The Press Box - Debate Fallout and Texas Monthly’s Skip Hollandsworth

Episode Date: October 1, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss the fallout from the first presidential debate. They weigh in on responses from several reporters and news anchors (2:38) and discuss conspiracy theories that have surfaced. Then on Listener Mail, they answer the question “What cardboard cutouts should be put in the audience at the presidential debates?” (22:53) Then, Texas Monthly writer and editor Skip Hollandsworth joins to discuss his new crime podcast, ‘Tom Brown’s Body’ (32:32). Plus: the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David Kaylee McInachanee claimed today that Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney-Barritt was a Rhodes Scholar. In fact, Amy Coney-Barrant went to Rhodes College in Memphis. What I want to know is, as graduates of Big 12 schools, should we be offended or should we just go ahead and take the populist line on this one? Oh, my God. I think you just got yourself kicked out of the Alumni Association. I mean, I do not the sort of person that says this sort of thing a lot, but I think we can save our outrage for more important matters,

especially when it comes to Kaylee McAnney and her half-truths, or mistruths, or whatever else. I find it hard to get to... First of all, I actually think that's a mistake that someone might make, but, you know, someone who didn't spend time doing their job, I guess. But yeah, I mean, and if it's deliberate, it's actually kind of hilarious. I mean, I don't know that she meant it to be funny, but it's kind of funny. You think she was just handed a piece of paper where the S and scholar was lowercase?

So she technically is a Rhodes scholar. Do you think she was actually, she was very deliberately, she made the choice deliberately to say that, and knew that she was misrepresenting the facts, but thought in that moment, well, technically I'm correct. No one can see if I'm capitalizing when it's me speaking. Do you think that's what she was, do you think that was her thought process? That implies a lot of sophistication that I'm not sure it's happening in the Trump

White House. I agree with you. I agree. Anyway, I have absolutely no time for college grandstanding in my life, UT. And I really don't. And just because I went to an elite public university, I'm not going to sit here and say that because I saw Ricky Williams win the

Heisman trophy in 1998. I'm not going to brag about that because I saw Vince Young win the national championship in 2005. Why brag about that? Come on, people. Have some respect. It's time for the press box. Part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers. Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer here with a big show for you today.

We'll answer your listener mail, including the question, which cardboard cutouts should be put in the audience at a presidential debate. Plus, Texas Monthly Legends, Skip Hollinsworth stops by to talk about his new true crime podcast, Tom Brown's Body. All that plus David Shoemaker guesses a strain pun headline and the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But first, David, I want you to listen to some audio. This is the sound of a news anchor with a broken heart. I have to speak personally here as somebody who's watched presidential debates for 40 years,

as somebody who's moderated presidential debates, as someone who's prepared candidates for presidential debates, as someone who's covered presidential debates, that was the worst presidential debate I have ever seen in my life, a lot more heat than light over some 98 minutes. David, have you ever heard George Stephanopoulos like that before? I have to say, as someone who's commented on a lot of media figures making public statements, that was the saddest media figure making a public statement I've ever heard.

Oh, but wait, because as we talk to Batefallout here, I want to start with a contest for which news anchor best emoted their disappointment after the bonkers debate we heard on Tuesday night. Now, as you know, news anchors are self-styled non-partisan creatures. So they really can't come down on the side of one party or the other. But the thing they can all go in on, David, is when a democratic tradition is defiled. Oh, yes. In the way Trump defiled Tuesday's debate.

Okay, so that was George Stephanoblus on the ABC News Post scam. Our second disappointed anchor contestant is CNN's Jake. Tapper. Well, that was a hot mess inside a dumpster fire, inside a train wreck. That was the worst debate I have ever seen. In fact, it wasn't even a debate. It was a disgrace. Not a debate, David. A disgrace. Yeah. Okay. If we're going to go with D words here, aren't they, aren't all of these responses? I mean, they're not inaccurate, but aren't they doing an incredible disservice to the actual content of what was on the debate. And I don't mean specifically that we should address the policy issues or the points of disagreement between the candidates. But

like, it was a, it was the worst debate George Stephanopoulos had ever seen. It was a dumpster fire to Jake Tapper because of President Trump, not because of the debate format or because of vice president Biden. It was a mess because of one element in the debate. And yet none of the of them, well, I mean, obviously some of them went on to say more specifically, but I see over and over again, people saying, just saying, this debate was the worst ever. You see it on Twitter. You see everybody saying this. But like, and then, and then a lot of these journalists will go immediately, we'll segue immediately into some commentary about how voters are turned off. Voters are turned off because this, our president is, is acting like a fool. And the commentary from the media class is,

oh, the thing that he was a part of was just bad. Am I, am I, am I dwelling too much on this? I mean, it feels like it echoes back to four years ago when people were, we're kind of bending over backwards to point out how the media was not criticizing Trump sufficiently, right, by doing a kind of this and that, either, you know, both sides sort of thing. But, but I really feel like that the response to this debate has been just remarkably unspecific, because there's a very specific problem with it. Jake Tabber got there.

Yeah. Though he did use the phrase the American people lost tonight. Yes. Which is kind of my favorite generic debate analysis. You know who the real losers were tonight, David? The American people. That is like your basic unit of debate analysis after something like what happened on Tuesday night. Yeah.

Probably good for every debate, right? Yeah. But I mean, it's like if something, I mean, it would have been, it would have been like, who did the, what was the famous? I'm sorry, I'm going like really, our ancient sports here. what was the Joe Buck call, the touchdown, was it Randy Moss pretending to drop trow in the end zone? That would have been, I mean, is, if, I mean, Joe Buck's response at that moment was basically the football audience, the American people have lost because of that celebration right there. But no, the appropriate response is, look at that idiot, right? I mean, if you disapprove of it, the response is look at that idiot, not the American people have suffered because of what just happened in the end zone.

And that, and I feel like we're getting a lot of the American people right now. On the very same roundtable as Tapper, there was CNN's Dana Bash, listened to how she summed up the debate. You use some high-minded language. I'm just going to say it like it is. That was a shit show. And, you know, we're on cable. We can say that.

Apologies for being maybe a little bit crude. But that is really the phrase that I'm getting from people on both sides of the aisle on text. And it's the only phrase that I can think of to really describe it. kudos kudos to mish bash for getting shit show past the censors but again

our president was a shit show the rest of the debate just suffered by proximity by being proximate to him it really is striking when news anchors cuss well it's funny right I mean it's like that's half of the jokes in like

anchor man like just cussing and cussing from that position of authority is just inherently funny. Yeah, they've taken it up a notch. It's like when Biden calls the president a clown, that's meant to just make you just sort of screech, do a tire screech and go, whoa, what just happened? But when somebody on CNN uses the word shit show,

you're like, oh, we've taken it up a notch here. Also from CNN, David, and God, what a night of head shaking it was on CNN, we have Anderson Cooper. I don't think we've ever seen a president of United States. completely lacking in shame. I mean, just shameless. And obesely immoral. I mean, there's not a moral fiber in this man.

Obesely immoral. Now, do you think Anderson Cooper just happened to land on that adjective? No, all great literature employs such sort of double entendres. That was good. I mean, listen, at least he... That was about Trump. Yeah, no, at least he pointed to Trump, right? I mean, at least he was accurate in his expression of disgust.

I was going to call it right there, but we had a late entry right before we came on the air. Fox News is John Roberts today. Ask Kaylee McInachianney at the White House to denounce white supremacy. She did not, especially directly anyway. So here's Roberts on the air a few minutes later on Fox News. And for all of you on Twitter who were hammering me for asking that question, I don't care because it's a question that needs to be asked. And clearly, the president's Republican colleagues, a mile away from here, are looking for an answer for it, too.

So stop deflecting. Stop blaming the media. I'm tired of it. All right. John Roberts is tired of it. So we're going to let you go. Thank you, my friend. What a dismount there by the Fox News anchor.

Oh, my gosh. I think like if everybody that popped up on any cable news channel just like preface what they were about to say by and all you people on Twitter who are and then just like go into the replies. That was like that was basically like he should have just said, you know, something mean gene to start that off. That was fantastic. I also wanted to talk to you, David, about moderator Chris Wallace. Who had a very interesting night on Tuesday night. He did an interview with the New York Times as Michael Grinbaum. And by the way, this was my favorite news anchory moment to the point you just made.

Wallace couldn't quite come out and admit that it was Trump's fault. This is Grimbaum writing. Asking directly if Mr. Trump had derailed the debate, Mr. Wallace replied, well, he certainly didn't help.

Chris, I don't know if you know this, but the debate was on TV. We saw you lecturing Trump. So he didn't help. You can go ahead and say that Trump derailed the debate. I don't know. I've been thinking about.

about his performance for the last day and a half. You and I touched on it a little bit Tuesday night. I'm still not convinced that he did a terrible job, given the fact that he was dealing with the debate monster and a guy who just had no interest in abiding by any of the rules, letting anybody else talk, and was determined to interrupt.

Where are you falling on Wallace? I think, I think I'm, I think he's actually said the words he did a good job. and you corrected me, he did a fine job, and I'm fully in the fine camp or fine at best camp right now. And I also said that he was, that if it hadn't been,

if this has been a conventional debate, but the questions had been the same, I think we'd have a lot to object to just in the content, the sort of partisan leanings of some of his questions. And there's probably, there was more of that

than I noticed even in real time. So yeah, I mean, I think there's lots of things to take exception to, but in terms of just refereeing, I don't know what else he could have done. I mean, like, I don't know. I just, I kept thinking that certainly he was prepared for it to go off the rails.

He was hoping that it wasn't. He might say he wasn't prepared for it to be, to go the way it did. But he acquitted himself, well, I mean, I guess your mileage may vary. He acquitted himself something. He was, he seemed capable of functioning in a moment where a lot of people would probably just be crawling under their desk out of embarrassment or anxiety or, anxiety, or, you know, of fear. So, you know, I think that given, I mean, in terms of refereeing, I find it hard to imagine someone else doing better, unless it was just someone that had Trump's ear in a way

that Wallace obviously didn't. I mean, I don't know. I think resistance Twitter probably would have loved Chris Wallace to stand up and say, Mr. President, you're being an asshole. That is not going to happen during a presidential debate or any television appearance involving the president of the United States. So if we, if we, if we, if we, if we go ahead and mandate that, what I think Wallace did so effectively was he was able to by fighting back, fighting back, constantly telling Trump that he was interrupting to basically underline it three times to the American people that Trump was being an asshole without saying it. And I think that's important because you're absolutely right.

It's very easy for this to slide into, oh, this was a crazy debate and everyone was yelling at each other versus the correct interpretation, which is Trump hijacked the debate. But you notice in almost all his comments, Wallace made them directly to Trump, right? He appealed directly to Trump between segments. You need to stop interrupting me.

You have to abide by the rules of the debate. Look, that is not going to be like super heroic or super charming. But I think, again, within the confines of what you could actually do from that seat, I think he sort of communicated to America that Trump was being an asshole. Yeah, I mean, there were also a lot of people, even on television. I mean, they were talking heads, people who I'm sure know the details of the debate format better than I do, who were maintaining on debate night that they should have cut Trump's microphone at various times.

I just assume that that is, if that were even remotely feasible, they would have been prepared to do it. But also the reaction would have been just. so dramatic to that, right? I mean, to just without warning, without pretense, just to, like, start cutting the president's mic. I mean, you saw the, the Trump campaign has been publicizing the fact that Chris Wallace cut off Trump, however, 60, whatever time, as opposed to the, you know, low double digit that he,

that he did Biden. I mean, if you saw the debate that you would say, yes, that's exactly what happened, because Trump was just being a jerk the entire time. That shouldn't reflect well on the president, but they spin it really easily into an anti-media, whatever, media-biased talking point. And I don't know what else you can do without making, I mean, if the talking point were valid, I think it would have, or even a little bit more valid, it would have so much more salience. And it would, I think, have a much bigger effect on people's perception of what happened. I saw a self-described conservative warrior named Wayne Allen Rood on Twitter tweet this. Wallace destroyed Trump's train of thought while saving Biden again and again.

It was Wallace destroying Trump's train of thought, not Trump clearly trying on purpose to destroy Joe Biden's train of thought. Okay. And this was former Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, truly one of the saddest people on cable news, if not of all of planet Earth. he thought Wallace asked some tricky questions. I would say the Democrats owe a lot to Chris Wallace because Chris Wallace asked those two questions. Not Joe Biden. It was Chris Wallace who asked those two questions. And he asked him for a reason because he asked two questions where he was asking the president do something that he knows the president doesn't like to do.

Which is? Which is say something bad about people who support him, right? What, declining violence? Well, talking about... Supremacy? Yeah, the white supremacist, number one. And number two, asking. Yeah, so the Chris Wallace asked Trump some very canny questions about,

do you support white supremacy? Yes, that was. He really put him in the corner. Thank you, Senator Santorum for that insight. It's just a quick, quick point of order. Wayne Allen Root was a candidate for the Libertarian presidential nomination in 08, and I think was their nominee for vice president before leaving the party and going back to a and going back to the Republican side. And if I remember correctly, he's also, he also

was a, he was a Columbia student at the same time Obama was or something and has implied that Obama never was there. So that's who we're dealing with. Right. So at some point, he changed his business card to conservative warrior and started going in this direction. Yes. Well, you know, I mean, that's, I think he just kind of follows the, uh, the Tea Party of Trumpism train with a lot of the rest of America. Finally, can we see? spend a second on the conspiracy theories that popped up around this debate. You and I were going to talk about this Tuesday night and the debate just threw us so much that we didn't even get to it. We talked about Trump's PED conspiracy that came out before the debate, that Joe Biden was using

drugs to sort of perk up for the debate. Then there was one that Biden was receiving cues during the debate via a secret earpiece. That went viral earlier this week. Turns out that theory has been around since at least 2000. Yes. I did not remember the 2000 version when Rush Limbaugh said Al Gore was getting answers to the Earpiece. I didn't remember that either, no. I remember the George W one in 2004.

Oh, yes. Very much. I definitely got some like email chain forwards. When is the media going to do something about this? This is before my career was involved Photoshop, but I probably would have been the person throwing those photos into stark contrast, interesting the levels like crazy in Photoshop. if that had happened during my time. I also, I mean, it's also just hilarious to look at the one, I mean, the ones from this debate

and see how, like, easily, how clearly Photoshop some of them are. But I guess that's all kind of beside the point, right? I mean, this, this is a conspiracy theory that comes up literally every cycle. The important difference here is in 2004, it was an email forward. In 2020, the Trump campaign is the email forward. Tim Murtaugh, Trump campaign's communications. director said in a statement that Biden had agreed to an ear inspection and later backed out. The Biden campaign has said that this is bullshit.

The Trump team also launched an ad campaign after the debates that asked, why won't Sleepy Joe commit to an ear test? Who's in Joe's ear? The ads, the BBC reports, have reached. Get ready. More than 10 million people via Facebook. It is interesting that, I mean, maybe it's because Facebook is a thing and the campaigns could have kind of have to take responsibility for whatever they put out there. I'm not sure that kind of transparency is a net positive.

But it is interesting that, you mean, you said the campaign is the email forward. You know, we had, you know, Sean Hannity was on TV prior to the debate talking about Joe Biden being on drugs, right? And there was a great article, I don't know if it was in the Times or where that tracked the earpiece conspiracy theory, basically from like one anonymously sourced tweet that was later sort of retracted or corrected and how that sort of climbed its way very, very deliberately, you know, up the Republican or the conservative media ranks until it could, you know, be a mainstream talking point. But, yeah, I mean, even four years ago, four years ago, the Trump campaign was dependent on, like, like, Twitter low-lifes like Mike Cernovich to pass around that Hillary Clinton is sick nonsense, right? And then maybe, like, after some amount of, like, permeation, then the Drudge report would just have, like, a snark. headline that no one quite understood unless you'd been following this thing on dark on the

dark web or whatever and and and even you know you go back further and this is this kind of stuff that you would a campaign would seed you know it's like when the bush campaign like would put out or supposedly put out those flyers about john mccain parenting you know kids out a wedlock or whatever it's like this was this is the the secret of the part about the part of campaign that we don't admit to and for the and trump in 2020 this is just like you know par for the course i mean they're They're open about it. Yeah. So we're Q and on supporters, David.

I know this is going to shock you. Because they saw something on Biden's wrist, which they claimed was some kind of communication device. Apparently Biden is like on Star Trek, you know, where you speak to the device in your hand to talk to the ship. Turns out that is actually a rosary that Biden wears to honor his late son, Bo. So that's a miss on that one too.

Wow. It's always good. if you're going to do a conspiracy to then insult the candidate. By the way, programming note, David, next Wednesday, October 7th is the vice presidential debate between Mike Pence and Kamala Harris. We will have an instant reaction episode here at the press box. And maybe this time, David and I won't have our jaws on the floor and can actually get through this without losing our minds.

All right. At time for the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. David, one of the revelations in that amazing New York Times report about Trump's taxes, Trump must pay back $300 million in loans and has a business debt load of more than $1 billion. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write, Trump can no longer afford to own the libs.

thanks to Leah Cassidy Fletcher and Ryan Snyder. In trying to describe the debate, David, a lot of people landed on the same word as CNN's Dana Bash. It was an overworked Twitter joke for your publication style guide to tweet, Shit Show is one word. Thanks to Michael Saul Warren for that. And finally, did you see the bit where Hollywood people were comparing the debate disaster

to their own career disasters? Oh, yeah. Star Wars's Mark Hamill tweets, that debate was the worst thing I've ever seen and I was in the Star Wars Holiday special. Screenwriter Jeremy Slater, that was the worst thing I've ever seen and I wrote Fantastic Four.

Screenwriter Alec Berg, it was the worst thing I've ever seen and I wrote the Cat and the Hat movie. Finally, screenwriter Eric Champanella, that's the worst thing I've ever seen and I wrote the movie Eddie, which had a cameo by Trump. Top that, motherfuckers.

Thanks to Sugar Lemon. If you use Tuesday's debate to purge your own Hollywood would payday. Congrats. You made the overword Twitter joke of the

week. In the notebook dump, David, let's do some listener mail. We do this every Thursday.

Remember when we talked the other day about the press box listener challenge? A listener had to get something mentioned on the show and

the overwork Twitter joke of the week, the strain pun headline and now listener mail. Of course. All right. Our pal Hugh Hopkins

has a new challenge. If you're a journalist, your challenge is to make a reference to the press box in your copy. Hugh Hopkins has done this.

In an article for Sky Sports, he wrote about WNBA's Alyssa Thomas. He writes, there has been an overworked joke on WNBA Twitter that expresses shock anytime a broadcast commentary team references Alyssa Thomas's

two torn labrums. This is this appeared in print. We're calling this the Hugh now, by the way. If you get something in, oh my God, this might be a one-time only sort of thing. I don't want to be responsible. where we're getting somebody fired for putting it like backmasking into the pro press press box

subliminal messages into their into their copy yeah there aren't enough jobs out there right now but if you feel secure in your position feel free to follow hugh hopkins into the abyss and work in a press box reference thank you so much you this is from steve holzupfeld who would be your ideal debate moderator character or actual person if the next debate is like the last one i'm voting Stone Cold Steve Austin, but could also be talked into Gordon Ramsey. Oh. Well, I'm sure it's kind of separate from the way he posed the question, but Stone Cold Steve Austin has found a sort of second life as an incredibly, incredibly smart and

quick-witted podcast host. Like, he is really, really good at it. And I would definitely put him up there, both for, you know, his on-screen shenanigans and his ability as a questioner. I don't know. I mean, who would you pick, Brian? Don't we feel like we have this incredible surplus in the world right now of mean hosts? Like we've got the two just mentioned.

We've got Simon Cowell. Right? We've got people like, I think what's his name? Pierce Morgan is probably going to be a little too pro-Trump. But we have people who play that role on TV. Wait, I thought Pierce Morgan was anti-Trump. But did he, did he turn? I thought he and Trump have like longstanding issues, but I could be, I might be totally.

Yeah, I'm just going to go ahead and say this. I don't care enough to look at this up here's more. But there are people like that. Let's go with Stone Cold unless we come up with something better. Wait, wait, what about, I mean, I don't, this isn't, this is only halfway serious. So it's probably not a good answer in either direction. But what about like a slightly older matured Howard Stern? Okay.

Don't anything Howard would do a fine job at this point? Sure. And he fits that broad category. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. He's seen weirder for sure than that presidential debate. This one was from listeners Bapton America and Matthew

You're made the editor of the New York Times What is your headline The morning after the debate Okay, can we start by reading The actual headline of the print New York Times Yeah, please do.

So I'm expecting some kind of On the one hand, on the other hand, you know, debate. This was their actual headline On the front page, Trump's heckles Send a first debate into utter chaos. That's not bad.

I don't know if I love the word Hecles. it's not like Joe Biden was a comedian. It doesn't feel exactly accurate, but I'm sure it is. Yeah, and I think they're, there you feel a little bit like they're looking for a safeish word, right? Heckles is kind of like feels a little more jovial than what Trump was doing, but that's not bad at all. No, it's not. It feels like they, it feels like they spend all of their capital on chaos and then had to figure out a very nice word to use for the other thing.

Yeah, I think, but you're right. It's fine. It's actually, it's not as kind of much of a misdirection as you might have. expect. I love this question from Rick Delaney. Would cardboard cutouts of people work better for the candidates and the debates? If so, who would each candidate want to see smiling back at them? Pope Francis for Biden, Duarte for Trump? So this is a fascinating question. And this is the way I would put it. I would ask each of the two candidates to pick the cardboard cutouts. I was going to say exactly the same thing. Right? Yeah. And wouldn't it be revealing? First of all, we could do

Biden's right now. John Lewis, FDR, somebody from Delaware, we don't know, Obama, right? I mean, we could just pick, John McCain for sure, 1,000 percent he has John McCain cardboard cut out in the audience. Yeah. Trump's could be literally anything. Like, who do you think Donald Trump puts in cardboard form looking back at him in the audience? Oh, man, that's a great question. I mean, Do you think there's any like TV or movie characters that would make the cut? Didn't he love Stephen Seagall? Wasn't that a thing? And one of the biographers that he was watching the same Steven Seagall movie over and over again?

Oh my God. I'm sure that's true. Mike Tyson? Oh, yeah. I think he's a big fan of Shark Week, right? I mean, I don't only know if you can put sharks in the audience. But I have no idea. You probably just put cardboard, like the cardboard cutouts of his kids over and over again, just like 15 of each of them.

don't know, dude. I think I think there'd be at least one kid left out in exchange for a celebrity. I really do. I think it'd be fascinating. I think this needs to happen with the second debate. This is from Nick Field. What should we make of the fact that despite the conventional wisdom, viewers did not turn the debate off, but stuck with it? This is true. First of all, the debate had 73 million viewers. Just for comparison, the Emmys, which you might have seen your friends tweeting about had six million viewers. 73 million viewers is a huge, huge television audience in 2020.

What Nick is specifically referring to is the debate did not lose viewership as it went along. Its rating near the end was about the same as its rating at the very beginning. 10.30 Eastern Time ratings, in fact, were slightly higher than the ratings at 9 p.m. I don't know about you, David, but I saw a whole lot of people on Twitter, including friends of ours, saying,

I just had to walk out. I couldn't watch that. I turned it off or I'm so glad I don't have to watch political debates. Were those people telling the truth? Well, probably not. I mean, not all of them. I mean, I also saw a lot of people who were just, a lot of, like, Twitter commentary where people made the assumption that the casual viewer tuned out after 15 minutes.

You know, like the, you know, the average, average Joe just must have gotten turned off by it. Obviously, that wasn't true. I mean, I don't want to. you know, make too big of a deal of it. But I think most of the people that tuned in were committed to watching it. And there might been people who were tuned in who, you know, were every bit as engaged as, you know, I think, well, who were very engaged by what went on for better or worse. I think we can even be simpler than that. People like train racks. Yeah. If the president is yelling at the moderator and yelling at the other candidate, you're going to turn off the television?

Yeah. Now, somebody is a millennial that is like post-TV. I, totally believe that you didn't watch it. I just totally, and I'm looking at Chris Almeida right now, I totally believe that you could have consumed it in some way that an old man like me doesn't understand. But of the TV generation like me and David, what else were you doing Tuesday night? I kind of don't believe that you weren't watching the debate. I really don't. And 73 million people. So a lot of people were watching the debate. Finally, this one for Maddie Wasserman has a good question about reporting. Is there any answer in interviewer dreads more than I actually get that question a lot.

No. Well, I mean, listen, about half the interviews, I mean, you'll do our kind of service interviews, right? I mean, like if you interview a, well, I mean, a lot of the people that you interview aren't being interviewed all the time. They're people who usually do the interviewing. But, you know, if a writer comes on to promote their new book, then part of what you do is kind of get at the same, you know, basic questions about it over and over again. So I'm sure there's a lot of questions that you hear, the people hear a lot that are still fine to ask.

But no, I mean, when you're not expecting it or when, you know, when that's not the answer you're going forward, that is a heartbreaking thing to hear because, you know, you want to be, you, you, you spend a lot of time trying to be original when you're, when you're cooking up your questions. You know the thing I have found in almost every interview is when your interview subject says, that's a good question. They don't actually mean that it's a good question. They mean that they don't know the answer immediately off the top of their head. Oh, okay. And that's what they're saying to buy themselves time.

So if you say something, I say, you know, David, that's a really good question. What I'm doing is just treading water right there, giving my brain a chance to click in. It might mean I've never heard that question before, but it's not necessarily a good question. Doesn't it feel like the great question, subtle shift? Isn't great question the reverse of that? great question is like, I know the great question is the preface to I am immensely prepared to answer that question. One billion percent. Absolutely.

You know who asks great questions, David? Who? Who? Who? Who? Who? Segoal. See if you can hear the fanboidem in my voice when I talk to Skip about his new true crime podcast.

Texas Monthly Skip Hollinsworth once told me, Brian, I'm writing one of my trashy murder stories. And when you put out a collection, Skip, that, absolutely needs to be the title. Hollinsworth is one of my very favorite writers on the planet. In more than three decades at Texas Monthly, he has perfected the magazine murder story. And now he's doing the same thing as a podcast. This week, Texas Monthly released a new multi-part story called Tom Brown's Body and Skip's here to talk about what it's like to report on a killing in both word and audio form. Skip, thanks for coming on the press box. Thank you, Mr. Curtis.

Let's start with the story itself. Who was Tom Brown? Well, you know, sitting in my house in Dallas, I tend to look at newspaper websites and just look for stuff that might be of interest in one of the thousands of small towns that are in this state. And I kept reading for the last two or three years about this weird investigation that never seemed to end in the town of Canadian, which is a town of 2,700 people east of Amarillo. and it was about the president of the senior class, the most popular boy in town, played on the football team. They had won the state championship for two years in a row,

which is a big deal. And just an all-round good guy, got along with everyone, the football players, the ranch boys, the drama nerds, everybody. And he went cruising on one night before Thanksgiving when everybody didn't have school the next day and went cruising with us some buddies,

said goodbye to him, and vanished. And that was in November 2016. And since then, there have been like four law enforcement agencies that have investigated the case. There have been rumors that have gone from everything that he was ground up in a wood chipper to, he ran away in his living in North Carolina or California or Colorado. And it just kept going on and on and on. Something about his mother was involved in his disappearance, something about his,

His brother was involved in his disappearance. Something about the sheriff was a suspect in his disappearance. And finally, his remains were found under a cottonwood tree east of town. Two years after he disappeared. And that only led to more questions about what happened to this case. And was he murdered? Did he accidentally die? Did he commit suicide?

What happened? So me being the narcissist that I am, as this case has been covered. for three or four years, I decided to go to Canadian and figure it out that I, Skip Hollinsworth, would come up with the answer. Because as I say in the podcast, a mystery can't always remain a mystery, right? I mean, isn't that what we're always told? Right. Sure. Now, you've parachuted into many a small town to do stories like this. I think of the one that became the basis of the Richard Linklater movie, Bernie. How do you drop into a town like Canadian? you get on an airplane

okay fly to Amarillo you drive to Canadian you show up and I had you know I was not I'm not the modern podcaster I'm not a guy who brings along a producer with a boom mic

standing behind me wearing a backpack full of all kinds of electronic gear and batteries and so on I just use my iPhone to do the entire podcast and I would just show up at people's offices I mean, small towns are still small towns. You don't always have to have an appointment.

And, you know, the first guy I went to see was the richest man in town, Salem Abraham, who out of this little tiny town runs a hedge fund that at one point had $600 million in assets. And here's this man that has multi-millionaires calling him during our interview. The light is always blinking on his phone. and he's so obsessed with Tom Brown's disappearance and whether he'd been murdered and that I had shown up to talk to him about it that he basically pushed everything off his desk

and talked to me for two hours while the stock market was open. And then I went over and, of course, saw the editor of the local paper who was a woman who is, you know, feisty and funny and trying to stay afloat in business even though all local weekly newspapers are disappearing. and she's been obsessed with the case.

She's been writing about the case for four years. And then I went and saw that the mom of the boy disappeared and everybody treated me like family. It's not hard to do. Now, you've got to get people to talk to you, to treat you like family to do a story like this. Did introducing the idea that this would be a podcast versus a written piece change those interactions at all?

Yes. They were as terrified of. podcast as I used to be and probably still am. I mean, you know, there had been, you know, they had heard podcasts before, but they didn't really know what it meant. I talked to the sheriff. He goes, I'm not going to be on any podcast. And by last week, he was saying things like, hey, can you call me? We need to record the new audio about something I just thought about. You've made them into audio professionals. This is incredible. Now, I was listening to your first episode. And it strikes me that when you do this in podcast form, that Skip Hollinsworth almost

has to be a character. And your reporting process sort of has to be part of the plot, just to explain this to people. How comfortable were you with that? Completely, because it was about me, completely comfortable. I actually like podcast best where you follow the journey through the eyes of the reporter and how the reporter finds things out. And, you know, like a lot of people who tried this, I'm influenced by the serial podcast and by others where you see someone fish out of water come into a town or into a location and try to find something out. And that was a lot of, you know, I thought, I don't want to do a podcast. I just want to do my usual old trashy true crime stories. And I realize that it's more interesting, this is sacrilege for me to say,

but it's more interesting listening to someone talk to me than reading about someone talking to me. Hmm. And why is that? Just the sound of their voice? Sound of their voice, the inflection, you know, the way their tone changes, the silences, all that drama in writing, you know, when you write a story, you have to say, he paused, And then he finally said, well, in the podcast, you let him pause and finally he says what he's going to say. So you don't have to use those stupid lines that we all use in magazine stories. He rested his chin against his hand. He thought for a moment. And then he said, well, you don't have to do that anymore. You don't have to write those stupid sentences.

He closed his eyes as if in prayer. And then he answered, finally. Now, see, I agree with that in theory. But then I, I, I agree with that in theory. But then I, I listen to one of my interview tapes and there is just a mass of stuff on there. And sometimes when you listen to it, you think, well, here's why this goes through the magazine writing food process because it really is better in print. But you were able to harvest enough moments out of all this audio you think to make it worth doing in audio form. I'll tell you part of the reason why I did this story in audio form. I've got a cartilage problem with my thumb and I'm developing arthritis in my thumb,

and it's hard to write notes anymore. So I just left my iPhone on. And when I would go back and play my iPhone, the tape on my iPhone, I realized I had this great stuff going on in the background, trains coming by a block away, the sound of doors opening and closing. Engine started, driving to see things,

stuff that I necessarily wouldn't tape when I'm doing a regular print story. And it was all there. You mentioned some of the characters we're going to meet in this podcast, the richest guy in town, local newspaper editor, a person you call a globe-trotting private investigator. So what does they skip Hollinsworth trick to presenting characters like those without it sounding like a really, really bad pulp novel?

Or what's that series where the Jessica, where she finds out the murder in a small town every week? Murder she wrote? Murder she wrote. I felt like that's what I was doing. I have no secrets. You just realize that the attention span of your audience is now so short. And if you write any lengthy introduction to a character,

instead of throwing your reader into the scene, then you're going to lose the reader. You know, you want to jump from scene to scene to keep a story going because otherwise readers are going to jump away. We're going to get rid of your story if you have those link Lincoln log cabin paragraphs about where they grew up, what they were like in high school. You just jumped to the scene and then you weave it in.

We talked about what people in small towns think of podcasts. What did they think of Texas Monthly? Is it, wow, a national magazine award-winning magazine? Or is it, oh, that's that old liberal rag down in liberal Austin? I think it's both, but I also think they enjoy getting the attention. And I have to tell you, I enjoyed getting the attention because people in small towns still love Texas Monthly in a way that people in big cities don't and there's Texas Monthly still sort of resonates with them and it's like you know all my friends

that live in cities don't they go you're still right for Texas Monthly I'm going thank you thank you so much do you whip out your Texas cred do you say you know I grew up in Wichita Falls do you use that when you're reporting a story like this No, I do the exact opposite. I think what you need to do is begin a lot of questions with, I hate to be the stupid city boy. I hate to be the stupid city boy, but what is deer shed? There's a critical scene that comes into podcasts,

much later on down the road in a few weeks, where a sheriff's deputy is hunting for deer shed. And when I'm told that story, I just stopped the person and I say, I am so sorry, but what is deer shed? Well, that's the antlers that are shed by a male deer that lots of people in the country pick up and turn into deer knives or deer chandeliers and sell them on the sides of highways. So that's what you do is you act. You know, the other question I always ask is, I know I don't understand a lot of this, but would you help me understand? what's happening right here. And people want to help. Don't act like you know anything, which I never do anyway. Let's talk about your career for a second. You get to Texas monthly in

1989 after working for several years in newspapers. What was the allure of working for that magazine for you? Oh, in college, the publisher and the owner of the magazine, Mike Levy, when I was in college, he was so, he loved his magazine so much that he produced a coffee table. The first five years that magazine was in business, he produced a coffee table book called The Best of Texas Monthly. The first five years of Texas Monthly, he already had a coffee table book out of it. And when you open the fly leaf on those front two pages, all the writers who had written for the magazine had signed their name. So there was Larry King, Prudence McIntosh, all the old greats, Jan Reed, Steve Harrigan, on and on and on. And I saw this one little

space that was white space that was open. And I took out my pen. I was a sophomore in college and I wrote in autographed Skip Hollinsworth because that's what I wanted to do even back then. There was some editorial turbulence, shall we say, at Texas Monthly after the magazine was sold in 2016. How did that affect your life? There was no editorial turbulence. Oh, Skip. I read the, I read the Columbia Journalism Review. Come on now. There's no editorial turbulence in my life, Mr. Curtis. I don't have editorial turbulence. I just have the same old problem of getting stories in before

deadline. This is the advantage of living in Dallas. You just avoid everything, right? You're just keeping your nose to the grindstone. My career is nothing but a life of avoidance. Now, I don't want people to think you just write true crime, because I think I've got an issue of Texas Monthly with your Leanne Rhymes cover

story on it here somewhere. I'm an excellent profiler of country music stars. I just wish people would celebrate that part of my career more. What is it about crime that attracts you as a subject? Well, because it plays out as a three-act structure. You know where the story is going to end. And so you can keep your readers jumping to the third act.

Or you can keep your readers guessing what's going to happen next. There's a kind of momentum that builds in a crime story. And, you know, when people cross that invisible line from being normal to committing a crime, it's always interesting to try to figure out why they did what they did. but the thing about Tom Brown's body is, you know, there's even another investigation going on as we're putting out these podcasts. So it's not like you can Google up the story

and find out what the last act is. It's coming. And we'll see if it comes while the podcast is still going on. That's got to be exciting for you as a writer because I think sometimes, you know, you do a magazine story and you get it all. But then there's another act or there's an addendum. So now essentially the addendum is part of the larger story, is it not?

That's a really complicated question coming from you, Brian. I'm sorry. I'll rewrite. Get me rewrite here, Skip. That was way over my pay grade. There is a lot of true crime in the media universe, Skip. You mentioned serial. It has many, many clones. Do you ever worry there's too much true crime? No, because I don't really read that much true crime to begin with. I just read my own stories. Oh, that's not true. That's not true. I think, yeah, there's a lot of, there's a lot of schlocky stuff that's written. But, you know, it finds its audience or it doesn't find his audience. I still think

you can write a true crime story that is thrilling and insightful and maybe a little scary, but also gives you a chance to explore the human condition. Oh, there, I just used a phrase that Brian Curtis would use, the human condition. Oh, how dare you? How dare you? Let me leave you with this. Are there, is there a list of things you don't want to do in a true crime story, things you want to avoid? The body was found, the opening sentence, the body was found under a tree. the sheriff sticking his

the sheriff sticking his thumbs in the little loops of his belt and leaning forward and spinning out the back of juice a lot of cliches as he stares at the body there's a lot of cliches you can jump into and I've jumped into every single one of them you can read the first installment of Tom Brown's body which is cliche free so far as I know right now via Texas Monthly as both an article in a podcast

the next chapter chapter two is out on October 6. Skip Hollinsworth, thank you so much for coming on the press box. Thank you, Mr. Curtis. All right, it's time for David Schumacher guesses a strain pun headline.

Woo. David, we got to shout out another listener here. His name is Jay Scott Sewell. I am not making this up. Jay Scott Sewell went through every edition of David Shoemaker Guessers a Strain Pun headline and laid out whether you

correctly guessed the headline or incorrectly guessed the headline. My God. And I know he did this because he sent me a spreadsheet. Was it, that not only has. Was it Google sheets or Excel? It's a Google.

It's a Google spreadsheet. He has it here. And it not only has whether David guessed or correctly or incorrectly, but it has the name of the headline. So I know he listened to every single one. All right. Now, he had to make some judgment calls.

If I had to give you a lot of help, he counted that as a loss. If I gave you a little help, I think he counted that as a victory. Okay. That's fair. Your one loss record, David, is 58 and 66 overall. You are not making the NBA playoffs.

Maybe, yeah, I feel like he's judging a little bit too hardly. If you were in the Eastern Conference, maybe you'd make the NBA playoffs, actually. But it turns out, since June, you are 17 and 10. Oh, I do feel like I've been kind of on a roll lately. I think so, too. He says, I think, David. 17 out of 27 is a, that's like an all-star level shooting percentage, or at least three-point. shooting percentage, right?

Absolutely. He says, I think David may have started juicing. He's got kind of a Biden-style conspiracy theory for you here. All right. Anyway, thanks to Jay Scott's soul. Incredible work. We appreciate it. This week's headline, David, comes from Gina Chin.

It's from The Guardian. I'm just going to read you the lead of the story here from earlier this month. A respected French philosopher has publicly disowned his equally famous philosopher's son, not for stealing his girl. friend, but for writing a book he claims has left him heartbroken and loved ones drowning in a sea of ingratitude. Okay? French philosopher disowned son for writing a book.

Wait, this is a thing that actually happened? This is a thing that actually happened. So, okay, a famous... We don't usually do, we don't usually do fiction stories here on David Schuemaker, guess is a train pun headline. A living, so it's a, it's not like, like, like, like Sartre. I mean, it's, it is a living philosopher. This is a living philosopher and the sun is also alive.

Um, um, yeah, like every philosopher is French, right? I mean, I don't, I'm trying to think of who's. Yes, every philosopher is French. Um, but who, who's a living French philosopher? Why can I think of a living French philosopher? Well, let's not get too hung up on the, philosopher here. Let's think of let's think of something about fathers

maybe. Oh, like Edipus? So wait, he What happened? Now we have to go back. Here we go. Jay Scott Sewell, get your counter ready. Wait, can you repeat the question? Can you use in the form of a sentence? Sure. A respected French philosopher is publicly disowned his equally famous philosopher's son.

Dot, dot, dot, dot for writing a book he claims has left him heartbroken. Eipus hex Oedipus Oedipus Oedipus Oedipus Oedipus complex

Oedipus Oedipus Oedipus Oedipus I'm sorry sir I can't get it I have to call time on this one Oedipus vex

is the answer O O no Oedipus vex David folks has dropped to 58 and 67 in the state I'm going to take this up with the judges.

I'm not sure about that. The Nets just slipped into the playoffs ahead of him. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris Albata. Production Magic by Erica Servantes. Next week's schedule, David and I will be here at our regular time on Monday

with the New Yorker's Jeffrey Tubin, who's going to talk about Donald Trump's investigations. Then we're back Wednesday night after the vice presidential debate between Pence and Harris with another live reaction show. It will be an obesely immoral edition of the first one. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.