The Press Box - Gabby Petito Coverage, ESPN and Gambling, and a Terrible Emmys Question

Episode Date: September 24, 2021

Bryan and David open up the mailbag and answer your Listener Mail. They talk through the Gabby Petito coverage (5:15), weigh in on ESPN’s high-profile employees investing in gambling (14:00), discuss how members of the media consume content (30:35), and much more! Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Listen up all you New York fans. Veteran New York Sports Talk host, John Dostromski gives his unique take on all the big stories in the Big Apple and beyond, including guest conversations, gambling picks, and reactions from you, the listener. Check out New York, New York with John Dostromsky on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

David, what's on your mind today? This is breaking news as we record this. It'll be old news by the time people hear it because, you know, things move quickly. But apparently, Rudy Giuliani and his son, one of those times where it's not a great idea to have ridden daddy's coattails,

have been banned from Fox News or have gotten a three-month ban. It's a little bit unclear when the band started. Maybe I just missed it. And the Daily Beast piece frames it as if Giuliani had just found out today that he was banned with the rest of us.

But according to Rolling Stone, which is the link that's being most widely circulated out there, Giuliani has been banned from Fox News for three months. Oh, this is according to Politico. Okay, so Politico had this first. The Politico report says Giuliani was slated to appear on Fox's 20th anniversary coverage, but host Pete Hesketh called him the night before to tell him he'd been cut and apologize,

according to Politico. The band network bookers have been told comes from the top and extends to Giuliani's son Andrew, who is running for governor of New York, um, Fox News spokesperson denied Andrew Giuliani had been banned from the network and denied that really Giuliani was a, was a scheduled to appear on Fox and Friends on 9-11.

Um, but Fox News declined to comment on whether Rudy Giuliani is banned from appearing on the network in general. Okay. That's a pretty, uh, you know, it's a very interesting state of the state of affairs right now, right? I mean, this is, like, Fox is still out there running, I mean, as functionally as a, you know,

still sort of like Trumpist platform, although other, obviously other places have tried to take over that territory. But because of, you know, the Dominion lawsuits and probably assorted other things, they are determined to say as far away from the big election lie as they can. Is that what, am I reading that correctly? Well, I've got a couple of reactions here that I think will address your questions. Number one, came from the top. Sounds very tinkling piano 1920s. This came right from the top. It's also the greatest excuse, too. Someone's just like, what the hell do you mean? I'm banned. Just be like, sorry, Rudy, this came right from the top. It's something that only a 70-something or 80-year-old man would just take his gospel and think that was enough to end the conversation, right? Sorry, it came right from the top. Oh, sorry, I didn't realize. It came from the top. I'm sorry that I'm talking to you about it.

I mean, that's, that's great. Also, Rudy Giuliani being banned from Fox News, what was the line that was traversed now versus everything Rudy Giuliani did? Well, I think it came out on Tuesday, right, that there were leaks from the Trump campaign's internal memos that they knew that all the Dominion stuff was false when they were promoting it, right? So I don't know if that's enough to change Fox's mind, but that's enough to, and I don't, I saw somewhere that Fox didn't even report on that.

But, I mean, unsurprisingly, I guess. But we're drawing the line here. That's it. You know, we've, now you've done it. Now you, now you have gone too far. Any notion of plausible deniability, I guess, is out the window now, right? Because you can't, I mean, if. But come on.

Yeah. Well, you're right. Yeah. The other thing is three months. So it's like a PED suspension in baseball. I don't understand. Yeah. Right.

So like the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the Dominion lies were his unfair advantage over the other talking heads on the network. But in three months, it'll be okay. In three months, they'll cycle out of the system. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it does seem like none of this is serious in any sort of meaningful way, but it does seem really ridiculous, right? That if someone's coming on your network and lying and you have an issue with their lying,

I think the appropriate thing to do is to say, don't do this again or you're fired for good. or you fire them for good, right? You don't say like, don't do this totally unethical, problematic thing, and we'll give you three months in the corner to think about it. Yeah, and then return to our air with your typical dispassionate political analysis. Everything will be just fine. Yeah. Yeah, you just got to wait for time to pass, I guess, with this, right?

Hopefully he'll be interested in talking about some other lie when he comes back. Coming up on today's show, David, we talk about Gabby Petito coverage. we talk about NFL insiders and gambling and how not to interview an Emmy winner. Seconds after they won an Emmy. All that more on the press box, a part of the Ringer, podcast network.

Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer here along with producer Erica Servantes. David, it's Friday, so let's do a little listener mail to roll into the weekend. Let's do it. And a subject comes up from Gabe Hernandez

that I've been wanting to talk to you about. Gabe asked was the, coverage of Gabby Petito too much? Was, I'm not sure, is the correct word there. Everything is, is the question. I mean, there's a lot of different factors at play in the story, but also in answering the question. Is it, has Gabby Petito's disappearance and death been covered too much as opposed to,

in the mainstream, in mainstream news? to the to the detriment in terms of coverage space and time to other stories yes i mean it in so much as it's taken time away from other subjects yeah and and you know obviously this spins directly into a conversation about taking airspace away or tay or occupying a certain amount of space that that every other significant disappearance and murder doesn't get right particularly of people of color. But I mean, I do think there's sort of a secondary piece of this that is just evidence of mainstream kind of traditional news sources trying to compete in the internet age. There will be people getting the same number of clicks on Gabby Petito's stories on Twitter

and on the internet if it's not NBC News or whoever. And obviously the mainstream outlets are in competition with those with those sorts of like, you know, fly by night sources even more directly now. The way I understand it, and this is totally,

this could be totally wrong, but the story was actually got national attention because of one of the billion crime podcasts out there that sort of identified the story and started blowing it up in the very early days.

And all it really takes is, you know, that sort of kernel of attention and our entire, this isn't the first time our entire national focus. this seemed to hone in on the disappearance of, you know, a blonde, white girl. It's not the first time our entire national attendance, our attention has been focused on

something that is like, in retrospect, incredibly insignificant, but gripping at the time. I mean, there's a lot of sort of potential meat to the story. And I think that in a world of, you know, there are more crime podcasts than newspapers, it makes sense that this is the sort of thing that would, you know, to see a story like that evolving in a real time. It makes a lot of sense that this is as big a deal as it is in a certain way. But I think what's really interesting and potentially hopeful about it is that the story is like, like, it's two parallel stories that are existing at the same time.

One is the disappearance and death of potential murder of Gay Bittito. And one is how outsized the coverage of her has been compared to the hundreds and thousands and potentially millions of missing women of color and just generally, other people who don't normally get this sort of media attention. And that story has really taken over the Gabby Petito story that it's almost impossible to pay attention to one without paying attention to the other. And so in some sense, the very fact that it's too much, that she's getting too much airtime might have a positive outcome.

Because it draws attention to the discrepancy and coverage between one and the other. This is what the late Gwen Eiffel called Missing White Woman's Center. This idea that the media latches on to particular stories. Katie Robertson wrote a really good story in the New York Times about it. Quoting here, the disappearances of people of color tend not to generate the same volume of media interest, despite they're occurring at a higher rate. A report from the University of Wyoming found that 710 indigenous people reported missing from 2011 to 2020 in that state, which is where Ms. Petito's remains were found.

I'd also like to come back to a sentence. you uttered a few minutes ago, which may be one of the most depressing things I've ever heard, there are now more true crime podcasts than newspapers. I don't know that to be true, but I would bet money that is true. That is the worst thing I've ever heard in my life. There are more true crime podcasts than newspapers. Because what we need to educate the public in America, what we need to get information is a true crime podcast.

Yeah. The only thing I would push back, on is when you talk about mainstream media retrenching to try to compete with Twitter and said podcasts, cable news has kind of been here for a long time. Oh, for sure. That's not giving them a pass. Or Dateline NBC kind of helped create this modern genre going back, even network news with John Bonae and all these other things, Nancy Grace.

And, you know, I mean, this to me is one of those things where I look at this and this coverage seems awful and completely disproportionate, it also feels like a rerun of everything that's been happening for decades in American media. Yeah, I do think, I guess the point that I was trying to make, because I completely agree, is just that like, the question is, is it getting too much coverage? And I guess there's a sense in which that is answered by the amount of attention, the amount of viewers that the story gets, the amount of interest there is in the story. And I think there would be the same amount of interest however you define it because of the endless amount of outlets that could be covering it, there would be the same amount of interest, even if the

mainstream outlets decided not to cover it, right? I mean, that's the only distinction I'm making there, and maybe it's a small one. Because you're right, the coverage, I mean, Dateline NBC and shows of its ilk have done more to sort of normalize and codify the way these stories are told really to the detriment of reality and, you know, missing people of color, indigenous people, all that. I mean, every story is the same, right? And they're all told in these incredibly deceptive, wrote ways, you know? I mean, it's hard for me to imagine that if this were not a young white couple that, that the, that the boyfriend who returned under a cloud of suspicion, I can't imagine that they'd be putting up happy couple shots of them at every moment.

in the news, right? Usually you see these things where they find the glamor shot of the missing person and find some way to portray the man in a negative light if he's the suspect if it weren't this sort of like happy white cornbread couple, whatever, or white bread couple.

Yeah, he is officially, or he is a person of interest according to New York Times. Yeah, I mean, the whole thing is just a very, is sort of paint by numbers at this point. And I don't know that does anybody justice, except as I said, with the growing realization that that is what it is. When you join legacy media's long time obsession with these kind of stories with the true

crime podcast and by the way, the obligatory Netflix three part, five part seven part documentary, which is almost always true crime, there is just too much of this. Content creators out there. If you're trying to do upscale dateline, maybe just do something else. Yeah. There's just, there is so much of this. Some of it undoubtedly is good.

I try to avoid almost all of it because I'm just not interested in true crime as the singular genre of everything. Yeah. Everybody's like, did you see this crazy murder that was recreated in a Netflix? I don't care. I don't know. I didn't see that. I don't ever want to see that.

And for the big boys here, this is from Katie Robertson's. story. The New York Times published a breaking news story and a live briefing and sent a news alert to subscribers about the Gabby Petito case. New York Times, which is just raking in subscription money, which now I saw on a tweet this week has more subscribers in Dallas than the Dallas Morning News does. Why are you chasing these clicks? What possible interest do you have in sending a news alert about Gabby Petito to subscribers. That just seems so dumb. And not just that, but that should, I mean, they should be out there heavily promoting the sort of meta pieces about it if they're going to cover it at all, right? There's important stories to be told on this subject that

aren't the breaking news alerts about moment by moment, you know, minutia in the case. Yeah. And again, recommend Katie Robertson's piece on that, which goes through a lot of the numbers and criticism of this particular genre. I want to direct you to a totally, different story, David. It's in Bloomberg. It's by Timothy L. O'Brien, fine writer and Donald Trump biographer. He was writing about ESPN and gambling. And really could be writing about all of sports media and gambling and those two world sort of coming together. Here's a paragraph. At least one of ESPN's most high-profile employees is interested in gambling too. Adam Schaefter, a prominent on-air analyst designated by the network as an NFL insider recently invested in

Boom Entertainment, a maker of sports and casino gambling apps that is also developing what it describes as real money gaming products. One of Schifter's co-investors in Boom is Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots football team and other sports ventures. Current and former gambling sports and broadcast executives and companies are also investors. So O'Brien then asks ESPN, well, wait a second. What is it, is that okay for him to be a game? co-investor and what's the deal on ESPN basically said no comment to everything, which is interesting. Now, that paragraph is written in such a way that I'm not quite sure what co-investor

means here. It seems like there's something of a difference between Robert Kraft and Adam Schaefter getting together to invest in something versus them just happening, just investing in the same company. Yeah, and I know we're kind of coming at this from the media side here, but Robert craft investing in it seems like a giant story in and of itself, right? I mean, we know that when owners, when new owners bid to join a league, right, either to buy a team or to buy the rights to a new franchise, there's a lot of scrutiny into their background and how they make their money and everything else. I'm not, it's kind of, I don't know that this would be disqualifying. There's a lot of, you know, tech arena investors in professional sports right now that are probably very, have a lot of

different investments and things that could be seen as problematic in different ways. But it does raise the question, right? If you get in, if you buy into a team and you have a clean resume, then at that point, are you free just to like invest all your money in Caesar's Palace and just, you know, or like Caesar's sports book? And, and I mean, is there any, is there any oversight at that point? I honestly don't know. But it does seem like it, I think that in a lot of ways the media companies and the sports

put themselves in this. position by trying to pretend that gambling didn't exist for as long as they did. It's kind of, you know, it seems like you could draw a pretty, I mean, you could make a pretty clear rule, right, about what people are allowed to do and not be in all this hazy territory. But it sort of all came on. As we discussed, as we discussed recently with the NFL network taking on a gambling, you know, gambling content, it just all kind of came as a title wave at once because it was like people were just putting, you know, their fingers in their ears and their toes in the dam as it was breaking and, and, and just wait and, I mean, waiting for it to be, you know, I guess you're waiting for it to be inevitable, which doesn't give you a lot of time to worry about oversight. Well, the Supreme Court decision comes down in 2018 and everybody goes, hey, money. Yeah. There's some money. Yeah. Let's retrench and be, and get some gambling content in here.

the NFL most recently by hiring Rachel Beneta. I mean, I just, it's interesting that there's not, like this is, again, this is from the O'Brien piece. I ask the network, meaning ESPN, if it had a conflicts of interest policy outlining ethically acceptable investments for its employees, it declined to say whether a policy exists and if one does, whether Schaefter's boom investments comports with it. Okay. It seemingly would be nice to have some clarity about that question. Well, yeah, it would have, it would be nice. I mean, listen, they're also in a. a weird position. I'm sure Adam Schaefter is being very handsomely compensated by ESPN,

but there's a lot of people of his profile and even lower who at this moment in time might have more value to a gambling company than they do to ESPN, right? And at some point, ESPN's going to say, do we want the Adam Schaefter or whoever it is? Do we want personality X to leave for draft kings? Or do we want to let him do draft kings on the side and keep him on our airways. I am so glad you brought us there because doesn't it feel inevitable that one of the major quote unquote insiders will go over to the gambling company. Yeah.

We've had journalists go work over there. We've certainly had content, you know, sponsored by, it was a draft Kings. That's a big sponsor of the new Lebitard metal art media enterprise. But when is the inevitable moment when one of the big insiders is going to go work for the gambling company because the stuff the insider knows is the stuff gamblers want to know and the stuff they want to know first. And what if they could know it, you know, a couple of minutes before the rest of humanity? I mean, but the way, I mean, it's, I don't even think it has to be, I mean, I think yes, yeah, absolutely true. I don't even think it has to be that gambling

specific. I mean, there's got to be some, there's got to be some number at which it makes sense for draft kings to just hire Woge, right? We're going to give Woge $50 million a year because his content is not reliant on his institution. He's proven that. He is the font of his own, he's his own empire, no matter what banner is on above him. And then every time you see a Woge tweet, there's a draft king's out. He's wearing a draft king's shirt in the video, like whatever. Like, that's got to be a value. Right? I mean, that is more, more straightforwardly monetizable than the way ESPN is making money off of him right now. Right? Oh, I agree. They're trying to figure out the way to make him to monetize him despite and but let him keep tweeting it'd be really

easy to be like for him just to be like you know lebron james got traded to the nix uh and go place bets on draft king you know i mean like like that's if that was in every tweet that would be great for them yeah if i have my draft kings or whatever it is app and i get a push alert every time he has a scoop of any magnitude and the thing is it doesn't matter how big or small the scoop is I always laugh when some of the insiders have the most insignificant stuff, but guess what? It's all significant if it's a company that does gambling. That feels like it's going to happen in 10 minutes. It really does.

And, you know, it's funny. I mean, you and I've talked to so many times about how it blows my mind in a way that the insider has become the preeminent figure in sports media. it's new in our lifetimes that that person would become the thing the world revolves around rather than the columnist or the commentator whatever now with gambling

their power if anything has been enhanced their value has gone up because as you say with ESPN it's like wow if Schefter and Woj are tweeting what are we getting out of all these tweets other than kind of of interest in ESPN by proxy.

But if you can harness those tweets and that information, that's already valuable. Just what we needed, right? David, was to make that figure more valuable in, in our sports media world. It is, that's wild. That's wild.

Very, very funny. And like I said, I think that domino is going to fall pretty soon. David, we're going to hear the worst question you could possibly ask someone who has just won an Emmy. But first, the overword Twitter joke of the week, where we celebrate a gag

that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. Twitter video from New Orleans this week, David,

had the roof of the Superdome, the Saints Stadium, on fire, and emitting a cloud of smoke. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. I thought the Cardinals pick the next pope, not the Saints. Wow, that's really good.

There were a couple of variations, but that I thought got the closest to sheer perfection. Thanks to our friend Scott Kushner, Mike Rosenberg, Grantlin ran record teacher and not Chester Lemon for that. David, a truly amazing tweet from the Des Moines Register this week, The World's Whitesest Paint has been created in a lab at Purdue. Oh God. How white was it? I'm glad you asked. It was an overword Twitter joke to say,

This pain is so white, it tried to use an expired red lobster coupon at Applebee's. This paint is so white, it'll talk over everyone in Polly Side Class. And finally, this pain is so white that CNN is sending reporters to Midwest Diner's Weekly to ask the pain how it feels about Donald Trump. thanks to Eric for that one. And finally, David, one of the best gags I have ever seen in this feature.

Just so perfect. The story was this. They unveiled the uniforms for the U.S. Space Force. We are still, is Space Force just inevitable? I'm sure there's been an explainer about this. We couldn't just cancel Space Force.

I thought that we had. I thought that he had read, well, I guess not. There was a uniform reveal, whether there's actually going to be moonraker style space combat, we did the uniform reveal of Space Force. And I don't know if you saw the pictures of this, but the uniforms look very ill-fitting

and untailored. Just kind of roomy, 90-style pants rather than the crisp and tight fits you usually see with a military uniform. I can get behind that. A couple people took a whack at the best Joe. but it was a superb, overworked Twitter joke to write, in space, no one can hem your seams.

Wow. No one can hem your seams. That's really good. Thanks to Alexander Frost for that one. If you took us to the final frontier of punnage, congrats. You made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, David,

more listener mail. from Sostradamus. On the Manning cast, are they cutting guests early if it's clear they're not great on TV? Did you watch week two of Peyton and Eli Manning? I watched some of it, yeah.

So it was a little weird. Brett Farve was, I think, supposed to be in the first quarter. And I don't know if this was a joke or not, but there was some internet problems down at the Farva estate in Mississippi. So he only appeared later. And then some of the guests

had to be shortened and everything like that. I found that the Manning cast is really, really good. The guests on the other hand of the Manning cast can be really good or really boring. Uh-huh. I have no idea why Brett Farv is put on television anymore. I understand Brett Farv is famous. I understand he is Brett Farv. Brett Farv is no good.

Brett Farv is bad at TV. They looked at him for Monday night football a couple years ago. There's a reason they didn't hire him. Not good. Not good TV. Maybe he's better on Zoom, you know? Who knows? I did look up and I had this vague memory that this had happened and it was true that there was a study recently that said that cheese, one of these just ridiculous medical states, it said cheese was actually very healthy for you.

And Tucker Carlson had Brett Farvon to talk about the healthful properties of cheese because, you know, Packers, cheeseheads. That really happened. Yes, I get it. Yeah, that's all I got for you. I love this question from Matt Williams. Can we discuss the pronunciation of sopranos and how it changed from like the music term to sopranos, kind of like Kabul and Kabul, et cetera. So as media members, have we changed the way we pronounce the sopranos? Yeah, do we have to, I mean, they always said it on the show like soprano more or less,

at least when they were saying it, but there was a certain, it feels like they did kind of go back and forth. Like it was, like, he was called Tony Soprano and certain like, you know, by people who didn't know better. But in the family, it was Soprano, right? I may, I'm just imagining that. That's right. I do, I'm just so fascinated by this where everybody at the same time decides to change.

Yeah. Sometimes they're changing to the correct thing. Sometimes they're changing the wrong thing, but they all change at the same time. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Is there some kind of bat signal put out? Is there like a long form podcast that's sort of correcting everybody? Well, one, I think it's like anything else.

In non-fictional, and like, you know, real human beings, usually when someone finds a more accurate pronunciation than it does get around really quickly that we've all been pronouncing it wrong and people, you know, maybe hyper-correct, but they correct. But in fiction, I mean, non-fiction, but especially in fiction, there's also the sort of insularity of the conversation, right? that everybody who, like the everybody who is pronouncing it the new way is, that you're referring to is probably a TV host or a podcast host that spends most of their time listening to other podcasts or watching other television shows. So when somebody says it one way, then I think an unusual way that turns out to be right, I think it kind of, you know, that's the now, that's the common language of the conversation that is going on behind the scenes.

So first the true crime podcast word fault for everything that's wrong with this country. now it's the TV recap podcast. I don't think there's anything wrong with pronouncing soprano the correct way. So, you know, I'm not saying anyone's at fault here. I got a clip for you, David. Sunday night was the Emmys. And Gillian Anderson, the wonderful Jillian Anderson, won an award for playing Margaret Thatcher in the Crown. Anderson was doing the postgame interview with journalists.

And I want you to listen to this question. Just to kind of continue with the whole Margaret Thatcher thing. First question, has, if you've talked to her about this role at all? And secondly, why do you think it has taken America so long to get a female leader? You know, when all of these other countries and look at what Margaret did in the UK? Well, I have not spoken to Margaret. Yeah. Margaret Thatcher left this astral plane in 2013.

So Jillian Anderson has not spoken to her about playing her on the new season of the crown. Now, what was funnier? That question, have you talked to somebody who is not alive or fishing around for the soundbite about when are we going to get a female leader in the United States after the Emmy? Totally valid question. I just love it. I don't know at that moment that that is the most germane thing to be asking after the Emmys. Okay. Yeah.

I mean, sometimes it feels like a reporter's workshopping a question in real time. Like it just occurred to them and they weren't expected. It's like when someone, the waiter, asks you what you want for dinner and you really hoped that your wife would order first so you'd have more time to think about it. But then you hear someone like talk about, ask someone if they were in communication with a dead person. And then you're like, yeah, you really didn't do your homework on this. And we think Gillian Anderson is being trying to be really polite there.

I think Gillian Anderson is in real time trying to make sure. I think she is actively Googling Margaret Thatcher and when she died. I think that's the hesitation that you're there. You're like, I'm fairly certain this woman is no longer alive, but I was just asked a question by a reporter that leads me to believe otherwise. So yeah, and she's also trying to be very kind. Yeah. It did feel like, yes, it did have the sense of, I know this is true, but I am, it is so

out of context and so unexpected. Yeah. that it makes me sort of wonder whether what I know is right is actually right. Yes. I think we were all struck with that when we heard it. Like, wait a second. Related question from Jay Schnabel. How do members of the media consume all this content with kids, work and life obligations

that seems impossible to watch all these games and prestige TV series? The media members scheduled time during work hours to watch, so they talk about content they didn't actually watch. I'd like to refer Jay's question to, other Ringer podcast hosts who seem to be able to watch every movie, every television series, every award show,

every important sporting event. I don't know how they do it. I'm amazed. Yeah, it's, it's mind-boggling. Because you and I don't watch everything. No. We aspire to watch everything

in some imaginary world. Well, in some ways, yeah. It would be nice to have watched everything. It's like what they always just, say about writing, right? It's wonderful. It's fun to have written. It's never fun to write. It's sometimes fun to watch the stuff. But it'd be nice to be able to just say you've watched it all. If you commit yourself to sports to like every big game or just about every big game, there's really not a ton of time left. Who do you think spends more time at their job if they're not

cutting corners or if they're not, you know, not if they're not lying about what they're doing? Is it, at this point, is it, if it's NFL coach, head coach versus national sports radio personality? Who spends more time working on that craft? Who spends more time working? It's got to be. NFL coaches famously work like 20 hours a day during the season sometimes or whatever. I mean, there's definitely got to be the really good national media, I mean, national TV and radio personalities, but you got to have the game is on every moment you're awake.

You're saying because they have to watch every game, not just the game, they're playing. playing. Yeah. Yeah. It may be. I mean, I think, I think NFL coaches win with just office time. Yeah. Because you're just kind of sitting around in a room a lot, which I don't get a sense that media members are in quite the same way. But to keep up with everything, yeah, they're probably watching more just tonnage of sports and probably working all the time. Those the insiders we talk about do not seem to sleep. Or do not say, let's say they sleep, but they don't not work when they're awake. from the Department of Amplification, David. The other day we were groping around for what to call Bob Woodward's house in Washington, D.C. We have been advised that the correct term is not Roe House, not Townhouse.

Oh, right. Okay. Real estate agent, I knew I was missing something there. Real estate agent Brian Evans writes, Townhouse tends to imply suburbs and HOA fees. Which is a good one. I'm glad that we got an actual real estate agent on here. It makes me feel a whole lot better about this conversation. So yeah, townhouse is like a, townhouse is like a, it's like a development.

Like where my mom, literally where my mom is moving right now is into a townhouse. I think specifically in the Washington, D.C. context. Oh, okay. Because in Brooklyn, you would say townhouse. Would you not? Say brownstone. I'm sorry, brownstone. And if it's not literally a brownstone, you can say townhouse, I think.

I think there are other places where townhouse would be what you're talking about, meaning house in the city. Okay. Well, it's row house. Maybe Brian Evans will write in again. Do you think Bob Woodward ever says come to my row house? No.

No. I don't think so either. You don't think he has some important policy makers. Can you come over to my row house? You want to drop by my row house? No. He probably has a fancy. He probably uses a fancy like French term for his home.

That was unnecessarily snarky. It doesn't say. It doesn't. feel like Bob Woodward. Michael Wolf, maybe I would, I would accept that, but not my, Bob Woodward seems to be more more straightforward than that. Anyway, thanks to Brian and Brett Anthony Collette for the advice there. Our only in journalism word of the day, David, spate, spate. Oh. Often used in journalism, very rarely used in normal language. A spate of murders. You never say spate.

a spate. You always try to talk yourself into the fact that you've used this, but again, I've been talking to you nonstop since you were 14 years old. You do not use the word spate. Yeah. If you did, you'd be imitating a newscaster.

Speaking of which, thanks to Shane Nyman, by the way, for spate. And it's time for David Shoemaker, guess is the strained pun headline. Yeah. Monday's headline about the closure of a local bean factory

was beans to an end. today's headline comes from Daniel Miller it's from the Chicago Sun Times David it's a preview of the upcoming Cook County Assessors Race something I know you've been following very closely the race will feature Fritz Kegi who is the incumbent versus Kerry Steele

what was the Chicago Sun Times a strain pun headline Oh there's so much to work with here Fritz Steel Kagi Carey Kegie Assessor

Fritz Kegi versus Keri Steele Kegie Steele Fritz Just think about those surnames When they run against each other It's a It's a

It's a It's a It's a It's a It's a right up your alley bud God, why can't A keggy Oh, Fritz

No, no, just Just surnames, Kegie and Stee. Yeah, yeah, Kegi Run against each other, it's a Keggy match, a steel Kegi match?

A steel Kegi match. Is that right? Oh my gosh. Steel Kegu match. That's great. He is David Chewaker. I'm Brian Curtis, production magic by Erica Servantes. We've got another cool book spot coming up.

Another book with a place of honor on the Curtis literary journalism bookshelf. Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation, David. Superb piece of reporting. Absolutely good. It's a great book. It turned 20 years old this year, and I thought about it a lot during the pandemic

when the coronavirus was spreading so rapidly at those meat plants. And something that those health and safety effects that Schlosser talked about became very relevant again. Anyway, Eric Schlosser joins us. Tell us how he wrote the book. Plus, more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David.

See you later, Brian.