The Press Box - Anna Wintour (Sort of) Leaves Vogue, the NYT's Top 100 Movies List, and the Bezos Nuptials

Episode Date: June 30, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David reunite to discuss coverage of Jeff Bezos's wedding and The Washington Post's puzzling new feature (0:42), before they parse through reports about Anna Wintour (sort of) leaving her position at Vogue and the masterly, divisive NYT "100 Best Movies of the 21st Century" list (10:01). They also talk about Gavin Newsom's lawsuit against Fox News, the shifting power of the opinion columnist, another addition to the Hall of Departed Journalists, and more (22:48). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline! Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David ShoemakerProducer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you're a fan of the inner workings of Hollywood, then check out my podcast, The Town, on the Ringer Podcast Network. My name's Matt Bellany. I'm founding partner at Puck and the writer of the What I'm Hearing newsletter. And with my show, The Town, I bring you the inside conversation about money and power in Hollywood. Every week, we've got three short episodes featuring real Hollywood insiders to tell you what people in town are actually talking about. We'll cover everything from why your favorite show was canceled overnight, which

streamer is on the brink of collapse, and which executive is on the hot seat. Disney, Netflix, who's up, down, and who will never eat lunch in this town again? Follow the town on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. David? Yes. We put aside our usual media navel gazing. The cover a wedding. Oof.

Jeff, I bought the Washington Post so I can destroy it myself, Bezos. Got married to his longtime girlfriend, Lauren Sanchez. The wedding was Friday, followed by a celebration Saturday, and what CNN described as a former medieval shipyard. Mm-hmm. Reminds me a lot of your recent nuptials in Princeton, New Jersey. My life is an abandoned shipyard, yeah. Guests included the Kardashian Jenner clan,

Oprah Winfrey, Usher, Sidney Sweeney, who, if you believe it, was seen dancing with Tom Brady at the party. Sounds like a positive thing. We got two ends to this wedding now. Owner of the Washington Post, lead commentator on Fox's NFL coverage. And do we, do we, this is like the dumbest question ever. Are we to assume that Jeff Bezos is in some, is like friends slash,

acquaintances with the celebrity thing, or is it just if you're a certain level of rich and famous, you just invite all the rich and famous people and then they show up? That was my question, too, because I'm just, I don't understand that. I don't think I'll ever understand that. I think I'm kind of happy not to understand that at some level. Yeah. Can I read you a little bit from the Vogue digital cover story? Oh, yes. So Vogue scored the exclusive with Lauren Sanchez's wedding dress, and I just have to read you some of this. And I'm so glad the piano will be backing me here. Quoting, David, Vam Vogue, she is now posing hands on hips and leaning forward,

felini-esque in the mermaid line gown, framed by an ale of Cyprus poplars. I feel like a princess, she says. You look like a princess, the eager chorus of onlookers, glam team. seamstresses, production crew, Perry's back. A team of Dolce Taylor's dressed in crisp white work coats with black crochet Peter Pan collars and gross-grained ribbon belts unfolds a tool and lace veil with the precision of surgeons. When a winged ant gets caught in the delicate fabric, a frenzy of hushed urgent Italian

ensues before the ant is carefully gingerly dislodged. Is that a metaphor or is that a real thing that happened? I believe that is a real winged ant. Wow. That was both carefully and gingerly dislodged. We needed two adjectives to capture that moment. How do you tell the difference between a flying ant and a termite while you're like transcribing notes onto your, under your notepad covering a story like this?

That's why you get paid the big bucks. I guess so. You think a fact checker looked into that? I mean, calling the Italian assistance, just like we'd like to just show you a couple of pictures and would like to, if you got to see you identify which insects. Were you, sir, speaking in hushed Italian, when the winged aunt, if that's what it was, landed on the veil? Oh, yes. What do you know about invertebrates? Can you pick them out of a line up?

Go ahead. Speaking of the Washington Post and also, marriages of a sword. Ben Mullen over at the New York Times broke a story that the Washington Post has a new feature. I'll read to you from the memo here from executive editor Matt Murray.

Tomorrow we will be soft launching a new feature called From the Source, which will invite sources quoted in our articles to engage further with us and our readers on our platform after a story is published. Here's how it will work. Once an article,

goes live, reporters will receive source-specific links to send to the main sources named in it. They will be invited, these are the sources he's talking about, to submit additional relevant information about the article. We'll vet the submissions before publication

and reserve the right not to publish in whole or in part in our sole discretion. So help me make sense of that. Washington Post prints a story. Yeah. You quote various people, in it. Then you send

them a link to the story that essentially invites them to add to their quote or I guess dispute the way that you quoted them in the story. Yes. I believe that that makes sense.

So somebody from the Brookings institution is going to raise their hands like, actually I've got a lot more material than the one line the post used. I mean, you won't assume it will be a race to just like counterfactualize. everything no matter what the story is, whoever's, you know,

the aggrieved party when a story comes out, we'll just have 10,000 words up there seconds later. I mean, I guess, does this change the, does this change the, you know, the office rules about how the norms about like contacting people for dissent?

I assume not, right? You can't just be like, hey, we didn't contact this person, but we're giving the opportunity to respond. on platform. We sent him a link. But if someone's like, gives you that phone call and they're like, hey, Brian, we're writing a big expose of you. We'd love it.

We'd love for you to talk to us in the next 10 minutes before we go to press. You could just be like, I'm going to hold my fire and just start prepping my, my online rebuttal, right? Yes. And I just think like a basic Washington Post political story is about what the Republicans say versus what the Democrats say. Yeah. And you're counting on the reporter to filter out that information.

Yes. Even if they're doing the annoying, one party says this, one party says that thing. They're just making it shorter. Yeah. So that you at least don't have to wade through half an hour of talking points. Yeah. But what we're doing is inviting them to just please unload your talking points at some length. Yeah.

It seems very strange. And who is this for? Is this for those magical people who is like, I would love to subscribe to a newspaper. I just wanted to be very, very fair and unbiased. I mean, I can't quite figure out the angle, but it feels like there's very specifically an angle here for, is this for dealing with the Trump administration saying, now listen, our guys are going to report some stuff bad on you?

But look, I just added this new feature. So that, like, you will never be left out of the argument? I guess. I mean, a source who was not invited to add more material in Ben Mullen's New York Times article pointed out that politicians want to maneuvering. manipulate us. Yeah.

So what you're doing is taking away some of the agency of the reporter and saying, please manipulate us more. Yeah. To whatever extent we filtered this out so that it's real information, it's usable data for a reader of the Washington Post. We now want you to actually add that material back or at least try to. I mean, there is a canny play here for just traffic, right? There's a traffic play here because, like, the rebuttals are going to be out there.

in the world. And it's just whether or not the rebuttals or just the references to the rebuttals or linking back to the post or linking to Twitter or whatever, you know? So, I mean, I guess if you can host your own dissent, like an old school comment section, that at least keeps people from just going somewhere else, especially in a business and a newspaper in particular where people are digesting the Washington Post, probably more on Twitter. than they are on the Washington Post website. But it still seems a little bit like I'm missing, I'm really missing the point here.

You're saying it's like an old school letters to the editor page on steroids? Yeah, yeah, that's what they need. I hardly recognized my book as it was reviewed in your pages on June 19th, sir. All right, David, coming up on a mostly recognizable press box, farewell, sort of, to Vogue's On a Wintour, why everyone loves that New York Times top 100 movies list, the Ross Douthit,

Peter Thiel podcast, and the changing power of the opinion columnist, plus the anti-TV of Bill Moyers, and we're going to revisit a classic piece of 21st century sports writing. We want you to do it with us. All that much more on the press box. A part of the ringer! Podcast Network. Hello Media Consumers, Brian, Curtis David Shoemaker, and producer Kyle Crichton, back together again. David, on Thursday, Anna Wintour, kind of stepped down.

Kind of. Kind of. She stepped down as editor-in-chief of Vogue. American Vogue, right? American Vogue. I love that every article made that distinction. I'm like, I appreciate that. on the press box,

David and I will understand if you go elsewhere for analysis of Italian Vogue. She wasn't the editor-in-chief of any other Vogue. You just have to specify that that's the Vogue we're talking about, not that she's like international Vogue editor and is only losing one job. Right. But she

is Vogue's global editorial direct. Which is a job she still holds? Yes. She is the boss of all the Vogue's. Right. And this is part of what made this story so confusing. She is stepping down as editor-in-chief of Vogue, so that had

an end of the era, break-out the think piece kind of feel to it. But she is still going to be Vogue's global editorial director, as well as the chief content officer of her Condé Nass, which means she is

the boss of all the Condé Nass magazines save the New Yorker, which is its own fiefdom. Okay. Let me give you a little more just to confuse you further. There's going to be a new editor of American Vogue. Sure. I mean, presumably she loses that title, then there has to be someone jumping in, right? But as Jessica Testa explains in New York Times, they're not going to be known as the editor.

Because with Anointour's departure, a job of that title no longer exists. They will be head of editorial content. What's the difference? Is it just an on, they're all. They're retiring the title in honor of her? Well, I think this is where people are trying to make this into a big story or something they should cover. We know nothing screams news in this world more than a media member changing jobs. Sure. And when that happens, we go into what it all means mode. So what people were trying to say is, wait, Anointour is no longer editing, specifically editing American Vogue, but she is in charge of it.

and she's in charge of all the vogue's, and she's also in charge of just about all of Condé Nast. But doesn't head of editorial content, is that separate from like fashion content? Or, and we, head of editorial content sounds more like what I presume Anna Wentworth's job to be than editor.

I don't think she was in the weeds with a red pin. No, I think there's also a sense here that this is the future now. You know, editor of a magazine seems like an old school title. you were the head of content. So does magazine, but it's

but like some titles just stick around beyond their like literal definition. It's true. And they're still publishing articles about the winged ants that land on a wedding veil belonging to Lauren Sanchez. Is it? I mean, isn't it weird that she has so many grand titles in this company and losing the most minor

of them is a major news story? Like I guess I'm this is, I mean, I presume this was an uncomfortable conversation because as every conversation of this sort seems to be, but like, hey, we're going to take away your most, like, pitly job of your jobs. And, I mean, I guess it's the one she's had the longest, right? Like, it's probably meaningful to her.

But especially if you're going to install somebody with a different title, whether or not it's out of respect to Wintor, could you not have just installed that person and not taken away her title? Could she have been the shadow editor-in-chief? or the public editor-in-chief that has the exact same jobs. I mean, like, just focus your energy on the global editorial process

or the entire fiefdom and not just... I don't know. It was impossible to say without knowing what her day-to-day was like, but I can't imagine anybody with that level of tenure and that grand of a set of titles

is spending that much time putting magazines to bed on a monthly basis. Though at the same time, you could say nothing's going to happen in American Vogue that Anointour does not approve of. Sure. So what's the point of taking her losing that title? This is where the tension comes in because I think, again, we try to analyze these things.

And again, media job change. Uh-oh. It's the end of some kind of era. And I saw at least one person make an attempt to say, well, it's the end of the all-powerful magazine editor-in-chief. And if you want to say it's a decline of that, I'll grant you that, but we already kind of of new this because the magazines themselves were going away. And David Remnick at the New Yorker still gets to run his own magazine without on a

winter or looking over his shoulder. So again, I don't even think you can get there. Yeah. Yeah, it's just weird because she already is Big Brother over there, right? I mean, it's like, what is that? Like, who is, who is, how is this changing? I guess maybe she got absorbed into the board to switch my side. references, and now we're just

installing somebody else who's not all-powerful, so it makes that point. But it hardly seems like she's being removed. She's keeping all of her most significant job titles. Maybe those titles will disappear at some point in the near future, and this will all make more sense. I don't know. Nothing's making sense today.

One more quote for you from Jessica Tess's New York Times piece. This is from Wintour. She says, this is my all-in moment at the company. I won't be moving off, offices or a single piece of my Clarice Cliff pottery. That's great. The New York Times movies list, David.

Yeah. Have you been seeing our pals tweeting their 10 favorite movies of the century so far? Yes, I have, of course. This thing is the ultimate listicle. It is a roach motel of engagement. The cinefiles go in, but the cinefiles don't come out. first of all because it's an unbelievably simple idea. You can rank Pixar movies or Marvel movies,

but if you just say the 100 best movies of the 21st century, everybody has an opinion about that. What the Times did, they write, is go to 500 filmmakers, stars, and influential film fans to get their votes. They put together a top 100, and I'll give you the top 10 here, if people haven't seen this, from 10 to 1, the social network,

spirited away, get out, eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, no country for old men, moonlight, in the mood for love, there will be blood, Mulholland Drive, and at number one, parasite. Okay. So why is this such an effective piece of content?

one is it is massively divisive Of course, yeah I have kryptonite for these things Cryptonite, that's not the wrong Give me the right Superman. We have a Superman movie coming up Give me the right metaphor here. Wait, you are, you are susceptible to these

Or you're impervious to these? I am impervious to these. I don't know what's the super, You are just Superman. There is no Krypton. I am Superman when it comes to listicles like this. I'm not mad. there's nothing you could put you could put you know whatever horrible movie you want on there

and i'd be like they're like okay the force awakens clearly there the rise of skywark clear the best made the 20 for general i'd be like that's great you made a list thank you so much for that so you're in the sense that you just don't you don't care one way or the other you're not like you don't like if someone put what the force awakens you don't just golf clap you're just like who cares again whether or not it's serious you're just not caring it's not like appreciate the endeavor don't hate the player hate the game you're just here yes yes it may be like we're inside the machine and we understand how these things get made and why these things get made yeah but i'm just like i'm not going to get angry no matter what you say there's nothing there but people do that's

the thing right everybody's got an opinion and even if they haven't seen let's say parasite which they probably have they've seen something they've seen the social network yeah and they're like i would like to vote for that. And this is another ingenious part of this Times list. You can vote yourself and tweet out the results. Yeah. So you get to play, and when

you play, you advertise the Times feature. So the functionality of it in that sense, I thought, was really well done. And the Times has gotten increasingly great at making these kind of social viral executions

in their own special way. But also just the Times being the Times. As far as these things go, it's just like, yeah, people will get mad at like a, you know, like moviejunk.com best movies list. But the New York Times lends this era of credibility to it or of gravity to it where it's like you can't, you can't be tweeting about movies ever and not respond to the New York Times best movies list. Right. I mean, it's just, it brings just so much extra angst into the equation that it's just a wonderful thing. I was going to say Gravitas to pick a different only in journalism word.

No, but Gravitas, I mean, Gravitas is right. But it's the show of Gravitas, right? The put-on of Gravitas. Again, it's the thing that only the New York Times could really pull off. I mean, there's probably a couple other outlets. But the New York Times doing the best whatever in an earnest way of an earnest category of things.

I mean, nobody else could do it. There are places that could do the best Marvel movies better. You know, there are places. that could do a lot of subgenres better, but no one is going to get people more freaked out than the New York Times list. I was going to say, what's number two? Like if Vulture did this?

Well, I mean, like AFI, you know, I mean, whatever, there are like institutions that can do it, right? If, like, I mean, Vulture has, New York MAG has that sort of pop culture power that they could do it. I mean, obviously having directors and actors and whatever vote on this could be effective

no matter where, you know, at other outlets. Los Angeles Times, I assume, you know, we get a lot of people talking. But, I mean, there's, it's, it's, it's more of a race for second than first. So you mentioned the actors voting and the directors voting. This is one of the cool features of this list, much like the site and sound list that last came out in 2022. Yeah. You can see individual ballots.

Mm-hmm. Got to say the list isn't quite as starry as I might have expected for the New York Times, but still very cool. Yeah. Pedro Almodovar. Yeah. You can see that he voted for Phantom Thread. Mm-hmm. Pamela Anderson.

You can see that she voted for Grand Budapest Hotel. Right. Welcome to the resistance, Pamela Anderson. Now, are these all, are the people that they list, I'm looking at this now, are these presumed to be all of the people who voted, or this is just, you had to like, sort of, like, self-select to be a visible voter? it seems like a cut yeah because it says 500 and if you know even 500 people yeah but i'm i'm guessing that they went with some of the biggest names and that there weren't that many secret ballots because

who really cares about having a secret ballot and something like this sure if you want to know david that jason blum voted for two different movies get out in whiplash that blumhouse productions released well you're right he did plus Silver Lining's playbook and Moulin Rouge. You think he should have exempted himself from recused himself

from voting for his own film? Because at that point, you're voting against your own films to be voting for somebody else. I can't do ethics of the New York Times movie list. We're all good. Even if there was a terrible violation,

I just cannot bring myself to do that today. Yeah. Last headline for you. Gavin Newsom has filed a lawsuit. Yeah. Gavin Newsom, of course, the California governor who badly wants to be everybody's governor. Mm-hmm.

He's suing Fox News for defamation. Is everybody's governor different than America's governor in this case? That sounds better, doesn't it? Yeah. Sounds like a nice segment on maybe Gavin Newsom's new podcast. Yeah. So why is Gavin Newsom suing Fox? Well, let me explain via Politico's Tyler Katzenberger.

Newsome claims, I'm quoting here, he spoke with Donald Trump for approximately 16 minutes by phone on June 7th. One day before the president deployed 2,000 California National Guard troops over Newsom's objections to quell, only in journalism, protests in Los Angeles. Sure. Trump, however, told reporters on June 10th, he had spoken with Newsom a day ago, meaning June 9th, implying a conversation took place the same day 700 U.S. Marines were deployed to Los Angeles. It's a little confusing, but follow me here. Jesse Waters on Fox played an edited clip of Trump's remarks on air before asking why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called him.

He simultaneously showed a screenshot of the president's call history obtained by Fox host John Roberts, showing Trump's last call with Newsom was on June 7th as the governor had claimed. Now, that all makes my head hurt. Sure. But I think the operative or the important phrase there is why would Newsom lie and claim Trump never called it. Yeah. Here was what Gavin Newsom had said about his lawsuit. But what I want people to know is, you know, gloves are off. Let's go.

Enough. We're going to stand up. Truth. We're going to stand up for American people. We're going to stand up for people that are being bullied. We're going to have the backs of people that are scared. we're going to use our formal authority. I'm proud to be governor of the largest state in America.

Again, I've said this before to you, 21 state populations combined, but we're also going to use our moral authority. And the extent we need to, we're also going to call out the bullshit and the propaganda and the weaponization of lies and miss and disinformation on networks like Fox. And we'll do it in every capacity. So like a lot of Democrats, Gavin Newsom is trying to follow the Donald Trump playbook, but from the other side. I'm going to master the attention economy.

I'm going to dunk on people on Twitter. And now I'm going to sue a media organization. Here's where I come down on this. I don't think this is a good idea. Go on. I'm a little surprised, furthermore, that people who are at the barricades when Donald Trump sues a media organization. Yeah.

Aren't at least raising the question of whether this is a good idea. Because we might argue that those suits that Donald Trump is throwing out there are different and certainly more widespread. Yeah. But I'm like, even if you accept Gavin Newsom's sequence of events here and accept that Jesse Waters mangled that timeline on the air. should we be normalizing the idea that public figures to just sue media companies? No, I mean, I, I mean, I guess there is an important distinction as to whether or not Jesse Waters mangled it deliberately or not, right? But in terms of your question, no, we shouldn't be normalizing it. I think that the only real defense of it is some concept of mutually assured

destruction, right? It's like maybe we can get Trump or whoever to stop doing this if they see that it goes both ways. Which will not work, to be clear. Yeah, it kind of seems like the most ideal version of this is for, I mean, it's just so much time and energy spent on something that I feel like is a terrible idea. Can Gavin Newsom win his lawsuit and then settle, you know, instead of taking $300 million, just take, just have Jesse Waters go apologize on air in a baby voice or something? Like, what it is some like comical

some comical come up and whatever. Yeah. Why do you apologize to me and retract the story? That kind of seems like the only like the only like real uplifting outcome here. Yeah, it's it it is weird. I mean,

I don't think, I think that what's really truly unprecedented is Trump was Trump's lawsuits and the willingness of the media companies to settle with him. I'm not sure if the people paying attention. I think, you know, people who fall on the liberal side of things are associating this more with the Trump lawsuits or more with the Dominion lawsuit.

And I think there is sort of an important distinction there because, like you said, people that were booing the Trump lawsuits. Well, there are a lot of people cheering the Dominion lawsuits justifiably. You know, certainly that's important stuff. But, yeah, I mean, it's hard to feel, I mean, I agree. I don't think we should be. normalizing this. But I think that it's easy to get sort of, it's easy to be blinded by the, by what Trump did before, as it is with so many things that he does. And to be blinded by anger

at Fox News. Yeah. And to be like, that's pro-Trump propaganda. Look how they've covered Iran. Look how they've covered so many, you know, so many things since Donald Trump became president. I mean, look how they, seriously, like just looks at that there was not, this wasn't an honest mistake. Even if it was an honest mistake, it was the product of a culture of deliberate dishonesty. Imagine just, well, we've been delivering with Fox News for so long. It's almost a punchline. But imagine in any other timeline the idea that just like, why did Gavin Newsom lie and say that he did, you know, about having a phone call with Trump, why would that even be like the phrasing of this news story, right?

of this on a TV headline. It's just so deliberate, like willfully antagonistic. You know? Seems like Gavin Newsom has very obvious recourse here. Which is, he is Sean Hannity's

favorite liberals since Alan Colmes. I mean, how many debates have they done together? Yeah, lots. Shouldn't you go on Fox News and explain that Fox News is lying to its viewers about what you did? Yeah.

Hasn't he done that exact thing before in other circumstances? Yeah. Isn't he really good at that? And that's part of his... Oh, like, you mean, couldn't he just do that instead? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Seems like a good idea, sure. He's suing for $787 million. You mentioned Dominion. That's, of course, the son that Dominion. But again, maybe this is the... Maybe the more important thing is that when that inevitable debate happens, this is on the Chiron. Maybe it lends an era of credence to his argument,

his argument when he gets there. I don't know. Well, that's what bothers me, right? It's like using a lawsuit toward a media organization as a stunt. Yeah. As something on a Chiron. I'm just going to get on record suing you. And then we can sort all this out and make Jesse Waters speak in the baby voice

and apologize to me on television. I think proceeding that with a lawsuit and that becoming the reflexive action of politician or any public figure is not good. And that is not part of the Trump playbook that Democrats should borrow. Well, in some sense, and I like Gavin Newsom, in some sense, this has got to be part of his bigger plan, right? Because he's, he needs to, he's a problematic candidate who happens to be an excellent, like, practical candidate, right? And, and in some sense, he needs to make his candidacy bigger than his governorship. He needs to make his candidacy bigger than his political resume, you know, and maybe, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and,

doing wild stunts like this is a way to do it. Because like, I hear liberals talk about it, man. They love Gavin Newsom. And then people drop in, they're like, well, okay, but here's some things by Gavin Newsom that might make it difficult to get elected for him to get elected. I mean, it's, people are like constantly surprised that his legacy goes back further than two and a half years, you know? Like, it's kind of wild. And, and, and, yeah, maybe that's, this is just the plan. Become a larger than life figure, you know, become the Trump of the left.

Maybe that's the whole move. I still remember when the Republicans minus Trump had a presidential debate out here in California in 2023 and he just showed up in the spin room and was like actually all these people are wrong. Yeah. I'm not spinning on behalf of it again. I'm spinning against all of them.

That was a great stunt. Yeah. We need more of that. It's true. No, it's absolutely true. I do think that he's like the, I mean, I guess what bugs me about him is what, is what.

And listen, the Democratic, whatever, the selection of Kamala Harris as the candidate this year was just fraught in so many, so many ways. And I'm not going to go into it here. But Newsom does have that little, it reminds me so much of the Biden thing, like so many politicians before him. It's just like he's just sitting waiting so eagerly for someone to drag him kicking and screaming into the race, you know. He's just like, I got my white horse all saddled up and ready here. You guys just let me know when to open the table. And it's just, to me, it's just that shows exactly what you don't want in a politician. It's like, no, right?

You're fucking horse. Get out there. And he's been out there. I mean, I guess you could argue it either way. But it's just like, no, no one's ever going to beg you to be president of the United States of America. You know, like you got to, like there's a certain way you go about this, which is to run for president. Would anybody be a least less convincing, reluctant candidate than Gavin Newsom?

No, but that's what, I mean, he would, but that's, I mean, and, I mean, and, The reason why we know him is he was functionally running for president for the past four years. You know, I mean, he was ready. Yeah. In 2024. Sure. That timeline had been slightly different. That brings us, David, to one of our favorite features here at the press box.

The worst question ever asked at the White House. Is it connected to what we were talking about? Sort of. Okay. At least when we talk about Trump and media. Kyle's been hard at work at this. He's been researching every presidency in American history. Thank you, Kyle.

Going through some of those questions, Jody Powell got at the Carter White House. We have come to the conclusion that Kara Castronova of Lindell TV, and you remember her as a previous winner of this award. Of course, of course. David, I regret to inform you the Thursday, Kara Castronova was at it again.

Is there any more information on the special prosecutor? So many Americans still have questions about the 2020 election. And speaking of rogue judges, Would you consider appointing somebody at DOJ maybe to investigate the judges that allowed for the political persecution of you, your family, and your supporters during the Biden administration? I love you. Who are you? Tom Power from Lindel TV. Well, that's just a very nice question. And it's not a setup. I have no idea who you are, but I appreciate that question.

So much greatness there. When Donald Trump both says he loves the question and has to assure the audience that you are not a plant. Yeah. That's awesome. Also that segue speaking of rogue judges. Oh my goodness. A slightly higher plane of discourse, David, happened on Ross Douthat's podcast last week. Oh. That's right. Ross Douth has pivoted to podcasting. Do you know what the name of Ross's podcast is? Who's talking to Ross Douthit?

His podcast is called Interesting Times. Okay. Which is both a subtle pun and the kind of podcast title you would expect Ross Doutha to embrace with both arms. Douth was talking to Peter Thiel. It was a founder of PayPal, a, Enemy of old Gawker. We know who Peter Thiel is.

Uh-huh. And they have this very high tone, very theoretical conversation that gets around to the concept of the Antichrist. I mean, I know it's inherently biblical, but the biblical concept of the Antichrist, or we talk about some sort of like tech jargon. Let me explain as best I can, because this is all much better within context. But Teal has this idea that when we talk about existential risk to our planet, we tend to talk about nuclear Armaged or environmental Armaged. And Teal says, well, you're leaving out the risk of a one-world totalitarian state that would be built to stop those other risks.

And then he attaches that idea to the biblical idea of the Antichrist. Again, must be listened to in context to fully grasp this. But I do want to play a little audio here. This is Ross pushing on that idea of the Antichrist. This is my very specific question for you, right, is that you're an investor in AI. You're deeply invested in Palantir, in military technology, in technologies of surveillance and technologies of warfare and so on, right? And it just seems to me that when you tell me a story about the Antichrist

coming to power and using the fear of technological change to sort of impose order on the world, I feel like that Antichrist would maybe be using the tools that you were building, right? Like, wouldn't the Antichrist be like, great, you know, we're not going to have any more technological progress, but I really like what Palantir has done so far, right? I mean, isn't that a concern? Wouldn't that be, you know, the irony of history would be that the man publicly worrying about the Antichrist accidentally hastens his or her arrival? There are all, look, there are all these different scenario.

I obviously don't think that that's what I'm doing. I mean, to be clear, I don't think that's, I don't think that's what you're doing either. David, in all your years, is a Baptist minister's son. Have you heard the words, Antichrist that many times in the single setting? No. No, he's been very little time in the revival tent, Brian, growing up. Yes, no. Antichrist, not a big part of my childhood theology. Yeah, this seems to be, it's an, okay, where to begin with this?

I think Ross's question is good and incomplete. I think there's many more people on the left that would probably say, they would have the same fears about AI and whatever innovations TIL is involved with, and more just direct discomfort with the politicians that he is supporting, being in favor of one government totalitarian states, which I guess Ross can't go down that path because of his ideological affiliation. Yes, they might be using tools that planetare develops, but it's also much more likely that, say, Donald Trump would be that leader than Kamala Harris.

but I think that that just goes to with just an inherent philosophical problem when you start throwing around terms like Antichrist that it almost, no matter how you define it out, it means the thing that I'm most afraid of. And it's not particularly helpful to think about. I guess these two guys, I mean, this sounds like an interesting conversation. As you were introducing it, I had no idea

this thing even existed. I presume there are acquaintances of some sort? Did you suss that out from the introduction in the podcast? Did they come, did they start from a friendly place? Or was this just like a host guest, like, you know, meet you. I think start from a friendly place, at least ideologically speaking.

Yeah. And I guess that Teal had written this big essay about stagnation for National Review and Ross has a history of National Review. And so I think you start out of like, here is a columnist from the right. Talking to somebody who is

somewhere in the near or, you know, at least on his general hemisphere of political persuasion. Sure. And we're getting into the nitty gritty. And listen, I was cleaning my office when I listened to this podcast and, you know, followed some NBA draft analysis with a little antichrist talk. Antichrist apex mountain, if you will. And that was, that was quite a pallid cleanser, if that's the right term for it. What it got me thinking about is this, the opinion columnist.

Go on. This is my pivot to media analysis here, away from the Antichrist and toward naval gazing. The opinion columnist. Your power used to come from the fact that you had 800 words on some of the best journalistic real estate in the world, New York Times opinion pages. Sure. Does your power now come as much from your ability? to get powerful people

to come on your podcast and ask them questions? Well, there's kind of two ways to answer that. One is the sort of chicken and the egg thing. Yes, the influence to get important people in your podcast is a measure of how influential you are and a measure of your power, right? A measure of your success.

But I think the question you're really asking is, do you need to make those sorts of headlines by getting these sorts of conversations out of these sorts of important people to self-legitimize, sort of? Or just land in a way that, like, look, if Ezra Klein says Joe Biden should step down and not run for president, we know that's going to, you know, do its work on Twitter. Right. But to use the power that you have is something like this going to punch through because it's got a video component to it, because it's got another big name attached to it

in a way that an 800-word column would not at this moment in history? Are most 800-word columns? I mean, there's a certain way in which, yes, absolutely, right? I mean, they're saying 100-word columns where they talk to Peter Thiel. They're underwent columns where you have first-person reportage, or you have quotes on it,

and nobody ever cares about that because it all seems to be in service of a argument that already pre-existed the quote, right? You know, I mean, in that sense, yes, this has more weight because you are sort of breaking news. It allows the opinion calmness to be a newsmaker and not just a thought leader. But the flip side of it is, hey, you're kind of tail wagging the dog when it comes to thought leadership, right?

I mean, you're giving platform to Peter Thieler. I'm not pointing fingers at him in this case, or whoever it is to go out there and make the news, to make the points. And you're hosting it, but not really doing it yourself unless you're out there, you know, unless you're just like arguing with your kids. guests, which could have its own thing, but I don't need, you know, 100, you know, Ezra Klein demolishes, like, YouTube clips or whatever up there that, you know, Ross doubt that demolishes Peter Thiel is not, like, interesting to me either.

And so you're sort of, I don't know, what do you think? I mean, it does seem like, like podcast success is sort of an inevitability of opinion-making on that scale. But a podcast just in and of itself isn't going to work unless you really, unless you really make it central to your identity. And I'm not sure that, I don't know if it's, it's just hard. I don't know.

It's such an easy question that I'm getting caught up and trying to make, give you the right answer. I don't know the answer. Yeah. I mean, it's like, but if you think of Ross and Ezra is, you know,

from the left and from the right. So then what we're going to, so they're going to have a list of guests that are mostly from that side of the aisle. Of course, they both cross over a little bit. Ross has had J.D. Vance on his podcast. Christopher Rufo's been on his podcast. Ezra's had every Democrat you can imagine on his podcast,

policymaker, lawmaker. Plus, I noticed today Salman Rushdie, but neither here nor there. And you are going to essentially get a version of their column, which is them, I don't know if demolishing is the word, but aggressively questioning, pushing famous people in what are essentially, I would say as much ideologically driven interviews as news-driven interviews.

Okay. Right? They're not trying to, I would say neither of those guys are exactly trying to pin people down and say, like, make news in a conventional way with me, which some podcasts do.

Agreed, yeah. But they're more of having like the, let's talk about how we talk, you know, Democrats should do this or what really happened in the election and let me, let's pin down these things that Democrats can do differently.

As I was listening to Ezra Klein and Chris Hayes, they were talking about Mamdani and his mastery of the media, right? Like, that's, again, Ezra could write that and probably has written that. But if you do that as a podcast with Chris Hayes,

that creates a moment right in a different way that maybe not only punches through on social media, but also just uses whatever power you have as a columnist in a different way. That's all I'm saying. It certainly allows for a little more focus. I mean, listen, there's been many opinion columnists over the years who have spent massive amounts of real estate

rehashing the same point time and time again, right? But certainly, if you wanted to talk about Ondani, in a podcast versus a podcast, I mean, versus a column, for the column, you have to think of the new headline. You have to think of the new angle. You have to think of the new argument that you make in his defense.

For a podcast, it's just like, let me think of a different guest to have the same conversation. You're not, to have a reiterative conversation, right? So, yes. There's a certain power. And Chris Haynes, like,

I would probably be more prone to listen to Ezra Klein and Chris Haynes than Ezra Klein and a lot of other guests. Chris Hayes, by the way, now you're getting your NBA draft analysis Oh, well, see, no, you misled me. I thought of what I thought this was a real meeting of my meeting of the minds.

No, Chris Hayes, but I, but I'm not sure that that's a, he's a guest that would, you know, draw us at whatever people to the podcast and the way that, I'm sure there's bigger names you could have that conversation with if you really wanted to make the same, have the same conversation on a bigger scale or the same titular conversation. But yeah, so there is a way that you can sort of go back to the same point over and over again, and that gives a little bit more credence to whatever argument you want to make. But yeah, no, no, I mean, listen, I think for anybody who's in that space, figuring out how to podcast figure is a much different, much more central.

It's not just podcasting. It is podcasting because whatever means in which you audio, video, whatever wise, are going to communicate to your audience moving forward. It has to be the most central kind of existential question that you've asked yourself over the past five years. and you continue to try to solve because that's certainly the direction all of this is going. 100%. 100%. I don't think the Times will ever say, if you have this job, you have to have a podcast, but I do think that the Times will cease to employ people that don't have that sort of savvy.

Dude, it's like the journalistic version of the conversation the Democrats are having. Yeah. Or Mom Donnie is having. What's the way we punch through? What's the way we get this to people if the old ways aren't we? working anymore. Like Cuomo's TV ads, the equivalent of that is an 800 word opinion column. In a lot of cases, again, the Times is probably an outlier in that sense because people still do read it and subscribe to it as a huge audience. I love this phrase from the Klein Hayes pod.

Klein spoke of, quote, the memetic tip of the spear. Which made me my favorite phrase that has appeared in the New York Times since the veritable satra that you and I... Mimetic? Like, memory? Mimetic. Mimetic. Mimetic.

Like, mimio? What does that even mean? Oh, Mimetic. Oh, oh, Mimetic. Like, like, uh... Imitic. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Like, okay. Mimetic tip of the spear. Yeah. Okay. See, that's pretty good. I was also trying to think of clips where Ezra Klein, quote, unquote, demolished somebody and all I came up with was Sam Cedar. Maybe there's others out there.

Coming up in 30 seconds, David and I are going to Wimbledon, at least in the podcast segment sense, and we want you to come with us. But first, let's do the Overword Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the Press Pucks pod where they are always, always gratefully received. We mentioned David that Anna went to her step down from the editorship, ahem, of Vogue after 37 years. Yeah.

It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, Wintour is going. When tour is going. It's a little bit difficult, but yeah, got it. Thanks to Don Steele. If you wrote that the devil will still, in almost all cases, wear Prada, as she walks past her Clarice Cliff Pottery,

congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, a couple quick things, David, in the notebook dump. first in the announcement. Part of our 25 or 25 series here at the press box, I would love to revisit some great pieces of sports writing from the 21st century. Maybe assemble a list of the 100 best pieces of sports writing of the 21st century.

That would make me mad, sir. How dare you put that piece at number one? Wimbledon starts today. So I thought maybe you and I could start with a piece that was reported at Wimbledon. David Foster Wallace's great story about Roger Federer, which ran in Play Magazine in the New York Times in August 2006. I was hoping that's where you're going to go. All right.

That's the one tennis piece you were willing to follow me to, other than the David Foster Wallace tennis piece in Harper's. I reread the story recently. It is fantastic. It contains footnotes. I will tweet out a gift link from both of our accounts at the Pressbox spot on Twitter and Blue Sky. And next week, before the men's and women's final, the Wimbledon, David, you and I can discuss this fantastic piece of sports right. That's fantastic.

It's on the new, I mean, it's on New York Times.com, right? It's on New York Times.com. Link incoming. You can also feel free to hit us up on Twitter or. or blue sky with your thoughts, and we will incorporate that into our discussion. Anyway, you were in for a treat if you've never read David Foster Wallace

on Roger Federer. And I will have some behind the scenes stuff, David, about the making of this piece too, which will... I'm looking right now, and it looks like there's a Kindle exclusive David Foster Wallace on tennis that has five different essays, including this one in it as well.

I believe one of his essays was called string theory, if I'm remembering this pun headline correctly. Yeah. Elsewhere, David. we have a new person that we are welcoming into the Hall of Departed journalists. Yeah. His name is Bill Moyers. Now, how did young David Shoemaker first know the name Bill Moyers?

Well, from The Moyers on Democracy Podcast, of course. No, I'm just kidding. See, everybody's a podcaster now. Bill Moyers was a PBS figure who felt, as again, the child of a preacher felt like a vaguely religious figure to me. Indeed. Turns out he was an ordained

minister, I learned from the other. Yes. Yeah, yeah. And there was a particular person whose work he was promoting when young David and young Brian were kids who liked Star Wars and it was an academic. Oh, yeah, yeah, the hero's journey stuff. Was he a really? He was a

Campbell and the power of myth. Yeah. Yes, Moirer. Yeah, I think my dad was a Moyers fan, and maybe that's why I associated him. But he also has the sort of like old-timey, like kind of wisdom of like a Garrison Keeler category. I don't know. There's some just vaguely learned man from like public radio thing going on with him there.

But yeah, yeah, yeah. Moors was, I feel like a weirdly huge figure in our lives to the point where like it's hard to even put. a finger on it. That Joseph Campbell in the Power of Myth miniseries. Yeah. One, it was literally shown in schools. Oh, he was the host of that. Yes, of course. Yeah, yeah.

And George Lucas, you know, this was kind of in the period between the Star Wars movies. So George Lucas coming out and talking about how Joseph Campbell had influenced him to write those movies. And that was such a big deal. That was, you know, that was the Ken Burns Civil War series of our childhood. Yeah, it absolutely

was. Dude, we saw that. We watched that in multiple different classes, different years, different, like it was always a big thing. Bill Moyers was a media guy, David, he was so many other things, according to the New York Times obit by Janney Scott. He was an associate of Lyndon Baines Johnson, who worked on his Senate campaign

and then his 1960 presidential campaign, which, of course, results in LBJ, not winning the nomination, but becoming Kennedy's vice president. Early in the Kennedy administration, Scott writes, Moyers supervised the drafting of the legislation that created the Peace Corps and was the number two men at the Peace Corps. Oh, yeah, Sergeiard Shriver, yeah, of course.

At age 28, when Kennedy was assassinated in 1963, Moyers chartered a plane, again, according to the Obit, to go to Dallas and put himself in Johnson's service. Johnson becomes president. Moyers is a great mover of great society, legislation. During the 1964 LBJ Barry Goldwater campaign,

he oversees the conjuring of that famous Daisy commercial. Maybe I should say notorious commercial, which shows the young girl pulling the pedals off the flower and says or implies that if Goldwater gets elected, we will have nuclear Armageddon.

Perhaps the arrival of the Antichrist. It becomes LBJ's press secretary. And then, after he leaves government, he becomes more or less a full-time journalist. Those PBS series, you say, which had a real kind of anti-TV feel to them. Yeah. He was also worked at CBS News.

He was a publisher of Newsday. There was some journalistic scolding mixed in there. And there's a great Jack Schaefer column where he pointed out that Moyers, when he worked for LBJ, liked to plant questions for reporters to ask the president. There were things the president could either wanted to talk about or wanted to make news with. So Moyers then talking about how future press conferences were scripted

was fairly rich. And he was a scold. So it was Schaefer's idea. The point that Schaefer was making was like he's got room, he has no room to talk. Is that the idea? You're being awfully sanctimonious.

Yeah, okay. When you employed these same skill, they're same tricks. It's also not a job. I mean, I know he worked for PBS, but he didn't get a start as a journalist. So I would just assume anything that came out of him

a little bit self-serving when you come from that argument. Anyway, maybe I'm being too particular. Another thing that came up in the obits and I saw on Twitter a couple of times, Moyers refused to talk to Robert Carrow for his LBJ biographies. That's so odd. It's really odd. Especially by after the first one came out. And we've got that just industry of people calling up Cairo and being like, are you finished yet? Yeah. Which as far as I can tell happens about every 90 days.

Shouldn't they have just calling Moyers and harassing him all this time? For sure. Anyway, there's so much good Moyers TV out there on all kinds of things about politics, about war, about poetry. He really did cover it all. Farewell to Bill Moyers. I'm going to go watch the Power of Myth again today. Cancel my plans. That's fantastic stuff.

All right, two more things for you, David. We have a media piss test. This is where someone says something is like something else. but on steroids. This comes to us from alert listeners, Mike the wrath of God and Amos. It's Donald Trump, and he's talking about immigration. A record number of deportations.

We're bringing criminals out by the thousands. Nobody can even imagine. They let people end that were murderers, 11,888 murderers, gang members, people from mental institutions, and insane as out of them. You know what that is? insane asylum. That's a mental institution on steroids.

So let's just slip past the idea that we're not totally sure that Donald Trump knows the difference between insane asylum and political asylum. Yeah. And Kyle, can we just roll a few more seconds of this because I wanted David to hear what comes next. During the campaign, I talk about the late great Hannibal Lecter. Do you know who that is? Hannibal Leibon. Silence of the lambs. I'd talk about it and the fake news would go crazy. All right. So we got both a media a piss test and then get another reference to the late great who people have pointed out is not dead in canon but again i don't want us to get sidetracked here uh we have one final sliding doors metaphor david yeah sort of gave up on this but then scott kilburn hit me an email

with a fantastic one scott kilburn writes to us my submission is grand poohba oh wait i feel like i should know what that is. Is that a, is that a Flintstones thing? Wait, where is it? Dude, you very, very good. I'm going to give you. It's a two-parter here.

He says, he looked it up and he says, I was amused to find out that it's, one, a character in the macado. Oh, that's, see, I should have known that. Where the Puba is a doofus that holds impressive titles, but no actual power. And two, a moose lodge, Shriner's-like organization in the Flintstones.

Okay. where members wear the fuzzy blue hat with horns and the leader is the grand pooh-bah. Scott writes, I'm 37, so Flintstones is a little before my time. I'm mostly aware of the vitamins. I would have accepted the cereal. I guess the vitamins goes, okay. Were you a Flintstones kid?

10 million strong and growing? Yeah, I don't think that was all the all the vitamins they made. That was a great thing from the latch onto, like the George Foreman Grill of cartoons. Time for a feature that always takes its vitamins and says its prayers and believes in itself. It's time for David Shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline.

Yeah. Last Monday's headline in your absence, David, about dads and moms who are raising sports kids in a new world was Air Ball. Love it. Today's headline comes from alert listener, me. I was reading the New York Times Book Review. and I looked at the front cover

and I immediately was like, here we go. Because there's a piece in there, David, about Jane Austen. Seems like we got a lot of Jane Austen our lives for the last couple of months on TV shows and movies and everything. The piece argues that Mansfield Park is Jane Austen's strangest novel. Okay. But partly because of that, it's also her most artistically mature work.

and I want you to get hung up on Mansfield Park I want you to think Jane Austen and Strange What was the New York Times booker views? Strain pun headline got it. Keep Austin Weird There we go, man. There we go. I didn't even have to give you civic motto

No. Funky Texas City. I thought I was going awesome until I just yeah, until the very, the last second. Then he always keep Austin Weird is great. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Place of Magic by

Kyle Crichton, coming up Thursday, Joel Anderson's on this podcast. Back here with you Shoemaker on Monday to talk David Foster Wallace and also to offer more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.