Pablo Torre’s podcast was gaining notoriety for its independent reporting on powerful figures in sports when, last February, he received a tip. A source suggested that Torre look into Aspiration, a green bank founded by two Democratic politicians that turned out to be a $2.3 billion fraud. But not before Aspiration recruited a key donor: Steve Ballmer, the former Microsoft executive turned owner of the Los Angeles Clippers.
In March, Torre was making calls when Aspiration filed for bankruptcy. Inside the filing, he noticed a creditor listed as KL2 ASPIRE LLC, which was registered to the Clippers star Kawhi Leonard. While Aspiration had promoted endorsements from the likes of Drake and Robert Downey Jr. as its valuation soared, Torre found no public mention of any partnership with Leonard — the rare case, in modern marketing, where the absence of evidence seemed like evidence. Like something was being hidden from the public.
Torre proceeded to interview dozens of Aspiration sources, building trust to amass more than 3,000 pages of confidential documents, from bank statements to internal e-mails and signed contracts — including Leonard’s endorsement deal. They suggested that Leonard had been paid $48 million by this tree-planting company — a Clippers partner funded by Ballmer, even as it collapsed — to do nothing, so that Ballmer could circumvent the NBA’s salary cap. So that the richest owner in all of sports could break a cardinal rule limiting what billionaire owners can pay to win.
As the SEC and the DOJ closed in on Aspiration’s defrauding of investors, Torre traveled to meet sources — several of whom were now federal witnesses — and convinced multiple insiders to go on tape. They would become voices in a conversational orchestra, as Torre began to write and fact-check the script for what appeared to be three podcasters sitting at a table with folders in front of them… and became a viral phenomenon that Nieman Lab referred to as “watchdog journalism’s future.” New York magazine wrote that Torre is “steadily inventing a language for how ambitious narrative work and investigative journalism can play out.”
Torre recorded the first episode of his instantly evolving Aspiration series (“The Silent Superstar and the Rotten Apple Tree,” Sept. 3, 2025) while sitting behind stacks of paper — a mountain of evidence, in one man and his independent podcast’s good-faith effort to prove the absence of evidence. Eight months later, the series was awarded The Pulitzer Prize for Audio Reporting. The Poynter Report wrote: “Honestly, it was heartening that the Pulitzer board recognized a podcast that devotes so much energy to producing deeply-reported stories. As the Pulitzer board aptly called it, ‘Pablo Torre Finds Out’ is ‘pioneering and entertaining.’ The choice also earned widespread praise on social media. Anyone who wins a Pulitzer should be proud, but it’s especially nice to see someone leave a reliable, well-paying job at ESPN, take a risk on something new, and have it pay off like this.”
