March 20, 2024, when Mizuhara told a reporter that Ohtani had knowingly covered his debts, is the only genuinely thrilling part of this story, and it was false. It will be dramatized in every version of this that gets made, forever, because it's the only part with tension in it.
So the pattern locks in. Every future gambling story in American sports now has a free opening paragraph. Every anniversary is content. Every documentary, book, and podcast reruns the same 24 hours. Ohtani's name becomes permanent inventory — a thing other people monetize, at no cost, with no obligation to him, using the fact of his innocence as the hook.
He can't sue his way out. Nothing being published is false. He can't outrun it either, because the more he wins, the more valuable the name gets, and the more worthwhile the retelling becomes.
This is what nobody understands about being falsely accused in public. You don't get cleared and go back to normal. You get cleared and become a franchise.
Ohtani is going to spend the rest of his life being the most famous innocent man in sports. And that is worth more to everyone else than it will ever be to him.
It’s a *Toy* Story 🤠
You knew it! My new original song “I Knew It, I Knew You” for Disney and @Pixar’s @toystory 5 will be yours on June 5th. I’ve always dreamed of getting to write for these characters who I’ve adored since I was a 5 year old kid watching the first Toy Story movie. I fell instantly in love with Toy Story 5 when I was lucky enough to see it in its early stages, and I wrote this song as soon as I got home from the screening. Sometimes you just know, right?
You can pre-order now exclusively at https://t.co/NoneI6kxdH and catch Toy Story 5 in theaters June 19th ☁️☁️☁️☁️☁️
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was abruptly pulled from a live interview after being told “the President wants you right away.”
After returning, his voice was noticeably shaken.