The Press Box - Bari Weiss’s Memo, Marc Maron’s Goodbye, and College Football’s Most Interesting Coach

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David are back to discuss Bari Weiss’s memo to her new employees and whether it is threatening. Then they talk about Marc Maron’s farewell podcast with Barack Obama. The two discuss Obama’s social media reluctance and why he isn’t he speaking out more (00:21). They also play the football audio of the week: Indiana coach Curt Cignetti as a Dan Jenkins character, Kurt Warner’s disbelief about the Broncos-Jets game, Adam Amin’s indulgence in Only in Journalism, and Tua Tagovailoa throwing his team under the bus (18:00). Next, they get into the worst questions asked at the White House, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and the latest edition of They’re Running: JB Pritzker edition (36:48). To wrap, they get into the latest on Pentagon press access, a Media Piss Test, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline (44:53). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Kyle Williams Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Danny Kelly, and it's officially fantasy football season, which means the ringer fantasy football show is back with the latest news from around the NFL and everything you need to get ready for the fantasy football season. So join us at the ringer fantasy football show on Spotify or on our new YouTube channel. David? Yes. What would you say you do here at the ringer? Oh, God. I feel like I can answer this in a professional email. But now you're making me think.

of all like the, you know, playground conversations I have with other parents when they ask me what I do. And it just becomes incredibly difficult to explain. I would say I'm a podcaster and an art director, although not technically an art director. That's not an official Spotify title. Or it is. I'm just not there. And yeah, you know, just sort of a jack of a little. all trades. I write too. What about you?

Well, I podcast, I write, I, uh, you know, I editor at large. Mm-hmm. You don't edit? You don't edit at large? No, I don't. A lot of people think that I do. Not sure either of these job descriptions would have passed muster with Barry Weiss. No. Who sent out an email to all the employees at CBS News last week saying, I want to understand how you spend your working hours. Mm-hmm. my mind immediately drifted back to Stephen A playing solitaire at the NBA finals. Does any journalist really want an audit of how they spend their working hours?

Absolutely not. Would any of us come out on top with that kind of investigation? No. No, absolutely not. So let's imagine Barry Weiss was running the ringer. Pause for laughter. Yeah. Would you find such a memo threatening?

I don't know if threatening. I mean, I don't know if threatening is the right word. I feel like if I got this memo from Barry Weiss or from whoever the new consultant or whatever it was at the ringer and Spotify, I would, I think I can say with some confidence that I would just refuse to respond. Now, I don't know that's the right thing. I'm not trying to take some sort of principled stand, but these are the sorts of emails that just like make me historically just make me. apoplectic. You're taking an unprincipled stand. I'm taking an unprincipled stand that may

align with the principled stand, but I'm just sort of like, if any, you know, I have too much on my plate to be answering emails about what's on my plate. I like that. I'm too busy to tell you what I do. Yeah, come watch.

Watch the magic happen. That's the best way to learn. I mean, yeah, it does seem like irrational. I mean, it's obviously, it's very dogy. This is, this, this, This is a, there's a very obvious echo there. But yeah, I mean, I'm not, like, I think we could all make a list of what we do. Um, I don't think in really anybody's case, it's a particularly good use of time, you know, when you go to the managers first and be like, what do each of the people underneath you do if you were really interested or like, you know,

I don't know. It just seems like some sort of like competency exam that is almost inherently wrongheaded, right? I mean, so many jobs in our company in the world, it's like the people least equipped to respond or at least apt to respond in the way that, you know, that they're looking for are probably the ones that are best of their job.

You know, I mean, it's just, it just seems so, so sort of inherently silly. But I don't know. I don't know what the plan was here. It just seems like a great way just to alienate everybody on your way in the door.

Maybe that's part of the plan. Well, we know that when somebody like David Ellison pays a huge price for Paramount slash CBS and then also the free press, the next move is to lay people off. So if you sit down and put your fingers on the keys, you feel like you're writing a please don't fire me email. Yeah. Now, Joel and I introduced a concept a couple of weeks ago called secular grace. And when we're looking at the actions of somebody like Barry Weiss, we want to give them the most charitable possible reading. So here's my attempt at secular grace.

Isn't this something that every new boss does one way or the other? Yeah. Figure out what people are doing. And in Weiss's case, isn't it pretty likely that she does not understand how television works? That's true. Yes. If you want to be as grace to be as charitable as possible in the reading. I mean, it is interesting, and this is a brief sidebar, that she chose to do this on her own byline, as it were, under her own byline, right?

That she could have had anybody else do it. She could have had anybody from the ownership group do it. you know and just access the answers then she decided this was part of the present you know part of the first impression she wanted to give um but yeah every new boss has to suss this sort of stuff out um look i'm sure that anybody at any company that you asked who's not at the very top uh if you ask them they would they could probably point out one or 10 employees that they think are not, don't need to be there anymore, right?

I think everybody has ideas of how they would run the company, if given the opportunity, and it would be necessarily different from the way a company is being run right now. And it's ridiculous to think that someone new coming in at the top wouldn't have, eventually have a bunch of changes they would want to make. That said,

I think that just the tenor of that, sort of, yeah, setting everybody up to defend their job just seems like the worst possible mood you could set as you're coming in. CBS News is in the zone where what it does is less of a story than what is happening to it. Yeah. We've seen other media outlets enter that zone. ESPN for a time. The Washington Post is there now.

it wasn't that long ago that the New York Times was in that zone. The funny thing about CBS News is it was in that zone before Weiss and Ellison. Yeah. Yeah, though that's true. I mean, it's been that way for a long time. And that's just in some ways, that's just sort of the state of national news at this point, at least television news. Yes.

But yeah, I mean, listen, we all knew there was going to be some sort of shakeup. We all knew there was going to be, it was going to be an uncomfortable introduction from Barry Weiss, between Barry Weiss and the team there. This is maybe a little bit more on the nose, I think, than even we were expecting. But yeah, it is. It is. Did you like how Weiss's answer to the question of, what would you say you do here is, I put together a Hillary Clinton, Condi Rice roundtable that had hundreds of viewers.

viewers. Yeah. Yeah. I don't really know what to make of that. What is your take on that? Well, if Jen Saki had had hundreds of listeners on the press box on Thursday, I would have been pretty embarrassed. Yeah. I would have said, why did we do that?

Yeah, exactly. It seems like a lot of effort. Condi Rice and Hillary Clinton. Yeah. It goes to your point. What's broken. may not be the approach to network news. What's broken may be network news.

Yeah. All right. Coming up on today's podcast, Mark Maren says farewell with Barack Obama. J.B. Pritzker is almost certainly running for president. How's he doing it with the National Guard in Chicago? Plus, reporters say nay to new Pentagon rules. We've got weekend football audio with a grumpy NFL quarterback

and a grumpy college coach. We'll tell you the worst question ever. asked at the White House. And we'll tell you what happens when your family builds you a physical media time capsule. All that and much more on a spine-tangling edition of the press box, a part of the ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers. It's Brian Curtis. It's David Schumacher. It's producer Kyle Williams, who's sitting in for nephew, Kyle. David Mark Merrin's last episode of WTF came out this morning. And his guests, because Jen Saki was already on the press box

was Barack Obama so much Marini about this episode as when he opened by reading a goodbye to his producer in front of Obama love when you bring the guest in for cold open style elements especially when the guest is the former president of the United States it's so good

Marin is one of the few media people I can remember who is walking away from the profession under their own power. Howard Stern may be part of this list, though I have kind of given up figuring out what's happening with Howard Stern. Yeah. I'm ready to do the Howard Stern farewell episode, but I cannot do the maybe farewell episodes to just let me know. Exactly.

Sirius XM when you figure out what you're doing. We got an interesting note from disc fan over on Blue Sky. Disc fan is a minister up in British Columbia who mentioned. in the press box in a sermon this summer. That was one of the cooler things that's ever happened to us. He writes, Here is my thought. Marin's last podcast is Monday.

The AP decided to note it by showing some of the most important interviews that this person thought it had on it. I bet that one of the reasons the podcast is going the way of the Buffalo is because it is no longer relevant to younger generations. This feeling was highlighted by one of the most important episodes being an interview with Mavis Staples. Now, I personally am deeply. fan of Miss Mavis.

I own too many of both her and her family's albums, but podcasting doesn't seem to have a hold anymore on looking back. What is relevant is only the now. It came across as naming some guys, which is something only old people do. Does WTF and itself just exists for folks who want to name some guys? It's an interesting email because a challenge for a journalist or podcaster is as you get older, living in the now. Yep.

Forcing yourself one more time to look at whatever the state of the art is, whether it's news stories, whether it's movies, whether it's comedy, whatever we define as Marin's own, and saying, I want to learn about the new thing. Not just talk about the old thing.

Yeah, and I think for a period of time, the new thing was the form itself in a lot of ways. You know, and there is space to do a lot of backward looking because you were sort of catching up, right? the four now the the the the library had to catch up to the form to the format um but it's not but yeah i mean i think especially as competition hit as you know like if you're the best biggest podcast in the world you can do mavis staples yeah i don't i own many mavis staples albums too don't mean to keep going after her as like the example of the negative but you can do

that you can explore different areas because because you have that ability and you also have the ability than to get whoever is the breaking newsmaker, the biggest name in the country, and you have a little bit of freedom there. But we're in a world of too much competition. And you can see right now, it's like, you know, watch what podcast, we talked about it last week that Leonardo DiCaprio is doing to promote his movie, right? The biggest thing will go on one podcast, or maybe two or three, but it's not going to be the same for the next DiCaprio. movie. And certainly if you did one, wasn't the same for the last one. You know, there's a different, there's a different frontrunner every time and they're going to be the ones that get the

biggest news. And I'm sure if you're someone like, like Mark Merrin, who's had such a huge cultural footprint for doing these podcasts, you're very aware of the diminishing returns. You're very aware the, you know, ad dollars have shifted in a downward trajectory since the peak or whatever and you have to make a decision whether or not it's worth it anymore. There's a really funny, merriy moment in this episode where Marin is asking, what will I do in podcast retirement? And then it gets flipped around and Obama starts talking about what he's

been doing in his political retirement. Here's what Obama said. I'd have formal power. I have some hopefully moral suasion, some credibility. Yeah. But I didn't have formal. power. And so more than anything, for the long term, what I could do that would be most helpful would be to start promoting, lifting up, shining a spotlight on that next generation of leadership

and talent, new voices. Because part of what also happens is, you know, as you get older, Michelle and I joke about this, no matter how much you want to pretend otherwise, you're starting to get a little out of touch. You're not completely, you know, plugged into the zeit guys. And it happens naturally.

It just happens. Yeah. I mean, look, I don't, my brain doesn't register TikTok. Yeah, mine either. The same way that it does my, 16 year old niece. Right.

Right. You got a guy to do it for you. It's not just the technology itself. It's that I'm not plugged in. I'm not relating to the cultural, you know, stream in the same way that somebody who's 20 or 25. This is a website. And it's funny because I've had those same thoughts. I'm like, Obama was the internet president.

He was the one who just seemed. so fluent in that medium, unlike John McCain in 2008, even Romney four years later. And now somehow partly due, I think, to his reluctance to be a bigger figure, but also perhaps due to his lack of understanding about how to use the medium. He's just kind of faded away. Maybe it's 95% the former and only 5% the latter. But I'm like somehow he has been outflanked by a president who uses true social and X like a Hollywood movie studio head in the 1940s who dictating memos to his secretary.

Yeah. Please tweet this. I'm going to say it out loud, type it out and push send. Yeah. But somehow Trump has figured out how to like fill the airwaves in Obama. we get like a strongly worded tweet about Jimmy Kimmel. Yes. Okay.

Thanks. That'll move the needle. Yeah, it's true. I mean, in some sense, I'm sure there's some amount of just social media paralysis that comes with this, right? It's like you can either really, I think all of us have had this to some extent. You can either like kind of use social media enough that you sort of have a character, or an online version of yourself

that you are constantly promote, that you're constantly sort of inhabiting to do that stuff. And then if you don't do it enough, someone who rarely tweets anymore, I get this. You get on there and you type the tweet and then you're like, yeah, well, I haven't tweeted in a month. Have I really earned this voice? Is anyone going to understand that I'm being funny here

or like anything? And then you're, by the time I rewrite the tweet a few times, it's just like, it looks like I'm putting out a press release, you know? I mean, it's, it's, it's, I get it to some extent. But it does, you know, it would, you do wish that he had a little bit more the ability to channel more urgency, you know, into something that he actually cares about. It goes back to what we were saying about Merritt, living in the now. Yeah.

You either have to figure out these forms of communication. Or you do those strongly worded tweets and, you know, sit on a stage. with Heather Cox Richardson and answer questions. And that's how you communicate. And that's what Obama has chosen to do. Yeah. All right, David, our as yet unnamed weekend football audio feature. Do you have any new suggestions?

We'll get to those in just a moment. Okay. Play the audio first, perhaps. Six and O, Indiana is having an unbelievable year. That is Indiana University, not the University of Indiana. Don't you dare call it that. Indiana's coach Kurt Signetti, David, is a Dan Jenkins character come to life. He's playing at Oregon on Saturday, and he got really pissed at the refs from missing a pass interference call.

Here was Signetti unburdening himself to CBS's Jenny Tell at halftime. Signetty's with Jenny. Coach, you have preached composure, but we've seen your emotions come out on the sideline. Is that intentional? What do you think? You tell me. Yeah, you can't let that go. Can't let that go.

Okay. What is your message to your team now? They are up by three. Jumping off sides. We got to do a better job of stopping the run. We got to quit laying on the ground on defense and coming back the next play. All right. And we got to play better.

I was trying to place that affect. And the only thing I could think of is when we were kids and people would imitate Dean Martin. And the joke was that Dean Martin was always pretending he was drunk. Yeah. Hey, got that over there. He got to get a little weird puzzles. Yeah. That was a really, really strange interview.

Indiana winds up beaten Oregon by 10, and Signetti and Dell did an encore post game. Indiana has never beaten a top five team on the road. What just led to that state win-win coach? Wow, what a stat. Great team win, great effort by, uh, the players and coaches. You know, we had a great mindset coming into this. Really believe it could happen.

I've won a couple great road wins the last three places I was. And I just kind of felt this coming in. Sammy Davis, bring me another martini. That's good stuff, Brian. Good stuff. Penn State's James Franklin got fired over the weekend. I saw that. All he had to do was lose.

in back-to-back weeks to 20 plus point underdogs UCLA and then at Northwestern or at home against Northwestern on Saturday. What did we do? How did we decide to fire coaches before betting odds? Oh, that's a good one. Because that has like the lead of every story.

So we knew the odds in the old days, but do you think now people just get madder about it on social media? Yeah, I think they have something real tangible. It's much more tangible than like we should have beat them. that was a non-conference game that was supposed to be a gimmie whatever you know

you just go with the record how do we lose to a how do we lose to a one in four team or whatever you know so I can't play the audio here because it doesn't really make any sense but there's a video that I tweeted out over the weekend by Andrew Callista

and basically he followed James Franklin off the field state college Pennsylvania after the Northwestern loss what turned out to be Franklin's last game And dude, if this video had been in a movie about a doomed college football coach, I would have said, it's a little much. I don't find this believable.

But he follows Franklin, who goes to the tunnel. There's all these Penn State fans just leaning over the tunnel booing him as he leaves the field. Then he kind of stops and he sends his family forward, I think because he's worried like something weird happening. and something gets thrown. I don't want my family being around. So he stops and his family keeps walking. And then Franklin walks into the tunnel. And of course,

there's all these donors or, you know, big ticket fans who have those field level plazas or whatever. They're just hanging around on there. I don't quite understand the circumstances. But there's more booing as he enters the tunnel. Again, I wouldn't stress this is a home game.

Yeah. It just, again, if that had been in the movie of the college football culture, I've been like, this isn't how it happens. Yep. This is not what it sounds like when he gets fired, but it was what happened. Yeah. James Franklin's last game.

Sunday NFL, we had a London game, Broncos Jets, really weird sequence before halftime where the Jets just let the clock run out at midfield. Here is Rich Eisen and Kurt Warner on the call. Some good work from Eisen there.

Another funny part was that Kurt Warner got on Twitter after this happened and tweeted somebody please explain that last Jets drive not really sure what I just watched. It's not typical, David, for the color analyst. They'd be saving his remarks for his social media profile? Or to just crowdsource the analysis, be like, I truly don't understand, can you help me?

Yeah. which is what Kurt Water was doing there. This was fun. Fox is Adam Amin. He of that crazy Mariners Tigers game the other day. And Greg Olson had Cowboys Panthers. See if you hear Amin indulge in a little only in journalism. Changing some pleasantries after the fracas will check the marker at the 20-yard line.

This is an unbelievable job by George Piff. The fracas in the Queen City. It sounds like Al Michael's using those 19-4. 40's words. I love it. Bill Barnwell noted that the Meow Mix podcast, which was canceled in shame, the Panthers have now won two consecutive games since that moment. It's the reverse Meow Mix jinks.

The opposite of the Madden cover and everything else. This is crazy, though. If they just go undefeated for the rest of the year, does Meow Mix have to stay on the sidelines because they might be, they might jinx them to come back. Ooh. Because there is a triumphant return waiting for them. There is. They could say they, they heard us and they turn their season around.

You know, if even Meow Mix turns their back on you, you got to look in the mirror. Even Meowmix. But if they come back because the season gets exciting and because, of course, why wouldn't you? And then the Panthers start losing. Does the whole, do the other 17 Panthers fans then turn on Meow Mix? So they lose their whole. They lose their whole. And my dad is one of those.

I don't mean to make light of the situation. But yeah, does that just ruin everything? I mean, wouldn't you hate to be part of a, even the perception of a jinx like that? The perception of a Carolina Panthers jinks? Mm-hmm.

I think if I'm them, I'm waiting for a performance, not against the Cowboys defense before I fire up those podcast microphones. Come on. Come on. The Cowboys had the number one offense in the league, though. All right, this was the most fascinating audio of the weekend.

Tua Tugavailoa. Through three picks against the Chargers, Dolphins lost. Here was Tua postgame as aggregated by the NFL network's Cameron Wolf. Well, I think it starts with the leadership in helping articulate that for the guys. And then what we're expecting out of the guys, right? We're expecting this. Are we getting that? Are we not getting that?

We have guys showing up to player-only meetings late, guys not showing up to player-only meetings. Like, there's a lot that goes into that. Do we have to make this mandatory? Do we not have to make this mandatory? So it's a lot of things of that nature that we've got to get cleaned up, and it starts with the little things like that.

To be clear, you're saying some players were late or missed? Late. Yeah. Yeah, thank you. Love the clarification there. Did you really just throw your teammates under the bus? Yes, I did. I want to be clear that I threw my teammates under the bus.

That is correct. And perhaps my coaches too, since they can't get players to buy into this stuff. Dude, I saw that. And I was like, that was Tua's debate show moment. We have Heisman moments. That's a debate show moment.

Oh, yeah. Go on. Because you solve the problem of like, how do you get the one and five dolphins into the first hour of get up? Yeah. Sure enough, dude. I went back to the tape this morning, looked at the first hour of get up,

led with the chiefs, Lions fracas. Of course, we got to get the Cowboys in there. You got to get Paul Finebaum, Gulp to talk about James Franklin. But at the 47 minute mark, Greenie comes on with a serious face, and he's like,

we've got to talk about these two of comments. Mm-hmm. I mean, we get them in. You do have to. Listen, right? The press box is talking about these Tua comments. Dude, and it's a perfect debate show moment because there's two sides to it. And easy.

Is it Tua's fault? Is it Mike McDaniel's fault? Is it nobody? Is it Emmanuel Acho's fault because he was pro too? Who did this? It was hilarious because they went all around and they came back to Adam Schaefter. And this was Schaefter's quote. I'm not kidding.

Is it possible Tua was just riffing? Like he was on with Mark Maren. Right, like he wasn't, like it wasn't a prepared statement riffing or like he wasn't being serious. Like Tua doesn't know he's a very highly paid NFL quarterback who's every single word, especially after a loss is going to be scrutinized. That seems like he knew it felt very much like a formal statement, whether or not it was scripted. Like he was enunciating, you know? 100%. He confirmed it.

When the reporter followed up, say like, did you really just say that? We got some possible names for the unnamed football audio feature here. Tell me if any of these stick out. Listener Adam Holson suggests, Hutt was that. Oh, that's probably going to make me laugh more than the other ones. I don't think I'm endorsing it, but still. Tom Gooding says, sounding the rock.

He also suggests guess the lines spoken. kind of funny. Drake Paul suggests fourth and wrong. It's just a pun, but I kind of like it on those grounds only. Let's see. Esteban Ayatis in Mexico City says, audible audio or two point conversation. Carter Godola says play call.

You can include a hut, or whistle audio snippet and have a great segment. Boy, that sounds sports radio. Mm-hmm. So Rocco over on blue sky says distant replay Which I kind of like Distant replay Josh Campbell says the sound and the fury

And then we still have grid irony Hanging around from a couple of weeks ago I'm not sure we have the right answer here Yeah If we could be Barry Weiss running a meeting at CBS News These are these we have a lot of good stuff here I'm not sure we've hit on exactly the right name for the football audio feature. Yeah.

I think it would be helpful if I knew what each of the people who submitted each of those recommendations does for, you know, like what they're, what they do in their job every day. I would give it each suggestion a different weight if I were more clear on their job descriptions and their performance. Before we get to the overword Twitter joke, David, we haven't had this in a while. It's the worst question ever asked at the White House. Kyle Williams has been going through records through decades and we have determined that these may be the worst question ever asked at the White House.

Even if the first one was asked by Foxes Peter Ducey aboard Air Force One, Trump was on his way to Jerusalem. You had talked a couple weeks ago you were doing an interview and you talked about how you hope to end the war and Ukraine because it might help you get into heaven.

How does this help? Does this help? I mean, you know, I'm being... A little cute. I don't think there's anything going to get me in heaven. Okay. I'm really, I think I'm not maybe heaven bound. I may be in heaven right now as we fly in Air Force one.

I'm not sure I'm going to be able to make heaven. That was pretty funny. Yeah. Then we had a week ago, Newsmax's Greg Kelly was interviewing Trump. He was trying to get Trump fired up about the Super Bowl halftime show. I want you to listen to the pivot. that Trump makes here. The NFL just chose the bad bunny rabbit or whatever his name.

This guy who hates ICE, he doesn't like you. He accuses everything he doesn't like of racism. Do you think maybe we should just kind of entertain blowing off the NFL like a boycott or something along those lines? This guy does not seem like a unifying entertainer. And a lot of folks don't even know who he is. I never heard of him. I don't know who he is. I don't know why they're doing it.

It's like crazy. then they blame it on some promoter that they hired to pick up entertainment. I think it's absolutely ridiculous. And while we're at it, I'd like them to change the kickoff rule, which looks ridiculous where the ball is kicked, and the ball is floating in the end, and everyone's standing there watching it.

Well, you know, I had my own introduction to Bad Bunny when he was... Bat Bunny Rabbit? Bad Bunny Rabbit or whoever. Who was that? that was asking the question. Greg Kelly of Newsmax. I love that it's like, is he the one that always try to be funny

in the White House pressors? Or is that somebody else? No, that was somebody else. I'm just going to say, I like it to the journalist feels like it's his job to do the fake, I don't know this guy's name. They try to like curry some favor sympathy

with your interview subject. If you sound too comfortable saying, you know, with the way, is it like if you sound too, comfortable with the way that bad bunny rolls off your tongue maybe someone will mistake you may well say that go you're not a real conservative you know you're not a real you're not really on the team um when bad bunny first came to w w i had very little idea who he was and did my own version in my head of who the hell is this guy and why is he why is why is w be bothering with him and then within about

30 seconds of googling i realized this was not my place to be asking this question out loud No. I think that there's a, you know, more people. I know that you're he's the president and someone's going to ask him about it, but like, there's got to be a point. There's got to be an age cutoff in every person's life. Not when you're too old to be president, although he's past that too probably, but just when you're too old to comment on, you know, pop culture goings on. You know, even the Super Bowl, which probably skews a little bit older. Like, what do you think?

Like after 55, just we don't need your input? You know, you just taking of living in the now. I mean, when Mike Johnson got asked about it and he said, what about Lee Greenwood? Like there's no, we live in such a polarized world that the only two options are bad bunny and Lee Greenwood. There's nothing else we could possibly find that would be acceptable to MAGA. What would the Lee Greenwood, I mean, besides I'm proud to be an American, what is the rest of the Lee Greenwood halftime show? Is it just? I really don't know.

I don't know. Maybe you cover some more modern hits. 133 million people watch Kendrick Lamar perform last year. How many people would watch the League Greenwood Super Bowl halftime show? Dude, I mean, that's when I hear the, when I'm not, forget the bad bunny part of it, but the boycott football part of it. It's just like that even Trump knows that is a fight that he will lose. Yeah. That's not going to go well.

By the way, it's Brian Glenn is the real America's voice, White House correspondent you're thinking of who all. also asks like, oh, what about Rosie O'Donnell living in Ireland? Your thoughts? Another frequent winner of this feature. All right, David, coming up in 30 seconds, they're running the J.B. Pritzker edition. 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 makes it made it. Excuse me, folks. At exactly the same time, send your nominees to add the Press Box Pod where they are always, always gratefully received.

this week's winner jokes about Tua Tugavailoa and that players only meeting we would have accepted any of the following memes were all trying to find the guy who did this Tua at the next players only meeting as Will Smith in an empty house and Tua running to a mic after a three I&T game to throw his entire team under the bus coupled with Charles Robinson the pro wrestling official running toward the ring. That's a good one.

If you let it rip about Tua, congrats. You made the Overward Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, in our latest edition of their running, I present to you the case of Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker. He has joined Robert De Niro on the list of people who do Kimmel bits. He wore a flackjacket for this one. He also got a very special report filed by J.B. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois. This is J.B. Pritzker reporting from war-torn Chicago. As you can see, there's utter mayhem and chaos on the ground. It's quite disturbing. The Milwaukee brewers have come in to attack our Chicago Cubs. We've seen people being forced to eat hot dogs with ketchup on them. And our deep dish pizza, well, has gone shallow. So it's a challenge to survive here in the city of Chicago, but there's no hellscape that I'd rather be in.

Thank you, Governor. Visual is great, too, because the flack jacket really didn't fit. Yeah. It was just kind of like a little too high, you know, riding high. It was a good New York Times story by Reid Epstein and Lisa Lerer about Pritzker. Casting him is one of these many Democratic electeds that doesn't have a lot of formal options to stop Trump. so they are waging what is largely a rhetorical campaign. You're doing bits on Kimmel.

You're making speeches. You are doing what Epstein and Laird called rhetoric once unthinkable by an American elected official. So in Pritzker's case, he's told Chicagoans to film federal troops in the city. Yeah, you had that news interview where he said, you know, you're going to have to come through me if you want to get to my people. whole thing, you know, is a very, very, you know, like, come at me sort of, well, I don't know if that was unheard of in the history of American politics, but sure, there was a time where that would have been thought, that would have been unthinkable. Absolutely.

He's hinted that Trump is using those soldiers as part of a campaign of polling place intimidation for the midterms. Quote, we know what they're looking for as an excuse to say there's fraud in the election in 2026. That's the real purpose. Prisker, of course, was already on the list of names to why. for 2028. But it is funny how Trump can partially create a resistance hero. So Trump has come out and said not just stuff about Chicago, but said that Pritzker

belongs in jail. To which Pritzker replied, come and get me. He also told Tim Walls, I'm asking any of you to come visit me in the gulag. And of course, the Trump administration doesn't know how to turn this off. Right? Like it's, it's probably a bad thing to just give Pritzker like they gave Gavin Newsom all kinds of heat. Yeah. So in this article I mentioned, when the White House was contacted for comment, Abigail Jackson, a White House spokesman called Mr. Pritzker, quote, an incompetent slob. That's the official response. An incompetent slob?

Yeah. Is he a slob? Is that just, is that just the you? for overweight that they're using? Yeah, like when the New Donald was a slob, that sort of thing. Yeah.

I've never seen J.B. Pritzker with his shirt untucked unless he's wearing a Bulls jersey. No, he's always very well put together. What do you make of Pritzker so far, at least at this moment in his maybe running for president campaign? I don't have a real specific opinion about it.

I think I just sort of dismissed him out of hand as soon as he started coming up. But he's not an incompetent. He is not an incompetent. incompetent politician. No. Every time I would see him, you know, when he first took office, I was just sort of like surprised.

He just didn't, he strikes me as like a historical governor of Illinois, but not like at all what I expect the current governor of Illinois to look and act like. You know, I guess Illinois is just, it's a Midwestern state and that it's not so crazy. But just when you see him in Chicago, I don't know. It's just like he's closer to close. closer to, you know, Bears coach than than regional politician.

But maybe that's what works for him. I mean, he does have a very specific charm. And if he's, and I think that, to take the Newsom example, I think you put yourself in a really, and what will end up being a very positive position by like you said, having no formal power to do anything against Trump,

like having to like actually find different ways to address him, attack him make yourself relevant because I think anybody who thinks are going to be the Democratic nominee needs to be taking political risks at this point in order to

find a footing that will seem a lot less risky a couple years from now. And this doesn't seem like much of a risk. No, no, no. I agree. Nothing's really happened up to this point. But I think that, yeah, you know, finding the voice, I mean, if nothing else, it would be nice to feel like

if you're a Democrat, it would be nice to feel like when the primary starts that you actually have some not some understanding for the first time in 10 years of like what personality type would be best to run against Donald Trump or you know his Donald Trump may may not more likely not be running but who can really what's what is the right democratic personality type to push the party forward yes and that might be as is what these Democrats we talk about are doing as much as anything. trying on the personalities. McGavin Newsom's done it quite forwardly by just being like,

I will create a Twitter account. I will have a Twitter persona. I will have a podcast persona. Pritzker sounds a lot like his previous persona, though, you know, I remember his speech at the convention last year. We had that line, take it from an actual billionaire.

This is a really different tone than that. when going after Donald Trump. Yeah. And it's interesting. I mean, he has, you know, again, also just to go back to what you said a second ago, I think we should keep a list of actual political risk that Democrats are taking. Because that's a little more subtle than going on television or making a speech or tweeting something out. Yeah.

I think for Gavin Newsom, Prop 50 here in California, which will be on the ballot in a couple of weeks, redrawing the congressional lines to offset. the Texas redrawing in the congressional lines. That was a political risk. Yep. We got our ballots here the other day because they mail them out to everybody, and that was the only thing on the ballot. Oh, really?

I'm going to fill in a circle here, and then I'm going to put the ballot in the mail. That was it. This is where I live. We're talking about the Pentagon, David. This week, there's another deadline for reporters who are trying to cover the Department of Defense slash war. last month you remember Pete Hexith and company said that if reporters wanted to keep their Pentagon press badges, they had to sign a policy that included this provision, that any information they reported, quotes, must be approved for public release by an appropriate authorizing official before it is released even if unclassified.

That, of course, is not journalism pre-approved information that you then publish. It's sort of the real world equivalent of like you must, like if you do a, you pull a quote off of somebody else's podcast and put it on your Twitter feed, you must cite the source. You must link to the source. But in this case, actually, you don't just link. Don't, don't do it at all. Yeah. Because we just said it wasn't okay. What would they possibly approve for publication? Oh, absolutely nothing. I mean, this goes without saying, but this is just like a means to, you know, punish people after the fact if they actually report. news. Okay, well, more on that because last Monday, DoD slash DOW came back with round two, a revised set of conditions. The approve before public release provision was out.

But according to Eric Wemple of the New York Times, these new rules did have some considerable downsides, too. He writes, one of the primary concerns for news outlets in the latest round of restrictions is a section that outlines circumstances where journalists could be deemed security risk to the Pentagon, a finding that could result in the loss of credentials. Unauthorized disclosure of classified information or certain unclassified information is among the considerations that could factor into the determination of a security risk. So if you report the thing that we deem to be either classified or even unclassified in certain cases, you could be a security risk.

it's so funny it's like the it's this is the like credential version of the original travel ban you remember from trump's first term or they like band to list people and then they said no you can't do that and they went back and they found like different reasons to ban the same people from flying and just like trying to like just right in front of all of us just like kept changing just moving the goalposts yep like how are different reasons to ban the journalism they don't want yeah it's like at least have the decent see it to be like, all right, we failed at that. Now let's just take a breather on it for a while instead of just like trying to fake some new reasons. But I guess that's just the whole politics of, you know, the modern conservatism too. CNN's not signing these new rules. The New York Times is not signing these new rules. And of course, these news outlets, they want to be in the Pentagon. They want to be on site, even if they're access to, you know, roaming around the hallways or their dedicated work spaces has already been taken away by the Trump administration.

you'd rather be there. Yeah. But to me, the ultimate power here is you don't have to be there. Yeah. I don't sign your rules. And then I just keep on reporting. Mm-hmm. Like I would want to report.

Yeah. Because I have a phone or I have signal. Yep. And it really is the walkaway privilege. Mm-hmm. We, you know, sports writers. What are you going to do? Yeah.

It's like, well, then you can't do anything. I mean, that's the thing. And I think with sports writers, you know, because there's often things about like this with the clubhouse and asking questions at certain times and doing all this kind of stuff. There is some power right that a team has. If you can't get into the locker room, are you going to be able to call people on the phone? But I would just think a Pentagon reporter's physical access to the space, not unimportant, but it's a lot less important.

Oh, yeah, sure. Especially because, I mean, yes, you're going to run into people in the halls. You're going to get some stuff. They talked about all the reasons why it was, you know, why the original rule change was a bad thing. But at the same time, I think a lot of that, a lot of the real substantive news pieces that are going to come out of the Pentagon don't, it's not necessary to be there in person to get them. It's also a press story within a press story here because when the Pentagon came out with these revised rules, Wimple of the New York Times wrote a story that was headlined

Pentagon relaxes press access rules Now the story noted some of these problematic elements that still existed in the revised rules But that was the headline Yeah Well Trump officials have been tweeting out that story Saying hey This is Sean Parnell DOD

Even the New York Times has recognized The Department's accommodating approach Because see that one headline of that one story Oh my God it's just like imagine the paralysis that the news that every that you know the copy desk must have every time they put a headline on something now i'm telling you man a couple more quick ones before we go the aforementioned new york times had what they described as a rare interview with former supreme court justice anthony kennedy i paused on that phrase because it sounded

familiar. And it turns out a rare interview with the Supreme Court Justice happens every time a Supreme Court justice writes a book. Yeah. So Amy Coney Barrett had a book come out last month. CBS had a rare interview. Sonia Sotomayor had a book 12 years ago. Reuters scored a rare interview in her Supreme Court chambers.

Love me a rare interview. A first cousin once removed of the newspaper favorite, a rare window. It offers a rare window into. A rare interview, yeah. I mean, that's basically you're breaking the silence. It's just that there's not a subject that merits that sort of headline, right? No. It really isn't.

Got an email from listener Ted Holiski with this title, Physical Media Time Capsule. Ted writes, long time first time, was wondering if you've ever seen this or heard of this. The day I was born, June 21st, 1991, my Aunt Mary went around and collected newspapers and magazines at the newsstand. She put them in a large manila envelope and wrote Ted, Do not open until June 21st, 2012. Happy 21st. As in birthday. Ted continues, of course, my parents totally forgot about this gift 21 years later, and I recently stumbled upon it hiding in my parents' basement.

The Hall includes USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, TV guide, Sports Illustrated, GQ, Time, and People. Wow. Some headlines from 34 years ago. It's so forward-thinking there, yeah. It really was. Some headlines from 34 years ago, Unified Germany selects Berlin as its new capital. Michael Jordan wins his first NBA title and GQ on the future of bachelor parties. Big fan keep up the good work and hoping this will earn me the prestigious press box button.

And it has indeed Ted earned you a prestigious press box button. That's fantastic. It's kind of sad we can't do that anymore, isn't it? Because there's no physical media to do? Well, if we went to the newsstand, it would be Parade Magazine remembers Robert Redford. Our hypothetical 21-year-old child would be like, what the hell is this? Yeah, yeah. there's only going to be one issue of Robert Redford magazine.

It probably won't stand the test of time. Yeah. What a great idea, though. We got a media piss test here. This is when reporters describe a thing as being like another thing, except on steroids. This comes from listener Kerry Fletcher Garbush, pointing us to the new issue of Wired,

which has a quote from James Tala Rico, that state rep down in Texas who's getting so much attention. running for U.S. Senate. Here's Telarico's quote, people are fascinated by Texas, always have been. They are excited by our state. They're terrified by our state.

Texas is America on steroids. Kerry has a press box button in the mail as well. Thank you, Carrie, for that. Wow. Texas is America on steroids. I don't even know what to do with that. It's not untrue, but I don't know that that's exactly true either.

Texas is a miracle Also feels like something that was written a long time ago before anabolic steroids were a thing just written in a different way. Yeah, totally true. All right, it's time for a feature that always tests clean. It's time for David Shoemaker guesses, the Strain Punt headline.

Yeah. The story is about Paul Thomas Anderson and his new movie, one battle after another. And the highly likely chance that it might not win an Oscar. Talks about Anderson's previous nominations and says that he has gone 0 for 11.

0 for 11. I want you to think of titles of Paul Thomas Anderson movies and whiffing on an Oscar. As you ponder, what was Vultures strained pun headline? There will be blood and hair and vice, phantom thread. And here and vice. There will be. There will be. There will be.

be oh for there will be nod there will be he's not going to win again he never wins he's not winning when you don't win an Oscar you are snub there will be snub there will be there will be snubs yes there will be snubs very good he's David

Shoemaker I'm Brian Curtis Prodictive Magic by Kyle Williams thank you Kyle Joel Anderson's back on Thursday Shoemaker, you and I tee it up next Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David.

See you later, Brian.