The Press Box - A ‘60 Minutes’ Breakdown. Plus, FS1’s Emmanuel Acho.

Episode Date: December 1, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker break down ‘60 Minutes’ in the feature We’ve Got Notes (2:25) before discussing publishing news, including Penguin Random House buying Simon & Schuster and Trump’s future memoir (30:00). Then, FS1’s Emmanuel Acho joins to discuss his career and his new book, Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man (51:40). 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

David, today is Cyber Monday. Kind of the sequel to Black Friday. What I want to know is what media goods and services are you planning on buying at a discounted rate? Wait, what are media goods and services? I was not... I don't know. Kind of old-fashioned way to say like a subscription or, you know... I should go. I should find some subscriptions in honor of Cyber Monday.

I don't know. I mean, everything... Listen, I just bought a house. My wife and I, I don't know. I can't speak for her, but I'm so frazzled all the time that if I think of something that I need, anything from like trail mix to a new 55 inch television, both of which I've bought in the past couple of weeks, I just buy it right then. If I were to wait for Cyber Monday, I would forget that I needed it all together and I'd be sitting there without a TV and starving.

So I don't know. I'm sure I'll find something to buy today. What are you going to buy? I was just being like lazy Black Friday shopper. where I'd be like, what if like the Criterion Collection has, you know, DVDs that are 10 cents today? Oh, they don't. Okay.

Well, you know. What if, uh, what if, you know, the Oxford University Press has some classic at one? Ah, it doesn't. All right. It wasn't so much as starting with the special. It was looking at things I already wanted to see if they were. You check your wish list. That's what I'm going to do right now.

We don't have on my wish list. Let's see if any of this stuff is for, no. Yeah. Have you renewed your bailers rivals.com subscription? today. A couple more years than New Yorker maybe to add on.

A couple of local newspapers, David, you'd like to support? I've escaped Baylor's phone calls for so long. Now they're going to know how to find me. This is a great, Brian.

Coming up on today's show, we've got notes on last night's episode of 60 minutes. We'll chew on two big stories from the book world, plus FS1's Emmanuel ad show on his new book, all that and more on the press box,

a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello Media Consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. David, we have a new feature where we catch up with TV news shows we haven't seen in a while. And we offer some production notes, some feedback, if you will. We did Meet the Press and Chuck Todd last week. And when we saw that 60 Minutes had landed Christopher Krebs, the integrity of the vote protecting cyber security official Donald Trump had fired,

we had to check in on that show. Here's the way last night's episode of, 60 minutes began. I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Nora O'Donnell. I'm Scott Pelly.

Those stories tonight on 60 Minutes. My first question, I had to go back and check on this. Does Scott Pelley get the hammer every week? I know he had for the last couple of weeks. I went back and watched some of them. I thought it used to be mixed up a little bit more. But Pelley's got a great old-fashioned news anchor voice, which I think is absolutely perfect

because I think the greatest compliment and maybe the greatest, the biggest, you know, redline note that I have about this entire show is it's very old fashion. It feels very old fashion. Yes. And I feel all old television shows

are having this identity crisis as we lurch toward a post-TV world. Do we cling to our old-fashionedness or do we try to modernize the place and chase younger viewers? viewers who are just on TikTok all day anyway. My advice is always, don't change a thing. Yeah.

Cling to those TV on TV viewers you still have and just try to hold on to as many as you possibly can. All you're going to do is piss people off if you try to change the show. It's sort of the Harper's Magazine of Television News. Or like no matter how fresh the content is, it still kind of feels like it comes in a casserole dish. or actually you know what I mean that's that feels a little bit and so I mean it's like the New Yorker right I mean the New Yorker is something is a magazine that like we talk about uh and not I mean just with I mean I don't think anybody's put off by the New Yorker at least not in our normal circles of conversation

and yet it is deliberately it deliberately it deliberately static in terms of presentation right the same painted covers I mean literally some of the same I mean they echo their I mean they pay homage to like previous painted covers that nobody gets the homage, right? I mean, it's like they, it is, it is a, it is deliberately kind of retro. And then everything up to like, you know, the type setting and the font choices and stuff like that, you know, but there's, I thought that I, but I do think the question that you raised is the integral one. I mean, how do you, once you evolve or once you change, once you modernize, do you become

just as disposable as everything else we would, you know, compare it to? Did you like the old school touch where before the. segment started, the correspondent was sitting in front of a thing that looked like a magazine on TV? Yes. It looked like a magazine. I mean, right. We used the phrase news magazine to describe news programs such as this.

But this was almost a literal interpretation of that where you get the cover of the magazine, right? The show opens with like a bullet point. Here's an article and why you're why you're going to want to. read it for each piece, right? And then we go to the, and then they do the 60 minutes. I mean, the introduction of the author of the anchors, as you mentioned. And maybe the most telling thing about that, the scene that you described, sitting in front of the CGI magazine. And by the way, I love the fact that they have employed a graphics department to make it feel more old, you know? It's like when I Photoshop something as like an old paper background, you know,

I mean, it's just so, it's so great. But they, but that they, not only is he's sitting in front of the magazine, but the producer credit is bigger than anything else on the screen, right? I mean, like, how wonderfully old school is that? It's like, this isn't even like Anderson Cooper or Scott Pelley or whoever taking, like standing in the spotlight. Certainly they're there, but right next to them in like size 64 font is the name. I mean, even a magazine wouldn't do.

The magazine wouldn't put an edited by Brian Curtis that big. Although I guess they do put the author and then they'll put like the photographer just as big or something. But it's, but it is a very deliberate choice. I felt like a subscription card was going to fall out of those things. Can I write my address in here and take advantage of your generous offer? Yesterday's first segment, David, was a trademark 60 minute segment. The big get. Yeah.

Every reporter in Washington wanted an interview with Christopher Krebs. We got him. Listen to this question from correspondent Scott Pelley as he sets up the segment. Krebs, a lifelong Republican, was confirmed unanimously by the Senate. His agency, known by its acronym SISA, helped secure computer systems anywhere that a security breach could be catastrophic. Nuclear power plants, for example, and the election hardware in all 50 states. Why are you speaking to us? I want to go ahead and answer that on behalf of Christopher Krebs.

He's speaking to you because you worked like hell to book him. You competed with all those New York Times reporters and, I don't know, Chuck Todd and whomever else to get Christopher Krebs. Because that's what you do. Your 60 minutes and part of your value is that you can get those people and give us the first glance at man or woman in the news. Yeah. Why are you speaking to it? you wouldn't stop calling me.

Yeah. Yes. I mean, listen, there is a, there is a, there's certainly a value to an institutional program like 60 Minutes for that being your first, I mean, the place if you want to go do one interview or do a series of interviews and have that be the beginning. It's a place like 60 Minutes has an incredible value. There's a certain amount of value that's built into the format that 60 Minutes help create, but they're not, it's not exclusive to 60 Minutes. minutes anymore, right? I mean, just sitting with, in this case, Scott Pelley, and having an intelligent conversation, chopped, diced up as it may be, and looking sober and together does a lot to sort of counteract. Well, I think the first wave of criticism had this been like a New York

Times interview, right? Or some sort of New York Times op-ed. You can see that he's a serious person. He is, Scott Pelley does the work of giving you his background in the tech world without him having to do it for himself. I mean, there's, there is a, there is a certain gravity that this interview imbued upon Chris Crabs

deserved, obviously, that, that the format allows for, and I'll go further. The stodginess of the format actually helps in this case. Totally 100% agree.

And the stodginess is not just, hey, this television show's been around for a few decades, stodginess. It's a kind of studied stodginess. Mm-hmm. Like, we are going to speak in this very deliberate way as I narrate the story.

We are going to ask you questions that are almost staged directions. This is the one that struck me. Pelley is talking about the tweet that essentially fired Christopher Krebs, tweet from Donald Trump. Listen to how he sets this up. The president tweeted after that statement, quote, The recent statement by Chris Krebs on the security of the 2020 election was highly inaccurate in that there were massive improprieties and fraud. Do you remember what the president said at the end of that tweet?

Oh, I was terminated. Is that? Yes, I recall that. Yes, I recall that I was fired by the president at the end of the tweet. Yeah. And of course, Scott Pelling knows that. Of course, he knows we know that. But as you say, there's something.

I don't know. There's something valuable. There's something that increases your belief not only in 60 minutes, but in the information being imparted to say it in that deliberate way. Yes. I mean, and listen, the camera would cut to Scott Pelly holding his glasses, pen, glasses pensively and sort of chewing on the earpiece at times to show you exactly how you were supposed to be reacting in a very serious way to what was being said. You mentioned the beats of the interview. I mean, you could, a successful parody of a 60 Minutes interview would not be even remotely funny, but it would be, it's fairly easy to do, right? I mean, it's just, there's a question, there's an answer. Sometimes there's a follow-up, but usually it goes right into the sort of connective tissue

where the interviewer just leads you by holding your hand to the next question, right? Or to the next bit. It's like, I mean, this is very, I guess this is what this podcast is for. This is very personal to me and you. But this isn't magazine writing so much as like how we were taught to write an essay, how we were taught to write a sourced essay in Mr. Reed's 10th grade English. English class where you have a quote and then you have behind that is the index card that leads you to the next index card with a quote on it, right? Like this is this is exactly how the beats go.

And there's and just one thing for that it's so hard to put into words. I'm not going to do it justice, but there's something so specifically 60 minutes about the cut, the way that they cut from the interview to B-roll where they let the ambient background noise of the B-roll come in for like one second before the narrator's voice, before the interviewer's voice comes in to sort of lead you to the next bit. Do you know what I'm talking about? Absolutely. It's like you can hear the birds chirping. You can hear the sound of people walking down 1600, you know, Pennsylvania Avenue or whatever. And then you get your place just for a second before you hear Scott Pelly saying, and that wasn't his last day at the White House. You know, what I mean, it's, it's just so specific to

the show. And I, and it's amazing. Did you ever see the John Oliver bit? where he showed how 60 minutes essentially did quote fishing. Oh, yeah. Their correspondent would say, so you're saying the president is a total dodo. And then the interviewee would say, I'm saying the president is a total dodo. And they do that all the time.

I thought that was really revealing when Donald Trump actually posted the whole Leslie Stahl interview that she did with him right before the election, not that Leslie Stahl did anything wrong. But when you're doing an interview that is sliced and diced, you can ask the same question, like 19 different ways in a way that Savannah Guthrie when she was interviewing Trump live on television

could not do because you're just really looking for what do you think? A minute of sound, a minute and a half, two minutes, maybe max from that person and all the rest is going to be narration. So you're right, you are leading them to the next note card and to the next note card. And it's like

quote from subject goes here. And you want to get moments of emotion, you want to get all that stuff. But really, you are telling a story in a super deliberate way, and that's how they interview people. Well, there's something slightly reassuring about that John Oliver segment, too, because they left in all of the fishing, right? It wasn't just the quote that resulted from it. I mean, I do think that they're in, in any form of journalism now, but particularly, I think, in television journalism, one of the great, one of the, the difficulties in the modern age

is how protective, self-protective your subjects are going to be, right? Like, every sit has to be, first of all, it has to be a complete sentence. You can't take me out of context. You know, if you answer a question just sort of casually, you can easily take that out of context, right? But if you answer deliberately with restating the question and making sure you get every, as much information as possible, you got your bases covered a little bit more. One more note on the 60 minutes gatekeeping and their ability to land a big guest like

Krebs. some of it is the style of 60 minutes, some of it is the reputation of the show. Isn't some of it also the fact that 60 minutes follows football? And that for our whole lives, like I was watching that Buccaneers Chiefs game on CBS yesterday afternoon, 60 minutes is plugged like crazy throughout the late afternoon NFL game. And there's something just super logical in American life is like, I'm going to watch football on Sunday. And when football's over, I'm going to watch 60 minutes.

It's like, well, it's like you eat, you have your dessert for dinner, but you have to have your broccoli for dessert. But yes, there is a logical connection between the two. It does feel like a little bit of a palate cleanser or something. And I mean, it's a sort of old-fashioned connectivity that I don't even think I, in my, you know, my stodgy best really understand. You know, it's like when, well, when CBS signed Letterman, and there was like whether or not I was going to conflict with nightline was the biggest question.

Am I, do I have that right? You're the expert here. I mean, I don't, the connectivity between entertainment, be it sports or general, you know, entertainment or otherwise and news is something of a bygone era, right? I mean, it's a, it is a, especially in the modern world where you just push play on whatever streaming system you choose to indulge in.

And yet, the connectivity between CBS CBS sports, which is not to overuse this word, but I have been watching

the Great British Baking show, the stodgiest of football broadcasts segueing directly into 60 minutes, it does feel sort of right. Can we talk about Scott Pelley's face for a minute? Okay, yeah. So Chuck Todd of Meet the Press

had smiley face when he was doing a contentious interview. Like, I'm actually smiling. I really am over here. Jake Tapper and Tucker Carlson have frown face when they're doing an interview. Scott Pelly had curious face. He was sort of halfway between Chuck Todd and Jake Tapper. Yeah.

As you mentioned, he was chewing on his glasses. Yeah. Kind of nodding ever so slightly. I mean, it was actually an incredibly studied TV interviewer face. Yes. It's one of the great aspects. I mean, it's not exclusive to 60 minutes, obviously, but you see it on 60 minutes. minutes a great deal. As you described it, like the Trump interview, there's probably not a lot

of aha moments. There's probably, I mean, the idea that the interview was actually learning something in real time is it probably never happens or rarely happened. Certainly it would be hard to imagine them reacting so perfectly when they learned a thing. It's probably a bad, if anything, it's a way to sort of, a trained way to react to finally get. getting the quote that you know you're going to use, right? When you ask the question three different ways, you get the quote, you chew on your glasses and sort of nod, but you're really just nodding to yourself and to your producer. It's like, you know, we just got it.

Second segment last night was another classic 60 Minutes go-to, which is a story that has already been told in print, but 60 Minutes thinks it's worthy, so they go re-report it and present it to an audience who hadn't seen it before. in this case it's Anderson Cooper on the slave ship Clotilda, which was discovered at the bottom of a river in Alabama. Cooper went out and talked to the descendants of some of the slaves that were brought over. It talks about Africa Town, the community founded by former slaves in Mobile, Alabama. He deals with the legacy and the evils of slavery.

Really enjoyed that segment. This is another one I'm watching. I'm like, this is absolutely what 60 Minutes was put on this earth to do. Yeah, I mean, Anderson Cooper's, I'm glad that he had a segment on the show because in some ways he's the he is their attempt at modernizing right i mean he's not the only he's i don't know i don't think he's the most recent edition of the show although he might be but he's you know when he was when he first signed up that was like you know inviting new a new some fresh blood into the elks lodge you know i mean it's it was it was seen as a rather snapper

yeah exactly who has gray hair and has been on television for decades yeah um and yeah i mean and this This segment, again, could not have had, it could not have been more sort of deliberately structured if it were a parody. I mean, it had the sort of the panel interview, you know, where you get six, I don't know, were they all residents of Africa Town or that general area, but certainly people who were invested in its future, you know, interspersed with the woman from the Smithsonian. And then again, intercut with actual footage of Anderson Cooper scuba diving. to ship's wreckage, although nothing happened in that. I mean, he openly said they couldn't see anything with the camera. Certainly didn't gain anything from him going underwater, but they did cut that in a few times to sort of remind you,

just sort of place you in the story. And again, you said it was, you know, you correctly said this was already, this story's been told in print. This is what television can do. It can show you what the shallows of the, of the, you know, Alabama coast look and feel like. sort of give you a little bit of, you know, placement. One thing I really liked about this segment was it was not the now ubiquitous Dateline mystery slash long form podcast thing where it's about a murder or a crime that has

been committed and what's going on and who did it and are we incurring new evidence. It actually had some historical heft and weight to it rather than being the kind of silly true crime genre. So I just appreciate that. And that's one thing I like about 60 Minutes and their old school approach. Wasn't so high, David, on the third segment in which correspondent Bill Whitaker did a piece on Late Late Show host James Corden. Now, 60 Minutes airs on CBS. The Late Late Show also airs on CBS. So if Christopher Krebs was a big get, this was like the opposite. This was, we walked down the hall and James Corden was standing there and we just interviewed him for a piece. yeah absolutely early on bill whittaker at the very beginning i guess bill whittaker introduces this

segment with which is sort of a 60 minute staple uh of you know maybe you haven't heard of james maybe you're one of the people that's heard of james cordon but maybe you're one of the people who hasn't heard of james cordon and you're just sort of like this is a this is a i actually have the sound can we just play the sound because i want people to appreciate here here is setting up the james cordon segment some of you may know james cordon as the frisky funny British host of the Late Late Show, one of Viacom's CBS's own. But if you are not one to stay up past 1230 a.m., then maybe you're one of the hundreds of millions who have caught Corden on his YouTube channel. Thank you. It makes everybody watching feel a little bit better because, in fact,

everyone has heard of James Gordon. I would assume most people, I mean, I guess maybe some of the 60 minutes audience hasn't, but thank you for making me feel included either way. Early on, He points out that this is, that we're five years in to James Corden's run hosting the late show, which has made me feel old or made me feel like a lot of time has passed in a very, what feels like a very brief window. But so you're left sort of wondering why at the five year mark are we even, are we watching this, right? I mean, carpal karaoke is years into its online significance. And again, even if you're slow to respond, why, why is, and you know, maybe the traditional. response would be there's something personal in James Corden's life that he's going to talk about today, right? Is he, you know, adopting children from all over the world? Is there some cause that he

wants to raise awareness for? But then you find out pretty quickly, no, it's none of those things. It's that he has a Netflix show coming out or a Netflix movie coming out. That is the occasion for appearing on 16. I would have even accepted James Corden after four years of Trump, because Remember when James Corden was floated as he was going to replace Stephen Colbert when Colbert was struggling? And then Trump happened and all of a sudden Stephen Colbert's ratings went through the roof. And so how does somebody like James Corden who is, I think, happy to be political? He kind of says that in this segment. Deal with something like Donald Trump.

Does he want to make it the topic of the show? Does he want to be like funny guy singing in the car? Those are interesting questions that you can ask about your fellow CBS employee. that really didn't get asked here in a substantial way or teased out here in a substantial way. You mentioned carpal karaoke. I have to play this sound because this is when Whitaker got into

trying to describe that segment. This is like a cultural phenomenon. I just, yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm, you're making me feel incredibly British by, uh, not being able to even look you in the eye, uh, during a compliment or any kind of. of recognition of success. Gordon kind of saved it there, but Bill Whitaker says this is like a cultural phenomenon.

The equivalent would be us having Bill on this podcast, be like, Bill, would you say the BS report is kind of like a cultural phenomenon for the BS podcast? Now, like, we need to tell Bill Simmons that, like, we need to pronounce that. Like, come on. I don't even care that it's a CBS, CBS thing. I don't even get into the ethics of this. it's just mostly a waste of time. Speaking of ethics,

did you have any issue with James Gordon appearing on this Netflix movie with Nicole Kidman and Merrill Street and then presumably interviewing them on a show at some point in the not too distant future? Are there any red, are you throwing up any red flags here? Are you free and clear if you're hosting a late night show? I think I'm going to throw my challenge flag at Merrill Street

appearing on 60 minutes to tell us that James Gordon was preternaturally talented. Speaking of a pageant, by numbers, quote, we could have almost guessed that's exactly the adjective she would use to describe James Gordon. There's also a really funny note at the end of this. They're talking about the Netflix movie and James Gordon says, all these doubters said that once I started a talk show, I would never act again. So I did this movie to prove them wrong. I'm sorry, can we get the 60 minutes I team to find these doubters? I think that was your agent. There was like, you should take this job. Now,

listen, there's not going to be a lot of Broadway opportunities because they're going to be working 52 weeks a year. But, yeah, I mean, it's a great gig if you can get it. When we were kids, 60 minutes ended. Wait, before we get to the ending, we have to talk about what goes between the segment and the ending, which is the hard cut. Every segment ends with the sort of aspirational, inspirational summing up of what's come before. It's almost like you're, I would be willing to wager that almost, that like, 75% of the, the closing quotes from these interviews are actually the first quote that's given in the interview.

It's just this sort of like a little bit of a calling a shot, you know, redressed up as the ending. But it always, it's the sort of all-encompassing, bringing everything together, close, you know, ending quote of the piece. And then the 60 minutes, the tick, the TikTok, the stopwatch. Tick, tick, tick, tick.

If that, that is effective, especially when you're coming back from commercials, when you're watching this in real time, like, oh, now I know I'm supposed to be watching again. This isn't a commercial that looks like a talk show or whatever. But that's kind of grandfathered in. If the press box, if that hadn't existed in the press box used the TikTok to go between every segment, I guarantee 90% of our tweets would be people complaining about it.

I'm sorry, let's go to the ending. No, I mean, Andy Rooney, when we were kids, was such a towering cultural figure that Chris Almeida had never even heard of him or just had no idea who he was. if they tried to revive the Andy Rooney segment, do we have an idea about who modern Andy Rooney would be? Well, Lewis Black sort of did it on the Daily Show. I wouldn't be shocking to see them kind of try something that obvious. Who would be a good complainer?

Well, our own Larry Wilmore would be really our own. The Ringer Podcast Network's own Larry Wilmore would be fantastic at it. Oh, yeah. I would watch. I'm trying to think of who is intelligent enough. who has the ability to be sort of surly without being, you know, while being totally approachable at the same time and smart and smart enough to do it every week. Totally. And the Rooney segment was kind of a Twitter segment before Twitter.

Yeah. It was this little contained thing that you waited for, even though it was just like Andy Rooney complaining about how many peanuts were in his mixed nuts or some stupid thing like that. but just put a nice little comic capper on the show. It would be like, I mean, it's basically like Adam Carolla schick now, although I'm not sure if politically he'd meet the criteria. Maybe we just need to, maybe we just need a Times op-ed page style alternating,

alternate, like, you know, merry-go round of, you know, it's like the coldest take or whatever. Everybody comes on to give their weekly complaint. All right, David, let's do the Overward Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious. 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. David, did you happen to see that Donald Trump press conference where he was raging about the election,

raging specifically at CBS's Jeff Mason, all while sitting at a weirdly small desk? Yes, I did. It was a great look for him. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. Couldn't NPR find anyone else for its tiny desk concert series. Does Trump even play an instrument? Thanks to Austin, George Tom Cooper and Terry Cote for that one. In other elections stealing news, the state of Michigan, David, certified its votes last Monday, finally and officially handing the state to Joe Biden. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, Biden's won in Michigan so many times he's legally required to change his name to Ohio. state. Thanks to Mark Tracy,

Will Holland, and Brennacht. We would have also accepted Penn State after this weekend's results. And finally, hopefully everyone here had a very special and very safe pandemic Thanksgiving. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write. Bringing a deadly disease to people with little to no immunity is a very authentic Thanksgiving reenactment. Thanks to Jake and Nigel D.

Grieves. If you offered us a reminder that things have all. always been really terrible here. Happy holidays and congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, let's do the notebook dump. A couple of stories from the world of books I wanted to talk to you about. First, Penguin Random House, which is the biggest publishing house in the U.S.,

has bought Simon & Schuster, which is the third biggest publishing house in the U.S. For $2 billion, creating a kind of mega, mega, mega, super duper publishing. conglomerate. You used to work in books. How big a deal is this in that world? It's a huge deal. I mean, it's absolutely enormous. The, the, and the, you know, articles about this, people say that we went from five giant, you know, huge publishers in book publishers in New York to four if this, if this actually comes to pass. I got to tell you, the publishing world feels a lot smaller than even that would almost make you feel. I mean, it's not four Penguin Random Houses squaring off, you know, bidding on every book project.

It felt, you know, it was a small world even before Penguin and Random House got together. It just, you know, it was as much as as much sort of assimilation as, you know, accumulation as I saw during, you know, when I was working in publishing, I certainly never expected this sort of like gigantic, you know, merger sort of situations going on with the biggest name publishers. This is, Penguin Random House getting together, I guess, sort of set the table for anything. Anything's possible.

But this is, this does feel like a big deal. The name Simon and Schuster doesn't mean a ton to you. This is the publishing house of Stephen King. It is Doris Kern's Goodwin. It is most recently Mary Trump. The second thing I wanted to tease out of you, David,

is this whole idea of publishing autonomy. Jonathan Karp, very, very well-known editor who runs Simon and Chuster. Tells the New York Times. One of the rare, I should say one of the, one of the, in this, in the modern age, the, the, what is his title CEO? One of the rare CEOs that comes from the editorial side and not the, not like a business side. Tells the New York Times, and I'm quoting here, Simon and Schuster would maintain its editorial independence and would continue to publish the same volume of books under its new ownership. will all still be competing against each other.

Now, does that literally mean that even if Penguin Random House and Simon and Schuster are in the same corporate structure, that if you, David Shoemaker, have a book proposal out there, that they will compete with each other to bid for your book? I feel like I'm going to get this wrong. My understanding is that when Penguin, when Random House and Pengers, when got together, this was, I mean, this is obviously the biggest question. My understanding was that they sort of had a little internal deliberation. People, they, they, they kind of, bid against each other on an in-house sort of way, but that the, but that they, they weren't going, they weren't actively bidding to the agent against each other. Um, but I could have that

totally wrong. I mean, one can imagine where whether or not, I mean, if that's the case, that's problematic, right? I mean, how do you, like, it certainly puts a different, uh, it changes the bidding process, right? I mean, if, if, if two or three of what would have once been the most motivated buyers are putting a group bid in, um, that, that will drive the prices down. Um, but one, one can imagine where even if that's not the case, even if they are actively bidding against each other how some sort of implicit collusion is is inseparable from the process, right? Yeah. Like at any publisher, the publisher, the person in charge of the division, be it Simon & Schuster

or, you know, a smaller imprint or whatever, is generally has a green light up to a certain dollar figure to make a bid. Right now, if, if Barack Obama's book, you know, gets submitted, everybody up to up the totem pole all the way to the top is aware of this before anybody talks money. But if you bring, if you bring in a first-time novel, a first-time author, a novel that kind of has the potential to be a big breakout book, you know, the CEO doesn't necessarily know whose desk this is on or whatever. And the publisher of the imprint, but beneath the CEO will have a green light to bid up to, let's say, a million dollars on it, right? Like, that's just a totally arbitrary number. Once it goes

to a million dollars in a cent or a million and one dollars, ever you want to say it, then they have to get the okay from the person at the top of the food chain, right? The person who's running the show, they have to, I mean, this becomes a conversation. So whoever this conversation is with, once a book gets to a certain point, the people from the penguin imprint, the random house imprint, the Simon and chooser imprint, all presumably have to go to the same person to get a green light to bid a certain amount of money, right? So it's, so, I mean, the process is going to be fraught if you're even trying to maintain I mean, once it, who knows if there's going to be any, you know, if the Biden administration is going to okay this sale.

But once, but if it passes and no one in the government objects to it at all, I mean, I just presume if you, if you assume that there's not going to be any objection, I don't know there's any reason to pretend that you're going to be competing within, against yourself. But if you were to say that, it seems pretty unrealistic. Because for writers, that's the nub of this. And if people don't know how this works, when you, when you're, when you're, writing a book, you write a book proposal and then an agent sends it around to all these publishing houses. And part of what you're counting on is that hopefully there'll be more than one publishing house interested in it, which is good for writers, because that then helps drive up the price, makes your manuscript worth more. David Cune, who's a literary super agent, he's kind of two agents what Jonathan Karp is to publishers, had this quote. He said,

there are projects that would have sold for $150,000 years ago that might not sell at all now to the Big Five, whereas the book that would have sold for $500,000 might go for a million. They would rather go in bigger for the thing that they have the most consensus on. So what he's saying the result of this conglomeration is that that sort of mid-level project is going to be, it's going to be hard for that author who does not have a huge track record to command that kind of advance. But if you are Stephen King, whomever you are, you are going to get a huge advance because they're almost doubling down on surefire projects like movie studios or doubling down on summer movies.

But the movie studio is an interesting thing to mention because, you know, one of the things that makes a book more of a surefire project is the sale of film rights, right? I mean, if you're not every novelist, I mean, is that becomes a big film. I mean, a lot of times the book comes out and proves itself in the marketplace, before the film rights are sold, and that's a deliberate decision. But certainly sometimes the film rights are sold before the book, you know, goes to auction or whatever. And that's a, that's one way that a novel that maybe doesn't have a well-known author

can get some traction. All that's to say, yeah, you can see how, I mean, there's some books that are going to sell themselves. 100% of the sales are going to, and we can talk about the Trump book. That might be one of those cases where the publisher, might not have a whole lot to do with whether it sells, you know, X copies or X plus Y copies, whatever. But for the most part, it makes a certain kind of sense that it's easier to sell, it's easier to pay $10 million for Stephen King's next several books. And we can,

we think with our brilliant marketing and publicity department, we can drive up his sales by 10%. And that 10% is more of a, is more of a profit than, and, you know, doing fairly well on a book selling even 50,000 copies would do. It is very comparable to movies to me, where you're just trying to take as much chance out of the equation as you can. I don't like books that are nowhere near as sort of stratified as the movies are. You can still walk into a bookstore and like, here's a book about Egyptology, which I actually bought the other. Here's a book about the Texas Rangers. Here's a book about a really small but interesting sports story.

Those books still get published. But maybe that sort of makes the extremes a little more extreme. Before we get off books, I want to talk to you about Trump's memoir, because this has come up over the last few weeks. Donald Trump is going to leave the presidency, we think, and he's going to try to write a presidential memoir. One, because every president does this just about when they leave office. And number two, because Donald Trump is already like the James Patterson. of nonfiction authors. He writes books all the time

because it's a really easy way for Donald Trump. Yeah, but I mean, James Patterson, well, okay, go on. I don't know who that's more insulting to. No, that puts a lot on James Patterson that probably he doesn't deserve, but go ahead. Donald Trump, though, is different from even a president like George W. Bush, who leaves the White House with pretty low approval ratings

and a lot of hate in the American public because Donald Trump is just sort of his own category. So this question has come up Is what's going to happen? Are book publishers just going to happily publish a Donald Trump memoir? Are they going to sort of head and eat that? Are they going to throw out this gigantic advance that that kind of book is going to take? Even if it doesn't get a hundred million that was that we saw that in the other day.

A hundred million dollars, yeah. That was that was the page six, you know, number that was floated. How was all that going to work? Well, okay, first, one thing, because it's material about James Patterson and Donald Trump is that, I'm sorry I took this thing. Whatever you want to think about James Patterson, he cares very deeply about publishing companies, the bookstore industry, independent bookstores, and maybe more important than all that, readers.

I mean, the people that are buying his book, he constantly signals and helps financially all of those institutions. Even frankly, he helped the book publishing industry by being published in the book publishing industry when he could probably make just as much money or more self-publishing and we'll get into that discussion, I think, in just a second. But how is this going to work? We have to say it's against the backdrop of the sort of Me Too movement, and more recently, and that's spread to, you know, certain authors being dropped by publishing houses and most recently to Jordan Peterson, to what Penguin?

Was it Penguin employees kind of protesting their publication, their employer's publication of Jordan Peterson, who is a, yeah, Canadian, there's no way to describe him. Men's Rights philosopher,

I see Chris Alameda is like, is looking sideways. If you have a better way to describe him, please. There's these, and, man, I mean, I guess I'm a couple of different minds of this. I mean, listen, my first job, at my first publishing job, we published a lot of conservatives, you know, kind of deliberately smart conservatives,

sort of George Wigels of the world, Neil Ferguson. Oh, we published Thomas Sowell, so I mean, who's, who's, you know, become a much bigger figure sort of in the conservative ecosystem than he even was at the time. And, you know, at my last job, you know, we, Bill O'Reilly, you know, probably paid my Christmas bonus every year. You know, we published all the, the O'Reilly stuff. And, and there was a certain sort of, it's the other end of the spectrum from those authors I mentioned before, but there was a certain sort of, just sort of smirking kind of shoulder shrug that everybody up and down the food chain gave, you know, I mean, the book was going to get published. That's what you always, say someone's going to publish this.

And it would make money. Yeah. And publishing, wasn't publishing Bill O'Reilly means that you're sitting, that you get a more, you get a better meeting, a better lunch with the buyer from Barnes & Noble or from Amazon.

You get more attention from them because you have this thing that they want, that they're going to sell. And if at that meeting you can sell, and I have this great novel by Chris Almeida that, you know, he's a first time writer. You should check it out. Then maybe that's, you know,

that that's the sort of end that is, that, you know, benefits everybody. at the publishing house. But the question here, right, is does the sort of philosophy that got you through publishing Bill O'Reilly when he was still on Fox News, publishing killing Gerald Ford or whatever book he had written at the time, is that philosophy going to carry over to Donald Trump? Well, and this is why I say, this is why the Jordan Peterson thing sort of may be uncomfortable

because I understand the sentiment, but I'm not sure, I'm not sure that I understand that I abide the logic. The conversation overall is sort of this platforming issue that we're having that we have about the internet, right? It's the, it's the, you know, the hosting versus curating sort of argument, right? I mean, if you are, if you as a publisher see yourself as merely a platform for a book to be pub, to get a book into the world, which I'm going to be honest, probably the people the very at top of the food chain do somewhat see it that way, right?

Well, all we're doing is just convey. this book from, you know, the ghostwriter's hands to the, to the, to the, you know, checkout lane at Barnes & Noble, then it's easy to see why there's less of a moral conundrum, right? But if you see yourself as kind of an active part of the creative process, which everybody beneath the very top people at the publishing house do, right? I mean, these are true believers who, by and large, are underpaid compared to their, you know, people in their demographic who have chosen to be in book publishing because they, care about books, a lot of them.

You can, it's very clear that they would see themselves as, uh, as, as, as, as, as part of this process, you know, as editors, even designers, marketers, marketers, everything. And you're kind of complicit in whatever the product is. You're part of the process. You've opted in the industry and you're, and, and, and, and what, what comes out is on your hands, sort of. Um, it. Um, it's like the New York Times Tom Cotton opet, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and that, and that, and that, I work at the New York Times. this thing is getting published in the New York Times. So why am I going to, why am I going to stand for that?

Why am I not going to get mad at that? Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's sort of the difference between like linking to it and publishing it. When it's come through the editorial process, you know, the editor has to take, you know, has to admit a part of it. I mean, it has to admit that they're, they're, you know, they were a part of it seeing print.

And, and yeah, it's very similar. It's sort of like if Trump's, instead of a bookstore, a podcast, right? Donald Trump podcast. nobody would be mad at Spotify. No Spotify employees, well, I mean, there wouldn't be a ton of Spotify employees staging a protest if they carried it on Spotify, if it's also available on Apple Music and wherever else.

But if this was a co-production, like the Michelle Obama podcast, there'd probably be some static from inside the house, right? I mean, this is the conversation that is going on. Now, the arguments against it, there is the deep-seated moral arguments that I kind of alluded to, But the things you actually get, like, in that Times piece coming from the grand old people of publishing are a little bit, a little bit harder, I think, to reconcile.

There was a quote from Peter Osnos, who is a wonderful man and a brilliant publisher. Or he says, this is a political pamphlet, not a book. It hasn't been subjected to any measure of quality or accuracy. Now, listen, Peter Osnos does care very much about those. I'm not sure that if you, if this was published by the conservative imprint at a major house, I know that they would do their jobs. I know that they would work hard on the book, but I don't think there'd be any presumption from the, from the, from the buying public that this book had been subjected to some measure

of quality and accuracy befitting, you know, a presidential history. I mean, you know, a history of the Civil War or something, you know. And then there's a later quote by, and Simon & Schuster's own Dana Kennedy, apologies if I said that incorrectly. She says, if she were to publish the Trump book, the quote is, I'd have to be satisfied that he met Simon and Schuster's overall standards for publishing a book, which is that the book, be honest, fair, and balanced. We'd want to know that he would be willing to be edited and submit to a rigorous fact-checking

process. Okay, well, publishers don't fact-check their own books for the most part. Maybe they would institute that for Donald Trump. I can say, and I'm not going to mention the name, but I, at one point in my publishing career, was the editor of a book by a conservative. I'm trying to think of the right word, conservative thinker. And it was a sort of...

I thought you were going to say firebrand. No, he was an older gentleman who the book was about the environment. And it was a little bit, you know, apocryph, not apocryphal, it was a little bit, you know, it was political. It was slanted, whatever.

I paid a, at that point, very well-known, liberal thinker in the same field to proofread the book, basically. I gave some money to this writer to say, like, tell me everything that needs to be changed. Tell me everything that you would take exception to. Tell me all the problems with this book. And we used that in the editorial process. But that was going over and above, right?

I mean, that was the, that kind of thing could happen, not necessarily a contracted part of the process. But my bigger question is, Simon & Schuster's overall standards for publishing a book, it's hard to really write standards, and certainly this quote does not give you standards, that would disallow President Trump's memoir and somehow allow any of the great memoirs of our time. I mean, we don't have to talk about a million little pieces to talk about the fact that, like, fictionalization of one's history is part of memoir writing, right? I mean, it's a literary tool. And I'm not making the case for President Trump because, you know, Dave Eggers imagined his son, I mean, his brother

waking up in their childhood and floating above the bed and talking to him. But, you know, it's going to be, there's, Trump doesn't abide by anybody's rules and you're not going to be able to write any rules that really, that, that prohibit his publication almost, you know. And it's hard to imagine that anyone's going to bid money to get into a mud fight with him about whether or not the election was rigged and whether or not that you have to say it in a certain way to get it past the censors. You know, I mean, I just can't imagine what the process would possibly be outside of someone at the very top saying, no, we're going to publish him and we'll handle it up here. I mean, I just don't know. So wouldn't he do like his son, Donald Trump Jr.

did with his most recent book and just self-publish it and take all the money and not have to worry about some fake news liberal book editor telling him that he cannot lie about the election and lie about all these other things in his book? Well, Don Jr.'s book was certainly a trial balloon, right? I mean, we don't know how many copies that's sold. Nobody really knows, except for Don Jr., I guess, and his, who is his literary agent slash buddy's name? I don't even know. But there's a former Rand Paul associate who kind of took on this job as Junior's, uh, number, co-writer and everything else.

Yeah, I mean, so Don, so Don Jr. was the trial balloon. You know, one would hope that they get their operation a little bit more streamlined before they published their first, you know, presidential history in such a manner. And we don't know how many copies Don Jr.'s book sold. You know, one would assume that it sold a good number and, and that, you know, the R&C or whoever bought a bunch of copies and, you know, whatever. But it wasn't in bookstores, really. And it wasn't, you know, it wasn't published any traditional ways. And certainly Donald Trump's book would be different in so many ways than his sons. It would be out there, you know, but yeah, I mean, and the profit, you know, the profit margin could be so much greater.

I find it, I just think for someone like Donald Trump, even if that might be the route that he has to go. If there's any kind of million, you know, multi-million dollar offer sitting in his lap, you think it would be hard to say no. But, but yeah, self-publishing is a real thing, especially in this day and age. When you go to Amazon.com, it doesn't really look any different aside. from the, you know, missed, the copy errors on the cover. But I mean, who's going to really notice that?

David, our producer, Erica Zervantes and I have been trying to make this a University of Texas only podcast. The only guess we allow our current or former longhorts. We have finally achieved that Nirvana with FS1 host, book author, interesting all-around guy, Emmanuel Atcho. Here's Emmanuel. Emmanuel Lacho is a former NFL linebacker and host on FS1, but he has another role too, as he writes in his new book, For all of you who lack an honest black friend in your life,

consider me that friend. The book is uncomfortable conversations with the black man, which grew out of a video series, Ocho started this summer. He's here to talk about that and everything else. Thanks for coming on the press box, Emmanuel. Brian, the pleasure is mine, man. Good to be joined by you. You are number 11 on the New York Times bestseller list,

hardcover this week. Do you feel as competitive about the list as you did football once upon a day? Honestly, probably more. So I was number 11 on the list in my second week. My first week, I was number three, and I was literally talking to my publicist, my book agent, and my book editor saying, what do we have to do to be number one? I'm looking every day like you're watching game tape. I'm checking the Amazon numbers. I'm seeing where I rank on Amazon, where I rank in stores. I'm like doing math in my head. I was like, okay, it's going to come down to one play. I mean, it's going to come down to one sale.

And I ended up, week one, I was behind Matthew McConaughey, and I was behind Humans of New York. But Brian, it's funny, funny story. I was actually content being behind McConaughey because for those that don't know, after my first video and comfortable conversations with a black man, the first episode got over 25 million views on social media. Well, I get a call from a number.

No caller ID number six days later. I pick it up and all I hear is Acho McConnorahe speaking. I want to have a conversation. This is back in June. So now to be joined on the bestsellers list and to be beaten on the bestsellers list by the person, the star, the celebrity who helped kick off uncomfortable conversations with the black man, I was actually happy about it. There you go.

It's a pretty loaded list now. Not only Barack Obama, which is, you know, not a small name there. Dolly Parton, Isabel Wilkerson, Michael Day Fox, Michelle Obama. I mean, it's pretty incredible. Yeah, honestly, right, I saw myself on the list last week and I was like, oh, which of these names is not like the other? Like it's literally Barack Obama, Dolly Barton, Michael J. Fox, Matthew McConaughey, Michelle Obama. And then you go down like three more names and you see Emmanuel Lachau. I'm like, I don't know how I ended up here.

Jamel Hill was on this podcast the other day and we were laughing. about the white people who after the protest said, give me a reading list. I want a reading list to help me understand what's going on in America right now. Given the various books that are piling up on nightstands, what do you want your book to do? Oh, that's a phenomenal question, Brian.

My book, I wanted to be a conversation, and that's what it is. That's the feedback I've gotten. Most books talk to you. My book talks with you. Every chapter of my book, it's starts with a real question that I received via email, via Instagram DM, via Instagram comment. Literally, every chapter starts with a question.

First chapter, for example, Emmanuel, should I say black or African American? Another chapter, the N-word. Emmanuel, how come black people have used the N-word in their song lyrics, but I can't use it and my white children shouldn't use it? Like, I literally start every question, Brian, with the real question. And so I start every chapter with the real question so that I'm responding to real people. So what's different about my book? It's a lot more conversational.

And it feels like exactly what it is, a teaching conversation. You go through all these various topics in chapters, white privilege, cultural appropriation, systemic racism. What has been the hardest one you found for people to wrap their minds around? Cultural appropriation. And it's hardest because there's such a hard delineation. in between, okay, I'm trying to celebrate something and I'm trying to acknowledge something. See, there's such a fine line. Remember, when you were in middle school, when you were in high school, and you were in college, you could take a quote, an excerpt from another author, and you could put

it in your paper, whatever history paper you're writing. You're allowed to do that. And in all honesty, that's praised and applauded and it's lauded. But the second that you don't cite, your sources and tell the reader or your teacher where you got that quote from, now all of a sudden, you might get expelled from the school. You're surely failing the class because you didn't cite your sources. So the chapter I write on cultural appropriation, I literally title it, cite your sources or drop the class. Because it's so hard for people to understand, like, wait a second, Emmanuel. I want to wear a da Siki because I admire African culture. Or what about I want to wear my hair in braids. And there's such a fine line, Brian, because historically all the connotations,

which we won't get into. But that chapter was very hard to write. And I understand it's very, very hard of a topic to digest. I want to ask you a little bit about how your life informed this book. You write that you've been, quote, navigating the lines between whiteness and blackness all my life. How did that manifest itself in your childhood? One, I'm loving this conversation because you did your homework, and that is a underrated, underrated thing for conversations like this. Let me put it like this. Listeners, Brian, there is a difference between color and culture.

There's a difference between color and culture. I am black, have always been black by skin, color, but my culture was not always black cultured. I grew up, my parents born and raised in Nigeria, so I grew up in America, but Nigerian cultured. In Nigerian households, my parents would say, you must be a doctor, you must be a lawyer, you must be an engineer. Like, that is Nigerian culture. You better be a doctor, a lawyer, engineer. Brian, I grew up eating goat meat, eating rice and stew, listening to Nigerian gospel music. But then I was immersed in white culture because I went to a college preparatory school from fifth grade to 12th grade. So I'm in school with a bunch of white kids wearing our white button downs and our gray slacks and our black socks and our black or brown shoes. and just walking around with, you know, all the white kids.

And I'm hearing things like, Emmanuel, you don't even talk like you're black. Or Manuel, you don't even dress like you're black. Ormanuel, you're like an Oreo, black on the outside, white on the inside. See, then, Brian, I was immersed in white culture, but ultimately played college football. And college football and played in the NFL, incredibly black cultured spaces. So I have been navigating different cultures. And the reason that I can, I feel like I can speak well in this time. time is because I'm kind of trilingual as it pertains to cultures. And though we're all speaking

English, the English is translated differently based upon the culture in which you cover from. Let's talk about the college part of that experience. You get to the University of Texas, your alma mater and mine in 2000. There you go. There you go. I was going to say it. 2008. You wrote those early college years were the first time I understood what it means to be a black man in America. What was the process of that understanding like? Man, well, remember, So I graduated with probably four or five black people in my high school. And so many of us, including myself, were white culture because we were amongst all white people, predominantly white teachers, white students, white everything.

And so now I get to college and now I'm seeing black people from the hood, black people from the country, black people from the city, black people that went to private school. Now there is a plethora of colors and cultures. And so I finally was like, wait a second, y'all look like me. You all carry yourselves how I would naturally carry myself, except without the backlash, without people kind of making fun of the vernacular and the slogans and the phrases. I'm wait, y'all walk like me, you'll talk like me, my people. And that was the first time, it was kind of like, wait, it was kind of like, remember when Tarzan saw other humans?

And he finally realized he was human, although he had been deceived into thinking he wasn't. It was like, wait a second. No, I'm black, black culture, because so long in high school and middle school, I wasn't black enough. And then I got to college and realized, nah, I'm home figuratively speaking. Part of the reason I went to UT is that it was advertised as a progressive, inclusive place. what was the difference between that image of inclusivity and the reality, as you found it? In Texas, and act like most places in our country, you find inclusivity in pockets. So the football team, inclusive.

There are black and African groups on campus, inclusive. The campus in and of itself at the time, probably not incredibly inclusive. You know, since when I was there, there were statues of Confederate leaders that have since been removed. Probably not incredibly considerate of the black student body that was, you know, walking across campus. There were buildings named after former Texas presidents who literally voted against having black students in the law school exclusively because they were black. Go back and look up the quotes. I think it was 1954. I think it had to go to the Supreme Court. It might have been like painter versus, you know better than I probably, Brian, but they're literally

like buildings named after people who didn't want black people on campus. So the pockets were inclusive. The university at whole still had growth to do. In June, a bunch of Longhorn football players put out a letter asking for a number of changes, dropping the fight song, which they said had racist undertones, renaming some of those buildings you talk about and diversifying those statues. What struck you about that effort? Well, number one, that the effort existed in the first place.

I went to Texas. As I was there for my four years, I never bothered to fight that fight. Now, things weren't as publicly volatile as they are now. And I think that if the world were as publicly volatile as it is now, I probably would have. But I was there and I said nothing about those particular issues. So I was very proud of the students who spoke up. They also did a good job of reaching out. People don't know this, but I got that letter before it ever went public.

because they reached out to me for advice. And there were some things on there that I were like, take that off right now. Like that sounds dumb and childish. The ethos of what you're trying to do is great. Make sure you don't miss the intention by having some silly requests on there. And so I respected the heck out of those two athletes.

What do you think the reaction would have been if you and your teammates circulated a letter like that in 2008, 2009? It would have been a pushback of, why? What's wrong? There's nothing wrong. I said this before, Brian. I said this to Oprah. Denial, spelled D-E-N-I-A-L.

I use the acronym of don't even know I am lying. See, in 2008-2009, we all would have just been in denial. Like, there's not a problem in our society. Our best players, Black, Brian Arakpo. Not only is he black, he's Nigerian. So he's blackety-black from the motherland. So you wouldn't have really been able to fix the problem because there would have been such vehement denial.

There's still denial about the fight song and what it means to certain people. So I think the world, unfortunately, our world has had to go through what it's going through. You refer to this incident in the book. You're in the NFL. It's 2013. Riley Cooper, wide receiver with the Eagles,

is shown on a video using the N-word. He is fined, but Roger Goodell in the league does not suspend him. Do we think that incident plays out differently in 2020 than it did in 2013? Absolutely. And I don't know if for better or for worse, right? Like, I don't know that he deserved to be suspended then. What is suspending going to do?

I don't care so much about canceling. I care about educating. So I think it would play out differently in 2020, but probably because in 2020, we do things to avoid trouble as opposed to being productive. Right? Like, we do things in 2020 just to make sure, like, our hands are clean as opposed to actually making cognitive and practical change. And I'm all about legitimized change, not just checking a box.

So I think it would play out differently in 2020 for checking a box sake, but I don't know if it would play out for the better. What's the ideal? What do you do in that case? Let's say that did happen. What would you ideally want to see happen? At this junction in time, I think, a conversation. At this junction in time, that's why I don't believe in cancel culture.

Cancel culture, you don't allow people room to grow to educate themselves to evolve. If you suspend Riley Cooper in 2013 or you suspend somebody now, what's that do? Let's talk about it. Deshaun Jackson, star receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles, just four months ago, he put out an anti-Semitic post on his Instagram. Everybody was like, Eagles need to release them. They need to cut them. They need to find them. No.

They need to talk to them. The Eagles owner is Jewish. The Eagles general manager is Jewish. Sit down and educate Deshaun Jackson as to why his sentiments were wrong. In 2013, I wish we could have like had a conversation with the team. Riley Cooper especially like, hey, let's talk about what this word means to us. Let's not just sit here and get ready to throw these hands because he said it. But let's talk about why we're upset, why we're heartbroken, why we're frustrated.

Everybody in the same room, private conversation. but everybody's in the same room and everybody talks about it at one time. Absolutely. And it can be private. It can be public. I mean, I think there's no need for it to be private. You see the conversations I'm having now,

they're public with millions of views. I think people could have grown from that conversation with writing. Like, imagine if a white man uses the N-word and then you have that white man sitting down with his black brothers and you publicize it so you can hear his black brother's brokenness and their pain and their frustration. White brothers and sisters across the world can grow from that. It's one thing, think about this, Brian. We say, don't do black face.

Blackface is wrong. For those of you all listening, black face, painting your face black, etc., mocking black people. But so many white people, Brian, don't know why black face is wrong. And they don't know because of the history of it. They just know, oh, I can't do it. But why can't you do it? Okay, let's go back to the late 1800s. When the minstrel shows, there would be white people who would paint their faces black,

draw on big red lips to imitate a monkey and mock black people. And they would mock black people's lack of intelligence. They would mock black people's big behind and their big lips and their big noses. And they would literally mimic and mock black people. The star of minstrel shows in the late 1800s was named Jim Crow. That's where Jim Crow laws come from. So, Brian, if all I ever say is black face is bad, but you don't know why it's bad, you'll still go around doing it.

But now when you realize, wait a second, black face and the main character from these menstrual shows is literally the title of the second most oppressive act in our country behind slavery with Jim Crow. Now you might be like, huh, I won't do that anymore.

So that's what we have to do a better job and do it. What point in your NFL to career did you start thinking you might have a career in media afterwards? My last, 2015, when I broke my thumb, I started to realize, you know what? But how am I going to transition? After four years in the NFL, your vested pension when you have annuity. So you have all the benefits.

So I was like, okay, the NFL has used me. Now let me use it. It's easier to get a job when you have a job. So while in the NFL, I was like, you know what? What can I do? What else am I good at? Okay, I'm fairly good at speaking and breaking down tape because I understand the game. I was never the biggest, never the strongest, but I was typically the smartest.

So I said, how can I use my intellect and passion for the game? to do something with that. And I was like, okay, we'll go commentate. That's interesting. It starts at Longhorn Network. You go to ESPN. And then this year, May 25th, George Floyd is murdered in Minneapolis. Three days later, you're sitting in Austin thinking, I have to do something.

How did you settle on a video series? Great question. Let me take y'all to the space. I'm walking around my two-story townhouse in Austin, Texas. And I'm literally pacing back and forth after George Floyd was murdered because I was like, I don't know if I should cry. I don't know if I should mourn. I don't know if I should just be silent and talk to nobody.

I don't know if I should go take my anger out on a punching bag. What do I do? I don't, I feel so much emotions. I don't know what the heck to do with it. But, Brian, I am solution-oriented. I don't like complaining about a problem without posing a solution. If I feel out of shape, I'm going to go work out. If I think I look scruffy, I'm going to go cut my hair.

If I think there's a racial issue in a man, what's the solution? And I realized at that point in time, my voice is my sword. My, my communication, that's how I fight. I've never marched. I've never protested. I've never gone on any of those marches. What did I do? I went to a studio and I did what I know how to do best. And I started this dialogue. And I started the dialogue because I realized black people are speaking in a language that white people don't understand. And white people are speaking in a language that black people don't understand. True story. 2018, I'm in Mexico at Puerto Vallarta. Brian, I'm running through the grocery store. And I'm asking, hamburgers, hamburgers, y'all got any hamburgers? I'm trying to

cook out with my friends. I'm getting nothing but blank looks. I'm running through the store. Next to tenant, hamburgers, hamburgers. You got any hamburgers? Blank looks. Finally, I checked my phone, Brian, and I have service in my phone. So I type in English to Spanish translation hamburger. And I see the word is hamburgese. And so I instantly say, oh, Amberger guess I? And they're like, oh, yes, I O'O4. And I was like, what the hell do you mean? What do you mean? Oh, yes. I've been saying hamburgers. And I realized at that point in time, Brian, I wasn't saying it in a language in which they could understand. And that's what's going on in America. You got black people saying oppression, systemic injustice, racism, oppression. White people looking around like,

what? Oppression, systemic injustice, racism, oppression. And so I'm now like, wait a second, I was immersed in white culture. So I understand the manner in which this message needs to be delivered. I'm just simply saying the same thing. I'm just trying to translate it in a message in which will be understood. You wrote that you were originally going to do the video with a friend. She was going to sort of pose questions to you and you were going to answer this translation you're talking about here. You wound up doing it alone instead. Do you think that gave it a different power than if you'd done it with someone else from the start? Absolutely. So again, true story. I was never supposed to do it by myself. Remember, uncomfortable conversations with the black man,

not uncomfortable monologue with the black man. The first episode was a monologue, nine minutes, 27 seconds of Emmanuel Lacho asking questions and answering the same question that I'm asking. It's because that was never supposed to happen. An hour, six minutes before my first episode, my friend who was going to do it with me, she had a change of heart.

She was like, you know what? They don't want to see me. They want to see you. It's tears streamed down her face. She was like, I can't do it. It's just not right. I was like, I didn't rehearse this by myself. What do you mean I'm doing it by my face?

So nonetheless, I did it by myself. I think it happened how it had to happen, Brian. I think because I did the first episode solo, my white brothers and sisters saw a broken black man speaking from his heart. True story. First episode, we didn't cut the camera. I went nine minutes, 27 seconds. There wasn't a prompter.

There wasn't like a producer. There wasn't an editor. I put my head down. I said, three, two. And at one, I opened up my eyes, stared into the heart of the camera and spoke from my heart. So it happened how it had to happen. This was right around the time of a big moment your media career,

because you're moving from ESPN to FS1. You're going to be one of the new hosts of Speak for yourself. Do you call up Fox when you're thinking about this and saying, hey, I'm going to do this by the way and put this out into the world? No, because what is this? In hindsight, we're like, oh, wow, you got 70 million views. You talked to Mahanahe. You wrote a bestselling book.

You talked to Oprah. You talked to Roger Goodell. Brian, at the time, I had 40,000 followers and was a semi-decent NFL linebacker. You don't call somebody before you pitch like a before you do something outlandish. So I had no reason to tell anybody about what I was doing because I didn't know what it was going to be. I was just speaking from my heart. Also, at the time, I was supposed to go to New York, not L.A. I was supposed to do a show called First Things First.

things just happened to where I moved to L.A. and do another show called Speak for Yourself. So everything had to happen because if I don't go to L.A., then who knows if I meet and partner with Oprah? So everything just had to happen how it did. You felt you were meant to be doing this at a studio rather than at a protest. Did you ever watch protests during the summer and think, boy, it would be interesting to be out there. Part of me wants to be out there just to experience what that part of this moment in time is like? No, I think there are several different, in war, in war you fight several different battles. And sometimes you send different troops to different areas to scout out the land or to fight different battles at different areas.

I'm fighting my battle in my area. I have no desire to go fight someone else's battle. I applaud them. I try to promote them as I see fit as it's doing justice and as it's doing good. but I have no desire to fight another battle. I'm fighting the battle in which I'm most equipped to fight. The book is uncomfortable conversations with a black man. Emmanuel is going to be monitoring its position on the bestseller list

to see if he can overtake McConaughey any day now. So make sure you help that effort. Thanks for coming on the press box, Emmanuel. My man, thank you, brother. All right, it's time for David Shoemaker, guesses the strain pun headline. Thursday's headline about Donald Trump's Thanksgiving ritual was lame duck, pardon's turkey. Today's headline comes from Sam.

It's from the Armed Forces News website, Task and Purpose. And it's an article, David, about a flaw in the Air Force JAG Corps, meaning judge advocate general, of course. Turns out the Air Force JAG Corps are good at prosecuting military justice cases. But according to the article, they wind up practicing too many different types of of law to really specialize in military justice. You might say they're just kind of scattered a bit. The pun word here is jag.

Jag. What was task and purposes strained pun headline? On a jag? On a jet. I mean, God. Hold in all kinds of directions. Mm-hmm. Zigza.

Trying to do too much. yeah oh oh oh running jagged something like that they ran ragged is that it um um jag jagged jag is gonna be your first word jag of jag of all trades jag of all trades master of none that's pretty good good stuff task and purpose he is david chewemaker on bride curtis researched by chriselmeda production magic by erika servantes we're back Thursday with listener mail plus one of our favorite political reporters, BuzzFeeds Ruby Kramer joins us to talk about her very interesting reporting on the death of Herman Kane, the 2020 campaign and other stuff. Plus more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you,

Brian.