The Press Box - Harry and Meghan Ditch the Royals, Twitter Stops a War, and Facebook and the Election | The Press Box

Episode Date: January 10, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss the Duke and Duchess of Sussex stepping back as senior members of the Royal family (03:00), the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week (18:00), how Twitter may have saved us from war with Iran (20:30), and how Facebook is protecting the integrity of the 2020 election, according to Teen Vogue (27:30). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, it's Liz Kelly and welcome to the Ringer Podcast Network. Winging It with Vince Carter and Annie Finberg is back in full swing for its second season. Catch up on recent episodes with guests like Wyclef Jean, who talks about growing up in Haiti, hip-hop as a teacher, and performing with a goat. And you can hear from tennis phenom Koko Gough on beating Venus Williams at 15 years old. You can listen to Winging It on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. David, a sports writer or someone. posing as a sports writer, asked a Minnesota Vikings player for his gloves after a playoff game last week,

and then allegedly sold those same gloves on eBay. Oh, man. What I want to know is if you had to ask an NFL player for anything in his locker, what would you ask? So the obvious answer is like the playbook, right? Something like that. Yeah, I mean, I'm going to help your job. First of all, yes, the playbook would be fantastic.

I'm not sure that, I mean, it would be like asking for, like, you know, a copy of the Bible in Greek. Like, it wouldn't be able to read a single part of it. But, um, I don't know. Like, every, I feel like it's sporting, like, everything is so disposable, right? I mean, every game they have, I'm sure there's a, I mean, there's a different pair of gloves, different pair of shoes, different jersey, if not multiples of some of those things. Gosh, I have no idea.

If I was, if I'm, am I looking to make money? Is it just about the money? Yeah, it could be. personal collection, I don't know. Man, a mentor you want to save, give to your kids someday? Sanitary socks.

I think I would just go, listen, if, if, somebody's already, since already, someone's already beat me to ask for some article of gear and, uh,

and, and, and then sell it on eBay, like that, like that, like, like, we've already gone to that level of odd and creepy.

I think I would just one up them and just ask for like a lock of their, a lock of their hair, a lock of his hair, maybe is I, is I, at least I, at least I, at least it,

you know, like a good, a good, like, Twitter story about me someday. Are you carrying scissors or do you have to borrow some from the trainer? Oh, no, yeah. I definitely have, I definitely have some, like, safety scissors from a preschool class, just to make everything as uncomfortable as it can be. We are that unlabeled bottle of pills of media podcasts.

This is the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers. You've got Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker of the Ringer here. Lots and lots to get to today. We'll talk about how Twitter. may have saved us from war with Iran. We'll talk about how Facebook is protecting the integrity of the 2020 election, at least according to Teen Vogue.

We'll crack the case of the glove-stealing sports writer, plus have the overworked Twitter joke of the week. But David, against perhaps my better judgment, I want to start with the Royals. Yeah. Duke and Duchess of Sussex, aka Harry and Megan, on Wednesday they decreed that piping hot content should be distributed across the land. The Duke and Duchess announced via Instagram that they are stepping back as senior members of the royal family.

They're going to split their time between the UK and North America. They're going to become financially independent and carve out what they call a progressive new role. The Daily Mail reports a dramatic decision was taken without the knowledge of the Queen, Prince Charles, or Prince William. who learned about the announcement as it broke on television news channels, a source close to the process, I mean the palace, tells the male, quote, the royals were shock, saddened and downright furious at the couple. One described the decision as, quote,

pressing the nuclear button. Tina Brown was on CBS this morning, analyzing the story she was put on this earth to analyze. If the palace had known about it, and I actually do think that they did, why couldn't there have been a statement of we're aware of this decision, we support their decision. We're working out all the details

as opposed to the messaging that they sort of went rogue and now everybody is very upset. It could have been message very differently. Well, I think, you know, in the moment, people are aggravated. You know, I think that they feel, they do feel blindsided a little bit,

not by the decision, but by the fact that it dropped like a hand grenade into the space as it did. I want to talk about this first, David, is pure intravenous content for the world press. Is there anything else that would bring together Pierce Morgan,

the front page of the New York Times, and the podcast, Ring or Dish? What other story could bridge that chasm? First of all, I'm disappointed in all the fine folks at Ring or Dish for not inviting you and me on the show

on the emergency pod to discuss this turn of events, there's really nothing else. And there's sometimes when something permeates, you know, all the very, all these such disparate news outlets to such a point that you feel, you know, you roll your eyes a little bit at it. But this is like a real life situation too. I mean, like I was in, I was on a phone call. And when this push alert appeared on my phone and I walked back into the relatively small

ringer New York bullpen. And I was just like, what is going, and before I could get what is going on out of my mouth, I realized that, like, everybody in the room was talking about it. And this is, there are no ringer dish correspondence in the ringer New York office, just for the record. It was pretty shocking to see everybody there so engaged in the subject. The minutia goes in a million different directions, but it really makes a lot of sense because as our kind of meat, as the various media empires have split into, you know, various shards over the years, you don't necessarily go to the New York Times

or some people don't go to the New York Times first and foremost for like cultural coverage or pop culture coverage, right? But the royals have taken on this incredible pop culture mantle. But it does have a serious news perspective too because of the international affairs angle. And it kind of seems like, you know,

there's the Netflix show, The Crown, which is fantastic. It just seems like as increasingly, as like functionally insignificant as the you know the royal crown continues to become the more you know we're obsessed with them in this sort of this sort of you know more meta way and and uh and i think in some sense in recent years our obsession has become based around the question of why we're obsessed in a certain way you know it's this sort of like third now we're in like the third degree third tier of like meta analysis i know but like i feel like every six months i read a on why we're obsessed with the royal family.

And we are obsessed. We are. We're just obsessed. So you make a great point there, which is that they seem to get more irrelevant as monarchs by the day. And indeed, part of this decision seems to be on Harriet Megan's part, making themselves less relevant on purpose.

But our interest in them doesn't wane. And in fact, all it takes is something like the crown to come on TV. to get everybody interested in the royals like we get interested in Dolly Parton again every seven years. And that's fascinating to me because you mentioned like there's the put them as sort of pop culture figures and this whole industry there. But what, sorry, what is the serious thing that's happening with this? Like what world, what world affair will be impacted by this? Is it going to be impacted by this?

U.S. standoff with Iran? I mean, this actually won't mean anything, right? Bia, am I missing something obvious? I am, for all of the light reading I've done on the subject and all the office conversations I've engaged in, I'm still a little bit blurry as to the actual significance of this, even as it pertains to the royal family, the Instagram post or whatever, however this announcement was made was formal but vague as such things tend to be. But yeah, you're right.

I mean, and there is a way in which you could argue that Harry and Megan, of all the royals since, you know, Princess Diana have probably have the most power in this moment to affect something like Brexit, you know, or to affect something on a global scale, just do their popularity. but this, them, you know, divorcing themselves from the royal family or whatever they're actually doing, yeah, I don't think there's any real repercussions to it. No, and there's a lot of serious pieces to be written about Future of the Monarchy, about the UK, as you say, those sort of thumb suckers about why are we so interested in these people, about race, about all kinds of things. But in fact, there's a lot of meta-media criticism to be done, as we're kind of doing right now. but I guess that's and I guess that's why it touches everybody so well because there's something for everybody in this story. You know, there is the there is the sort of pop culture entertainment tonight part of it. There's the, you know, the Tina Brown part of it.

There's the there's the kind of self-reflection. Like, why are you watching this part of it? I went to the Daily Mail website yesterday and the Daily Mail can be pretty much considered a pretty reliable barometer of our base to desires. And these are the stories in order. Number one, the royals. Number two, did Iran shoot down a passenger jet? Number three, Leo DiCaprio saves a drowning man in the Caribbean. And number four, Paul Krugman. So those are your power rankings right there. One to four. But the royals in the number one spot. I also went looking for front pages. I think the daily mirror sort of one, which was a very elegant, simple headline,

they didn't even tell the queen. That's pretty good, right? They didn't tell the queen. And it's funny because I think in America we have this, including here at the ringer, we have this whole, as you say, kind of quality of like, oh my gosh, let's analyze this, both being kind of interested in it, but also just being interested.

How cool is it that we get to have our interest? in the royals period just like, you know, pre-ironic America got to have it with Princess Diana, right? So we get, we get to have this kind of meta-quality. Then you go to the British tabloids and it's just, it's just, we're all in, right? There's, there is not in many cases that sort of, that sort of distance. Like I'm looking at Pierce Morgan. I'm looking at pieces in the male that called Prince Harry the Prince of Woke. What is it about? What?

And are having, and if you read the sort of, if you read the news piece as the mail, it is this very, very serious, we are angry about this. You know, we on behalf of our readers, we are going to sound very angry about what Harry and Megan is. So not only do you kind of get different parts of the media. you get all these different keys too, all these different registers. And it's just pure content. Like I can fully understand as, again,

insignificant as maybe the royals have become in a real way, as significant as they could be becoming in a pop cultural way. I can fully sympathize with that, with that, you know, performative disgust of, of whatever news outlet decides to put on that face. if you're paying millions and millions of dollars to the royal family to just subsidize their lavish lifestyles,

the least you can expect is that they're not allowed to opt out, right? And they have to stay and they have to maintain, they have to stay in the public eye, they have to subject themselves to our tabloid coverage or else. What are we paying for? And this is literally a topic that has run through Harry and Megan's lives recently. They held out their eight-month-old, now eight-month-old son, Archie, they wouldn't allow cameras to come to his christening. The British press made that exact argument we were talking about.

Wait, we are subsidizing your gazillion dollar lifestyle. Why don't we have access to this? Caroline Davies writes in The Guardian that this move is a quote, escalation of Harry and Megan's war against the British tabloids, essentially. There is a whole part of this that is, that it's media criticism. If you read their new website yesterday, and this goes back to 2018, the Mail on Sunday printed a letter that Megan Markle had written to her estranged father. They got a hold of the letter and printed every page of it. On this new website, the Duke and Duchess talk about how they're going to change

this system and no longer participate in what's called the Royal Rota system where you sort of have to give access to accredited UK newspapers, Davies rights. So they're going to opt out of that. They want to speak directly to the public through social media. Okay. They want to work, they said, with grassroots, Roots Media Organizations, I'm not sure what that is, and quote, young and up-and-coming journalists, not have to be at the mercy of the British tabloids. Why does Harry hate the tabloids? I'm glad you asked. Here's a clip.

Diana, Princess of Wales is being remembered around the world. Harry's mother killed in that infamous car crash in Paris as her driver fled the paparazzi, the moment that would forever taint Harry's view of the media. Those people that cause the accident. instead of helping we're taking photographs of her dying on the back seat and then those photographs

made their way back to news desks so I think understanding this on the one hand is we want to change our lives we don't want to be full-time royals is understandable but it's also it

we don't want to have the media requirements of being full-time royals right yeah I mean I think the financial independence thing takes it. I mean, we're going to have to dig into that a little bit more for it to have any great significance, right? I mean, it's, you can be financially independent, but like all of this,

like, if, if the, you know, the fortunes that they're taking with them are presumably still tied to, uh, you know, financial dependence broadly defined. Um, I'm also a little bit unclear how one like pursues, this is, you know, maybe, maybe this is just overly American or modern of me, but I'm not quite sure how one achieves any sort of financial independence at all without a last name. Like, don't you have to have, you have to have, like, I don't know what the, but they don't have, like, social security cards in the UK, but presumably there's some sort of, like, identification card necessary for, you know, for, like, signing up for your 401K. Just to fill in the form. Yeah. Yeah, but, yeah, it's, no, I mean, listen, we all understand what they're going through.

We all understand their point of view. And the, well, I mean, listen, I'm not saying. You're followed around by tabloids. People are publishing handwritten letters that you send to your parents. No, that's not happened to me. I'm saying that I would, I would be bristling at that too, I'm sure. And I, and I, you know, I'm sympathetic to what they're going through. I think that, I think that, you know, that that part is easy.

I mean, I think that part's easy to wrap one's head around. The rest, but the intrigue, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, uh, kind of, you know, battling going on at the, you know, at Buckingham Palace between these various parties and who know, who knew what when and, and, you know, how these sort of decisions get ironed out. I mean, the only reason we have any kind of like concept of it, again, is because of the crown and, you know, and various books that have been written. And so it's, it's, it's, it's, it's endlessly enthralling just to, to, to imagine what's going on. Megan's estranged father, Thomas Markle. There was a famous, this is got to be one of the great Royal Watcher media moments of all

time. So right before their wedding, there's this whole question of was he coming to the wedding and all this stuff. He was photographed in an internet cafe in Mexico, in Rosarito, reading a story on a computer about a wedding, about the wedding. It was like the all-time pathetic photograph. Like I'm having to go to an internet cafe and a lot of. on to learn about my daughter's wedding. And then he was, he was charged with having conspired with the paparazzi to stage the photo. Because then the photo, of course, sold for a gazillion dollars. So you have this, this dad, this American dad sitting in a Mexican internet cafe reading about the royal wedding. Then that turns out, again, allegedly to have been a co-production

with paparazzi photography. That's just incredible. That's absolutely incredible. I don't know what the American equivalent of that would be, but that feels like something that just perfectly fits with the British tabloids and with their interest in the royal family.

All right, David, 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're always gratefully received. Let's not leave this topic yet. Because the ringer's very own, Amanda Dobbins, set off the overworked tornado siren yesterday when the news about Harry and Megan came down. Oh, yeah.

Because all of Twitter was overworked jokes about the Royals. So this edition of the Overworked Twitter joke will be all Royals as well. Are you ready for the gold in ruffling ascending order of funding? Yes, please. Number one, Harry and Megan are resigning to spend less time with their family. Number two, anybody calling it Megzit. That's fantastic. Number three, I can't wait until season fill in the blank of the crown.

Yes, yes. Number three, B, I can't wait for Megan Markle to play herself on the crown. Yes. Number three C, I have watched three seasons of the crown. I know this decision was only cemented after several deep size and longing stairs. Number four, perhaps obligatory, Harry and Megan are joining the athletic.

Number five, for you college football fans, Harry and Megan are entering the transfer portal. Number six, damn this dude Harry was buried on the depth chart. Number seven, laughing my ass off. Harry and Megan turned Buckingham Palace into the New York Knicks during free agency. And number eight and perfect for our ringer audience, this is what you call load management.

Thanks to John Xavier Deal, Alhosa Cucac, Don Steele, Paul Bosson, Nickfield, Dave Mulhern, Ed Garner, Isaac Chip, Street Courier, Deep Breath, Brad Rowland, Tim Simpson, Tim Sampson, excuse me, JW, Alex, Hungerford, Adam, Michael Mason, and Johnny C. If you created a royal pun that would have made

lunchtime, oh, booze proud, Congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. Do you also see this very funny headline in the Chicago Tribune? But it just had a picture and said Northwestern graduate moving closer to home after spending time abroad. Oh, that's fantastic. I love that the Chicago Tribune is just doing like onion stick now. Like we're just running headline and photo and just like letting you get the joke. It's great stuff.

How to Save America's dying newspapers. Yeah. Gag headlines. All right, David, time for the notebook dumb. I wanted to share with you this great piece by Garrett Graf. in Wired about how Twitter may have stopped war with Iran. Last week, of course, Donald Trump ordered the killing of Iranian spymaster Qasim Soleimani as retaliation on Tuesday night Iran fired rockets at bases in Iraq where U.S. military

personnel were stationed. Now, once that happens, there's all these kind of fog of war questions. How big is the Iranian offensive? and is Donald Trump going to retaliate in a way that he threatened to on Twitter and turn this into full-on war? Not only do we not know the answers to the questions in the moment, but neither of the combatants know the answers to the questions. Graff writes that Twitter proved a remarkable modern-day answer to the long-running challenge world leaders have faced in struggling to communicate between nations during unfolding crises. He has a bunch of very cool historical examples. I'm quoting from his piece here.

He says at the height of the Cuban missile crisis, it took the U.S. embassy in Moscow nearly 12 hours to encode one 2,700 word message from the Soviet Union, which was the equivalent of about five type pages. In turn, whenever the Soviet embassy in Washington needed to send a message to Moscow, they relied on a bicycle messenger from the local D.C. office of Western Union. after he peddled away with my urgent cable one of the principals said we at the embassy could only pray

he would take it to Western Union office without delay and not stop to chat on the way with some girl at the end of the crisis Nikita Khrushchev read a letter allowed over Radio Moscow to make sure Washington would get it faster

and in fact as graph points out when you have a crisis like Iran and the United States are undergoing it's really important to write things down to avoid any mistranslation or garbled message or misunderstanding. You have to be able to tell the other country exactly what you're thinking in the moment. So way back when the Americans and Soviets had this so-called

red phone installed, which is really a teletype machine. But fast forward to 2020 and Tuesday night. After the rockets were fired, Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif, got on Twitter and posted this. Iran took and concluded proportionate measures in self-defense under Article 51 of the UN Charter targeting the base from which cowardly armed attack against our civilians and senior officials were launched. We do not seek escalation or war, but will defend ourselves against any aggression. Translation, we're probably finished, right? This is not going to be a wider attack. Twelve minutes later, we hear from Donald Trump. All as well, missiles launched from

Iran at two military bases. Dot, dot, dot. So far, so good. We have the most powerful and well-equipped military anywhere in the world. By far, I will be making a statement tomorrow morning. Translation, I'm not being as belligerent as I was on Twitter earlier. Graff continues that neither Trump nor Zerif tweeted again all night. And after weeks of frenetic activity on Twitter by the president, a hundred or more a day, sometimes Trump's 13-hour silence on Twitter by the time he took the stage of the White House, marked one of the longest periods of online calm. since the start of the Ukraine scandal in the fall. So yeah, I mean,

is it too much to say that this was like one of the, one of the few nice stories, one of the few useful stories ever to come out of Donald Trump's Twitter account or Twitter more generally? Yeah, I mean, you know, this is, this is definitely an, a, uh, a, uh, eye-opening piece. It's one of the few,

it's one of these few pieces that I was actually just like really surprised, surprised at the argument and surprised read that we've covered in like the entire history of this podcast. And it was, and yeah, like I said, really eye-opening. I mean,

this is, it's an incredibly, it's a really interesting story and a really interesting point of view on this whole thing. And I mean, I'm, I mean, I've been sitting here the past,

you know, 24 hours, just sort of, shocked that we are not in the middle of a war already and that, you know, the parties involved were able to, you know, negotiate. And I use that term loosely a, you know, some sort of, you know, peace for the time being or whatever. And, and this is a really, this. Yeah. And this is a very compelling explanation as to why. I mean, I guess the one thing that this story

doesn't quite deal with it, I guess would be the next frontier if we're talking about this being useful is. So we're imagining that the Trump tweets that come out once combat has begun are measured and clear versus the Trump tweets that we read like on Monday, which are not measured and often totally unclear.

there. Like, you know, the idea that you have these formal communications between nations that are at this point with each other, the idea is that lots of people are looking at this. And every word is fussed over because they know everyone on the other side's going to read it. Well, like, what was it 24 hours, 48 hours before? Trump was threatening to bomb Iranian cultural sites. Yeah. But I guess, I guess the counter argument there is that Trump is so belligerent and so bonkers. on Twitter normally, that when you read that statement 12 minutes after the Iranian statement about the attack, then Iran has at least some mild assurance that the U.S. isn't going to go any farther. Well, I mean, and maybe one of the odd positives of, you know, Trump's Twitter presidency is that there's room for rewrites, right? I mean, you can tweet one way and then tweet another way.

And presumably there is some back channel communication where you can direct, you know, your peer in the, in, you know, another country to be like, no, no, no, just ignore the tweet from 1206. The one at 1211 is the one we really mean. And, you know, it seems like whatever editorial process went down, and we talked about ghostwriting earlier this week. I mean, whichever, the tweets that have been determined to be meaningful, apparently won the day. and thank goodness by the way absolutely let us talk a little bit of David about Facebook in the election

because there were three stories this week I want to take I want to pull your attention toward the big one today Thursday is that Facebook said they're still going to allow lies in political ads number one

and number two you can still micro target those ads Facebook exec quoted in the New York Times says we have based our policy on the principle that people should be able to hear from those who wish to lead them warts and all and that what they say should be scrutinized and debated in public.

This, of course, follows Twitter banning political ads and Google limiting them somewhat. Okay, that's story number one. Story number two is, again in the New York Times, written by Kevin Roos, Shira Frankel, and Mike Isaac. They got their hands on a memo written by a Facebook exec named Andrew Bosworth. Now, Bosworth doesn't want Trump to win re-election. He thinks not changing Facebook's rules may leave. lead to Trump's reelection, but he used an extended J.R.R. Tolkien analogy to explain why Facebook shouldn't try to hurt Trump's chances. I'm quoting Bosworth here. I find myself thinking of the

Lord of the Rings at this moment, specifically when Frodo offers the ring to Galadriel and she imagines using the power righteously at first, but knows it will eventually corrupt her. As tempting as it is it is to use the tools available to us to change the outcome. I am confident we must never do that, or we will become that which we fear. Can we get binge mode in here? I'm not sure I quite remember that moment. Is Mallory around?

She's got to be in the studio next door, right? She can't be that far away. The fate of the 2020 election hinges on on that reading of the Lord of the Ring. I like it. You do. So you're happy. You're good with us.

We should like Frodo or Galadriel not use our power, not use Facebook's awesome power to try to swing the election. No, I'm just sympathetic to any argument that cites the Lord of the Rings. Is there any fantasy epic? I'm not really making a comment about the actual content. Yeah. It is a little weird that you went in our Star Wars,

in our kind of Star Wars obsessed, watchman obsessed, even Game of Thrones obsessed time, back to Lord of the Rings. But maybe that's just the age of Facebook executive. So Bosworth goes on to call any comparisons of Facebook to nicotine, wildly offensive.

He compared Facebook to sugar, David. If I want to eat sugar and die in early death, that is a valid position, Mr. Bosworth. Worth wrote. My grandfather took such a stance toward bacon and I admired him for it. And social media is much less likely, likely much less fatal than bacon. Wow. I don't know about you, but I feel great about where things are going in this country. I feel fantastic.

This guy's like trying to be like Chuck Closterman or something. I mean, you know, I got this out there and pop culture analogy, you know. Like, no, no, no. You're not a writer. Just run the big thing that's going to kill us all. Good Lord. Consider the slab of bacon, Brian. Last but not least, David, the Facebook Teen Vogue caper.

Rachel Abrams and Cecilia Kang reported on Wednesday. Teen Vogue published an article called How Facebook is Helping Ensure the Integrity of the 2020 Election. It had no byline they write in a glowing tone, so glowing that Facebook C.O. Cheryl Sandberg shared the person. piece on social, great teen vogue piece about the five incredible women protecting elections on Facebook.

Well, not long after the article was posted, a line appeared at the top of the story to signal it was a paid advertisement, quote, editors note, this is sponsored editorial content. Abrams and Kang continue soon after the sponsored editorial content label disappeared. And then the article itself vanished. Somebody tweeted, what is this? teen vogue. To that, the teen vogue account replied in a tweet that was

later deleted, literally, I don't know. Facebook, after all that, Facebook came out and said, no, no, that was a real which is a not paid for article. That article was absolutely real. Then Facebook came out and admitted that it was an advertorial.

And they were wrong. Casey Newton made this point on the verge, which I liked. let us step back for just a moment here. Facebook is trying to tout its integrity as it relates to the election. That's the point of this whole manufactured thing. So it commissioned a paid-for article. We want you to think that we have integrity.

So here's a fake article. Just think about that. I mean, all right. very very very mealy mouth very half-hearted devil's advocate here i think that when the teen vote when the teen vogue twitter account said they had no idea what it was i think that's probably the most insightful thing i mean about this whole situation i'm i guarantee that both the facebook and teen vogue uh who the people from both sides who were involved in the production of this were utterly separate from any kind of whatever normal decision-making process would have addressed these things in any in a different way and a more

responsible way, right? I mean, this is just like two PR teams that are like having a cocktail and high-fiving afterwards. And, you know, it's the idea that this is like, just the diabolical corruption of Teen Vogue's editor-in-chief or something is probably not true. However, I'm not sure that makes it much better. And from the Facebook side, you know, whoever is doing this sort of thing, 100% should know better. I mean, it's, it's whether or not this is their, they're nine to five, you know, whether or not this is in their normal job description, you have to know better than the do this sort of thing. It's just, it's, it's just, it's just so silly. I mean, whoever, you had to know you were opening yourself up to the kind of exposure and to not actually navigate,

if you're trying to, if you're trying to put one over on the world to try to not navigate the actual details of whether or not this was going to be labeled as an advertorial or paid content, whether or not you're going to figure out who the byline was going to be. I mean, that's, to not, to not talk about that stuff ahead of time is just like laughably. stupid. And if you want to convince people that you are going to safeguard the integrity of the election, you can also make all those executives available to actual reporters. Like let's say Mike Isaac and Kevin Ruse and everybody else at the New York Times. Like that would that would also, Shira Frankel, excuse me, I want to leave her out. That would that that would also be a good idea.

Yeah. And and much more convincing than than a paid for thing in team. Vogue. Nothing against teen Vogue, but really? That was the idea. Yeah, well, they're trying to reach a whole new generation of potential Facebook users who are constantly being bombarded with this notion that Facebook is evil. I want to talk to you, David, about the case of the thieving sports writer, or maybe sports writer imposter. I don't know if you saw this, but last week, Minnesota Vikings tied in Kyle Rudolph caught the winning touchdown, playoff game against the Saints in overtime. he was wearing gloves when he caught the ball as football players do. Rudolph writes on Twitter this week,

a member of the media in the locker room after the game asked if he could have my gloves for a charity benefit. So I said, of course, and I will even sign them for you. Well, he got me. They were sold on eBay three days later for $375. Oh my God. The eBay listing from Purple Planet 19 is still up. Kyle Rudolph made the winning touchdown catch

overtime to beat the Saints. These are the actual gloves Rudolph wore in that game, signed by Rudolph and Black Sharpie. Comes with official team roster. Rudolph adds it was not anyone that I knew, so it wasn't a local reporter I see daily or national reporter.

Locker room was a zoo. I'm not blaming Kyle Rudolph for this because it seems like he was trying to do legitimately a menschie thing. But if after a huge playoff win, that happens in overtime that shifts the fortunes of both franchises if not both coaches. If a reporter comes up to you in that kind of chaotic environment and says,

hey, can I have your gloves because I want to sell them for charity? That is not a real reporter. That's not going to be, if any reporter on earth actually wanted to do that and they shouldn't, that's not the time they're going to ask. they're probably busy as you're saying as you're saying there's a lot of like national NFL correspondents are like slowly sidling back against the wall

and putting a pair of gloves in their back pocket and pretending I never had them I've seen a lot of fucking around going on in locker rooms but never that kind I just you know I you know hey can I get can I get those gloves from you I'm just at a charity auction coming up so great coincidence that you just

caught the winning touchdown in a playoff game. Yeah. Story does have a happy ending, by the way. Guy named Jason King tweeted that he was the one who bought the gloves and he would donate to a charity of Rudolph's choice. That's nice. But I was texting with Kevin Clark about this the other day. I was like, do we think this is some sports radio TV rando?

Because I'm naturally, I want to protect sports writers. I can't believe a sports writer would do this. But if it's some guy at a radio station holding them I'm like, well, you know, within the realm of possibility. He says he thought it was just somebody who just snuck into the locker room because those are kind of lightly patrolled. Well, this is great. This sounds like an everybody wins sort of situation, right?

I mean, Kyle Rudolph gets to donate the gloves to a charity of his choice. He wins, the charity wins, the thief wins because he got his money. And we as media consumers win because we got to follow this little online detective story for 24 hours. It's like royal content for sports media people. Exactly. To a little listener mail. I love this one so much, David.

This comes to us from Guy to Gata, who sent us a recent episode of the NPR show Planet Money. The episode is about marathons and it includes some vintage NPR audio. Now, David, I want you to listen carefully to a very familiar catchphrase uttered by a radio man in not. 1979. Wow. A look at jogging produced by David Sullivan. David,

where are all these people running to? Oh, Michael, they're not really running. Dad? Is that you? Oh, man. There had to be at least

11 people in the world who heard that when it was aired on NPR and immediately thought of us. So for those 11 people, so happy. I'm so happy. I'm thinking it may just be Guy Dagata. I don't know about you, but I'll take 11.

That's amazing. It was the same, it was the same intonation. David? Yeah. Yeah. Maybe you're, were you listening to a lot of died to guy as a child, do you think? You weren't quite aware of it. Well, this is guy, the guy who sent us. He's the Twitter user. Oh, wait. Who is the, sorry. It's not the voice. That was NPR guy from 1979. Sorry.

I'm on, I'm on Ancestry.com right now trying to track him down. I'm telling you. Apple doesn't fall far from the tree. David, this note comes from Gruns. You mentioned on the last pot

about back-to-back tweets of World War III and Weight Watchers. Those sort of got tangled up. But do we have a name for this social media phenomenon where two unrelated yet serendipitously tied posts appearing your feed back to back? And he sends one along that was a note about everyone or 100 people at college humor losing their jobs. And then the next tweet was National Magazine Awards.

The freelancer support fund offers a reduced rate for freelance writers who wish to submit their own work to the National Magazine Awards. So everyone loses their job. Next tweet is, help for freelancer. Do we want to try to name this phenomenon? It's like ironic serendipity sort of or like a, like, like a, like a, yeah, like a mashup of two things. It just has a sort of, like, ironic resonance. Yeah, someone's got to figure this out.

Yeah, I was thinking like it's the back to back. It's the, I don't know if you could do something with algorithm. Since sometimes those are, you know, it pulls something that seems relevant and turns out to be completely irrelevant. An algorithm. I don't know. Anyway, if you have a good idea, please send it to us at the press box pod. finally this one comes from me i sent this into listener mail because david you and i have identified

a genre of journalism called the old guy still got it where a journalist sits at the knee of martin scorsese or john lacari and insists their new work is of a piece with their classic work well i've got a new nominee it's historian robert caro because there's a piece in the art section of the times today about how you saw it donated his papers to the new york historical excited society, which is just really an excuse to talk about how cool Bob K. Row is. Now, I know he's 84 years old. So let's do it. Let's let's celebrate while we can. But I feel like I've read a lot of Bob K. Roe appreciations in this in this vein lately. And I am completely okay with waiting until he has another, an actual bookout to break out the old guy still got it, Rubric one

more time. But just, just take a breath. Just take a pause. We, Bob Cairo is awesome. We got it. We are, we're, we're, if you read, I don't pretend to have read all of any of those books. Any, I wouldn't, I am not pretending. If you pretend to have read it or actually did read it, I'm really proud. But let's just take up, let's just take a pause. We love the guy. He's great. He's a great guy. Oh, guy still got Bob Cameron. You remember when I, I don't know if you remember this. You remember back in the, in our, in the house, yeah, days of hanging out

in New York publishing circles. We had a group of friends who were in a book club in which they were endeavoring to read the

entire Robert Carrow Lyndon Johnson series. Yes. I cannot imagine a better way to lose the friends you started with

and to go down this path together. We had another friend who may be a prominent journalist right now who was reading all of Stephen King.

Remember that? Yeah. Every page. If he wants to identify himself will let him. But what do you think was more fun reading all of Stephen King or all of Bob Cairo? Actual question. I'm not sure. I mean, I think Stephen King would certainly have it's like try. The problem is there's so much Stephen King that even that even at it, even the best,

even the best Stephen King, yeah, would get a little bit repetitive. I've been watching a lot of Stephen King movies lately though and they do not get old. But yeah, I mean, if we're going to be talking about like wonderful genre writers, there is a little bit of like the George R. Martin and Robert Cairo, right? There's this sort of like, exhaustive series that's never going to be finished. And so we just have to find ways to keep talking about them in case the next book never comes out. Absolutely.

He's more reliable than George R.R. Martin, though. I mean, I think that's true. Time for David Chewmaker guesses the Strain Pound headline. Last week's headline about the disappearance of Nissan head, Carlos Gone, was Gone going gone. As usual, our readers are a lot funnier than we are. Chris Dealey says it should have been gone out of the country by traveling.

labeling lebanonymously that's terrible Foxcon says here today go in tomorrow Neil Savage says and like that he's gone Kaiser so's a gift

Dimo Harrison and Jeremy Pike propose gone in 62nd which I really like which I really like but I think I just slightly favor

the one from McGillicuddy and Will Holland Gone, baby, gone. Little known fact. Little known fact about the hopefully this will appear in the Ringer All History someday. When the entire staff of the ringer was tasked with trying to find a name for what is now the big picture, Sean Finacy's movie podcast.

Everybody was spitting out names, various puns of movies, the classic movies of Hollywood past. My suggestion, which I think had the highest approval rating, except from the man who's actually running the show, was Sean Baby Sean. It did not get chosen. That was a huge whiff. I'm just going to start calling it Sean baby Sean.

That's amazing. Today's headline, David, comes from Jeff Denning. It's from the National Bureau of Economic Research. I love when people send us the academic journals. Because when those guys try to be funny or gals. I feel like it's kind of unfair, but I love them every time. It's great. This headline is at top, and I'm not making this up, working paper number 26502.

Oh, my gosh. The authors did a study about whether your older sibling going to college correlates with you going to college. Are you more likely to go if your older sibling goes? Are you more likely to go to the same college as your older sibling or a better college? Okay. That's the general gist of the story. This is going to be a big leap. So let me get you started with, it's a pun on the name of a beloved Cohen Brothers movie.

What was the National Bureau of Economic Research's strained pun headline? About your siblings going to college? Mm-hmm. It is very strong. Okay, let's whittle this down. not Lobowski probably not no country Blood Simple has a possibility

Fargo no I mean I feel like raising Arizona there's some thematic stuff there but I don't think I don't say that would be a good headline More in the comedy more in the Oh brother oh oh okay I got I wanted I wanted to keep going I wanted to want to eliminate all the way up to a serious man.

But burn after reading, there might be something there. Okay, so I judge from your voice, it's, oh, brother, where art thou? Brother, if your sibling going to college, it influences whether or not you go to college is the idea. Mm-hmm. Oh, brother. Where you might go to college? Oh, where you might go to college. So, oh, brother, where.

I have no idea. I'm looking at it and it's so bad. Oh, brother where study. Oh, brother where study. Oh, brother where attend. Oh, brother where. A little closer. It's, oh, brother where start thou.

Siblings spillovers in college enrollment. All right. Oh, brother, where start thou? Congrats to the National Bureau of Economic Research for appearing in this segment. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris on Made a production magic by Jim Cunningham.

We're back Tuesday with more lukewarm takes about the media. Talk to you then, David. See you later, Brian. David? Yeah. Where are all these people running to? Dad? Is that you?

Oh, man. This has got to be one of the great media moments of all time. Yeah. Do we want to try to name this phenomenon? I mean, just think about. I mean, I want to talk about this first, David, is pure intravenous content for the world press. Is it just about the money?

I don't know about you, but I feel great about where things are going. I feel fantastic. I like it. You do. So you're happy. You're good with us. I like it. I like it.

Translation. I'm not being as much. belligerent as I was on Twitter earlier. All right. Hey, can I have your gloves? Okay. Yeah, it could be your personal collection. I don't know.

Oh, brother. Oh, oh. All right. That was the idea. Telling, Apple doesn't fall far from the tree. And thank goodness, by the way. Absolutely. On the one hand is we want to change our lives.

We don't want to be. Yeah, I think that's true. I don't pretend. We all understand what they're going through. We do? But what do you think was more fun?