The Press Box - Bedbugs and the New York Times, Lawrence O’Donnell’s Faceplant, and Podcasts and Plagiarism | The Press Box

Episode Date: August 30, 2019

Fallout from Bret Stephens’s Twitter-bedbug beef (03:00), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (19:30), Lawrence O’Donnell’s snafu on MSNBC (24:15), news for next month’s Democratic debate (30:30), plagiarism in podcasts (33:30), and more. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to the Ringer podcast network. I'm Liz Kelly. With the NFL season a week away and the ringers fantasy football coverage gearing up, we have released our first ever fantasy football hall of fame. We assembled a panel of voters including Bill Simmons, Cousin Sal, Robert Mays, Mallory Rupin, and more to induct the 25 best fantasy football players of all time. You can find the rankings by going directly to fantasy football.com. And for more fantasy football coverage, check out the Tennessee Football Podcast on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. David, New York Times columnist Brett Stevens went apoplectic when a Twitter user called him a bed bug. What I want to know is what insect could someone call you to drive you off Twitter. Oh, definitely mole cricket. I'm just kidding.

I have an opinion on this subject. No, I know because I googled a list of insects. I'm trying to see if any of them actually bother me to read out loud. Booklaus? Booklaus seems like something that someone would... I was weirdly just going to say that. Didn't we have a booklaus bit in high school? Weren't we weirdly obsessed with that?

Or is it... Am I making that up? You may or may not be. That sounds totally plausible. You were the only person at our high school. I could have possibly have talked about that one. Well, there's actually a couple more. They knew who they are.

Booklaus. Our producer Jim just texted me the word cockroach, except broken up into syllables, is as cockroach and I'm laughing for some reason hysterically about this. I don't know. As children of the South and or Texas, the cockroach was my mortal enemy as a kid.

That was the one thing I just terrified. I don't know if I would care if somebody called me that, but I was absolutely terrified of cockroaches. And if they flew, if they could just achieve a lift-off, I was even more afraid. Yeah, I remember moving, when I moved to Texas,

I was like, not only was I, there were cockroaches in the house because it had been like, you know, semi, it would be sitting empty for a little while. But also they were, people were calling them water bugs. Like, as it. Because I guess that just like put a little like pretty face on it or something like that. But that somehow made it even more terrifying that this is such a problem that it needs, that it needs a cover story.

Like, it's, it's just, I don't know. I'm sure there's a distinction there. But if you call me a water bug, that might be a terrible insult too. This podcast has the lifespan of a mayfly. This is the press box. a part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. Lots to get to today.

We're going to talk about Lawrence O'Donnell's face plant on MSNBC. The cheer you heard among reporters at the news that we're only going to have one Democratic debate next month. We've got podcasts and plagiarism, an obscure newspaper that buddied up to Donald Trump plus listener mail. But David, I want to start off by talking to you about bedbugs. Yeah. Should we let on how excited you were by this topic? If we rank David's excitement about possible press box segments from 1 to 10, Kirst and Jillibrand leaving the presidential race being a 1,

I think bedbug gate was like a 19. You were so pumped for this. Listen, I've never actually had bedbugs in my life. I'm knocking on wood right now. I have had termites for what that's worth. But so maybe I have the ability and, you know, I'm privileged. enough to be irrationally excited about bedbugs topics without any, without any baggage.

But yeah, I think what excited me most is this is, is the, that it's a two-tiered story, that there was actually, I thought I was, I was laughing about a bedbug story and then there was another bed bug story. So, well, I guess we'll get into all that. It started with a report on Monday that, quote, evidence of bed bug activity was found in the newsroom of the New York Times. I believe Ashley Feinberg over at Slate had that first.

Good tweet by attorney. Lindsey Barrett, quote, I think you mean there's insect-tinged problem in the New York Times newsroom. That's bad bucks. I like it. David Carve, professor at George Washington University, took the opportunity to tweet, the bedbugs are a metaphor. The bedbugs are Brett Stevens. Stevens, of course, being the frequently owned columnist at the New York Times. Well, nobody saw David Carp's tweet at all.

as Carp himself later noted, he got nine likes and zero retwees. But Brett Stevens, who apparently left his Twitter account to his assistant in June 2017, he is not on Twitter. He is just on it indirectly. Saw the tweet and at 9.10 p.m. sent this note to Carp. Dear Dr. Carve, someone just pointed out a tweet you wrote about me calling me a bedbug. I'm often amazed about the things supposedly decent people are prepared to say about other people. people they've never met on Twitter.

I think you've set a new standard. I would welcome the opportunity for you to come by my home, meet my wife and kids, talk to us for a few minutes, and then call me a bed bug to my face. That would take some genuine courage and intellectual integrity on your part. I promise to be courteous, no matter what you have to say. Maybe it will make you feel better about yourself. Please consider this a standing invitation. You are more than welcome to bring your significant other, cordially, Brett Stevens.

So nice of Brett to include a plus one there. Always, always want to do that. Turns out not so cordially, however, because Stevens, in writing that note, C-Ced Carf's University Provost as a way to get Carf in trouble. As one does. As one does. So two bad things are happening for Brad Stevens here, David. Instead of just sending the email, he was using the weight of the New York Times to get this guy in trouble at work. which is not dissimilar to Jonathan Wiseman sending a note,

not just to Roxanne Gay, but to Roxanne Gay's publisher when he was demanding an apology. That is number one, is it not? It's the number one takeaway here? Number one reason why we're in deep shit, and we'll get to number two in a minute. Oh, yes. I mean, yeah, it's,

I don't know if this is, if the official, if there is a more direct email to this, to Carp's boss, or if GW Provost is actually like the right email handle, but it certainly seems like you're just like C-Cing management vaguely with the direct, you know, as a direct attempt to get someone's, get someone fired. Not even vaguely.

I mean, you know, how do you, how do you see-see someone vaguely, right? It wasn't it, I don't even think it was, it was just sent to both of, wasn't it? And the idea that you're just going over this guy's head and saying, do you realize your employee insulted a New York Times columnist on Twitter? Yeah. That he made a joke about that big bucks. Carf wrote Nesquire. It means Stevens was trying to send a message that he stands above me in the status hierarchy.

It was an exercise in wielding power using the imprimatur of the New York Times to ward off speech that he finds distasteful. Okay, that was mistake number one. Mistake number two was Stevens just messed with the wrong university professor. because Carf teaches strategic political communication. You know, maybe next time you go pick somebody in the classical SIV department or something like that. But he teaches, he teaches this subject. And Carf Wrights and Esquires, luck would have it. I have little to fear from Brett Stevens.

I'm a tenured academic with the support of my university administration and my disciplinary peers. I am also like Stevens a white guy. If either of us was a woman or person of color, we would endure. far worse insults online every day. And then Carf proceeded to give every interview and apparently write every possible op-ed all in extremely measured lightly comic tones to show how utterly silly and petty that email was. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it was, you know, I think in the age of social media,

where we all kind of have to teach ourselves lessons about logging off, you know, about taking a breath before you click tweet. There is something sort of like deliciously old fashioned about typing out an entire tisking email and still and still sending it, you know, with a hot head. I mean,

because that's presumably what he did. Or just, you know, you're right with great, with way too much, you know, presumption, power tripping,

privilege, whatever else. I mean, it just seems it's just, it just seems very quaint for some reason, but it also is just like if he had gone out of it, if he, if he had been deliberately, you know, if making an attempt at self-parody, he wouldn't, he could not have done a better job.

To undermine not only his like specious arguments about campuses and free speech and everything else, but also just to like, just to be, I mean, just a parody of the level of self-importance it takes to cough out some of the op-eds that he writes. I mean, it's just, it's just, just so

amazing. Can we follow that thread and just make attempt to understand Brett Stevens for a second? He is- Let's do it. He is devoted to this pre-internet ideal of courteous dialogue between a columnist, other columnists, and the columnist readers. And he's not just sad about this. He is attempting to reach out and civilize every one of his critics because he did it to Samar Kar Karov over a deadspin did the same thing. Let me just tell you about how journalism works here. Let me send you this little note. And now he's trying to do the same thing. Like, not just like, you know, hey, asshole, why are you calling me a bed bug? But I would like you to come over to my house so we can talk about this like gentlemen.

And then you can see that I am not a metaphorical bed bug. But I am a real person, flesh and blood just like you. quaint is a good word for it. It also just seems insane. And like it's not going to work. He is not going to find whatever he thinks Washington journalism was like in 1985 here in 2019. At first reading,

I just read it as a threat. I mean, it seemed like the inviting your wife was like a cover store. I mean, was a was a slight cover for just like do you want to take this outside but you know maybe that wasn't his intention at all but the whole thing just seemed real i mean like whatever if whether he was he was harkening back to a more genteel era of public discourse which probably never existed or where he's hearkening back to you know the old west or hamilton burr or whatever i mean just like it's it's a

i mean i guess that's only brett stevens will ever know the answer to that and he presumably won't tell us um because he's you know our already been out there giving his side of the story, which is completely nonsensical. A lot of people harken back when they don't like being criticized. And they say, can't we go back to an old, you know, when they're the young punk criticizing other writers, they're totally fine with the world. But as soon as they start taking a few bullets, they're like, ooh, why can't we go back to when things were civilized?

Why can't we do that? Stevenson went on MSNBC Tuesday morning and attempted to history spain his way out of trouble. Listen to this. Is that the worst thing that you have ever been called on social media? There's a bad history of being called, of being analogized to insects that goes back to a lot of totalitarian regimes in the past. Now, come on. One, bullshit.

Two, if you're devoted to civil discourse, then you are not taking a silly joke and ratcheting it up to totalitarian regimes. that is not part of of even mythical civil discourse. Right. You are not taking somebody's dumb joke and trying to put them on par with some dictator in the past. Who called people insects? Come on. That is so absurd and embarrassing. I mean, it was a sort of command performance.

It would have been if it hadn't been so detached from any norms of like human discourse. but like, I mean, but it was, I mean, to utterly, I mean, to stick to that line of argument without even just like, you know, opening with, I know that it might sound silly in a conversation about bedbugs, but, you know, just some sort of, some sort of like framing of it to let people, to try to help people into your, your wild point of view. And also, yeah, I mean, it's like, no, this wasn't some like, this wasn't some, this wasn't some, you know, totalitarian dictates some totalitarian metaphor

to like, you know, to put, calling the question the humanity of a class of people. This was a joke about bedbugs. That was a response to a tweet about bedbugs. You know, I mean, it's very,

like the joke is so clear that there's no way he didn't get it. It's pain's going to have to say that. But yeah. No, but it sounds like what we were talking about on Tuesday with the Trump allies who are combing through people's tweets

and trying to willfully misinterpret them. Yeah. That that that what he said on MSNBC is really, really close to that. And for as much as Brett Stevens hates Donald Trump, that's pretty ironic. We heard a lot of people, David, invoke the Streisand effect this week, which is what happens when you try to, you know, try to snuff out something embarrassing about you and actually just turn it into a much, much bigger story. Right. Do you think Brett Stevens knew that was going to happen? Or do you, do you think, do you, do you think, do I'll let me put it this way. Could he have possibly not known that as soon as he sent that email,

he was exponentially increasing the chances of bedbug gate becoming this all-consuming media event instead of this obscure and mostly unread tweet? No. I mean, if he was smart, he might have been able to foresee it, you know, or he might have been able to foresee the possibility of it. But, I mean, obviously, I don't think he would have sensed it if he had thought that was, I mean, if he had considered it. I'm not sure that he was thinking particularly logically at the time,

or at least not logically in the way that we would define the term. But no. I mean, I don't think anybody that, like, that tries to flex that sort of power, let me rephrase that. Anybody that would send that email to the professor and the provost at the same time with that sort of dick-wagging insinuation, probably thinks that he's already so famous

that there's no amount of joking on Twitter that could really affect his... Or, you know, there's no amount of reaction from the Twitterati that could affect his status. Right? I mean, he's got to assume that he mean, he just... He can't have, he can't have assumed. He can't have thought any of this would happen.

And that might be the thing he understands the least is the place of the New York Times columnist in media and Twitter circa 2019. Right. He still is imagining we're in the Marine Dowd Anthony Lewis, Tom Friedman Glory Days. Whereas now those people just

just you know whatever podium they were on has been sawed down completely. But I guess he still thinks it exists in the old way. The Times columnist at this point exists only as Twitter punching bags. I mean their ideas

matter way less than the you know snark that they get on social media platforms. I would say Michelle Goldberg has mostly avoided that. I'd say weirdly Ross Doubt. There's a lot of strange new respect for Ross Doubt that kind of burbles up

every couple of years. The existence of Brett Stevens may have something to do with that, but go ahead. That's fair enough. And am I missing anybody? No, not Friedman, not Dowd, not Frank Bruny.

Yeah, that's about it. That's probably it. On Tuesday, Stevens deleted his Twitter accounts. Now it's not just his assistant reading. And by the way, you didn't really quit Twitter. If you just told somebody else to read Twitter on your behalf, you and tell you all the stuff people said about you, including tweets from George Washington professors, you really didn't quit Twitter. That's like saying I quit drugs. It's just someone else is shoving things up my nose.

No, no, no. You're still on. You're still addicted. Right. You're addicted to Twitter. I love this from listener. DRN 3030 who writes

Should we work in a classic Bill Simmons trope Did the championship belt for Twitter self-owns Just passed to Brett Stevens? And I love this idea, David. I feel like Luis Mench was the champion And then she lost the belt to the Krasenstein brothers And then at some point At some point when they were literally owned so bad

That they were off Twitter, it went to Brett Stevens. But since Brett is off Twitter, he can't defend the belt so he has voluntarily passed it along to Relyinquished it? Yeah, relinquished it and Barri Weiss found it sitting in the Times Bureau somewhere and picked it up and walked away with it. I'm glad that you I'm glad that you mentioned Barry Weise because before we get out of here we mean we we have to mention that Brett Stevens is I mean has literally written about the dangers of

disappearing free speech on college campuses more than once right I mean he he is he is quoted throughout all the coverage of this as saying our name or no no he quoted David French is saying in a tweet, our nation cannot maintain its culture of free speech if we continue to reward those who seek to destroy careers rather than rebut ideas. He's, I mean, this is, this is a stalking horse of his. And also, I don't, I am deep, I really want to find whatever Twitter account or a website that I don't know about or RSS feed, whatever it is, like old-fashioned pamphlet, that all of these, that so many public figures are getting that

lead them to believe that free speech on college campuses is a bigger issue than conflict in the Middle East or climate change or anything else. This is literally the most important thing all the way down to like Pete Davidson going off on kids and a comedy set in Florida today, I guess, or yesterday. Like when it when this became the number like what you're reading that is skewing your view to such an extent like this is some humanitarian crisis, I really want to find out where everybody is getting their news. I guess it might have been Brett Steven's Twitter timeline.

hope that's not the case because, man, these people are going to be a drift going forward. Yeah, where are we going to get our news, if not from Brett Stevens' Twitter feed? All right, David, time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week. Speaking of Twitter, 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 box pod where they are always gratefully received. On the subject of Brett Stevens, this wasn't overworked, but just awesome. A tweet from the redoubtable Bobby Bigwheel who writes,

we're all going to look stupid when we find out that Brett Stevens's parents were murdered in front of him by bedbugs as they were leaving the opera. Thanks to Nick Field for that one. It's a pretty inside, but I like it. Boris Johnson, new prime minister of the UK, who has not been nearly a big enough figure on this podcast, was at the G7 meeting this week, David. And he was talking about trade restrictions with the United States. He said, Melton Mowbray pork pies, which are sold in Thailand and in Iceland are currently unable to enter the U.S. market because of, I don't know, some sort of food and drug administration restriction. The pork pie producers cam forward to say that, no, Boris Johnson, we do not sell pork pies to Thailand or Iceland.

What are you talking about? And it was an overwork Twitter joke to say, Boris is telling pork pies. Or I think the full, if we want to go all in, it's I don't Adam and Eve at Boris is telling pork pies. Sorry. Apologies to all UK listeners for me screwing that up. Thanks to Tony Groves sending it in. Tweet from the AP this week, David, about those fires raging in Brazil. The G7 countries agreed to an immediate $20 million fund to help Amazon countries fight wildfires. It was an extremely overworked Twitter joke to note how comparatively little money this was.

Here are some examples. Netflix paid $100 million to stream friends. the budget of the Adam Sandler vehicle Jack and Jill was 79 million. Andrew Wiggins made $26 million last year, and this from our own Roger Sherman, faced with a potentially irreversible climate catastrophe, the richest countries on earth have committed slightly less money than Nick Foles's average salary. Thanks to James Beard, Mitch Gaines, arms on the track, Chris Fitzpatrick, and Heartland Henry. And finally, big news from the White House, which the president has fiercely denied for some reason.

according to Axios' Jonathan Swan and Margaret Telev Trump has suggested multiple times, here I am quoting, to senior homeland security and national security officials that they explore using nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the United States. Nuclear bombs. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write,

Here I am, nuke you like a hurricane at Scorpions. Thanks to usually J.B. David, do we want to hear a little bit of scorpions for the young kids out there? Please. Scorpion's not the official band of the press box. That position has been...

Not yet. Not yet. Watch out. Well, maybe we're doing our own championship belt. If you reach back to the artistic embarrassments of the 80s to describe the political embarrassment of today, congrats. You made the overweight Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, before we move on, let's take a quick break. Today's episode is brought to you by Luminary, a new podcast subscription service with some of the best content around. I'm excited about Luminary because it's the only place you can listen to the newest show on the Ringer Network.

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get your first two months of access to Luminary's premium content for free when you sign up at Luminary. Dot link slash press box. After that at 799 a month. That's Luminary.com slash press box for two months of free access. Luminary. Dot link slash press box. Cancel any time. Terms apply.

All right, David, time for the notebook dump. I think we need to start this section with Lawrence O'Donnell. This was a big story Tuesday that Deutsche Bank has in its possession Trump tax documents that Congress is trying to get its hands on. What could be in those documents? Well, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell had a scoop

and Tuesday, in a bit of cross-talk with a fairly stunned Rachel Maddow, this is what O'Donnell had to say. This single source close to Doge Bank has told me that Donald Trump's loan documents there show that he has co-signers that's how he was able to obtain those loans and that the co-signers are Russian oligarchs.

Really? No, not really. Not really, Rachel. On Wednesday after the segment, Trump attorney Charles Harder sent a letter to MSNBC asking for a retraction. And on Wednesday, O'Donnell tweeted, last night I made an error in judgment. The item didn't go through our rigorous verification and standards process.

I shouldn't have reported it. and I was wrong to discuss it on the air. David, I'm not going to do that thing where I retroactively claim I knew this was going to be wrong because I really didn't pay that much attention to it when I first saw it. But I can vouch for the fact that my first reaction was, wait, multiple Russian oligarchs signed these papers. Is that a thing? Is this like when the five families of the mafia meet? like oligarchs get together and go,

hey, we need to, hey, we got some paperwork. We need to sign this guy's, this guy Trump's loan. That just felt, felt really off for some reason. Yeah. First of all, what a incredible unforced error. And maybe this is a little bit too in the weeds,

but, you know, they always have these little, those little bumper conversations on MSNBC between shows where they're just like, hey, we talked about this a little bit during the, during the, uh, Rachel Maddow, Chuck Todd segments. of the of the MSNBC debate, but it's like,

they're just like actively trying to come across as buddies on MSNBC when they're switching shows. And it all seems very staged. I guess this is proof that it's not actually that stage because he's just like just doing some little like, you know, backroom talk about some rumory over at the bar the night before or whatever. But yeah,

I mean, it's just, I think if there's anything that Maddow has proved in the MSNBC overall, is that it's the I mean you can stick to just like the more mainstream conspiracy theorizing or just insinuations of wrongdoing

and still you know get people going you don't need to just like say nonsense just a really weird story and particularly weird that you know I mean that he said it that it was a that Trump's civil attorney immediately threatened to sue MSNBC

and then they retracted Lawrence O'Donnell was forced to retract in a tweet I mean the whole I mean it just all seems so strange I think whatever you see a scoop and it's from the cable news opinion host, you immediately should just be like, wait, what's happening here? Because one, places like MSNBC have a really good team of actual reporters. And two, they have seemingly every Washington Post and New York Times writer who hasn't signed with CNN signed to a contributor deal. So how did this pass all those people and just get to Lawrence O'Donnell? Like that's the first like, huh?

And in fact, Michael Del Morrow, who's a booker at Morning, Joe tweeted the next morning after O'Donnell made that claim, the information came from a single source who has not seen the bank records. NBC has not seen those records and has not been able to verify the reporting. Kind of a tough two-year run for MSNBC. MSNBC. Yeah, well, remember the Rachel Maddow Trump tax reveal that was teased for minutes and minutes and turned out to be slightly less in time. you also had Joy Reeds. I was hacked a bit. I don't know if we want to tie in, you know,

some of the Ronan Farrow NBC stuff, but it's not been a totally spectacular run. I guess it never is for cable news. We could do that for CNN. And certainly we can do it for Fox. I don't know about you. I'm just not a Lawrence O'Donnell fan. And I'm not a huge fan of that whole lineup.

Not to change the subject, but why not? I'm not a fan of that whole lineup because, I don't know if I was just spoiled by Keith Olberman or something, but I really want people to be kind of funny. I want them to be funny, funny liberal crusader, or just a pinch of, a pinch of humor.

And when it's like I am just very purposefully not funny liberal crusader, I just think in the world that had John Stewart and still has John Oliver and all these Trevor No and all these other people, it's really hard for me to watch that. Because I'm just like, this is

just I'm not getting enough information to to sort of make up for the fact that I just don't find this presentation interesting at all. Yeah. I mean, I think Mattow's presentation, I mean, is really interesting and impressive at times. I like Chris Hayes a lot. I think, but I think both of them have a little bit of a sense of humor and I think, but it's the, it's, if there were still an Obermann-esque figure to sort of, you know, who is more on the surface humorous.

Maybe that would do more to kind of bring out the humor of the whole thing. But you're right. O'Donnell is, whatever, whatever O'Berman is, O'Donnell is the opposite. I mean, he's just, it's just like, you know, political carping as like, you know, in the mode of like bad Shakespeare. I mean, he's, like, his most viral moments are his most sort of just overwrought sort of self-important moments. And I, and I'm not, that does not interest me either. I was looking through O'Donnell's mentions and I found one supportive tweet. It was from Louise Minch. She writes, you declared it single sourced and you qualified it. Best of luck to you. So Lawrence O'Donnell has not lost Louise Minch. Congratulations on that. I got some amazing news from

the world of politics, David. On Wednesday, Tom Steyer did not hit 2% in one more poll, meaning he does not make the September 12th Democratic debate meaning we only have one debate gosh do we have any do we have any like party sound going on right now USA USA I was just imagining that footage of people

like from the 20s and 30s dancing on pianos you know when good news of the war came over the wireless or something like that it is honestly amazing to me because we live in this era of cheap content you know there's a news Star Wars trailer out and Ray looks angry. Give me a thousand words.

We got it. This is big news, right? Woge tweets something. We do an hour long debate about that. But given the chance to have two nights of debate content, America's reporters were like, abso fucking looting nut, not interested.

I do not. I do not want more. Which is just really funny. I mean, it's like, like we'll all take, we'll all take content hints, but we'll only take so much.

Yeah, no, I mean, this is just, I think everybody was just sort of exhausted by the prospect of it is. I mean, just the same way that we were. It's, it's, it's, everybody's kind of ready to move on to phase two of this campaign. And, and, and I don't think having a bonus debate on a Friday night was going to help anybody in their decision making process. Now some bad news. The Thursday night debate, live coverage here at the press box, is three hours long. So there's that. Because she didn't make that third debate, New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand has left the presidential race. I liked this tweet from Nate Silver. If I were Gillibrand or

someone I'd be annoyed with the various random white dudes who entered the race late with no real rationale for their campaign made it more of a clown show understandable that voters would just want to focus on the top four to six candidates in that case. So that's a good point because

there did get to be this period and I think it was pretty much after the first debate, certainly after the second debate of just exhaustion among Democratic voters. There's just too many people here. I can't keep track of this. I don't know who's running for president. And the fact that you had a semi-serious candidate like Gillibrand and with some not very serious candidates, it definitely hurts the semi-serious candidate, which is not to say

that the Gillibrand campaign will be remembered really for anything or for capturing lightning in a bottle or any other container because it didn't. But that definitely hurt her. She has not made an endorsement but tells Alexander Burns in the New York Times. I think that women have a unique ability to bring people together and heal this country. I think a woman nominee would be inspiring and exciting. So we will await now the final stage of the Gillibrand campaign, which is lending her endorsement to someone else.

David, we got to start this story with a big disclaimer because Josh Levine, the character at its center is a pal of ours. But he's right in this case. And it also brings up a very interesting issue about podcasts and plagiarism. So to recap, Levine wrote a big piece on Slate and then a book and then a podcast about a woman named Linda Taylor, who was the notorious welfare queen, that Ronald Reagan and others turned into a racial, political, cultural lightning rod. There is a podcast called The Dollop that thought this was an interesting idea. and in 2017, Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds, the comedians who do the dollop, did a live podcast in Chicago, where they read giant chunks of Levine's work.

They did not credit him at all verbally or otherwise to the crowd. When that live event was then formally turned into a podcast, there was no credit except for a link on a Squarespace site where they listed Josh's work. Now the dollop has done this before. They did it two years in fact before this. There was an online throwdown about that and then they did it again. Levine said in a Twitter thread that he's not invoking any kind of legal claim here but calls it unethical, ungenerous, rude, and shitty.

What did you make of this whole situation? I'm intrigued by it. I mean, definitely. We should also say that Josh's tweet Storm came on the heels. I'm not going to say that he was plagiarizing, maybe inspiration. inspired by, I'm sorry, just kidding, but he came on the heels of a, I guess, a BuzzFeed report was the initial place that the popular podcast, Crime Junkie, was accused similarly of plagiarizing other sources and then deleting episodes where they were claimed to have plagiarized. Yes, this is Stephanie McNeil and BuzzFeed on August 15th. We'll put that out on our Twitter feed as well. Go ahead. It's a really interesting situation because I think that the examples that both of,

the two podcasts that were cited here are, um, unquestionably instances of plagiarism, right? But plagiarism, just like so many other things is, is one of those kind of you know it when you see it categories. Um, but there's a lot of gray area in between.

I mean, there are plenty of podcasts out there that, that go out of their way to cite sources, right? I mean, there are, um, well, the slate podcast for one. I mean,

this isn't exactly the same as citing sources, but they were, they were on, you know, they were always posting show pages that had, you know, kind of posts that had every, every story that they referenced, every, everything that was cited

and they would, you know, have links and everything else. That was easily accessible to the average listener. There are certainly historical podcasts, like the ones that we're talking about right now that are, I mean, like, Dan Carlin, who's like wildly popular, you know, will cite his sources in real time

on the podcast as he's reading from them over and over again. But, you know, I mean, there is a, there is a one can see how one falls into this trap, right? I mean, that you kind of have a bunch of different sources and you're just like,

and you're, you're transforming, there is a transformative aspect to it, right? You're changing the medium. You're, you're doing it in a more performative way. You're inserting jokes and, and commentary throughout.

I guess the question, for me, is less, you know, how could someone be so evil? And, like, how can someone be so dumb as to not just reference

Josh Levine? in their podcast, right? Or all the various reporters who were in crime junkie. Because if you're going to make the case that your stuff is transformative, you must be, it must be clear, one would think it would be clear that you, that there's no loss in this and just briefly mentioning them at the top or the, you know, when you're reading from their sort of from their original article or whatever else. I mean, it's literally a second, you know, in an hour-long podcast.

Like, what would the problem be here? or even frequently mentioning them every, you know, I don't know, 10, 15 minutes and going, and by the way, I'm relying on Josh Levine's excellent slate article, check it out and then keep reading. I mean, that seems really easy. I don't think anybody's listening. I mean, maybe I, maybe I misunderstand because, I mean, I don't listen to either of these podcasts that are in question here. But like I said, I've listened to Carlin in the past. You listen to stuff like, I'm trying to think of what else.

Like last podcast on the left, which is, you know, talks about like, you know, horror stuff and, and cults and murders and whatever else. Like, they always reference what they read for the podcast, and they do it over and over again when they're reading from it. And you're right. It's not that big of a deal. If it's a quality podcast, nobody's going to the podcast for your excellence in historical synthesis, right? I mean, it's because you just like, like the presenters. You like the presentation.

You like this, you know, you like just like hanging out and learning a little bit. But one can understand. I mean, obviously, Josh had some, some, you know, screen grabs or whatever else from this whole thing. from Reddit, I think, and he said, you know, where people were kind of complimenting the content of some of these episodes and obviously had no idea that it was anyone but the host that put it all together. It just, yeah, it seems very just like wrong-headed. Like how you could have even gotten to that? I don't know. Yeah.

And I think almost we almost should take the word plagiarism out of it, even though this is really plagiarism. Like they read giant chunks of Josh's work, word for word for word. Yeah. Let's push the word plagiarism to the side because to me that makes it seem like a journalism dispute about, you know, sourcing and credit. This is just a creative people dispute. When you're a creative person, you understand that what you do has value and you don't want somebody else to just take it and use it on their own and give either negligible or no credit for it. That's what it. that's all it is.

And these guys are comedians and podcasters. And I listen to the kind of, I don't know if this quite counts as an apology, this is what they came up with on a recent episode of the dollup in terms of, you know, what had happened and trying to make sense. So I want to talk about something really quick.

There's been a lot of stuff going on with podcast and podcast and sourcing and it's in the news and stuff. So, so I think a lot of podcasters are not. familiar with sort of the rules, which I think we are one of them. You know, we source everything. We put a link in every description of every show to link to stuff. Journalists, you know, would like more to happen.

So we're going to start following the lead of like what my favorite murder does and last podcast in the left. So at the end of each episode, I'll read out the sources just to give props to those guys who are doing a lot of work. Yeah. Because, you know, there's a legal thing. there's an ethical thing and, you know, we were told, just do this. It's how you do it. It's legal.

So we're going to do more. Yeah. And then you can also see those on the iTunes when you go to the action. And I don't want to upset anybody. We're trying to do the right thing here. And we're trying to, we're trying to do everything.

It's just, you know, we're stumbling along and figuring stuff out as we go. Yeah. It's just, you know, it's the way it is. Yes. Let me just say why I find that explanation to be bullshit. These dudes are comedians.

Is it cool if I go to the comedy store in L.A. tonight? Yeah. And 75% of my routine is there. comedy routines word for word. And I'm adding my own jokes. I'm remixing it a little bit. I'm putting a little Brian Curtis in there. But I do 75% or whatever, 35% of their routine. And then I credit them on my website later. Like by the way, these jokes were from Dave Anthony. That's not cool, dude. That would make me a joke thief. This is the equivalent of being a joke thief. There's no,

there's no difference. Or to put it in this, I mean, back into the, into the kind of switching mediums rubric i mean what if you yeah you took somebody's state one of their stand-up routines and just wrote it as a column on slate dot com yeah like here's here's my humor column yeah you can't i mean that yeah obviously that would be theft um i think it's true that that podcasting as an as an art you know sort of the wild west i think that there's i mean to be to be overly i mean specific here there's a lot of quote unquote comedians that have podcasts that aren't like comedians in the way that we think you know that these guys aren't like headlining you know the comedy store or whatever but

regardless, they should, there's, they don't have editors, they don't have people in charge that tell, there's not a previous generation of podcasters that tell them how to do things. Most of them have their system established before they get any measure of fame or notoriety for podcasting anyway. So, I mean, I understand how those mistakes are made in the beginning, but to go back to my thing, like, my, my question about how, why you would do this, because it's so easy, it'd be so easy to fix it. I mean, the only thing that makes sense is not that you're worried, is not that you're embarrassed that you have sources, but it's that, and you see this in the case of Josh's, you know, his story about him being the only source. I mean, you're embarrassed that you only have one source. You're embarrassed that you are taking something whole cloth from someone else and not doing any synthesis and not doing any research. You are reading an article and presenting that as your own stuff. And that's where the transformative argument, just, you know, argument, just sort of breaks down. If you had, if there was any work done, um, then I don't think there'd be any,

any need to hide the lack of sourcing. I'd push, I'd push the ball five yards even more down the field. I'd say, you don't mind your audience thinking that you wrote all this stuff. Josh is a good writer. So you read his words and they sound and you kind of, you know, add a few of your own and change a few transitions and throwing a few jokes here and there. It makes you sound really good. If I read one of Josh's pieces on this podcast, I, I'd sound really good and it would it would cut down my work considerably. But I don't think people doing this mind people thinking that at all. And again, that's where to me, let's not talk about plagiarism.

Let's not talk about a journalism dispute. Let's just talk about not being an asshole and crediting people properly. Yeah. That's the thing here. When we ever we have journalism disputes, some of them are about pure plagiarism. Did you use my words? Did you quote me directly? Of course, that actually did happen in this case.

But most of them are about sourcing. You know, did you give me a generous enough credit given how much you relied on my labor? And the test for that is, are you being an asshole or not? And this is being an asshole. That's just what it is. That is just what it is. I read a tweet from the dollops account in January 2018. They were mad because someone had stolen, a t-shirt company had stolen art for the t-shirts.

and said this is terrible. And this is stolen art. Oh, that's interesting. What an interesting thing. I do also agree with your point about the Wild West of podcast. And you know why is because I don't think if this had appeared as a written work, it would have been pretty likely that the author Levine in this case would have seen it. I don't think the people, people aren't, there's very hard for people to find this stuff,

even if it's a popular podcast. You saw this with crime junkie. As soon as a woman who had done all this work, listen to an episode of crime junkie, she's like, wait, those are my words that appeared in an Arkansas newspaper. That's my work. And that got, that got taken down immediately. And I also think there's this thing, I think there's this larger cultural thing now with, because of the existence of Wikipedia that we think all history is just creative commons now, right? How many, how many podcasts, by the way, have you heard just read a Wikipedia page? Just like, oh, let me tell you something about

this and just read like paragraphs of it off. Sure. As if it were, if, as if they had written that statement. I just think there's a sense that history is just Wikipedia, all history. And hey, these are, hey, man, these are just facts. I mean, you can't, you can't copyright facts. I'm just reading me about history. It's like, no, no, you're reading, you're reading the work of somebody who did all the work to put those facts together, to bring something out. This is not the Continental Congress, the welfare queen. That took a ton of hard fucking work. And that's not, that's not just usable material. That's not just the bin that you can go,

you know, the penny jar at the gas station in case you're a few cents short. That's somebody's work and you took it. And I'm with you. I'm mostly just don't get it at all. And I don't, I don't buy explanations that this is some hard to understand concept that is unique to journalism.

It's a concept that's unique to everything. And you don't do it. That's it. Yeah, I mean, specifically in the case, case. Well, first of all, we should say that the crime junkie plagiarism was brought to light by the reporter's name was Kathy Frye for the, with the Arkansas Democrat Gazette. And they just sent it. They finally sent, not finally like it took too long, but they sent a cease-in-dislist letter

to the podcast today as we're recording this anyway. Or they reported it today. Yeah, I mean, but the, but the, you know, I think that there's a lot of, just a lot of details. in Josh's tweets, you know, about how the sources, when they were posted were posted on like a separate website, a Squarespace website. I mean, it seems like there's a lot of effort has been gone through. I mean, it seems like a lot of effort, there's a lot of energy being spent for something that someone is like blissfully unaware of, right? I mean, it's, it just, I think you're right. It's impossible. I think it's hard to imagine that they don't know that they're doing something wrong here in all these cases. And, um,

And certainly, like, surreptitiously deleting podcasts doesn't lend any credence to your argument that you, you know, just made a simple mistake. Um, hiding credits somewhere and then sometimes not posting them doesn't, doesn't, you know, help your argument, uh, in that way either. And, um, and it's just, it just all seems, I mean, like I said, I mean, but it does just kind of go back around. Yeah, it's, it's, it's being a dick. But it seems like being, it's the least significant thing to your podcast. You know, I mean, I, or to me, it seems that way. It just seems like so simple. to not be a dick.

And I mean, it goes for a lot of different areas of life. But this doesn't seem that complicated to do the right thing here. Fascinating piece, David, that I want to cite in every way humanly possible. Is an NBC investigation by Brandy Zedrosny and Ben Collins into the newspaper of the Epic Times and the unlikely way it has joined the Trump News ecosystem. If you have ever seen the Epic Times somewhere at a newsstand or in, a newspaper box. It is the newspaper associated with the Falun Gong, which is a Chinese spiritual practice that fiercely opposes China's communist government. And as Collins and Zadrosny

report believe judgment day is around the corner, et cetera, et cetera. The paper has been around for a while. It was not a particularly political paper, at least in non-Chinese politics. And in the last six months, Zadrosny and Collins wrote, the Epic Times quote, spent more than $1.5 million on about 11,000 pro-Trump advertisements. More than any organization outside the Trump campaign itself. I'm still quoting here. These video ads in which unidentified spokespeople thumbed through a newspaper to praise Trump. I'm already laughing.

Petal conspiracy theories about the deep state and criticize the fake news media. Hmm. Because anyone. who's pro-Trump in the press gets led into the White House the next day, the Epic Times has gained access to many of the president's allies. Listen to NBC's Brandy Zadrovny, explain. They have gone from a really fledgling newspaper where no one was really reading it. It cost a dollar. Sometimes it was free on the streets of New York. And now they are everywhere. Their senior editors were in Trump Tower earlier this year interviewing Laura Trump. They're at CPAC. They're interviewing congressmen, celebrities like, you know, Diamond and Silk and Candice Owens and Ted Cruz.

They're really coming up in the conservative movement, and it's important to know who's behind this. Not sure what the bar to getting the Diamond and Silk interview was, but I guess Laura Trump was kind of an impressive get in that world. On Monday, David, Facebook cut off the Epic Times from advertising, but not before the two authors, Zodrosny and Collins of MSNBC, excuse me, of In NBC had reported that some of the Epic Times's new ads were appearing under page names like the honest paper and pure American journalism.

So they weren't appearing as Epic Times ads anymore. They were like, this is this, this ad is from pure American journalism. And I don't know. I mean, this is, this is such an interesting story and it has got so many implications. but the easiness of penetrating the Trump White House and the Trump campaign is so amazing to me. Yeah. All you have to do is be ridiculously pro-Trump and you're in. It doesn't matter what this newspaper is or what it was before Donald Trump became president.

If you suddenly get really, get religion about the president, you know, Laura Trump, come on in. You guys seem great. How about an interview? that, again, that was just what made me raise my eyebrows. Yeah, I mean, that's one way that one, I mean, one place where one would raise their eyebrows. I mean, the whole story was just, I mean, pretty just amazing. I'm always just sort of, you know, I'm always just sort of wowed by these, well, I mean, I don't even know how the Falling Gong is categorized now. I mean, it's a spiritual practice, a spiritual community that is, you know, functionally morphed into a doomsday cult, at least this group of it here.

And it's just, I mean, it's just kind of wild to see a religious sect or a philosophical sect that just convinces itself of, you know, the coming rapture, the coming doomsday to such a degree that, like, they are willing to go out of their way to, to ensure that it happens. I mean, it's, you know, hypocritical and nonsensical in so many ways, but it's not, you know, specific to this group. But I'll get off my religious soapbox for now. You're right. I mean, the access is just sort of crazy that they would get that kind of, you know, all you have to do is just like write some pro-Trump pieces and spend a couple mill on ads. And all of a sudden you're just like sitting in the throne room. It's pretty, it's pretty, you know, impressive how direct the line that is. I was reminded of that guy.

I remember from the Washington, Washington Times, Bill Salmon, who got all that access to George W. Bush and produced the following books. I looked up his uvra. At any cost, how Al Gore tried to steal the election. Fighting back, the war on terrorism from inside the White House. Misunderestimated. The president battles terrorism, media bias, and the Bush haters. And finally, David, strategy.

George W. Bush is defeating terrorists, outwitting Democrats, and confounding the mainstream media. What a run. Yeah. Now that's getting inside the White House. Epic Times got some work to do. Listener mail, David, on Tuesday we got to talking about canaries and coal mines. And we tried to run with that metaphor.

It turns out whatever we said, canaries do not chirp when there's poison gas in the coal mine. They die. They just die. Apologies to any dead canaries we may have offended. That was sent in by Cody Wilson, Martin Murray, Andrew Hertz, and Chris Chaiton. Chris Fitzpatrick, another listener reminds us. of this and I'm glad he did.

Did you see that video that was going around all week of the woman manhandling a guy at a fast food restaurant? Like a big fight and she was throwing him around all over the place? I don't think so. I mean, I've seen a lot of fast food restaurant fights, but I don't think I saw this one. I just,

I see a lot of respectable and semi respectable media types doing color commentary on that stuff. Can we not do that? Can we, don't you watch those kinds of things that are like, do we know what's happening? here? No, we never know who these people are. It feels

like one step away from the bumfights video thing that was going on like 10, 20 years ago, whenever that was. And you're just like, this just seems horribly exploitative? Yeah. And, you know, if Joe Rogan wants to comment on it, that's great.

But I just, everybody else, please know. Time for David Shoemaker guesses the strain pun headline. Tuesday's headline was about an Australian scientist. She studies sea snakes by the sea floor. We're going to stick David with the New York Times. We're also going to stick with animals.

And we're also going to stick with Australian animals with a story sent to us by Patrick Grinter. It's a story by Annie Roth about an animal called the Kalluda. The Kalluda. And by the way, this is another one just like the sea snake story. I recommend you go ahead and read the whole thing. It is fascinating. Forget the headline.

Just read the story. Anyway, Annie Roth writes that the Kalluda is a marsupial. It's kind of mouth. mousy looking. And the colluda, David, is what they call Semelperus. New word for me, simelperus. And semelperus means that when they mate, they die. When the male colluda mates, it dies. Roth writes for male colludas, sex is suicide. Okay. Now we're going to go with the Twitter headline here. Not the, not the one on the piece, but the one

the Times used on Twitter. What is the strained pun headline about Kaludas that die after mating. Oh my gosh. It's not dead and married. Love and death. Loving. Like I love you to death or something. What would this be?

This is the... A little more punny. A little more, you know, go outside the word love a little bit. So it's something. the sex um yeah think of it think of some synonyms

for sex oh okay semi raunchy synonyms doing um I assume it's not like a like a just a plain curse word

uh no let's start you off here these marsupials go out oh with a bang is that it

Chris is not your to not at me today okay that's good that's good I like that pretty pretty transgressive for the New York Times,

don't you think? Yeah. I like that. These marsupials go out with a bang. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Almead

at the production magic by Jim Cunningham. We're back Tuesday. Right and early with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian. Yeah.

I think you've said a new standard. What? I would welcome the opportunity for you to come by my home. Uh, um, Hey, asshole. Yeah.

Are you being an asshole or not? Unquestionably. And this is being an asshole. Yeah. Unethical. Yeah. Ungenerous. Yeah.

Rude. Yeah. And shitty. Uh, yes. Congratulations on that. Yeah, I mean, that... That's not cool, dude. Right.

Do you want to take this outside? I would like you to come over to my house so we can talk about this like gentle. Yeah. No, not really. Yeah. Come on. That is so absurd and embarrassing. It just seems like so simple to not be a dick.

One, bullshit. Two, bullshit. But the dick wagging, as one does. As one does. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Why can't we go back to when things were simplified?

Why can't we do that? Yeah, I mean, it was... I quit drugs. It's just someone else is shoving things up my nose. Right. Now, come on. Abs so fucking looting. Not interested.

USA. USA.