The Press Box - Chris Ryan on Election News, the Campaign As a TV Show, and Growing Up to Be a Critic

Episode Date: October 24, 2024

Hello, media consumers! Bryan welcomes Chris Ryan, host of The Ringer’s 'The Watch' and 'The Rewatchables,' to the show! They discuss how they are consuming election news in the final stretch (0:46). They also react to Mark Halperin’s claim of a scoop that could change the election (8:12) and Tucker Carlson comparing Donald Trump to America’s Dad (9:35). Later they get into some ways this election seems like a television show (14:50). They close the show with Chris’s background in journalism, growing up with a dad who was a film critic and transitioning into podcasting (29:35). Plus, David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline of the Week. Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Chris Ryan Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent and host of Somebody's Got to win. Brought to you by The Ringer and Spotify. The 2024 election has been upended with Joe Biden off the ticket and Donald Trump facing a new challenger, Kamala Harris. If you want to hear what the insiders are really saying about the race, join me Tuesdays and Thursdays as I break it all down with lawmakers, journalists, and political strategists. We'll go deeper than the headlines to the anxieties at the highest levels of power. And of course, we'll chew overall the hot political gossip as we head into this historic election. Be sure to follow. Somebody's got to win at Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Media consumers, welcome to press box. Brian Curtis of the ringer here,

along with producer Brian Waters. Our guest host is sitting across from me here in the Spotify studios. He is a host of the watch and the rewatchables. He is a child of newspapers, a proud son of Pennsylvania. Chris Ryan, welcome finally to the press box. I am the October surprise. I'm so excited to be here, Brian. Thanks for having me. I'm glad it's you that Mark Halpern was talking about. We'll get there 11 days until the election.

Yeah. I woke up this morning looking for a Maris poll or Gwynipiac poll or some kind of poll. How are you consuming news in this final stretch? Pretty much the same way I imagine you are like about 51% social media, 49% traditional media. And within those traditional media, like places like, there are the things that I go to to reliably make me angry

because I don't like the framing or I don't like the sort of manipulation that I feel like I'm experiencing. And then there's the stuff that I'm just trying to get brass tax news about. My usual media diet, like to start the day, is I get a substack called news items, put together by this guy, John Ellis,

which is usually like a pretty healthy mix of international news and domestic stuff and a lot of election stuff. And it pulls from The Economist and Bloomberg and Wall Street Journal and stuff. It makes me feel old in a good way. Like I still need to open up the paper and just take it all in. But before I start getting takes, before I start getting how to read this poll, how to read this news, it's just basically just the fax man. It's A1.

Yeah. So that's how I kind of open up my day. And then I look at the Times. I look at The Guardian and I have a couple other substacks that I'm subscribed to. But they're mostly, I'm almost like using them the way I think people use Netflix for Stranger Things where I'm going to have them until the end of the election and then probably back out, you know. But I have definitely hit that point.

I don't know if you feel this where I've reached the outer limits of what I think I'm capable of as a citizen. Like I care as much as I'm sure you care and I'm like as invested as I can be. and I've done my due diligence and I've done what I feel like I'm capable of and now I just want it to be over honestly. And it's funny, we have this big, all hands kind of weak here at the rigor

where all the staff is here and I was talking with Brian Phillips, who still lives in Pennsylvania. And I was like, how's the blue wall looking, baby? Like, what's going on? And he was like, you know, my town is pretty divided and everybody's been decided for months. And I think everybody kind of just wishes

there was some flexible scheduling with this election. It's like, should we just do this on Halloween? Do we need two more weeks? I totally agree. And that feeling really set in for me this week. Maybe it was the Kwynapiac poll in Michigan

that flipped from Trump up three to Kamala up three. Yes. And I was like, okay, I don't have anything else. Like even telling the story of this election as a, you know, like we do an NBA season,

right? Here is this kind of soap opera that's happening. And this thing happens. This thing happens. I'm like, I'm done. even with the woge bombs. They don't make sense to me anymore. Well, I almost feel like

the Wojbomb thing is a kind of interesting comparison because as we record this, we're in like day three or four of this looming scandal that's going to break for Trump that's going to end his candidacy according to Mark Halpern.

And I almost am now beyond the point where I'm like, I don't even know if he could kill someone on Fifth Avenue and it would make much of a difference. I think everybody is kind of made their bed with their candidate and they're just ready to vote if they haven't already. I know. And this is what Caller Daddy is, right?

This is what all these little things are. There's got to be somebody out there who hasn't decided or maybe just wasn't going to vote or wasn't that fired up to vote. There was like a 40% chance that we're going to get out there and do this. Let's find that person. Yeah.

And drag them by lapels to the polls. Yes. I believe that is the case, right? Yeah. I wonder whether also like a lot of this stuff is about get out the vote enthusiasm rather than converting undecideds. Like, to me, what Kamala has done over the last

couple of weeks where it's been the Cheney Christmas card, family Christmas card getting brought out, is that was more about like impressionable Harris curious, traditional Republicans who just can't stomach voting for Trump. And like, I think even Tim Walts has said this, where it's like, it's basically a permission to those people to vote for Harris to go against their usual leanings. But when you see something like Harris campaigning with Beyonce in Texas,

that to me is more of a like, let's fire people up about the act of voting and voting for Harris. It's not about, is there someone out there who on October 24th is still on the fence. Which we know works because Beyonce appeared with Hillary and Bruce Springsteen at the end of the 2016 election. And they turned out in that blue wall. Who among us can forget LeBron wearing the Beto hat?

That works. Oh, my God. I'd actually memory hold that one. Yeah. What a moment. That was awesome, man. Of the resistance, that was. I wanted to ask you about your get me mad list.

Yeah. Of media sources. What do you read to get angry? Well, it's more, to be completely honest, like looking at the Times front page, the website front page. And doing the thing that I think is been the hallmark of the last, what, since 2016, so the last eight years, which is getting annoyed at how they are framing things. You're one of those guys. A little bit. Yeah.

Yeah. On the site. Like, because I think I know a little bit more about the adjectives and the phrasing that you use on websites to, I mean, for lack of a better term, trigger people into clicking. Because we do it with NBA. We do it with sports. We do it with culture. Why this is the best movie ever. Why this is the worst movie ever.

Why LeBron is washed or LeBron's the goat and MJ should kiss his ring, all this stuff is to make people engage so that then they get to the piece of rights. And they're like, oh, what a nuanced, interesting, and funny opinion. I don't necessarily, like, think that they're doing it just to make people mad, obviously, on the Times website. But I do look at it and note the font difference of, like, you know, Trump talks about Arnold Palmer Schlong is, like, much smaller than Harris still not exactly laying out her vision, question mark, you know? That's funny.

I never thought of you as one of those guys, but I can see it from programming the ringer and Grayland before that. Yeah, I mean, just I, it's more almost like, it's like train spotting for me. It's like I kind of like looking at it to see that it's happening. But I don't, I think that I was getting more frustrated by it maybe in September. Whereas now I think, I think it's all in this haze of like this is, this is just the absolute last call at the bar, you know, vibes of this election. And we really all need to go home. as the premier breaker-downer of television shows.

I have a theory for you about this election that has become a television show and it's also become kind of a bad television show, lesser episode of the newsroom, perhaps. Let me give you a few plot points and you just tell me how these register with you. One is the Mark Halpern's scoop. If people don't know,

Mark Halpern is the co-author of the Game Change books. He was semi-canceled. And as I guess now, semi-back. We're attempting to be semi-back. what he said the other day. And I can tell you, without going into detail, that I've been pitched a story about Donald Trump now for about a week, that if true, would end his campaign.

And there's all sorts of things like that flying around. I'm not the only one who's been pitched. What do we imagine such a story could be? I mean, honestly, is it the only thing I could think of is Trump is voting for Kamala. Like, I couldn't think of anything else. That would be a zag. That he would do.

What could he do that would? end his campaign. Even if it is the old Fifth Avenue shoot someone thing. We don't believe that would do it at this point. Peetape, Epstein Island connections, all of these things that your mind would go to. I just...

mentioning Hitler, we've had a bunch jamming to Ave Maria Maria November rain for 30 minutes on stage. What if he actually in a private moment was caught disparaging Arnold Palmer's manhood? You know, just like it wasn't as big as every thought, you know?

Fuzzy Zappa. Beller was impressed for no reason. Trevino. Now that guy. That was a schlong. That was a Texas wedge. Come on. Here's another plot point for you. It's Tucker Carlson comparing Trump to

America's dad. There has to be a point at which dad comes home. Yeah, that's right. Dad comes home. And he's pissed. Dad is pissed. He's not

vengeful. He loves his children. Disobedient as they may be. He loves them. Because there is children. They live in his house. But he's very disappointed in their behavior.

And he's going to have to let them know. He's going to have to get to your room right now. And think about what you did. And when dad gets home, you know what he says? You've been a bad girl. You've been a bad little girl, and you're getting a very bad little girl.

you're getting a vigorous spanking right now. The delivery of that analogy is unbelievable. The build. It's also just like he could have just ended it dad's coming home and like it probably would have been the PG-13 version of this unhinged analogy. He got the big cheer for that. But then he keeps going on. He genders it and he does the spanking.

It's just like, dude. Spanking your daughter particularly. Yeah. And what's the room and where's our room in America? Like, where do we go back to? Yeah. Go back to the office? Like, what are we talking about?

Doesn't that feel like something that would have aired on ACN in Succession Season 5? I don't think that they could have come up with this. That would have been rejected, right? Yeah, of course. Yeah. I always think of your pal Andy here because, like, he's in writers rooms and has been in writers' rooms. And he were writing a television show about the election.

Yeah. And either of those things had been suggested. It would have been like, this is too on the nose. It's too silly. Andy and I have been talking about a lot recently with the last, I don't know, five, six years of TV shows is this idea of writers, TV writers writing themselves into a corner. So you basically, if you take the last season of industry, you're not giving anything away. It's a really good example of writers saying we're going for broke. What we set up in the end of this season is tomorrow us's problem. You know, because what we want to do is just get it all out. Empty the whiteboard, empty the idea bag. If it's good. it works, it goes. And we're not saving something for season five, season six,

scene seven. The traditional precise, like, you know, this is something that gets revealed slowly over time and is the hinge of the entire series. That's been kind of done away with

because people don't know how long these things are going on for. It's kind of how Trump's running this, where he's just like, there is no season three. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not playing.

Well, we don't think. We don't think. We don't think. Would that be 2B? I can run again. Why not? Yeah.

I don't think I don't think. I think he's always running. You know what I mean? That's obviously what he's in it for. Absolutely. That's what he's most comfortable doing. Here, let me give you some other rejected TV plot points that are actually happening in this election.

Kamala Harris next Tuesday giving a speech at the ellipse where Trump gave his go get him Tiger speech on January 6th. That's right. Is that what we're referring to, go get him tiger? Kind of sorky. Go get him shaman. Yeah. Yeah.

There you go. Kind of sorky, is it not? Yeah. I'm going to go back there, but I'm going to reverse it. Instead of saying, hey, what if we did this thing with the capital? I'm going to say, no, no, no.

Do you think that he can be beaten by saying, vote for me, I'm not him? Do you think that she, do you think that that's become, like, generally speaking the message that they're closing with? Is that I'm the best alternative. I don't know that she wants that to be. the message. It might necessarily be the message just because she hasn't been in the race for

very long. Yeah. Okay. Because, you know, we keep hearing like, oh, she hasn't introduced herself to the American people. People don't know enough about her. I don't know how much that's true. I think that's, that is the kind of thing that I see on the Times that I'm like, that's bullshit. That that's what you get mad at that headline. But I do think, like, people don't have as much experience with her. So if you, if you understand, look, I had four months to run a campaign, then a lot of my campaign is going to be not Trump. Yeah. And by the way, Biden's campaign was going be not Trump. Yeah. So we're borrowing some hits here. Yeah. I mean, I think that because of the way that the last three elections have sort of played out and because of like the, you know, Hillary was a very

much of an establishment candidate. Obviously Biden had been in the White House. It was a long time DC sort of Denzian and Harris is the acting vice president. The idea of Trump versus an outsider is probably a scenario we're never going to see, possibly because we'll be living in the never-ending second term of Trump. Who are married to the high castle? Sure. Yeah, where he descends into the Olympic flame in Los Angeles or whatever. But yeah, I'm curious.

I wonder how somebody would run that was more of like vote for me because I'm me, not vote for me because I'm not him. Have you seen the movie, no, the one that's about the Pinochet? Oh, no. Have you ever seen this movie? No. It's a fascinating movie. I watched it the other day because fantasy and I were doing election movies.

But, you know, they had this like plebiscite in Chile about, you know, Chad. And he's like, yes, he gets to stay. No, he doesn't get to stay. And they're thinking at Gail Garcia-Bernel is like the ad man doing the campaign. And he's like, okay, how do we do this? How do we do this? Because a lot of people want to run like, here are the way we run. Death, disappearances.

And he comes in and he's like, we can't do that. Yeah. We actually, that isn't the way to win, even if that is the overwhelming moral, you know, thing. at issue here. We have to figure this out. So he starts making these ads that are like Coca-Cola commercials. And it's like, no.

No, get on the no team. And when I look at what the Harris team is doing, I think that that is the war inside their brains right now. Yeah. And the way you just phrase that is actually this enthusiastic no. This is like kind of. The vibes no. Yeah, it's an optimistic no.

It's a no for tomorrow. It's a no with Beyonce. Yeah, right. It's a no with Magic Johnson on the stage in Flint, Michigan. No. Yeah, M&M introducing, yeah. So it gets to what you're talking about. You're not, it's not totally an affirmative vote for Kamala,

but it's a different vote than just saying no to Trump. Yes. It's no plus optimism. Yes. And maybe when she says turn the page, that's what she's getting at. It's no 2.0. Yeah. Some other rejected TV plot points that were actually part of this election, Biden in the Beach House in Delaware, pondering whether to get out of the election.

I mean, that feels pretty hacky, right? Yes. He had COVID at the time. It literally is like the west wing plot of him hiding like his. Oh, my God. Somebody pointed out at the time either scenario was sorky, either Biden stays in or Biden gets out and lets his young apprentice run for president. A general stepping forward to say that Trump is indeed a fascist that happened.

The world's richest man, Elon Musk, giving away money in an election sweepstakes. that's real. That really happened. Elon and Rupert Murdoch, per the New York Times, having dinner this Monday to discuss the election. Again, Succession Seasons 5, like, nope, too much. There are scenes in the most recent season of industry, which if anybody listening to this has not watched, I highly recommend for Pressbox listeners, where there is essentially an Illuminati meeting of British society where it's like the guy who publishes the Daily Mail, someone in charge of an investment bank, and someone working in like the energy stuff. sector get together and decide who the next Chancellor-Exchecker is going to be. And, you know, people had criticized

that scene because they were like, it's two on the nose. We're watching it literally take place in Sun Valley or literally take place like Rupert Murdoch's preferred dining establishment. And it's on stage. Yeah. It's not even a secret meeting most of the time. It is like Elon with a golf check.

Like he gave away a golf check a couple of times. So like there are laws, right? Like Merrick Garland's just like, we're going to look into that. We'll get to that after November 5th. Seems like the time. I'm sure you'll still be employed then. There's a lot of division among the election law experts that I've read in the New York Times and elsewhere about this.

But there are definitely people that say. Not to circle back, but I'm curious for you. Are you more every day it's data as much data as possible, but I'm not really getting too swayed by what I think people think when they read New York Times headlines or Washington Post headlines? I like to say I've sworn off data. But I still look at it because I want the dopamine here to go back to the Wojbom analogy. It feels good. There's something happened.

Yeah. A thing happened today. It's this poll that may be wrong or may be right, but this poll is out. And I can look at it and I text my wife and like, Kamala up one in Wisconsin again. She was down one. Now she's up one. The framing stuff for the media, I just feel like some of that criticism gets so overblown. Yeah.

I saw a tweet the other day that said, The New York Times. could end the election if that's the way it started. I'm like, guys. We've tried. Guys, this isn't going to happen. So even though I am on a media podcast, I'm just like, okay. Yeah. You know, the election is being covered very, very imperfectly.

There are certainly many, many errors being made. And I still don't know that the media has figured out a way to cover Trump. Sure. But I don't know that they ever will. Yeah, I think that it's nitpicky on my part. It's more just sort of like, and I actually think that I think you're right. Like there's never been this sort of agreed upon way to address his stuff. I thought the LA Times story this week was really interesting.

The non-endorsement? Yeah. And it was this kind of very public, basically feud between the publisher of the LA Times and the editorial board where it sounds like the publisher had said you can endorse somebody. The paper can endorse somebody, but they have to do like a thorough investigation into the factual, you know, pluses and minuses of either candidate. Laying out the issues and how they affect America?

Turn down all the noise and only get pure signal. And then that's how we're going to decide who we endorse. And that the LA Times editorial board was like, we choose not to endorse someone if that's the sort of methodology you want us to go through. And then one person quit. I think the person who runs the editorial board design, right? And the publisher released a very long statement about this. very long tweet.

Yeah. As it were. Just taking advantage of those extra characters. And all in the background of newspapers flailing around and trying to figure out what to do. Yes. And so we wind up with a non-endorsement in the presidential election. Like whatever, you know, would that matter, right? People reading the LA Times.

Yeah, a lot of Los Angeles were. Yeah, we were on the fence. But if you're a newspaper and you don't do it, like what you start to go, well, what's left in the newspaper? Yeah. What moral force do we have? What authority do we have? It's already hard enough to find box scores, you know. race results from San Anita. When Mel Brooks complained about that, that they weren't printing the San Ani,

he actually wrote into the paper. Good. And said, you know, where, what happened? It's a similar time. I tried this out on David, wanted to try this out on you. I think there is a strange force on all of our psyches that Trump says, I'm winning.

I'm winning the election. I won 2020 also. I'm always winning. Whereas Harris's message is, I'm the underdog. I'm going to lose. unless you come out and vote like crazy, you give me money, you do all these things.

Yeah. So that all of us here in this last 11 days go into it going, oh my God, Trump is winning and Harris is losing. What do you make of that? They both want to characterize themselves as the force for change and the force that's like nobody wants me, but like, you know, the establishment doesn't want us to, you know,

wrestle back democracy from fascism or, you know, the establishment doesn't want us to undo the deal. deep state and take apart the bureaucratic, you know, tumor that's like sit on Washington that stops you from making money and, I don't know, zoning up your buildings or whatever it is that, like, Trump's like going for here. I think it plays. You can't really run on a being, the last person who ran on like, I'm kicking ass was Obama and 12, right? Like, yeah. And even that was a real hedged. I'm kicking ass. Yeah. And that was, if I remember correctly, I feel like that was one

that was one of the first elections where I felt like the coverage of the campaign was not played out, did not play out in the actual results of the election where I felt like he smoked from me, right? You know, and it but it was like, this could be close.

Hey, this could be close. This is the most important election of our lifetime. And it did look close late. Remember because he lost the first debate and everybody freaked out. Yeah. But then we sort of found out, oh, they won the election because they showed that picture of Romney holding a dollar bill. over and over again in the early summer and then Romney was the rich guy

who's not looking out for you and it's over. But you're right. Yeah. He wanted a massive victory. He won every swing state. Yeah. So,

I don't know. I mean, do you start gain, are you so into it that you game out scenarios or are you just like going into election night, like kind of blind and like slightly,

you know, slightly bourbon buzzed and hoping for the best. I would happily game out scenarios, but I just don't know what that means. I don't know what a path to victory is. I mean, we could talk about, Okay, she drops one of the blue wall states.

So now needs North Carolina. But she maybe picks up a Sunnalt State. We can do that all day. But I don't, the polls haven't shown us a clear picture of that. And by the way, you can feel journalists getting frustrated. We feel this all the time when there's like an NBA season. Yeah. That's not clear.

College football does this all the time. This is like MBD being hurt to start the season. I'm just like, all right. We've not brought it back to the Sixers, right? But it's true. But you fell as sports writers when they don't know what's going to happen. Yeah. They just start flailing around because they can't see.

where it's going to end up or like where what two teams are going to end up. Yes. This is exactly what this feels like. Yeah. Political reporters don't know. So this kind of frustration sets in, this kind of, well, what if it's this little subgroup in Pennsylvania that's going to make the, and we just, and so I've just kind of tapped out of all that.

Yeah. Because I've also read every possible piece that, you know, about what it could be here. Here's this scenario. Here's that scenario. For sure. How do you feel about this potentially coming out of Pennsylvania? you. I have like a, you know, as a Philadelphia, I think a lot of Philadelphians probably have similar experiences where it's, it is kind of two states. You don't really have a lot of, I mean, unless you

have like family who live in like the western part of the state. It's, it's very much more part of the like Northeast Corridor of to use an Amtrak phrase. So you feel like a little bit more connected to the New York, Boston, Baltimore, you know, kind of like run of geography rather than, say, Harrisburg or Scranton or Carlisle or wherever, you know what I mean, out there. It's like, you know, if you went to Penn State, maybe you have, maybe you get like a little bit more insight into the fact that it's just like, you would think it was a different part of the country once you get that far west.

The Pennsylvania part is really interesting because when I was home last summer, I think, was when I-95 went up in flames. I don't know if you remember this story, but it was like there was a truck exploded underneath I-95 or on it, and it had basically like melted down a big chunk of the highway outside of Philadelphia. And Josh Shapiro, the governor,

did this very, you know, kind of active, somewhat performative, transparent. Like, we're going to get I-95 back up and running in two weeks. And I think he got it up in like nine days. And there was like a camera. You could watch the live stream of them fixing, I-95. And that was about as good as I felt about Pennsylvania in a long time in some ways, because it felt like, hey, you know, this is actually like, I-95 is the perfect metaphor for like,

no matter what persuasion you are, you need I-95 to work. And this is a governor who came in and just like fixed it. And it's the difference between politics and governance. You know, it's like there's the campaigning and then there's the elections and all that stuff. But then there is like, so can you fix this road? You know? And that was the best I had felt about PA in a while because it felt like everybody had kind of seen a road be on fire and then a road get fixed and we're like, good job. That was good. I'm glad that happened. I think we've gotten a long way from my 95 though. So I have no idea how PA is going to break. Are you going to be one of these shit-a-pick Shapiro guys? No, I'm not. I'm not. I think this is the way it was going to,

this was always the best way for it to work out given the circumstances. If Biden was unable to run and everything and it wasn't going to be a primary of the, any real significance. I don't think picking Shapiro out of a pot would have, would have marginally helped it. That it would be close in the end, and she would have a chance of 50-50 chance to win. I think, I think Shapiro would be in the same situation. You know what I mean? And I think Harris, at least, has been in the White House for so long around the White House for so long that she's been really, really vetted. I mean, I will say that there, it's been pleasant enough to have very little, like, the thing from Kamala Harris's past that's looming, like, you know,

that nobody knew about, right? Because she's been under the microscope, more or less, for the last four years. So she had the vetting process. I think Shapiro immediately kind of like had some stuff come up when his name is being kicked. Was it a college op-ed that we saw? Yeah, there was some that. There was some stuff that had happened in his office that he had kind of either looked the other way on

or swept under the rug. And, you know, I can't remember the exact details of it. But, yeah, I think it would have been a pretty electric vetting process. Is this where we are contractually obligated to? the site that James Carville quote, excuse me, about Pennsylvania politics. You know this? Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in the middle. Yes. Except he actually used suburbs here. You're going to have to help me with these pin hills and how do I say this? P-A-O-L-I. Paoli. Payoli. Yeah. I didn't want to get the Philadelphia and's mad at me. So it's Paoli and Pin Hills

with Alabama in the middle. Yeah, I think it's, this is sort of his way of talking about the, and people talk about this with Miami suburbs. Remember in 16. there was this really phenomenal this instant where the Miami suburbs did not go enough for Hillary. Yes, and we knew. And that meant there was going to be

this cascading effect of like, well, this is the mood of the country. If she's lost this suburb or didn't win it very well, that means the rest of the country is going Trump. I think that these PA suburbs

where it's like, maybe people have spent some time in Philadelphia, but have moved, maybe people are at least adjacent enough to a city to have a connection to a diverse group of people. Like they're,

they go where the wind blows them politically. A bellwether. Yeah, you can have some, some parents or Republicans, kids or Democrats kind of action going on. Whereas where I grew up in Philly, it was like, it's been blue since Rizzo pretty much.

Do you remember the senator? Rizzo, I can't remember. Wasn't Rizzo a Democrat? I just didn't act like one, right? He was, yeah, that it was that, that sort of,

yeah, age of Democrats. Yeah. You remember the senator that Carville got elected? 1991. Was this a big moment for you? Who was it? Harris Wofford.

Oh, yeah. After John Hines died in a plane crash. What a strange moment politics that was. Yeah. Oh, my God. That was a blast from the past. I was in early high school then. There was a great story in Politica the other day.

It was like people in Pennsylvania and Philly particular worried that the Harris campaign is blowing it. And the lead quote was from the head of the building trades council saying that Harris is and I was like this is just I'm already we're in. What a Philly story. The Building Trades Council, it's like is it already been for years? Can we jump in here? All right. Before we go, let's talk a little bit about your background. Sure.

I mean to this business. Your dad, Desmond Ryan, was a critic of a number of things at the Philadelphia Inquirer. What kind of critic was Desmond Ryan? He was a film critic for 17 years. He started out as a Metro reporter and then became like a political columnist. is, had an adversarial relationship with the aforementioned Frank Roso

and then became the film critic sometime in the early 80s, I think, maybe late 70s, early 80s, and then was one of, I mean, this was the glory days,

they had three film critics on staff at the Philadelphia Inquirer. So my dad, Carrie Ricky. Carrie Ricky, a famous Paulette. Yeah, and so then they,

he was a critic there for a long time, became the theater, critic. So when I was living in New York, my dad would come up to New York to see shows and I would go get lunch with him and stuff like that. And then towards the end, I think he was going to move into something else and then just retired. Yeah. We should note this is the age when if you liked movies, like young Chris or young Bryant did, you did not have access to lots of ways to read about movies. No, you would find out what was playing by looking at the ad. And then underneath the ad was the theaters it was playing at and the showtimes. And your local critic was your person. Yeah.

Even, we couldn't even get Roger Ebert's reviews until like mid to late 90s. Yeah. Like this is the way you learned about things. And my dad would also put out a, I think he did a couple of additions of a home video guide, which were just capsule reviews of videos that most stores would have. But like, this was like bound volume. Yeah. Yeah. Really sold around the Philadelphia area? I think so. Yeah. Through the paper? Just independently. No, I think he got to carve out there. I think he, he, he, he, published it somehow, but like, it was available. It would just be one of those things that you would be able to like look up like, oh, what else did Stephen Frears direct and then go to the

video store and go check it out. Which was a legitimate question. The information was not always easy to find. Whereas young Chris thinking my dad has the coolest job in the world? I thought he was my dad. So, I mean, it was really, really neat to go to like the Batman premiere or go see Pulp Fiction like the night before it came out. But, you know, more often than not, I disagreed with his taste, partially because I was a teenage boy. And partially because he was a British man who liked merchant ivory movies and thought a lot of the things I liked were like tripe, you know? So you inherited the anglophilia from him, but not the taste in merchant ivory remains of the day.

I do like remains of the day now, but not as much as heat, which was a big argument in our house. What did you read at that age in terms of nonfiction that popped out to you? That's a great question. I think so when I started getting into the idea of writing about sports instead of playing Sports Sports Illustrated was a huge thing. I was a big baseball fan. So I would read Baseball Weekly,

and I would read SI, and I was really awesome to college basketball. So I was a big, memorize all of the college basketball rosters from the back of street and Smith person. And then just like imagine like Syracuse playing, you know, Wake Forest on some night in my head

because I was an only child. So like there was a lot of, a lot of Bob Costas nights of just like, in games that were taking place in my imagination. And then as I got older, I got more into music journalism, music criticism, and started reading people like Lester Bangs and Richard Meltzer and like sort of the great village voice writers, Spin Magazine, where I wound up kind of writing and being very adjacent to was a huge deal for me in the 90s.

So yeah, it was like from sports journalism and some of the great Philly columnists that we had to moving into music stuff. Did you ever want to make movies? Oh, yeah. Yeah, I went to a semester of film school at Temple University. And I left to move into the journalism school. How did that semester go? The first assignment was to do an animated film, and we had to, like, draw on this film strip.

And I'm terrible at drawing, and I also don't like animated films. So I let that be like an overarching signal that I shouldn't do this. Did you complete the assignment? Is there a lost film of Chris Ryan out there? beginning of a stick figure looking at a tree and then there's just basically you can see my motivation dissipate as like I just have a line going through this

film strip. So you were like I will write about these things but I will not make these things. I found that to be it's been like kind of this thing that I always am struggling with because I think a lot of my friends and a lot of my colleagues are always like they're working on a big project.

They've got something they're going towards. They're going to write the novel. They're going to write the screenplay. They're working on something huge. And I have always really enjoyed getting my range session in every day and doing whether it was blogging when we were at Grantland or whether it's doing lots of pods and hanging out with people now. I feel like I'm more of like an everyday player than I am like a Megalopolis player, you know, where it's like I've been waiting eight years. I haven't, you haven't heard from me and here it is, you know? And you think that's because that's what your strength is or you just? I think that that's how I enjoy the world.

You know, like, I think that that's how all of my favorite writers, all of my favorite, like, commentators, all of my favorite, even my, I love prolific musicians. I love a band that puts out like three albums in 18 months, you know, or three albums in 24 months. Like, I like people who are working and like let their work become this almost living, breathing document of what they're interested in rather than, you, you know, I've been building up to this one monumental statement. And I, I think that's, where I feel most comfortable and the hard part is being okay with what you're good at, you know? Uh-huh. Was there a moment where you felt like you, I'm now okay with this rather than saving up for a big book or a big treatise on something? I don't know if it was ever like a moment of clarity, like an epiphany or something. I think it's more like I've tried writing some of the, like I've tried writing screenplays

and and like gotten since you've been an adult internally. And I've gotten like, you know, third. 35, 60 pages into something. And then I look back at it. I'm like, this is really hard. Like, you know what I mean? And it's not like, you know, those who can't do teach sort of situation.

It's just like, this isn't really, this doesn't give me joy the way that this, what we're doing right now does. And I think that that's okay to admit that you like doing certain things more than others. And that even if you kind of like, think like, oh, I'm building towards what I really want to do is write my own version

of Tinker Taylor, Soldier Spy down the line. It's like, I think I just like talking about Take Your Sailor Soldier Spy a lot and books that are like that. We've all kind of evolved from being writers first to being podcasters first or at least tied with writing. What do you like about podcasting in particular? Well, there's a purity of voice, which is just obvious because it is your voice. But I was always a pretty voicy writer. I never thought I would say. I never thought I had like the most amazing angle on something or I certainly didn't have, you know, I've been digging through somebody's three-point shooting and this is what I've realized. When I read Kirk or I read Zach

or I read Rob Mahoney, I can't do that. But I really like the voicier side of this is my interpretation of what we're watching, whether it's a game or whether it's a TV show or a movie or something like that. And so I feel very at home on a microphone. And we're so lucky because we do have these personal relationships with the people, you and David, me and Andy, we have 50 years of friendship probably between us, you know, like, it's nice to be able to have this conversation of the, like, that's basically the same one that we've been having since we've been in high school. I was talking to Fantasy last night and he said, Chris Ryan at a bar in the odds. Was Chris Ryan in front of a microphone now? Yeah. Like, that was the guy, you know, and it was like,

well, what if this were a thing, but there was no vehicle for that to be a thing? Yeah. I mean, I think I spent a lot of the aughts, the early aughts, like trying to figure out how to express myself. You know, I didn't have the most traditional professional trajectory. Like, I was working retail in New York. I was working at Kim's record store, Kim's. Hell yeah. But I was in the record store department for a few years there. On St. Mark's, the legendary Kim's.

And then I would write a piece for the voice. And I was just talking with Harvilla about this the other day. or a couple weeks ago, it's like you'd write a piece, and you've write a record review for like the voice or spin. And I think because there was no actual feedback, the only feedback you would get is if a friend of yours at a bar, was like, hey, man, saw the primal scream review you wrote in the voice. That was pretty good.

And you're just like, I'm going to dine out for a month on that. And there was like a real like personal pride because, A, you could hold the thing that you were talking about. You're like, check it out. Like, you know, the mayor is on the cover. of this paper and inside I wrote about the Afghan wigs or something like that and then there was also like this lack of

feedback from the internet so there wasn't like this thread about something that you had done wrong or right you really have this like personal relationship to the work and I loved that but that was really like a side gig for me like I didn't become like a professional writer

writer I worked at Fader for a while I've worked at MTV as a blogger on these various projects and stuff like that. But like the first time that I was like every single day I have to write my ass off was granted. And that probably happened at the right time in my life for me. I think I needed 10 or 12 years to screw around before I could like the lead up. Yeah. And now when I get this job, yeah. That turns out to be a fantastic job and makes your career. But it was also like weirdly Bill letting me do something approximating what I was doing on like blogs that I was writing for

for my own personal amusement back in York. The C is dope. Yeah. just to list one memorable example. Yeah. Could transfer perfectly to Grayland. Yeah. And the C-Stope is actually not, like, as a blog post, I reread it a couple years ago, and it's about two trailers for movies that were set on submarines. And it's not, they're not particularly informative, and they're also way over-haping

these movies that were pretty average. But, like, was like, I was just enthusiastic in the moment. I tried to capture that. You talk about this era where if you got one email about something you wrote or somebody just patted you on the back of the book. bar, you'd feel so good. You have gone from that to being this enormous figure in podcast, where there is a subreddit about Chris Ryan. There are people online who are like, did you hear the thing Chris said? I would like to repeat the thing that Chris said because it was

so funny and it was so smart. How do you deal with that? I just really appreciate it. Do you read it? I try not to because I'll disassociate. That was such a Josh Shapiro answer. I really appreciate it. Just Josh Fierreelius say he disassociates. That was such a political answer. Do you keep one eye on? Are you interested at all what people are saying about you? Well, I don't ever want to be doing something because I think that's what, like, I, like, even like when I do Wayne Jenkins, like, every single time, I'm like, I kind of feel stupid doing this because now it's like, this thing people like, kind of are like, oh, is you going to do Wayne Jenkins? Yes, he did it again. But, you know, like it's, it's, I do, I dabble.

All right. Last question for you. And then I'll let you off the psychiatrist scouch here. Okay. We have podcast personas. And then we have actual personas that we show our partners at home and we show people around us. How close do you think Chris Ryan on the mic is to Chris Ryan washing dishes, Chris Ryan at dinner at home? Well, I think that it's really hard to answer that.

How do you answer that question? Well, we're more up when we're on podcasts. Sure. Like if you and I came home and we're like, it's Andy Greenwald. I think our wives would be like, what are you doing, dude? Are you okay? You have to be more excitable. You have to be more of a know-it-all, I think, in front of a microphone.

Yes. Like, I think if you treated people like that in your life, they'd be like, do I get a turn here? Yeah. I do not. I try not to explain too many things to my wife. She doesn't really have a lot of time for that. And I find sometimes you transfer from podcast mode to just like when I'm hanging out with dads in my neighborhood.

And people just don't talk like that. No. I do find that like there is like something that bleeds into like hanging out with people who also do pods, especially the ones I'm already hanging out with because they're my friends, is we do speak in more, like, paragraphs. And that is annoying. Like, I do miss the, like, just shooting the shit. Like, sometimes there's three minutes of silence while we look out the window of a bar, like, whatever kind of normal rhythms. I think also because as we get older and people have kids and people have, like, lots more responsibilities and stuff, like, you're trying to,

like, if you're going to hang out and get dinner, you want to, like, compress it with as much, like, as possible. A great hour. Yeah, it's just you got to have a tight, a tight 45. Great hang for that 45 minutes. As far as the persona thing goes, like, I actually, I don't think I'm the right judge of that. I think probably I

am pretty much like I am on microphone as much as I usually am in public. Maybe like in my house I'm standing around pretending like I'm going to use this kettlebell while I watch like a Bengals game out of the corner of my eye. It's not the prettiest thing you've ever seen.

I was about to say, can we get that on the new ringers video? Yeah. Initiatives, I'd like to see that. I know. My wellness, my wellness vertical is coming. All right. Chris Ryan, the rewatchables, the watch future wellness podcast perhaps. Podcast perhaps I can talk.

See at the polls. Thank you for coming on the press box. Thanks for having me, man. It's time for the second. Weekly edition of David Shoemaker guesses, the strained pun headline. Yeah. Monday's headline about efforts to calm Democratic panic before the election was Kamala before the storm.

Today's headline comes to us from our pal, Seth Somerfell that's from the inlander of Spokane, Washington. Turns out, David, that at the movies, it's been a big couple of months for body horror. Body horror. I want you to think of the season we're in and body horror.

As you ponder, what was the inlanders strain pun headline? Body horror. Yes, accent on the body. Fall body, autumn. Another word for body, we may say, well, if we're taking a class in college. Anatomy.

Okay. And the season. So yeah, here we go. Fall anatomy. Oh, you're so close. Remember there was a big movie. Anatomy. Anatomy of the fall.

Yeah, anatomy of the fall. Yeah. You guess you could also do fall of the anatomy. or there's something there too. Anatomy of the fall. That is the press box. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Brian Waters.

Coming up next Thursday, Asted Herndon from the New York Times is going to give us our election eve rundown on what's going on. We're going to have a bunch of pods on election week, including Dave Weigel from Semaphore. Shoemaker returns Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. Have a great weekend.