Dan Le Batard is one of the biggest personalities at ESPN, but he’s also one of the best voices in entertainment. Find out why in the latest Deeper Cut.

If you’re looking for a new voice in entertainment to listen to this year, make it Dan Le Batard.

Yes, Le Batard is a sports personality for ESPN. But his work is as much entertainment as sports, not to mention cultural and social commentary, and brilliant three-ring circus.

Le Batard has quietly built himself a small empire since joining ESPN in 1998. He’s been hosting radio show The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz since 2004 with co-host Jon “Stugotz” Weiner, with a TV simulcast since 2015.

In 2011, he added an afternoon TV series, Dan Le Batard is Highly Questionable (now shortened to Highly Questionable). He’s easily the most entertaining guest host on Pardon The Interruption.

And last month, he announced the launch of a new Le Batard and Friends podcast network, which officially premiered Tuesday, Jan. 8 with Le Batard’s long-form interview series South Beach Sessions. The end of 2018 even brought about his own merchandise store.

Actually, quietly is probably the wrong word. Dan Le Batard has never done anything quietly. That is what makes him not just a sports personality, but an entertainment one, too.

To paraphrase a line from ESPN’s sister network ABC, The Dan Le Batard Show is about sports like Charlie’s Angels is about law enforcement. You don’t have to know much about sports to enjoy the show. Le Batard and his colleagues have eschewed the dry, tired sports-talk concept; they don’t rattle off endless statistics or sound like hollow talking heads. There’s a lot of noise, but it’s almost always joyful.

When they discuss sports topics, they find an entertaining way to do it. When Derek Jeter had his contentious interview with Bryant Gumbel, rather than just talk about Jeter’s outburst, the show had producers Billy Gil and Chris Cote re-enact it.

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They’re not here to reiterate what happened and debate the minutiae of it; they’re here to discuss it from a genuine, real-fan perspective, where they’re able to laugh and rant and remind audiences why people care so much about sports in the first place. They put the fun back in sports while also gently ribbing it, not unlike a family sitting around the Thanksgiving dinner table.

But much of what they do has little, if anything, to do with sports. One of the show’s recurring bits is bringing on Zoo Miami‘s Ron Magill to talk wildlife. Greg Cote from the Miami Herald, Chris’s dad, is in studio every Tuesday with a “Back in My Day” segment where he opines about things like gift wrapping.

They’ll routinely skewer other media personalities, especially those elsewhere on ESPN. Tuesday was a highlight, as Will Cain called in to jokingly discuss his rivalry with the show and wanting to have his own podcast network; Dan joked that they’d start a “Le Batard and Enemies” project.

The TV simulcast billed Cain as “Stephen A. Smith Adversary,” a reference to Cain’s butting heads with Stephen A. Smith on First Take. Speaking of First Take, another gag involves Le Batard’s team pausing their own show to give a “live look” into the other ESPN program just to see what Smith is up to now.

There’s no one they make fun of more than themselves, though. There’s a “penalty box” that Dan will send people—even himself—to if he feels they’ve killed the show. A long list of fines can be handed out for any number of reasons, and there’s a year-end faux awards show that once spent more than seven minutes deciding which was the best Dan Le Batard mistake.

All of this is fun and games, with a fantastic cast of characters including the show producers, and other ESPN personalities, and the occasional celebrity (Kenny G played the halftime show of their college football megacast via phone, and the late Bob Einstein had some amazing commentary). It’s everything that’s great about the entertainment world, without any of the pomp or hyperbole.

But while he makes everyone’s lives more interesting, Dan Le Batard is also capable of being quite serious when the need calls for it. And he’s also authored some of the most important takes on a few issues over the years.

The other, under-appreciated strength of Dan Le Batard is what happens when the laughter stops. Le Batard’s career took off when he investigated the University of Miami football team, and he is still writing for the Miami Herald. He’s a true journalist, and he’s also incredibly committed to the city of Miami and to his Cuban-American culture.

When Major League Baseball began to normalize relations with Cuban baseball players a few weeks ago, Le Batard devoted a segment of the radio show to discussing how it was more of a problem than anything else. He’s both written and spoken about his family’s history; his parents are Cuban exiles.

His father, Gonzalo Le Batard, is his co-host on Highly Questionable and has become a fan favorite as the prankster “Papi,” but he’s also an engineer who risked everything, along with his wife, to get his family to the United States. Le Batard’s producing team on the radio show is nicknamed “the shipping container of frightened refugees.”

It’s not just cultural issues that he’s passionate about. Everyone knows Dan Le Batard for his pointed interview with MLB commissioner Rob Manfred after the Marlins were sold. He was not afraid to be emotional on-air when former ESPN president John Skipper, who had played a huge part in his career, resigned.

And it was less than three years ago that Le Batard and Weiner were incredibly honest on the air about nearly ending their radio show. That’s some of the most raw, genuine, emotional radio that you’ll ever hear.

There’s every reason for entertainment fans to listen to Dan Le Batard, whether it’s on radio, on TV or preferably both. His shows are the anti-sports shows, that focus on the story behind that latest headline rather than just repeating it. And that’s what the best of entertainment is at its core—great storytelling.

Le Batard and his team know how to tell a great story, and they do several times a day. Whether it’s digging into the next odd story, sending Art Briles to hell repeatedly, or tackling some tough subject head-on, they are natural entertainers. That’s why they succeed.

They show TV fans that you can make a successful TV show out of the bond between a son and his father, and remind us of the importance of family. They prove that hard work and sacrifice is still worth something. They remind audiences that there are many things that need to be taken seriously, but yourself isn’t one of them. And perhaps most importantly, while they’re having fun, they make sure everyone else is having fun, too.

Do yourself a favor and join Dan Le Batard’s marching band to nowhere. It’s an entertainment experience like no other, and it’s the purest form of fun you’ll ever find on television or radio. Just watch the clip below and you’ll understand why we all need a little Le Batard in our lives.

The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz airs weekdays at 10 a.m. ET on ESPN Radio and ESPN2; Highly Questionable airs weekdays at 4:30 p.m. ET on ESPN.

Find the latest Deeper Cut every Wednesday in the Entertainment category at FanSided.