The Press Box - 2020 Conspiracy Theories, Listener Mail, and Jordan Ritter Conn on 'The Road From Raqqa'

Episode Date: July 24, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker break down a few recent conspiracy theories, including QAnon, the Jeffrey Epstein case, and one related to Love Connection host Chuck Woolery (1:10). Next, on Listener Mail, they answer the question “What happens when you dream about 'The Press Box'?” (16:50). Then, Ringer staff writer Jordan Ritter Conn joins to discuss his new book, The Road From Raqqa (31:30). Plus: The Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Ringer podcast network. It's Liz Kelly. This week, we launched a new show on the network called The Ringer Fantasy Football Show. Coming from the guys who brought you the DanyaC football podcast, Danny Hifitz, Danny Kelly, and Craig Horlebeck will guide you through the fantasy football season, providing analysis on big picture conversations like weekly matchups, trades, and daily fantasy. The show will run every Monday and Wednesday throughout the rest of the summer, and we'll be helping you through the regular season as well. So follow and listen to the first episode of the Ringer Fantasy Football Podcast, out now for free on Spotify. Hello, media consumers. You've got the press box.

Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer here. We got a lot of great stuff for you today. We'll answer a mega dose of listener mail, including the question, what happens when you dream about the press box? We'll be joined by one of our favorite ringer teammates, Jordan Ritter Khan, who will tell us about his new book and reporting at the Turkey Syria border.

All that plus David guesses the Strainpun headline and the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, let's begin here. We're in one of those times in American life when we are surrounded by conspiracy theories. You sent me a list earlier in the week, and I think we actually had to trim it considerably, just so it wouldn't flow over one segment. The reasons are pretty obvious. You have the instigators, Donald Trump, and his social media pals. And then you have the subjects, coronavirus, the protests, the Jeffrey Epstein case.

Russians, the elections. The biggest of these, at least in November 3rd terms, is QAnon. If you don't know what the Q&N conspiracy is, the New York Times describes it as a convoluted pro-Trump conspiracy theory about a deep state of child molesting Satanist traitors plotting against the president. Now remember, that is the conservative New York Times description. Would you say, David, that QAnon is the biggest thing that people like our parents don't know about in the world right now?

Yes. I think that's exactly right. Although I should say that it is creeping in to, I mean, I don't know that my mom knows about it, nor do I even want to broach the subject, but. Not a great, that's something great to talk about around the dinner table, if we had a dinner table. Yeah, our ringer co-worker, Roger Sherman,

who is an all-time just Twitter ace, just strikeout artist. tweeted some i forgot what the tweet was but like the q an on there's a cue portion of it that was like the tertiary part of the joke and it got a bunch it got a great reaction and i remember just looking at like the you know the retweets escalating and i was like i guess you could if cue if we are familiar enough with the concept of cue that it can be a secondary or tertiary part of a tweet a humor tweet then maybe it's way more widespread you know it's better more widespread knowledge than i was aware of. Yeah, I like the Roger Sherman tweet test just to determine

how much traction these things are really getting. There are more than a dozen Q&ON candidates in the election right now. Even after many were defeated in the primaries, Joe Ray Perkins, the U.S. Senate nominee in Oregon, has said, I stand with Q in the team. Other candidates are Q and on curious.

Lauren Bobard, who knocked off a five-term congressman from Colorado in the primary, has said everything I've heard of Q, I hope this is real. Angela Stanton King, House Canada, Georgia has tweeted the Q hashtag Trust the Plan. No, that is not a Sam Hinky hashtag.

That is a QAnon thing. Jeff Sessions, David, recently defeated in Alabama, tweeted a Q&N meme. The head of New York City's police union, you and I were talking about this, appeared on television with a Q&on mug in the background.

Yeah. And I think even if you're level-headed about this, we're now getting to a very, very weird, weird place. in American, if not in American life, at least in Republican politics. Right. Okay. This is maybe a rabbit hole, but if our parents in general are unaware of this, the existence of Q, some, I mean, their contemporaries aren't necessarily, but the people who are Q fanatics, I think, are just one step up, the internet evolutionary chain from the hypothetical parents who are discussing. I mean, you have to be pretty remarkably

computer illiterate to even give this the time of day for a second, right? I mean, I think you or I both know how the internet and the world at large and the modern age works, which is to say, if you are a well-placed person with some secret information that you want to get out to the world, you just start an anonymous Twitter account and say the thing that you know, right? You don't, you don't speak in vagaries on an anonymous message board for fear of your personal safety. Nobody really cares about that. The only thing that vagaries are good for are like covering your ass or lying, right?

I mean, unless you're trying to confuse someone or preemptively excuse yourself for being wrong, look at the way that people were covering the Washington football team news before it came out like we talked about last episode. That's when you use vagaries online, right? Not when you have

great actual intel that you need to get out to the world. It's... Right. It's this, the whole thing is so silly to believe it for a second is just, I mean, It's kind of wild that this is a thing. And that, I mean, the rise of the Tea Party candidates, I think probably were, I mean, however long ago that was, probably should have been the siren that went on. I mean, it's a very, it seems to be a very similar talent base here, although you could make a little bit more of a straight face case for the Tea Party.

But the fact that a new cause arose, its fan base was dwelling on some, like, relatively new part of the internet and the candidates themselves were not just interesting, unusual, but were also seemingly very, I mean, had some sort of legitimate place in the Republican Party. It was alarming then. It's even more alarming now. And what a headache for national Republicans. New York Times notes this. Republican leaders cannot afford to turn off voters who share those conspiratorial views.

if they hope to retain the Senate, retake the House. So it's not just the inconvenience of having, oh, wow, our House candidate is a QAnon person. It's we cannot make the people reading these things on the internet mad. Well, the Democrats are worrying about

figuring out where the common ground on like universal health care is. And this is going to be like a deal breaker for like half the party, according to some people. And the other half is like, where can we find common ground on like does this massive conspiracy that literally doesn't exist, exist.

Is JFK Jr. alive, right? Yeah, exactly. What is the middle ground position on this that Joe Biden could possibly take to satisfy everybody? Big news this week, David, was that Twitter banned 7,000 Q supporting accounts and is apparently trying to limit the reach of a bunch of others. But a friend of the press box Will Summer writes in The Daily Beast in the real world, meanwhile, Q&NON isn't concerned about being banned. its promoters earn invites to the White House

as the president retweets Q&ONO followers and Trump's social media chief Dan Skavino post a cartoon from avowed Q&N supporter Ben Garrison. Eric Trump recently posted a Q&ON graphic summer rights with a giant Q on a dot dot dot. Former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and man this was amazing, recently filmed himself taking a Q&on oath with his family.

Thrilling Q&on followers desperate for proof that their dream of mass executions will come true. So that's Q and on. Then David, there's Chuck Woolrie. But moving on, are there any 80s game show hosts so we can tie into this? What a segue. Yes. Back on July 12th, Chuck Woolry was trending, which always gets our attention. When we mentioned this name to Chris Almeida the other day, we got a what is word perfect style reaction. So just in case you don't know, Chuck Woolry was the host of the 80s, 90s game show Love Connection, which was sort of like scrolling through Tinder in a,

a doctor's waiting room. Am I getting the ambiance of that show, right? Here's the opening theme of love connection. Welcome to Love Connection, where old-fashioned romance meets modern day technology, where you hear all the intimate details of a first date. Our parents' generation can hear a Beatles song and flashback to their childhood.

You and I are cursed to hear the Love Connection theme and flash back to our childhood. Anyway, Chuck Woolrie has refashioned himself as a rabid right winger on Twitter. And this was the tweet that got everybody's attention. The most outrageous lies are the ones about COVID-19. Everyone is lying. The CDC, media, Democrats, our doctors, not all but most. I like how you built that in there, that we are told to trust.

I think it's all about the election and keeping the economy from coming back, which is about the election. I'm sick of it. It was so conspiratorial, David, that it got a retweet from President Trump. And then four days later, Woolrie tweeted, My son tested positive for the virus. And I feel for those suffering and especially for those who have lost loved ones. He then deactivated his account. An associate tells CNN Chuck's son is fine and asymptomatic.

I mean, does it help the argument that there's no place for right-wing voices in Hollywood? This is the, Chuck Woolery is your paragon. of right wing voices. I mean, in Hollywood, is it because, it's easy for me to look at him and say, you know, if you're, I mean, if you go from being Chuck Willery, who in our minds is relatively famous to a guy who's like, you know, doing podcast, doing, you know, podcast with Rachel Bruno or Newt Gingrich, I guess there was a reason one. That's a, that's a high point. Then there's not much to really be said. But listen, if you are an outspoken voice in Republican or conservatism and libertarianism and everything else, you know, I guess it's a good thing

when your bullshit gets proven wrong by reality in like a moment's time. But it's really sad that had to happen to his son for him to like, well, it's sad that happened to his son. It's sad that had to happen to his son for him to like understand that there is a reality that exists outside of his foil hat. Finally and most grimly, David, we had an attack on the family of federal judge Esther Salas. Last Sunday, a man pretending to be a deliated. delivery man comes up to the North Brunswick, New Jersey home of Esther Salas. The man shoots and kills Daniel Anderl, Salas's son and injures her husband, Mark Anderrell. Salas was in the basement at the time, so she wasn't hurt.

Salas had just been assigned a case relating to Jeffrey Epstein. So naturally, people's minds went there a few seconds later. The suspect is Roy Den Hollander, who police found dead of an apparent suicide. Den Hollander, the New York Times says, is a self-described anti-feminist lawyer who flooded the courts with seemingly frivolous lawsuits. Sued various nightclubs, David, claiming they violated the 14th Amendment

by having ladies' nights discounts for women. He called Esther Salas lazy and incompetent in a, quote, self-published 1700-page book. And now the FBI is exploring whether he might be responsible for a similar killing out here on the West Coast, a men's rights lawyer who was killed in San Bernardino County, California, also by someone posing as a FedEx delivery man. So there's that one, two, just in terms of, I guess conspiracies that went off to a very, very weird place. Well, two things. One, not to make

light of the situation because it's a real tragedy, but that's a, well, not to make a lie of the situation, but I would hate to be the, you know, assistant editor at the New York Times that was tasked with reading that 1700 page self-published book. You'd probably go crazy. Second of all, what a career this man has staked out for himself. I mean, just, I'm all about passion projects, but this is just the saddest thing I've ever heard. Ladies night was where you were planning your flag? Because women got a discount and you didn't. And there's and there, there, I saw reporting that his beef with the guy in California who apparently killed was that they had started a, they had filed a suit against the draft being men only and they had left

him out of the, of the, of the, whatever, the attorney pool. And he felt that he had been sidelined. And that was where the beef began with them. So anyway, but I should say for listeners, this immediately, this, this originally made the list of conspiracy corner when it first happened because of the, um, the, the, the uncertainty surrounding at the time, the, the, the, Epstein part of it, yes. And then also there was the judge was apparently involved in the Deutsche Bank thing. And at the same time, there was a parent, there was rumors of a suicide of someone who had been tangentially involved in Trump's accounts there. There's so much conspiracy theory theorizing going on. And I guess it's a good example of it happening on both sides because, you know, the liberals were very interested in how this tied to Trump and Jeffrey Epstein and Trump by proxy and everything else through there. I mean, at that point too. But even setting that aside. This is, we talked about Q&ON. We talked about this stuff with some frequency. You know, men's rights activism may not sound like a conspiracy theory and may not by definition B1, but this is what happens when you just bathe yourself in online inanity in the way, and for some of these totally misbegotten wrong side of history, sorry to use that phrase, causes.

and it's something we should all be wary of, but it's something that we should not be afraid to point out when we see this sort of agitation, we see this sort of activation going on right before our eyes. And this is obviously an extreme example, but the fear is that some of these causes are made up of extreme examples. I'm not saying Q&N candidate's going to go out and kill anybody over their cause, but they're already exhibiting extreme,

extreme behaviors in any number of ways. So, you know, this is, this is what it is, man. It's a tragedy. All right, David, let us gently step to the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag. It was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod, where they are always gratefully received. Big news from tonight's baseball restart, David. A couple of seconds before we started recording this at the Nationals game in Washington, Dr. Anthony Fauci throughout the first pitch. It was not pretty. Let's just say that we're grateful for Dr.

Anthony Fauci's contributions to infectious diseases. He will probably not be in an MLB rotation anytime soon, but it was an overworked Twitter joke to write of course he'll try to flatten the curve. And by the way, that was extremely overworked. Did you happen to see the picture, David,

of Mark Zuckerberg surfing in Hawaii with his face slathered in sunscreen? I've been busy, but yes, I did see that. I saw multiple dueling picks of Zuckerberg and Caesar Romero as the joker surfing from that weird Batman episode about surfing. But it was an overwork Twitter joke to quote the social network and write, you know what's cool? A billion SPF. Thanks to Riles McGiles. That's fantastic. And this tweet was pretty awful. We lost congressman and civil rights leader John Lewis last week. And Marco Rubio,

Senator from Florida tweeted a tribute to Lewis, which was Marco Rubio standing with another recently deceased black congressman Elijah Cummings of Maryland. Extremely unfortunate mistake. It was an overwork Twitter joke to post a photo of Rubio and Ivanka with a caption, Here's Rubio and Kaylee McInananey. Thanks to sugar lemon. If you couldn't come up with a better face palm for Republicans and civil rights

than what actually happened, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke. of the week. In the notebook dump, Mr. Shoemaker, let us do some listener mail. You and I had a big convoy on Monday about Fox News as Chris Wallace and his TV interview affect. Well, a few people wrote in and said, hey, did you guys know that his dad is CBS News Legend Mike Wallace? Yeah, we know. And let me tell you why we didn't mention it. Chris Wallace is 72 years old. He's been on TV for almost 50 years. Yeah. And at some point, I think you earned the

a right to be judged as your own person, right, and not your father's son? Yeah, yes. And by the way, it came up, I think we came up in our conversation before, but it certainly popped into my head as we were discussing it on the podcast. But here's the thing. When he got the job, even when he got the job on Fox, he had been doing this for a long time. The word nepotism still rang in the air when he got this gig, right?

And in the intervening period, no matter what you think about Chris Wallace, politics or presentation or anything else, he's. He's proven all that to be ridiculous, right? I mean, that's just so unnecessary. And so, you know, if it bore passing mention, okay. But, like, he's been at it for so long, doing this real legitimate job in a very real way. So, come on.

Yeah, I had Christopher Buckley on the other day, and you'll notice I did not mention the words William F. Buckley, his dad, until I wanted to get him to tell a story about dropping acid. It's not the right, even, it's not even the right comparison, by the way, for Chris Wallace. his interview style is much smoother and more low-key than his dad's.

Anyway, just thank you for everyone who tweeted that because we know his dad is Mike Wallace. This is from the athletics Eric Corrine, David. What does it say about me that I had a dream last night that Brian was interviewing me in person along with Chris and that you were both allowed in Canada for some reason. Should I stop listening to the press box while washing dishes? Oh, I don't have to actually answer the question. What does it say about me? do I don't think I'm qualified.

I'm sort of relieved that other people are having dreams about the press box because I know when I have an interview like scheduled the next day, not so much with Jordan Kahn today, but like when we have one of these people on, I often have like a weird, you know, 10 second dream about me like having no questions for them or just like, just like basically the, you know, didn't bring, didn't do your homework, didn't know the test was scheduled dream.

Yeah. So join the club, Eric Corrine. And, And please keep listening to the press box while you watch. And then during every interview, do you get the momentary impulse to mention to them that you had a dream about this interview the night before? It's usually my lead question. I had the weirdest dream last night, Mr. Buckley. This is from Nick Field.

The protests in Portland suffering from being on the West Coast. Seems like it took a long time to get correspondence on the ground out there. I imagine if everything happened on the East Coast, it would have been a much bigger deal, much quicker. What do you think about that? I think, yes, that is undoubtedly true. Undoubtedly true, sorry. And also, I do think that there was a sort of national exhale as sort of the first wave of protests that were happening and occupying, you know, East Coast cities, I guess I should say, were sort of winding down, that there was a feeling that the one, you know, other ones were winding down too. I don't know.

But it's a great point. I mean, and I, but I do, I do think that it, being in on the West Coast. and being in Portland, despite it being a major city, certainly has affected the coverage. I agree. And I'm always amazed as a relatively new West Coast or only about five years out here. Just how much less everything gets. There's like a West Coast discount of like 30%. And it could be the exact same story. There was a headline early in the in the protest from the LA Times. Big front page headline. It was all about looting. If that had been in the New York Times, there would have been like 19 think pieces about that by the end of the day.

Yeah. And as far as I could tell other than inside the LA Times, it was not noticed out here. It was really, really wild. This is from Andrew Hertz, David, I think who has been watching some of the preseason NBA scrimmages with no crowds. Is there any home court advantage with no crowds? How weird is the broadcast going to sound? I got to say, I watched a little magic clippers yesterday from the Orlando bubble or on TV from the Orlando bubble. Yeah.

It's a little, the visual's weird because you've got all this space around the court. No photographers under the hoop like we're used to. None of the rich people sitting on the sidelines. But you know what? The full ambiance of the game sounded to me a lot like a regular season NBA game. Yeah. It'll be weird when that's the playoffs. But just for like Thursday night, 76ers game that's just kind of on, I don't know.

Didn't seem totally different. You're right. The visual of the fans is more significant than the volume of the fans. And, you know, I defer to Zach Cram about whether or not home court advantage is an actually existent thing. But like, it doesn't seem to me like it's going to make a ton of difference. It might, you know, I'm sure some players will excel in relative silence. But I agree with you. I think it'll feel pretty similar.

Semi-related Morgan Edge wants to know about fake noise at political conventions. surely the GOP will have a canned four more years chant but what will be this year's locker up can can noise help the poor mid-level politicians who always try to get the barely paying attention convention ears to get a lame chant going first of all we should say that Trump canceled the convention this afternoon there's not going to be an in-person convention at all

but if this were to happen I think it's much more interesting to ask they couldn't get away with lock her up even in the era of Trump right you cannot record or fabricate the sound of a bunch of people yelling something that borderline or that offender. Imagine the other thing. I mean, some of the other things are chanted at Trump rallies. It would be chanted at this. You couldn't get away with recording and playing that the way you could get away with Trump sort of absent-mindedly leading those, leading the cheers, you know?

Wait, so there's a moral difference in running canned locker up. Yeah. Over real locker up. Yeah. Trump can't be just like, listen, they chant whatever they want to, you know? I mean, they just got excited. they just chanted the offensive thing somebody said on the platform. What could I do about this?

This is from Kevin Fairley. As much as I love NPR, I find myself increasingly annoyed by this tick among certain reporters and hosts who always sound like they're smiling while speaking, even if what they are saying is grim, which it often is. What is going on here? I think I understand this a little bit because there is,

you and I are hardly audio professionals, as we prove twice a week on the press box. But there is this thing where you do have to sound a little more excited when you're recording something than you would be in real life, just so you project out of the iPhone a little bit. And I think a lot of times that sort of melds into I'm really happy about the horrible piece of news I'm relating on NPR. Is that a decent theory?

Yes. I mean, definitely when you're learning to do your job, people will say that just like turn it up turn it up turn it up you know i mean and just like you become a sort of parody of yourself until you sort of find i don't know the key you're supposed to be speaking in and then they're just like yeah do it like that and then it's sort of you you bring it down but yes there is a sort of urgency i cracked up when you when you just read that because i couldn't stop saying of like the joker there seemed to be just some sort of like smiling through absolute horrors thing going on but also i know exactly I know exactly the voice that Kevin is talking about,

that I would have never put a finger on it myself. But that is an incredible observation. And I will never be able to listen to NPR without imagining like, you know, Jack Nicholson's pancake white face. But then here we go. What about Cizu Romero on a surfboard? You know, there we go.

There we go. Brian Longton says, you've talked a lot on the show about the NBA bubble. Is it strange how comparably little play the NFL's plans for this season are getting? do we think it'll start on time? That's sort of a big question. I was just listening to the radio, which is not something I have the opportunity to say very frequently.

And I heard, I think it was, I think I heard Keishon Johnson on I believe the Michael Kaye show. And we should probably talk about it. You have a Keeshan Johnson segment and not to distant future, I guess. But he was saying, he said made a really good point, which is that the NBA and MLB are going to be the, I think he said the test dummies for all sports going forward. and I think that a lot of the conversations we could have about the NFL

and that the NFL is even having for itself we're all going to be rendered moot by something that happens and one or both of those sports over the next month. So I'm not really sure what the conversation would be. It is kind of glaring that it's not getting as much relative attention. But, you know, I kind of feel like by the time that they're ambling onto the field, a lot of the just uncertainty kinks will sort of be worked out. I could be wrong, though.

Yeah, we had all those players tweeting almost in unison the other day, right, trying to say, wait, wait, if we're going to test every day, why haven't we said we're going to test every day when we go back for preseason, for what is now our sort of preseason period? Yeah, I do think there's an important distinction between the NFL is being quiet and the NFL doesn't know what it's doing, but there's a very highly likely chance that the NFL is being quiet because it is taking in as much as it can and not committing itself to anything, which the NBA and

Major League Baseball had to do just by virtue of starting earlier. But it is fascinating. And trust me, the NFL will not be ignored. When it comes back, if it has a bunch of COVID positives in training camp, that is going to be a gigantic story. Well, and listen, the one big thing that we don't know. I mean, that we're not going to know for, presumably, we'll know in the very near future is, and listen, scientists, doctors might might know this. We as a public, I don't think, are really aware of the ramifications, how this is just a job. I don't think, are really aware of the ramifications, how this disease might spread if somebody gets tested positive after they've played a game with a bunch of people, like what the kind of human part, human aspect of it is.

And that's going to be, that's going to hugely affect how the NFL, you know, how testing is done and how quarantining is done and everything else, especially in a sport where you're, you know, kind of spitting in each other's faces as a matter of course. This is from Hugh Hopkins. Even before the COVID-19 shutdown, places like Bleacher Report, the Athletic and even the ringer would occasionally do post breaking down social media. and now there are in-depth articles about life inside the respective bubbles, all generated from Instagram pages and TikToks.

This is content that has traditionally been the lifeblood of SB Nation team pages and international blogs like double clutch. But if the big boys are taking up that space, what should content look like on the different fan blogs? Is there a future for community coverage? That's kind of interesting that the social media beat because of the lack of access to the players has moved over to the bigger websites. Huh.

That's a really good point. That's a really good question. I mean, I think that there's a sort of capitalist argument that, you know, these blogs have been doing it longer. And my presumption is they're probably doing it better. They're certainly doing it. But I can't imagine that, like, I as a writer could catch up to, like, the tempo of doing this on a daily basis and compete in any meaningful way with a blog, like double clutch or whatever.

But, but, yeah, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I think that every, I think that we've talked about this. before, but it's just, it's so hard to grasp in general what media is going to look like through this season of sports. And I think that, you know, you can look at it from a bird's eye view like that, but I just think that even from the blogs all the way up to the, you know, the news desk at the biggest paper in the country, people are kind of going to be grasping at whatever they can and trying to figure out on the fly what works. I don't know. What do you know? No, I think I think that's what it is. I think we, what's been so fascinating about the last

four months is we, the sports media, don't know what content is, right? We just get to make it up every day. And it's kind of like, well, let's go see what works. Does some other random thing that happened 20 years ago work? Sure. And the great thing about, or the great, the great thing, your mileage may vary, but the great thing about what's happened. I mean, the absence of sports is that we've had a lot of time to sit back and think and ponder what is going to happen. to write think pieces about TikToks and whatever else. And my mileage will definitely vary on that one. And for us to have whole segments dedicated to like,

what will journalism look like next month or in two months or whatever? And that's not a luxury that we necessarily would have had. We would have probably been talking about, you know, the way that, yeah, the way that the national media was covering Russell Westbrook and James Hardin's friendship or something. And like we would, we would have found another angle. So, yeah, we're all kind of, maybe. paying an inordinate amount of attention

to the sort of mechanics of it now, but that'll all change too. We'll squeeze in a couple more from Tongenjami. Evergreen listener mail question, what Twitter joke formats do you wish media Twitter would retire already? Is all of them a valid answer? Do you have an answer for this?

You don't do these, do you? No. Even when you were a Twitter person? When I tweeted a lot? Yeah, you weren't doing the mad libs. You know, let me do the joke format and do do something funny within this?

I mean, there were certainly times. I'm sure if you look back through my feed, you could find something if someone really wanted to canvas it. I mean, listen, a lot of the time I was tweeting about professional wrestling. So, uh, some, so more,

if I ever did something like that, the joke was applied to pro wrestling. Exactly. You know, it was sort of inherently self-referential. But anyway, retire all of them. I don't care.

Finally, this is from Sal. Hey, big fan of the show. But if you don't bring back the, David, in the beginning, I'm going to be forced to delete the press box for my app. I hope you understand. I think this has been on my list, actually. I think we should

bring it back next week. All right. Let's do it. I'm down. I'm down. I just wasn't even like an appropriate so much as I wasn't up for it. Yeah. I mean, we took it out sort of out of an, you know, abundance of. It didn't feel appropriate and also just didn't feel like doing it at those types of American life. Can I ask a quick question? Did his question actually say, I'm deleting it from my app, or did he say a non-spotify app that we were forced to delete? No, I read these straight out. All right. How dare you? How dare you, sir?

Just the formulation of from my app seems to seem to a little bit for us. I don't know. There are no favorites played here. Excuse me. All right, David, when we have a teammate as talented as Jordan Ritter-Con, and when he writes a book, we got to talk to about it. Here's our interview. Jordan Ritter-Con has been a wonderfully aggravating teammate since we were together at

Grantland. And by that, I mean, Jordan will write a piece that is so finely observed and filled with his unique kind of writerly empathy, that it makes the rest of us feel like we're doing something wrong. You know Jordan's ringer story about Brianna Taylor and his podcast about the Sonics leaving Seattle. This week, he has published a new book,

The Road from Raca, a story of brotherhood, borders and belonging. The New York Times calls it a resplendent love letter to an obliterated city. And I, Brian Curtis, say if you read the first chapter in a bookstore and aren't moved to buy the book, then lose my number. How are you, Jordan?

Oh, man, I couldn't be better after that. Thank you, Brian. I'm thrilled to be here. Let's do a little This is Your Life before we talk about the book. What was your first job in journalism? When I was 19, I got a job at a now defunct paper called the Bradley News Weekly in Cleveland, Tennessee. And this was a paper that I guess now you would call it an Alt Weekly, but it was in a town so small that I had no idea what an Alt Weekly was back. then, but it was like Cleveland, Tennessee is one of the most conservative towns in the country. It is kind of the home of the Church of God, which is this massive Pentecostal denomination that kind

of looms over everything. And the Bradley News Weekly at the time was this like liberal kind of bomb throwing little newspaper that gave me a chance when I was 19 to start writing there covering, covering sports and politics and writing a terrible, terrible column. And, yeah, I started there and then ended up working at the Chattanooga Times Street Press nearby after graduation, which felt at the time like the big leagues. And that's kind of how I got started. And what did you want to be when you grew up at that point? I didn't fully, you know, there were times I wanted to be Gary Smith, the legendary Sports Illustrated writer.

Sure. who I remember reading his anthology and thinking it was just full of stories that make you want to quit writing forever. They're so good. And, you know, there were times in college when I did really terrible personations of our boss, Bill Simmons, writing for the college figure, as I think every college sports writer did in a certain era. But, you know, ultimately I found that the stories that I really, really loved and was really, really drawn to were kind of these long narrative feature stories. And so finding ways to tell them, whether in the world of sports or outside of it, was very much kind of the path I wanted to go down. We shared an editor back at Grantland, Rafe Bartholomew, who was important to both of our careers, really important.

And I was pleased to be reminded that your writing about the Syrian Civil War began in the dying embers of, Grantland. How did you get on to this subject? Yeah. So you may remember the month of October 2015. Stans out. Grantland was on its very last legs. And the last thing that I did working at that website was Rath. Basically, this was all Rave. He just said to me like, hey, I think I know you like to do this kind of stuff. I think if you can find a story related to the impacts of the Syrian Civil War and find just the faintest sports connection, I think we can put together the money

to send you over there. And so I found one. I found a soccer team that was kind of united and playing like an anti-Assad, an anti-regime national team for Syria. And I said, hey, I've made contact with one or two of these people. Is that enough for me to go? and as you know,

Grandland was kind of like felt like working in a toy store at times with all of the resources and the ways that like they would just be like, sure, yeah, go. Take a few weeks and however much you need

in terms of the budget and do the story. And so that's what happened. And I went over there and spent several weeks and then got back and did a ton of reporting talking to people affected by the war, both connected to sports and not.

And got back. And I think about a week after I got back was when when Granlin was shut down. And we were all kind of left figuring out what was next. And I got kicked over to ESP in the magazine and just really wanted to find a way, like, the only thing I cared about there was finding a way to finish the story. And it was during that process that I needed a translator near my home in Nashville. And my wife, Beth, is connected to the man who was at the time the president of the Islam. Islamic Center of Nashville. And I asked him, do you know, do you know anyone who could help with this? And he told me to drive out to this town called Hendersonville, which is a little northeast of here.

And there is a restaurant there called Cafe Raqa. And if you walk in, introduce yourself to the chef, he'll help you out. And, you know, I had just gotten back from reporting in this part of the world. And Raqa at that time was the city in Syria that was at the time known for being the, quote, de facto capital of ISIS. And I was just thinking, why is there a restaurant named after Raqa in Hendersonville, Tennessee? And I got there and introduced myself to the chef Riato Kassum. And he was the single most, like just one of the most captivating charismatic people I'd ever met in my entire life. And he helped me with the interviews and was incredibly kind and gracious. And then we talked about his own story. And I just couldn't get it out of my mind.

I found myself thinking about his experience and his story of the reasons why he came to America. He fell in love with the United States from a college classroom in Aleppo. The experiences he'd had here and the experiences that his family was going through back in Syria as they were kind of weighing and wrestling with this question of whether they should leave as ISIS had overtaken their city. And so for months, I kind of couldn't get a story out of my mind. I kept thinking about it, going back to it. And ultimately it led to us talking about doing this book. So Riyadh serves as a translator for this ESPN story, which is about soccer, which you publish at ESPN.

Then you come to the ringer when we start in 2016 and you write about Riyadh and his experiences in America as a Syrian immigrant after the 2016 election where Trump obviously gets elected president. When do you realize you have enough here for a book? Because I feel like as journalists, we hear great stories all the time. And there's always this question is, is this a long form piece? Is this a piece at all? Is this a book? When did you hit the latter point? You know, I thought there could be a book from really from the very first time I talked to him.

It was in my mind as a possible book from that moment. I later, you know, I think that that piece I wrote for the Ringer after the 2016 election, which the day after the election, I went and sat with him and talked with him for hours. And that led to that story. That kind of led to kind of, I think, building the kind of trust that, you need in order for a book to happen. And it also led me to just learning more about his family because the book is not just about one man's experience of immigration in America. It's about, it's about these two brothers and Riyadh's brother Bashar's, his experiences is very different.

He chose the life that Riyadh left behind. He stayed in Syria, built a family, had a prominent career as a lawyer before ultimately being forced to leave. And, you know, without that story, it wouldn't be enough. You know, it would be just a long feature and a long feature where you feel like, ah, I think there's more here, but not really fully a book. And I think once I had knew that there were these two stories, these two brothers who were connected,

both of them captivating, that was when I thought. And that was when, you know, I would reach out to, I'd been having conversations with agents, you know, agents that will ask you, hey, do you have any book ideas? And it was at the time, That's a great, right, right. And it was it when I said there are these two brothers, when I made it not just about this one man's experience, but about both of them, that it felt like other people thought, oh, yeah, like this, there's really something here that this is definitely a book. So in this book, you're relying on both brothers' memories of very important parts of their life, most of which occur in Syria, at least at the beginning of the book.

It really reminded me of Tracy Kidder's book, Strengthen What Remains, where he's writing about a man who came to America from Burundi and kind of reconstructing this life back home. You need those memories to be very specific, very descriptive. How do you go about drawing them out of those two brothers? Yeah. You know, it's talking a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, and going over stories again and again and again and again and writing drafts. and realizing there's not enough here. I need to go back. We need to fill in these details.

And part of that, you know, this kind of speaks to some of the journalistic questions that went into this. It was journalists where we're taught. I certainly was taught in J-school and in early jobs in my career to keep a distance from your sources. You're taught time and again. You are not their friend. And that's a really tough thing to do, a lot. lot of times, especially at the ringer. I write a lot of stories that are about pretty traumatic moments in people's lives

and to feel like I have to keep that person at arm's length while I'm kind of telling the world about these intimate and difficult parts of their lives is a really tough thing to do and something I struggle with. And in this book, at some point early on, I realized that's just not going to happen here. Like, these are my friends. like I'm this is not a typical journalist source relationship and and so you know I've written for about Riyadh for the Ringer he's never read those pieces before they publish um because that feels like you don't show you don't show a piece to a source before you publish it but with this book

the first thing I did after I wrote the first draft was go to his restaurant and for about two weeks uh night after night just sit there and read it out loud to him and um and and And that really helped in terms of just filling in details and scenes. Like it would bring something up and he would be like, oh, yeah, let me tell you about this that happened and this and this. And then we would do something similar with Bashar. With Bashar was more difficult because he, you know, I don't speak Arabic. He does not speak much English. And so the interviews were always done through various forms of translation.

But Riyadh was present for a lot of those interviews with him so that he could be kind of a part of that process as well. And so all that to say, like bringing them into the storytelling process, allowing them a sense of agency and ownership over the story, which they did not use to say, like, I don't like this. It's unflattering. Please change it. They instead used to say, like, oh, let me give you these other details that I think really matter. And so, yeah, that was a conscious decision I had to make pretty early on. One thing that really struck me about the book, too, is one of your big challenges, apart from reporting on. scenes that you were not present at was explaining the Syrian Civil War, which is incredibly complex, even for those of us who try to read news articles about it from time to time. How did that the complexity of the war shape the way you thought about laying out the book? Yeah, it is. It's endlessly complex. And, you know, I think one thing about this book is it is a story about two brothers. It is not a, you know, it's rooted in the context of the Syrian Civil War, and I worked hard to,

you know, make that context, give it the texture that it needs. But it's not a book that's going to exhaustively explain the conflict because, you know, I'm not the writer for that book. I'm the writer for this intimate true story. And, but in order to do that, you know, a few things. I mean, hey, those trips that I took for Grantland and ESP in the magazine, were tremendously helpful. Because so much of that time was just spent sitting and talking with people at night in their homes or in restaurants about their experiences. These stories that I never wrote about for ESPN and that aren't in the book, but that really helped shape my understanding of the conflict.

And meeting people there who were helpful with the book. I had a friend who had been a translator for me while I was over there. who is, you know, the term we use as journalist is a fixer, but he's so much more than that. His name is Ahmed Ajouz. He basically was a co-reporter with me on that story, and he now, he's won an Emmy. He lives in Germany. He read the book in advance to give me a, you know, point out where I might be getting anything wrong. And so that was critical.

having, you know, getting eyes on it from of people who understand the conflict more deeply than me early on. But it was, you know, it was a challenge, finding that balance and finding the right way to try to present it. The structure of the book, too, I wanted to ask you a little bit about because you began with Riyadh. This is the brother who's well established in America in 2013 going back to Syria into a civil war. He lands in Turkey and he has this very nervy trip across the border. Why did you want to open the book that way? Probably just from a pure writerly point of view, just because I thought there was a lot of tension in it. Like I thought that moment was, you know, you have this man who at that point had been in America for 23 years, who was an American citizen, who's married to a woman from Tennessee, who has two sons who were both born here, and has this really nice.

life is built a business and and yet he feels this deep deep, deep pull back to the city of his birth in a moment in which that city is descending into pure chaos. And in a moment when the family of his birth is facing very real danger. And so Riyadh, without telling basically anyone except his most immediate family here in America, certainly without telling anyone in Syria, including his mother and his brother, makes the decision to get on a plane and go back and travel through, you know, through Syria Civil War to get to his childhood home to try to convince his family to leave. And I just felt like that was a moment that I hope showed the stakes of what he was kind of wrestling with. And that, you know, just purely as a writer who

wants to write scenes that are filled with tension that you hope draws a reader in, that felt like the moment that I hoped would do that. So writing books sounds romantic, but you've also got a day job. And you essentially, for some part of that, have to do two jobs at the same time. How did you manage that? It was really hard. And there were times when, you know, there were times when I didn't know if I could do it. I, you know, for the first, for the first while after I kind of got the book contract and was trying to write it, I just kept, I got, I had 18 months to write it.

And I kept telling myself, oh, that's, that's plenty of time, 18 months. That's, that's fine. And then three months go by and that's down to 15 months and five months go by. And it's down a little less. And then it's like, oh, I've really got to do this thing. Kind of a shock clock, isn't it? You know? Yeah.

Yeah. You can just slowly watching it take down. And really, I mean, honestly, it was trying to, trying to work on it almost every day throughout. But then for me, you know, and I'm sure every writer is different, there was a real sprint to the finish. There was a, there was a time near the end of the, as I was, the deadline was approaching where I just had to basically decide that, you know, interpersonally, like, my relationship with my wife matters. My relationship to anyone else does not matter. Like, everything else in life has to be just completely forgotten.

And all I can focus on is doing what I need to do at the ringer. We're working on, we're starting to work on the podcast, Sonic Boom, write it right at this time. And so I was working on that and finishing the book and completely ignoring everyone else. And you know, something about it, like now that that period is over, like I kind of romanticize it a little bit. Like there's something kind of like monastic about it. Like just who needs other people? Right, right. Just like pretending the outside world doesn't exist.

All you're focusing on is working on these projects. Like the clarity of purpose. It was kind of nice. But also it was, you know, I spent a lot of time pacing around wanting to vomit because I didn't know if I was going to get it all done. And functionally, is this happening like you setting an alarm for 445 in the morning? Are you doing this at night? Like when are you?

are you sort of shaping these these final pages? I would wake up, I would wake up at five and work on the book for a few hours. I'd like to, I'd like to write in like 80 minute chunks. So I kind of like block out Twitter and everything else and just try to get what I can get done for 80 minutes, take a little break and then do it again. And so I would do two of those 80 minutes sessions early.

the morning, then shift my focus to the podcast. And fortunately, at that time at the ringer, because I was doing the podcast, I was able to be pretty focused on that. So it was just like these two projects were the things that mattered. And then at the end of the day, after I had wrapped that off, then I would go back and do two more kind of 80-minute sprints with the book until, and I would go to bed really early, like around nine and do it again the next day. And then on weekends, it was sunup to sundown, nothing but the book for that period of time.

Sean Fennacy and the copy staff here at the Ringer will tell you, I have trouble letting go of a 1,200-word column. Like I'm fudson till midnight in the Google Doc and then sending that email to the East Coast editor saying, just two more things, if you could, before we get this up. That's a column. How does it feel to let go of a whole book? Excruciating. like I I you know I I sent my I sent my editor

this was the first time I've done this so there are all these like steps along the process where you don't really know if it's done yet you're like I'm not sure if I can ask for changes and so I would send these emails like hey are we still allowed to change things they don't want you to know they don't want you to right exactly they're trying to keep you in the dark they're like no it's fine it's fine don't worry um

And so I, but there was one, like there was one, basically a full paragraph that I wanted to change after the galleys had been printed. So like the early versions of the book that go out to media. There was one full paragraph that I wanted to change. And I sent them this email like begging for us to be able to change it. And I actually never followed up and never knew if they changed it until I got the final copy of the book. And I saw that they did. Which was a huge type of relief. I'm not sure I wanted to know.

Like I was terrified that the answer was no. And then when I saw it, it was a huge relief. But even now, like I've read, since I've gotten final copy, I've reread it. And there are just all these little things. I'm like, oh, man, I wish I had changed that. But ultimately, you know, the book exists as it is. And I feel proud of it. But it's, yeah, it's excruciating to let something like that go.

One more before we let you go. And this is kind of a where is your long form soul at right now question? Are you thinking, I can't wait. to do another book or are you thinking boy a tidy 3,500 word piece or a bunch of tidy 3,500 word pieces sounds real great right now? I mean, kind of both. I guess you should say the latter just for the ringer purpose. We'll edit anything out to get you in trouble. So it's just that's okay. Anyway, go ahead. No, I mean, I love them both. I love them all. I, you know, I love the stories I write for the ringer. I love the ways that I can follow my curiosity down, down a rabbit hole for a few

weeks and then do it again. I also really loved the process of sinking so deeply into one story and loved the experience of doing the narrative pot and eager to do another one of those. Like, I don't know. It's all fun. Like every day you know this as well as I do, every day that we can do this stuff for a living is pretty great. And so yeah, my heart's very much in all of it. The book is The Road from Raka, a story of Brotherhood, Borders, and Belonging. If you're not lucky enough to live near a cool indie bookstore like Parnassas,

you can buy it wherever books are sold. Jordan Ritter-Con, thanks for being here, man. Thanks so much, Brian. All right, time for David Shoemaker. Guess is a strain pun headline. Yay. Thank you, sir. Monday's headline about the plight of arcades during the coronavirus

was Super Mario Bothers. we got to vote for super it's so terrible even a week later it's just terrible we had to vote for super mario scrubbers and also donkey gone which i know you'll appreciate today's headline comes from mike david it's from the philadelphia daily news uh it involves the arrest of one jisleine maxwell you know who jeslaine maxwell is associate friend of geoffrey epstein was recently arrested for number of charges, including sex trafficking and enticement of minors. Now, the word we're looking for here is madam, madam, and you'll also remember that her arrest was somewhat shocking and surprising when it went down on July 2nd.

What was the Philadelphia Daily News's strained pun headline? Is it Madam or Madame? It's definitely Madam. Okay, okay. Um, uh, madam, is it mad or like Adam?

Like, I'm trying to think of what this could possibly be. Um, just remember it happening very suddenly. That's, that sort of should inform your, your thinking here. Suddenly,

uh, out of nowhere, um, Madam, Madam, Madam, Madame Tusses. Uh,

madam, I'm trying to think, I have no, Madam Butterfly, uh, Madam. Getting better. Fed's drop a... Madam Bomb?

Fed's drop a Madam Bomb. That's great. Fed's drop a madam bomb. He is David Shoebaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almeida, production magic by Erica Servantes. We're back Monday.

We have an interview with legendary sportscaster Diane K. Shaw. I can't wait to ask her about her career and what she made of the Washington football team story. They ran on the post the other day. I'm also going to continue to be annoying, David, and ask listeners to please share this pot on. social media. Say what you liked about it. Say what you didn't, as long as it involves David. We want to keep growing this thing and we would be grateful. And if you do that, David and I will be back with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later.