The Press Box - Headline Catch-Up: Colbert Is Canceled, NPR and PBS Are Defunded and FS1's Barstool Shake-Up. Plus, 25 for 25: NYT's David Marchese on the Future of Interviewing

Episode Date: July 21, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David discuss dueling theories on why Paramount decided to cancel 'The Late Show With Stephen Colbert,' NPR and PBS losing federal funding, The Wall Street Journal's Trump/Epstein scoop, and FS1's shake-up that leaves Joy Taylor out and 'Barstool Sports' in (8:42). Then, Bryan is joined by David Marchese of The New York Times to discuss his extensive history of interviewing, his preparation process, the future of the format, how podcasts changed his approach to conducting interviews, and stories from some of his favorite subjects, including Norm Macdonald, Nicolas Cage, and more (41:48). Finally, stick around for David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained Pun Headline (1:28:50). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David ShoemakerGuest: David MarcheseProducer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, Danny Hyfitz here from the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. We're coming to you multiple times per week to tell you who to draft, who not to draft. Honestly, that's kind of most of it. The Ringer Fantasy Football Show, YouTube, Spotify, wherever get your podcast, The Ringer Fantasy Football Show. David? Yes. I understand we both spent a little time in New York City last week. I was just there yesterday.

But yeah, since the last time I spoke to you, I've done some time. What kind of misadventures did you get up to? Well, you know, we're just out of New Jersey. I mean, it's a little ways away. But we went just for like, you know, my wife and I had to go over the old stomping grounds. Went to Prospect Park and the waterfront over in Dumbo, or actually more like Atlantic Avenue. So my kid could hit two different splash pads and did all the slides and stuff. And I just did just the New York experience.

Stick your nose in a couple shops. Pop in, buy some vintage t-shirts you might never wear. That's what we were getting to. What did you buy? So we went into one shop that was mostly dresses, right? I mean, these vintage shops normally are, right? If they're, if they're the both for men and women, it's like 90% women and then one rack of t-shirts for the guys or whatever. And I found for the low, low price of $45.

And I say that somewhat sarcastically, but seriously, it could have just been a hundred or whatever. A beautiful white Howard Stern morning is 92.3 K-Rock T-Roc T-S. shirt. Oh my God. Just the show logo, patch on the front, full back. And it fits perfect. It's the first time I've ever, I think, tried on a vintage shirt in the store. Usually, back

in the day, you would just buy them and wear no matter how they fit. But this was like, hey, you know, if I'm going to spend this money, I want to actually wear this on occasion. So you're a grown up now. Yeah. You go to that fitting room just to check it out. Yeah. I've earned the fitting room. Yes. That is so incredible. Does

it have a little name patch for Tom Susano. Is it part of his private collection? I don't think this came from where the, maybe it did. It's in really good condition. It certainly has not been worn a lot. So, you know,

maybe it did come from the whack pack or something, whack pack adjacent. What a fabled place K-Rock was when we were listening to that show from Fort Worth, Texas. I know. Just sounded like Xanadu out there in New York. A couple New York observations for me. First of all, when you and I live there,

and we live there together for quite a long time. Sure. we had a very special skill that one acquires when living in the city, which is when you go to enter the subway, and I'm talking about going from the sidewalk down that very first set of stairs, you have this ability to hear the train coming and know that you should start sprinting if the train's coming. I was amazed to learn that there are now, in many stations, little boards there. telling you how long it's going to be before the train comes. This is as soon as you hit that first flight of stairs. Yeah. And I'm like, oh my gosh.

And I'm like, oh, my gosh. And I was not part of any of my life at any point. I mean, that must be really recent. And you remember, like, you and I had wolf ears. We could hear that train coming. Well, humanity, do you think now evolved the other way? Mm-hmm. Will we become lazy?

Not be able to hear some experience life in New York like we once did? It's possible. It's possible. I don't know. I'd like to think that, you know, the New Yorkers still hang on to their own styles. Although, you know, people were still using subway tokens when we first moved to New York. So a lot changes. Well, you were buying cool, used t-shirts. I was taking my kids to the Strand. No, it's kind of an upset there. I took my son last year. This was my daughter who's nine. It was this was her first time. And her first line when she got in was, Daddy, you didn't tell me it was four floors. I was like, yeah, it is.

It's like you're not allowed on the on the rare books floor here, but you know, you'll get there someday. Anyone else you want. This is your pleasure dome as well as it is mine. I was struck by a couple things. One, there's a lot more cream cheese flavors in New York City these days. Is that new? I think so because I went into a bagel place and you had, you know, your scallion cream cheese. Some other normalish flavors.

and then you had birthday cake. Oh, yeah, that was not a thing. Oreo cream cheese. And I'm just like, what hell has been unleashed in New York bagelries that you can get this kind of crap in here now? Well, I'm glad to see you appropriately upset. I've never been a bagel purist, and partly that's because I was raised on, like,

cinnamon raisin bagels. And, you know, but I was sort of enthralled to see that be part of the, Democratic mayoral primary in New York that the candidates were asked what their bagel was. I know it's just an old school New York question. I'm glad it's still getting asked and that toasting the bagel is still an ethma to the, the appropriate New Yorker experience. I don't really know how that works. But I mean, toasting the bagel, I like a toasted bagel.

Same. But it's all, but it's still, it's a can of worms. You get them half the time and this cream cheese is just like squirting out in every direction. It kind of ruins the whole thing. Kind of melts. Yeah, but yeah, it doesn't shock me Those flavors are available, you know, as a man of the world Because they have crazy flavors on attach to everything now

But it does a little bit surprising for New York, you know, There's so much Puritanism with their bagels involved there, you know, so So glad you said the word Puritanism Because I went over to Broadway And I saw a new play or a newish play called John Proctor is the villain Oh, yes, I've heard about this where you have these kids in high school and they're reading the Crucible

now in the age of Me Too. Yeah. And rethinking the play. It was absolutely fabulous. And always a reminder that I have not been to the theater in way too long. Yeah. There's something about sitting there

at live performance that's just so fun and interesting and electrifying. Also, how they just swing open all those doors at the end of a Broadway show. Doors you didn't even know existed. Yeah. And then everybody piles out onto the street.

But I did see one thing in Times Square that I would like to get your take on. You were always a good student, along with me, of Southern or Texan culture seeping into New York. Yeah. What do we make of there being a Raising Cain's outlet in Times Square? I mean, listen, it was bound to happen. Raising Cains is absolutely huge business right now. And it's pretty good. I like a lot of, I like just kind of like,

I love the Raising Cains aesthetic. I love the Raising Cain's menu. I love, I do enjoy eating there, a great deal. Pretty good was the correct term. It's pretty good. You know,

it reminds me in some ways of like, the first like upscale barbecue joints that rolled into the city where it's like, it tastes really good, but you don't realize that like what makes barbuck, is that what makes barbecue special is just the amount of time it spends cooking and the flavor that like seeps into the meat

Raising Cates, like, I'm never going to be disappointed by a Raising Cain's meal, but if you just handed me a Raising Cain's chicken finger without any of the other stuff, I don't know how high I would rank it. Not a lot. Not a ton of flavor in there. You got to dip it, baby. And I'm a big, I'm a big dipper. So I'm, so it works for me.

Next time on the press box, when did all sauce become orange? But we got some media headlines to catch up on, David. I really want to do that episode. I don't like that's, I have a lot of thoughts. In some ways, you and I are miscast on this media podcast. but we will get to that story in due time. Coming up today, though, David, we got headlines to catch up on.

Stephen Colbert has been canceled, at least in the TV sense of the term. There was a Wall Street journal scoop about all of Jeffrey Epstein's body friends. PBS and NPR have been defunded, and in sports, FS1, has been cleaned out, and then restocked. Plus, a new installment of our 25-for-25 series,

an interview with the New York Times is David Marquesi, the guy who asked tough questions of famous people about the future of interviewing. All that much more on the press box. A point of the ringer. Podcast Network. Happy summer media consumers, Brian Curtis. David Shoemaker and producer Kyle Crichton here.

David Stephen Colbert came on the air last week, and he told us something that, well, was not a Trump joke. Before we start the show, I want to let you know something that I found out just last night. Next year will be our last season. The network will be ending the late show in May. And, yeah, I share your feelings. It's not just the end of our show,

but it's the end of the late show on CBS. I'm not being replaced. This is all just going away. So a very sad story there for Stephen Colbert and his fans. Can we agree that there is something kind of funny about booing bad news? Yes. Yeah, it's like cheering for, fireworks except the reverse. Yeah, booing bad news. The only person there to receive the booze

is the person who you're a fan of and who has nothing to do with the news itself. Yeah, that is, it's a, it's a very human but very odd reaction. I think when it comes to the cancellation of Stephen Colbert that multiple things can be true at the same time. Thing number one, of course, this must be motivated, at least partly by appeasing Donald Trump. I mean, that show, David, was a product of resistance 1.0. Yeah. And when he came on the air in 2015 and he wasn't the lovable Stephen Colbert character

from The Daily Show, and everybody was like, ooh, this guy's not so funny. Let's get James Cortin in there and fix this baby. Yeah. Well, what happens the next year? Donald Trump gets elected president. And all of a sudden, Stephen Colbert's late show has a lot. a purpose. In a related story, I learned of the cancellation of the Colbert program from a tweet from

California Senator Adam Schiff, who was a guest on Thursday's show, which should tell you just how much that show has embedded itself, intertwined itself, if you will, with the resistance. What do we already know is going on with CBS and its parent company Paramount? well they're trying to get their merger with skydance over the goal line with Donald Trump's FCC so Paramount already caved and gave Donald Trump $16 million because of that lawsuit about different clips from 60 minutes Colbert had a good line about this he said I believe this kind of complicated financial

settlement with a sitting government official has a technical name in legal circles it's a big fat bribe. We know that 60 Minutes Executive Producer Bill Owens resigned rather than be part of Operation Bin the Knee. We know that CBS News President Wendy McMahon did the same thing. Also, in CBS News, we learned this last week that CBS is trying to buy the free press and per our friend Matt Bellany over at Puck

install Bari Weiss as a kind of CBS News spiritual advisor. Yes. So once you know all that, doesn't it seem like Stephen Colbert in his late show is one sacrificial lamb to be named later?

Yes. You were right in saying more than one thing could be true at the same time, but it's impossible to read this as anything other than further need ending or, you know, of continuance of said bribe.

And I think that obviously the CBS, Paramount folks had to be aware that's how it was going to be read. And if it's indeed part of appeasing Trump, that must be how it was intended to be read, right? You have to work really broadly and very blatantly, I think, to Curry favor with the president. and certainly, you know, the untowardness of it, and being very generous with that word choice, is not their, you know, primary concern.

They could already gauge the market based on the way that the $16 million payment just sort of got swept under the rug. You know, when it happened, you mentioned the town, or you mentioned Matt Bellany, I was trying to think of how he's going to cover this on today's episode. because he's usually pretty even-handed when it comes to balancing the the politics of it with the sort of corporate urgencies of the situation. I mean, this feels a little bit, let me take a step backwards.

My guess is the $16 million wasn't particularly meaningful on a fiscal level so much so. I mean, it was probably a drop in the bucket for what they were trying to get out of it, right? It just matters at the sort of moral philosophical level. right? And I think that this cancellation, I don't think you give away. I don't think full on cancel late night unless you're already planning to cancel it anyway, unless the end was already in sight. And to give it away like this to make it feel so much like, like, you know, a favor to the president must have been deliberate, right? I mean, I don't, I don't think you would

straight up give him the show, but I think if you're going to cancel it anyway, you'll go out of your way, the people that, I'm speaking as the people that decided to pay. him $16 million to make a merger happen. You go out of your way to make it seem like he's getting something out of this. This is a, you know, it's a bargaining chip that you probably already had, you know, agreed to divest yourself of. It's a terrible look. I mean, it's just freaking ridiculous.

It probably in the long run helps Stephen Colbert, the commentator, the public figure, because now he can, he is more resistance figure than ever. He can kind of chart his own course. he can go, you know, the Tucker Carlson or whatever, Medellan route and, and, and plan his own flag, you know, create his own thing. We're just, I thought you were going to say debate college kids like. We're debate college kids, correct? So I'm sure he'll be doing some of that.

But it's not a good thing. It will go down in history as the last host. And he can, and he doesn't have to have because, and it was canceled because ratings were so bad on his resume, right? You know, I mean, so there is some sort of, some sort of periodic victory there. I mean, it kind of, and it also sort of weirdly saves us from having the kind of tired conversation about what the point of these shows are in the first place and, and how long they could possibly last.

It's funny, we always hear about, at least, you know, specifically for the tonight show, but in all the late night shows that for, that they're just kind of relatively inexpensive to make and, you know, make just enough money to be very profitable shows in the time slot. more profitable than CSI reruns or whatever the alternative would have been. And that's why they keep going. But I guess at some point it's just, it's, you know, diminishing returns. I can't imagine there were a lot of politics involved in the decision making prior to this week. And then they probably just made it made a very political decision to make it feel like it was political.

But I don't know. I don't know. What was your takeaway? Well, you brought us to economics of late night, which is true thing number two. And you also mentioned Matt Bellany. So I'll give you some stuff that he's already published over a buck before they made it to his podcast. Stephen Colbert makes between $15 and $20 million a year. Late Show costs $100 million a year to produce.

And according to Bellany, it was losing $40 million a year. Oh, wow. So you're actually losing money on this deal. Now you can argue if you put CBS stars on the late show, if you put Paramount Stars in the Late Show, you're going to make money in a lot show. you're going to make money in other ways. Yeah, synchronic. You have to go spend. Yeah, it's money you have to go spend otherwise.

But the economics are pretty dreadful. Also, according to the Hollywood reporter, the average age of a Colbert viewer is 68 years old. 68 years old. That's even older than us. Isn't it crazy how close we're getting to that, though? I was driving past a 55 and older community yesterday. And I was like, you know what? I could be there pretty soon.

Like, I can just go see. start looking into real estate now. Dude, when I was charging down the subway steps to make that train, I was like, wow, I have reached the age where I am afraid of falling down the subway steps. I never thought that when we were 23. Yeah, that was my Joe Biden moment. But if there are crummy economics here, and that is also true, then that is certainly part of this story.

But as you point out, did CBS just happen to figure out the economic reality of late night now? right now, when you're in this giant appeasement procedure with the president of the United States. I mean, Donald Trump's certainly going to be happy about the cancellation of Colbert. But it is, I think, crucial to understand that they're not replacing him with a less partisan or less liberal comedian. They're just canceling the franchise altogether. Yeah. Is it too indelicate David to say when we're talking about Stephen Colbert?

If we've established that CBS is doing something really stupid, really bad here, we've established that the economics of late night are also bad. Can we say that Stephen Colbert's late night show was not funny? Sure. I mean, I gave it a whirl usually when I was doing work and trying to find a clip for you. I'm trying to find one of the Democrats you would have on the show. And I was like, these don't even sound like jokes to me. Yeah. And I'm not offended by the Trump jokes.

I think everybody who listens to this show would understand that. That does me no offense. I'm not like, boy, this, remember the old apolitical days of Johnny Carson and Steve Allen? I don't feel like that. Yeah. But it was, you mentioned his future. And to me, this feels a lot like Conan O'Brien hosting the Tonight Show or even Conan O'Brien hosting that show on TBS for years afterwards. We're like, there's a guy here who's really talented and really,

funny who we're going to appreciate more as soon as he gets out of the strictures of a late night television yeah in 2025 yeah when he hosts a podcast or does an interview series like letterman or whatever else he does we're going to learn to love stephen colbert again yep and not just as a martyr of trump 2.0 or late night or cbs or whatever it is but actually interact with his comic gifts that I bet people who are being honest will admit they have not been interacting with him that way in a very, very long time.

Yeah. Yeah, that's right. I mean, to have such a job of such, you know, traditional significance, you do just sort of disappear into the media ether hosting one of those shows, you know? I feel like there's the occasional like New York Times think piece

about late night shows trying to make themselves relevant by going viral, you know, finding all the different ways to work in something in, in, you know,

social media form and, and to get retweeted and all that kind of stuff. But I feel like I see those more than I actually see the retweets, you know, like there's, there's,

yeah, I guess that's not true. I mean, you see the occasional funny sketch. You see, you know, the occasional interview tidbit, but it's not usually,

because it's some breathtaking, interesting moment, you know? And I'm not the target audience, but I can't remember the last time I saw a CBS actor, you know, like a social media video of anybody from the Paramount family that they're trying to seek out press for. You know, it's just regardless of what you, I mean, this was the most desirable job in the world, what, 10 years ago? And it's indisputably, you know, on its last legs now. across all the networks, regardless of how many of them are profitable or whatever else. You know, you can't be.

I find it hard to imagine, I mean, maybe Colbert because he did have a political bent and was, and was, you know, clearly was fighting the good fight. Maybe this is a platform he would love to continue to have, but I can't imagine most of the people who are hosting late night shows don't realize that this is the last days of late night shows. There's a little bit of hopelessness that there's a little bit of like, I can't wait to get out of here and then do something real. amongst all of them, right? It's just kind of hard to walk away from the platform. It's hard to

walk away from $25 million a year, however much you're getting paid. Needless to say, yeah. I mean, I often think about that with media jobs as our world changes. You have David Letterman's old job. You have Johnny Carson's old job, but you don't have their old job. Exactly, yeah. It's not the same. It's like saying, you know, will there be somebody writing a Boston Globe Sports column in 10 years? Sure. Are they going to have Bob Ryan's job? No. No.

They're not. It's just a different world out there. And, you know, I got to thinking about this because in one of the weirdest moments of synchronicity or somebody hitting a button very, very quickly, Stephen Colbert has a story in The New Yorker this week about Kenneth Tynan's great New Yorker profile of Johnny Carson. Oh, my gosh. That's great. This is something New Yorker's been doing to celebrate their 100th.

they have people weigh in on famous New Yorker stories. If you have not read this Johnny Carson profile, and you love great profile writing, get thee to a web browser. It's called 15 years on the Salto Mortali. It was written in 1978. Salto Mortally is like a deadly jump that circus acrobatts do. And Tynan was describing Carson,

you know, doing this night after night on live, you know, on television. I won't say live television, but on television. you know when he joke bombs what did he do and all this stuff and he talked to carcson talked to ed mcmann it's a great piece to revisit but it's so funny to hear colbert or see colbert writing about that at this moment not only turns out to be the death of his show but perhaps the death of late night full stop anyway check that out in the new yorker npr and pbs david oh boy there's nothing but good news on the media beat this week let me quote to you from the new york Times, early Friday, the House, that is the House of Representatives, gave final approval to a measure that would eliminate 1.1 billion in funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The company that funds NPR, PBS, and stations in major cities and far-flung towns. Far-flung, incidentally, a great only in journalism word. The New York Times continues, the cuts are a time bomb for the public media system.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting has dispersed funding for stations through September. after that, more than 100 combined TV and radio stations that serve millions of Americans in rural pockets of the country will be at risk of going dark, according to an analysis from public media firm, public media company, excuse me, an advisory firm. So there are all kinds of ways to think about this. But if we could put aside the top line shows that you and I know from national NPR or from PBS, that that's, that. That second paragraph really makes a key point that in a lot of America, public media equals the media. Yeah. The local newspaper is a shadow of its former self or has gone out of business completely. The rural radio station is an important thing.

Yeah. Well, funding just got cut for that. For all over America. Another good point I saw from Jim Rutenberg in The Times, where he talks about how this has been a conservative goal since the beginning of public media. Yeah. So the law that created

PBS and NPR, Routenberg notes passed in 1967. Richard Nixon, who was elected the next year, immediately started tearing in to PBS for all the liberals, for the quote-unquote, Kennedy sycophants, as Nixon

aide Patrick Buchanan put it at the time, Routenberg writes. So this is something that Republicans have been trying to do and do and do and do and do. And Trump was the guy who got it done. By demanding, and this is a point also made in the article, that Republicans in the kind of places served well by local NPR stations, let us say local public radio stations, stand firm with him. Mm-hmm. And defund.

So that's a big change here. Then there's this interesting debate that the article gets into, David, about, okay, do, do you? we need to fund, do we need to have a government-funded public media in America now? I'll give you both sides of the coin. From the no column, hey, wait a second. We got the internet. If you watched PBS because you loved a country doctor who was going around solving mysteries in England, well, hey, there's this thing called Britbox where you can find that country doctor and lots of country doctors like him.

solving all kinds of mysteries. You can find news everywhere. So where once this was filling a hole in our world, the world's much bigger now. Yeah. There are more options. Whereas the yes forces would say, aha, but those other options, have you checked out them? Have you checked them out lately?

Have you seen what's on social media? Yeah. Are we willing to give our news gathering capabilities over to Twitter? Mm-hmm. You know, Newton Minow has this great and just must be quoted more than any other line in the history of television writing about TV being a vast wasteland in the 60s. Yeah. Which is part of the impetus to create public television. The yes column would say like, ooh, vast wasteland, that's here.

Yeah. That's Twitter. That's everything. Yeah. So shouldn't we create an island that is not that? Yeah, I mean, it's a really sad state of affairs. I saw a lot of people online framing this is another instance in which, you know, Trump can, says one thing and does another, I guess, in the sense that he ends up,

the people he ends up hurting are functionally his voters by and large, you know, I mean, the, the, the regions that are that are going to really be hurt by these cuts, uh, are by and large, almost entirely. areas that voted for Trump. But I don't think that's necessarily the right take because I think that he would probably stand on principle here as silly as it is, you know, more so than he would in some of the other instances, you know, taxation, tax plan and everything else where he has to just kind of keep BSing. This has been, you know, remember the big bird stuff from the Obama Romney campaign?

I mean, this has been on the table forever. It's kind of shocking that it hasn't gotten done. But as you as you rightfully explained, you know, I mean, it's for all the talk, there's a lot of Republicans out there that were not for those cuts. Because they, their regions were served by public media. It's just sort of nonsensical more than anything else, you know? I mean, it's like it's a big stuffed head on the wall. And I'm sure for Trump in particular, it has the added resonance of being a political obstacle. arrival in the information space

that he has identified. So, you know, I'm sure it feels like a victory to him. But yeah, I mean, it doesn't really pass muster. Perceived politics aside, it doesn't really pass muster as like a conservative small or big C move. I mean, this is basically just the media equivalent of like shutting down the coal mines, right?

It's like just this is a There are other places where you would say Oh, we got to keep this way of life going. This is intrinsic to who we are as a people. And you know, this is obviously Trump and all the people that blindly follow him did not decide to see the value in that. Should we do the Trump media scorecard here for a second?

Sure. Tell me if I've left anything out. Defunded NPR and PBS. Check. Got a $15 million settlement from ABC News because George Stephanopoulos misspoke on the air. Mm-hmm. Plus 16 million from CBS News. Mm-hmm.

He's suing the Pulitzer Prize Board, the Des Moines Register, and now the Wall Street Journal. Mm-hmm. He brought the Washington Post opinion section to heal. Mm-hmm. He brought perhaps the entire LA Times to heal, or at least its owner. he has brought every tech mogul who controls their own media company to heal. Yeah. And he filled the White House with sycophantic reporters who populate our worst question ever

asked of the White House feature. Mm-hmm. I get everything? Is that the Trump media scorecard? You got to be leaving something out, but nothing off the top of my head, no. Did the media get any points, David? Have we gotten on the board? No.

Months into Trump, too? Well, I guess you could say we kind of did. because David, the press box tornado sirens went off last Thursday. Oh. And it wasn't just that the Wall Street Journal had gotten a huge scoop about Donald Trump's relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. It was this headline which appeared on the bottom of page one of the journal. Trump's body letter to Epstein was in 50th birthday album. You see, David, we've trained a whole generation of people, not just to

respond to major scoops in America's best newspapers, but to just go absolutely crazy when they see a word like bawdy. Because they understand that is not a word that escapes from human lips very often. Yeah. It's a word used by headline writers. And what do you think? How much time do you think was devoted to debating which adjective to use to describe the Trump letter in the Epstein album. It's a great question. I think body probably came up pretty quickly, how quickly it was agreed upon. But who knew body? Like who, whose, whose tongue was that at the tip of? Like, I understand, right, you're trying not to get sued. You're trying to lock everything down. Trump's already sued the journal. So that didn't work. But you're trying to lock everything down.

You're not trying not to get in trouble over a headline adjective of all things. But who in the journal newsroom was like, I know, body. It's a body letter. That's the thing. The story here, David, Jeffrey Epstein, on his 50th birthday, Jislane Maxwell, who was his friend and now is a convicted sex trafficker in her own right. Jislaidna Maxwell was putting together an album of letters from family and friends, the journal reports.

And one letter, according to the two authors of the piece, Khadija Softar and Joe Palazolo, was from Trump, or at least had Trump's name on it. The letter was reviewed by the journal, to use the phrase they use in newspapers. And this letter said this, as an imagined conversation between Trump and Epstein. I will read to you here. This is my dramatic reading. Quoting, voice over colon, there must be more to life than having everything.

Donald, colon, yes, there is, but I won't tell you what it is. Jeffrey, colon, nor will I, since I also know what it is. is. Donald, we have certain things in common, Jeffrey. Yes, we do come to think of it. Donald, enigma's never age. Have you noticed that? Jeffrey, as a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you. Donald, a pal is a wonderful thing. Happy birthday. And may every day be another wonderful secret. Trump has denied writing the letter, calling it, quote, a fake thing. A fake thing. The journal also notes. A fake thing. The journal also notes. The journal also notes, It's a typewritten text framed, was framed by the outline of a naked woman, which appears to be hand drawn with a heavy marker. Trump responds to that detail by saying, I never wrote a picture in my life.

And of course, our internet slews have already found several pictures that Donald Trump drew. Or wrote, yeah. Or wrote in this case. So there's that. Donald Trump has already sued everybody. Rupert Murdoch, the publisher of the journal, both reporters. Brian Stelter notes that this is one of the first times that anybody can remember, perhaps the first time, that a sitting president has filed suit against a news outlet. Yeah.

While they're in office. All those lawsuits I just named, that was before Trump got reelected. So there we go. A Dow Jones spokesman says, we have full confidence in the rigor and accuracy of our reporting and will vigorously defend. end against any lawsuit. Want to change the subject and talk about FS1? Sure. There's been some, let's say, recalibrating of FS1.

Out, Joy Taylor, David, and three different shows. Speak, the show called Speak, which had Joy Taylor, Paul Pearson, Keishon Johnson, Breakfast Ball, which was Craig Carton and his friends, and the facility with Emmanuel Acho. That's out. In The Barstool Guys. Right. There will be a daily barstool-produced show on FS1

featuring Dave Portnoy, Big Cat, probably also a cast of thousands. And Dave Portnoy is going to be on Fox's Big Noon Kickoff pregame show. What do you make of the FS1 fruit basket turnover? I mean, listen, I'm surprised it took long. It sort of seems like what one would have imagined

some of FS1's content to be before they, well, kind of before they launched and over professionalized. But, you know, I mean, I don't even know what to say about this. This landed with such a whimper. I found it hard to get too outraged about it.

I'm not a big fan of a lot of Barstool's content, but you know, it's undeniable that they have a following and that Fox Sports is looking for one. Fox Sports is looking for any following. FS1, you mean? Yeah.

Andrew Marchand notes in his athletic piece that Barstool is going to produce the show for Fox la Pat McAfee. Are you ready to do 9,000 segments about something that got onto the air on FS1? With the Barstool produced television show? I mean, it'll be interesting. It does kind of seem like in this day and age, you just sort of ask for what McAfee got, right? Like, it's just sort of,

there's been so much written about that, that whether or not you think you actually need it, I feel like you would just demand it. It's like, yeah, I want a company car because that guy got one. But so we'll see. My guess is they'll still be leaning on the FS1 team quite a bit, you know, for production purposes. You know, it's just going to be a lot of those.

We've talked about this in terms of ESPN so much, but a lot of those production units are so hidebound to what they've done before to the way that sports television is supposed to look. I say that in air quotes. That it's hard to make anything feel different. Same thing goes for cable news, you know. And it will be incumbent upon all this

to make it feel very different. I'm sure that's a huge issue. And just make it stand out. I mean, we said like, when's the last time you saw a clip from Colbert? When's the last time you saw a clip from Breakfast Ball? Oh, yeah. Could you have told me who the host of the facility were before we had this segment? I really knew that one.

I like Emmanuel Ocho, I guess. But, no, I mean, it's such a weird name. I think that's why it stuck with me. But yeah, no. I mean, yeah, I can get a table my. hot takes on this one and just wait for all of our can you believe this got an FS1 pieces in the coming years i think i've told you this before i've certainly told joel this before but living in l.a i will you know from time to time find myself out on pico boulevard doing a story about fox talking to people there

talking to their announcers their executives i cannot tell you how few times fs one comes up in any capacity with those people it is all about big fox the Super Bowl, the NFC championship game, the game of the week, the World Series, league championship series, all that stuff comes up. FS1 does not come up. Yeah. You know, Colin Coward, they love Colin. Nick Wright, they love Nick Wright.

But it's just not a topic of discussion. Yeah. Amongst those people and hasn't been since Jamie Horowitz left the network. It just hasn't. It's just like this other thing over there that also happens. Yeah. So it is interesting in that context to me, that you're picking the bar stool guys.

Because that's not just, hey, here's a generic show that will go up against ESPN in this time slot. Yeah, that's actually doing something, whether it's the right thing or the wrong thing, we'll see. All right, coming up in 30 seconds, David, an interview with a great interviewer. But first, let's do 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. Senior nominees who at the press box spot where they are always, always gratefully received. last Wednesday, David, while you and I were thinking about New York City, there was a Coldplay concert in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Oh, God.

The band played Viva La Vida and Yellow and everybody went home happy. Oh, not everybody, because a camera went looking for fans and the camera found, as you have certainly seen by now, Andy Byron

of the tech company astronomer and Kristen Cabot who is Astronomer's chief people officer. And as a result of a clip that you are welcome to go look for on the internet, or subsequent to that clip anyway, Andy Byron has resigned. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write, Coldplay hasn't released a new song in years, then they make two singles in one night.

That's good. Got an abbreviated laugh there by David. Thanks to Hey, Rattie, if you tweeted that two people outed themselves as Coldplay fans, Congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, while I was walking around the sweltering streets of New York City, I dropped in to the New York Times building because I wanted to talk to David Markezy, an interviewer extraordinaire. You know his work, the great Quincy Jones interview he did for

New York Magazine, Kathleen Turner also for New York, Yon Winter more recently for the New York Times. He's done some great ones. Here is the latest installment of 25 for 25. The man sitting next to me here in the New York Times building is David Marquesi. For more than a decade, David has been doing interviews with the famous and not that famous that for me rank alongside some of the great profiles written during that time. David has been an interviewer for New York Magazine and The Times Magazine and now can be found asking questions on the podcast, The Interview, which you can listen to and watch

on the Times website. Today he has agreed to a meta exercise. The host of the interview will give an interview about the future of interviewing. David, welcome to the press box. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Nothing I love more than a meta exercise. Let's do it.

My favorite kind of exercise is meta exercise too. How'd you become an interviewer? Through sheer happenstance. I had been an editor at New York Magazine working on culture. there and was feeling sort of burned out with editing. The first half of my career had primarily involved editing. And I wanted to switch to being a staff writer. New York very generously said, okay, you can make that change.

And I was kind of floundering for a bit. I didn't really have a beat. And I ended up being assigned two interviews, maybe two or three, in a relatively short period of time. I did one with David Letterman. I think I did one with John Oliver. And then I also did one with Louis C.K. I think so this was probably like, you know, 2016, something like that.

And they all did really well. And my bosses were happy with them. And then the editor-in-chief of New York at the time, a guy named Adam Moss, who's very well-known in media circles, sort of like a magazine-making genius, said to me one day, you know what you need? You just need to make interviews your thing. Like do interviews. That can be your beat, basically.

And it never would have occurred to me in a million years to focus just on interviews. So it was just Adam Moss in the office one day saying, do that. Put me on that path. What do you like about interviewing? There's a lot of things I like about it. I like the interpersonal dynamic of it. I, you know, just sitting and talking with a person, I just find, I find it like sort of a very free exercise and doing it, knowing that I don't have to then sort of create a scene about it

or I don't have to then sort of like make meaning around the interview in the way that I used to have to do when I would write profiles. I just think, I feel like it gives me more room to move. I sort of can escape some of the conventions of profiling that I didn't feel like I was particularly great at. And then also, the fact that I have freedom to follow my curiosity with interviews and they're not strictly limited to a particular subject or set of subjects means it always feels very different for me. And each one feels like a unique event.

And sort of something that I used to struggle with, particularly. when I was working at music publications, which I mostly did for the first, you know, seven or eight years of my career was, I felt like there was almost like a MADLibs feeling to the work sometimes. I want to credit this to Chuck Clostermine. I don't know if he's the one who said it, but in my mind it sounds like something he would say, so let's say he said it. But he said that music publications do three stories. They do, I think Chuck said it. Band on the way up, ban on the way down, ban on the way back up after they were. we're down. And I just really felt that in all sorts of different forms. Like, I'm just telling a

version of the same story over, in different, uh, instances. And with interviewing, I feel like each one is sort of its own thing and doesn't have to fit into particular templates. That's the old behind the music arc, isn't it? Yeah. Up down and then back up again in the last five minutes of the show. Yeah. What do you think readers and now viewers and listeners like about interviews? Um, well, there, there's sort of aesthetic things and then there are very, very practical things. I think from a practical perspective, I think reading an interview is very easy on your phone. Just the Q&A format is a simple format and intuitive format to scroll through. Whether that's good or bad, I don't know, but I think it's sort of easily digestible.

I also think that the interview format creates a feeling of transparency and intimacy that a traditional profile maybe doesn't create or creates in a different, you know, sort of slant a way. And then I think the third thing is, I just think they've become ubiquitous. You know, there's, forget written interviews, you know, just think about the amount of podcast interviews, YouTube interviews shows. It's almost like interviews have become the default for, sort of how we encounter well-known people or interesting people, which for me is very interesting, because I really remember 10 years ago or something, sitting in meetings and interviews were the things that, like, would get assigned when we just wanted to cover somebody but didn't really have a better idea for how to do it.

You know, they were kind of just like a half a page in the front of the book. Exactly. Exactly. That's very interesting. And when we say transparency, you're talking because we can see the question and we can see the answers. And we, speaking for readers here, somehow feel that that is more authentic, more real than, let's say, a celebrity filtered through a profile.

Yeah. Well, and also, increasingly, we can hear the questions and answers. or see the questions being asked and see the questions being answered. And it's so interesting to me because part of what writing a profile is, right, is you go back and check the information. You're going to call that person's best friend and say, hey, he said that. Is that real?

Call his manager. Call, you know, people that might be detractors. So there's a different kind of transparency, you would say, attain that way versus taking somebody's answers and then maybe challenging them on them. Yeah. I wonder if the first thing you described is, Is that really a form of transparency or like accountability or accuracy?

I'm not sure that we're just gathering secondary interviews. Yeah, yeah. But I will say too that all my stuff and all the stuff that the times or happens on the interview, that stuff is also fact checked. So if somebody says something, we do go back and figure out was that true. And if it's not, we end up cutting it. How many conversations do you like to have with the subject for a single interview published in the Times? I like to have two. So typically the way it works is I do a first interview of roughly 90 minutes.

And that's kind of like the main interview. And then I do a follow-up, ideally within a week or so of about 30 minutes. Sometimes it'll be longer. It's very rarely shorter. And I think the follow-up. up is really important. And important, both for me and I think sort of, in like a larger sense, important for it to feel like journalism. So having a second bite of the apple gives you an opportunity to go back and say, like, I don't think, I don't quite follow that thing you said.

Or, you know, this didn't really make sense or, you know, it gives you a chance to ask a follow up that you didn't think of in the moment. So I just think it adds like a layer of rigor and ideally richness to the interviews that, you know, it's hard to achieve if you just talk to somebody once. You said 90 minutes. Why is that length important? I think that length is mostly important in terms of not scaring people off from and making them feel like they're giving you too much time it's going to be sort of a laborious task. You know, like one hour doesn't feel long enough. And if I was asking for two hours,

I think a lot of people would just say, I don't have two hours to sit there and talk with a journalist. But if it keeps going, you're not, of course, going to object. Oh, yeah, I never, if the interview's going and it seems like there's more to talk about, I never say like, oh, we hit 90 minutes. Stop your interesting answer. I think every reader knows the famous disclaimer at the bottom of an interview. This interview has been edited and condensed.

Yes. How do you edit a subject's words? I mean, basically, we're editing for clarity and coherence. You know, sometimes in the middle of an answer, someone will have a digression that doesn't really make sense or, you know, there might be sort of non-grammatical sentences that are hard to follow. And basically, we're just cleaning that stuff up. So when you listen back or read back, you're not like, wait, what's going on here? The most important thing, sort of the Lodestar, is that no matter what editing we're doing, no. no meaning has ever changed, you know, and that's where having the fact checkers really feels

like a necessary and useful sort of safety net for me, because they, of course, are then checking the raw transcript against the edit and making sure that no meanings have been changed or anything like that. So you have two total conversations. Yeah. What percentage of those two conversations do you think readers actually see or hear? Oh, I can't do the math. But I'll say, you know, generally a two-hour total transcript shakes out to somewhere between like 15 and 20,000 words.

And, you know, the final written piece usually winds up on average, I would say, in the 4,000 word range. So really a lot is getting cut. So that's 20% if I'm doing my math? Sure. For going with 20,000 words. Yeah. And that was part of the magic trick when you did them in print especially, is that we would read this. interview. Yeah. And you would imagine you sitting across from the subject and everything they said

would be interesting, fantastic, gossipy, wonderful. But in fact, it was a very edited transcript of everything they said. Yeah. It's, you know, there's a line I think about often from Elmore Leonard. I think it's from Elmore Leonard in his, he has a little book that they used to sell like at the front of bookstores or urban outfiters or something called something like Elmore Leonard's Rules for writing. And one of the rules is, I'm paraphrasing, but one of the rules is something like cut out the boring parts. And I really try and be rigorous about cutting out the boring parts. A few weeks ago, you interviewed podcaster Andrew Schultz. He said a lot of words in public. How did you prepare for that interview? You know, it is hard when the subject is someone who's

spoken for thousands of hours, because you just can't consider. all the material in the way that you can get close to doing with other types of subjects. I mean, so I read as many profiles as I could. He'd been profiled in, you know, Esquire and who else did? Maybe Vanity Fair did a piece on him. It was Vanity Fair. So I read pieces like that and sort of, you know, credible publications. And then, you know, I just basically then tried to like take a.

like a research snapshot of his podcast stuff. So I'd probably in total I spent, I don't know, I listened to like 30 or 40 hours of his stuff, but it wasn't sequential or anything. Like I would just look and see what the episode descriptions were and say, oh, maybe there's something here, maybe there's something here and try to consume it that way. I just want to feel like I have a firm handling,

I had a firm handle on like the kind of guy he is and the kind of stuff he likes to talk about and how he likes to talk about it. And I felt like after 30 or 40 hours, I had that handle. But I knew it couldn't be comprehensive. Do you like to write out your questions word for word in advance? I do write out the questions word for word in advance. And then I memorize the question. So then I'll read them, usually between like 30 and 40 times.

And at that point, I've got them memorized. Because I like to write them out in advance, but I don't want to feel beholden to them during the interview and feel like I'm stuck looking at this printed piece of paper with the questions and can't really deviate from them. But I find that if I memorize the questions, then it makes me feel like I have freedom in the moment to go down whatever path the subject wants to go down. knowing that I have these questions that I thought of in my head, kind of as like cards to play at the right moment. So, yeah. So for me, it's really the balance of like feeling prepared, like I know what I want to ask, but also giving myself the agility to move away from that.

Are interview subjects allowed to put anything out of balance? No, no. They can say they don't want to talk about something, but I would never say, okay, I'm not going to talk about it. It's sort of an interesting thing because oftentimes, particularly with famous people, their publicist or manager will say, you know, we're really looking to discuss this. We don't want to get into subject X. And I just mind it's so strange and like kind of infantilizing.

We're talking about adults. If I bring something up, they're allowed to say, you know, I don't want to talk about that, you know, but the idea that like they can't be asked something, I really am allergic to it. And then I think it's also Times policy that we're not, you know, we're not allowed to go into interviews with sort of boundaries set on them. It's an important distinction because I think there's a lot of podcast interviews in the world. I suspect anyway, where things are put out of bounds or things are perhaps taken out after the fact that the subject's request. And we don't know that. Right.

Right. Like we're not talking about newspapers here. We're just talking about lots of things that have sprung up out of the earth. And I wonder how many people actually understand that that could be the case when they're listening to an interview on a podcast. Yeah, hard to know, hard to know. It's also funny that I've definitely had the experience of a publicist telling me that, you know, saying something like, you know, I really wouldn't talk about that. They're probably going to shut down or and then it comes up in the conversation. And it's clear the person had no problem talking about it.

You know, it's like dealing with preemptive damage. much control is kind of a strange thing sometimes. Do you want to be a character in your interviews? That's a complicated question. Do I want to be a character? I don't think I want to be that. It's not something I consciously think of. I mean, also character to me implies a kind of performance.

And I don't think I'm. trying to do that, but I do want to be like a live human presence in the interview. What I really never wanted to feel like is it's like the interview is being conducted by a generic journalist. You know, I think it makes the interview feel so much more alive and it creates so much more conversational and emotional possibility if I'm engaging with the subject as myself, like really as a person who has opinions and thoughts and feelings about the subject and their work.

So is that the same as a character? I don't know. I think there are probably things I do as conversational tics or sort of like, at this point learned conversational techniques that might have some character-like qualities to them,

but I don't think of myself as a character in the way that maybe someone like an Andrew Schultz, I suspect, thinks about himself as someone who's like

performing a version of a person on his podcast. Here's something. I'm sure you've heard a lot. What does it mean when an interview subject responds to you by saying, good question? Oh, you know, I used to find that annoying because I would think, weren't the other one good? You know, why are you singling out this one? And then someone else pointed out to me that probably people say good question, that they say good question. And what they what it really means is that the question has just forced them to think about the answer a little bit more.

So good question is just like a stalling sentence while they think about the answer. It's a celebrity's way of saying, hmm. Exactly. Yeah. Let us revisit some of my favorite Marquesi interviews here. How did you feel after you interviewed musician Lou Reed for Spin in 2008? I felt horrible. Yeah, I mean, Lou,

read had a reputation for just really being difficult with journalists, a reputation that turned out to be well earned. And, you know, the little anecdote that sticks out, there's two that stick out for me from that interview, aside from just like walking away feeling totally like humiliated. Because he would just take issue with every question, like say it was a, you know, I'm stupid for asking it, you know, the fact I was asking it, betrayed it like an utter lack of knowledge about him and his work and, you know, just really was unpleasant. But the two funny things that happened. And then there was like some fallout after that I'll get into. But we're talking. We were sitting outside at a cafe in the West Village called Sant Ambrose or something like that.

And we're talking and we're having this kind of awkward interview. and Lou Reed is like scowling and looking like I'm a looking at me like I'm a worm the whole time. And then oddly Robin Williams rides by on a bike. Robin Williams. Robin Williams. This is probably like 2008. And they recognize each other. And you could tell they didn't really know each other, but they knew who each other was.

And just instantly, Lou Reed dropped like that asshole schick he was doing. And he and Robin Williams just were like being ass kissers with each other for like five. minutes while I sat there and I was like, oh, this is like this. Oh, so you're just like, I'm a celebrity, your celebrity club. We're just going to be friends and, and like, just the way he snapped out of jerk mode so quickly to be obsequious with Robin Williams. I was like, this is just a weird window into what it's like to be celebrities and how they interact with each other. So that happened. And then the other thing was, uh, we were, Lou Reed and I were sitting and eating. And he ordered a salad with shaved parmesan, uh, as one does. And, uh,

The waiter brought a salad over with, put it in front of Lou Reed. And Lou Reed looks up at him and goes, you call this shaved parmesan? And the waiter and I look at each other, it sure looks like a piece of shaved parmesan. But he had to like go away and come back with some parmesan in some other form. I was like, well, this guy is just really difficult. But then after the interview was over, you know, Lou Reed called my bosses or his manager called my bosses and complained. I was like, you know, this guy should be fired. and it was very stressful because it was also very early in my career.

But the thing that it taught me, because the piece ended up being really fun to read, was that, you know, the interview subject disliking you or getting defensive or giving you a hard time does not mean that the interview is going badly. And it doesn't mean that the interviewer has done a bad job. You know, it's like these kind of interviews are interesting, often more interesting than an that's super sympathetic hope and maybe nothing compelling happens. So that was like a real key lesson early in my career that I learned from that. I think you could argue that readers actually like it.

Yeah. Because they hear so many interviews that are so smooth. Yep. And go so well that it comes in as a curveball. Yeah. I did an interview earlier this year with Denzel Washington where I just, he just, you know, the problems. It's always my fault.

There's always something I could have done differently or better. It's never the subject's fault. Like they're just showing up to do. their job. But he was just, I couldn't get him to answer questions in a meaningful way. And I felt like he was enjoying putting the finger on me a little bit. And it was just hard and, and difficult. But I really got a lot of response on that one. And yeah, and I think people do, they are like sort of little curveballs that come into your feet or whatever. And I think people appreciate that. Another favorite. You interviewed Kathleen Turner. Oh, yeah. Magazine in 2018.

This is like a This is your life situation. It really is. I've got more, too. What do you remember about Kathleen Turner sauntering into the New York Magazine office? Oh, she was just so brassy and like immediately, you know, taking control. She's got that great husky voice. She's like, I need blueberries. We need to have blueberries in here.

She, like, sat in a room and it's like, do we have the, are there the fresh blueberries? And it's like, we're just in an office in downtown New York. I think we did somehow get her fresh blueberries. But just really, she exuded the thing of like, I am a brassy dame who just is going to speak my mind. And it's so fun when you get a subject like that. It just really feels like they're talking without a filter. Patty Lupone was another interview subject who had that vibe.

Shirley McLean was like that. And it's just really a pleasurable experience for me. That's an archetype within the genre. Oh, yeah. A veteran, I won't say old, but a veteran performer. veteran at their craft who gives no fucks yeah yeah i mean the the for me the like the ultimate example of that would be uh quincy jones who i interviewed i think probably and also in uh 2018 it's just like i'm just going to say the shit that i have to say and it clearly is not worried about what the

blowback or pushback or how it might reflect on them and then it's like that those are the dreams so quincy jones was incredible because the subjects you covered included who killed jfk yeah how the Beatles were terrible musicians and him dating Ivanka Trump. Yeah. And that's just a small taste of it. Yeah. And that had the crackle of those old Playboy interviews you read, which every answer just is improbably more mind-bending than the next.

How'd you come to Quincy Jones? You know, I have a really big spreadsheet that, you know, it has 600, at this point, 600 or so names on it. And just any time I think of someone who I might be interested in interviewing, their name goes on the spreadsheet. So his name was on the spreadsheet. And, you know, the thing, the thing that happens is that, you know, you can't, I don't just snap my fingers and people agree to an interview. Like most people say no. Most people say no. The batting average is better at the New York Times because it's the New York Times than it was at a vulture or, or, you know, or spin or Rolling Stone, where maybe like a quarter of the people I asked would agree to the

interview. And now, I don't know what it is, half the people or something like that. But so I'm always like, you know, we're kind of always, someone helps the booking now, but we're always sort of prospecting names. And so Quincy Jones was just like, it's not like I thought one day, like, oh, Quincy Jones is my main target. I'm sure Quincy Jones was like one of 50 people I had an email out to. And the timing was right for him and he did it. But I knew he. But I knew he. would be a good subject because he'd just been around forever and, you know, had so many different things to talk about. Here's an example.

You asked him, what was your greatest musical innovation? And he responded, everything I've done. Yeah. He knew what he'd achieved. You know, why pretend to be humble? Do you have a tell when a subject says something interesting? Do you mean something like a feeling that I get or something? Sure.

An expression on your face? Do I have a tell? I used to say, oh, A, all the time. Like, I remember, it's almost weird. There were a couple times where people said things to me in interviews where they said it. I'm like, in my mind, I thought, I know you're going to get in trouble for that. And my surroundings would be, oy. But no, I don't know if there's a tell.

You'd have to ask the person I'm talking to who would know better than I would. But I do, there is a feeling I get when I know that someone has said something. Yeah, there's just like a sort of a, like a little crackle, like you said. Here's an oi from the New York Times years. Two years ago, you interviewed Rolling Stone founder Jan Wanner. Oh, yeah. And he had this book of interviews with musicians. And you asked for an explanation of why he interviewed a bunch of white guys and didn't stray very far from that mandate or didn't stray from it at all.

Yeah. And he makes a notorious comment that women were not, quote, as articulate enough on this intellectual level. So what goes through your mind when you hear that comment? Well, probably the first thing that went through my mind was, like the equivalent of whatever a mental spit take would be. Or just like, no, that's wrong. Like what you're saying is wrong and dumb. So that is the first thing.

And then the second thing was probably some version of, I know you're going to get in trouble for that. And then from there, I suspect my thinking was like, now we have to get into this. You can't just leave the comment there hanging. We have to explore that a little bit. What celebrity other than Lou Reed was the most difficult to get material out of? To get material out of.

You know, there aren't so many that are difficult to get material out of, especially because at this point, you know, I think people basically know what they're signing up for when they speak with me and kind of what the expectations are. I feel a little weird like bringing up one. You know, I did an interview with Jason MoMA and I asked him probably a clumsy question about,

and again, I just, anytime I ask someone a question and they take umbrage with it, you know, the fault is always mine. It's not theirs. I remember I spoke to Norm,

I interviewed Norm MacDonald a bunch of times. He was my favorite person to interview, so I interviewed, him like four or five times at different publications. And he once said to me, if anybody ever takes something along the lines of, if someone were to take offense, take offense at a joke he made, then he felt that the fault was his for not articulating his idea well enough or being clear enough what the joke was. And I feel the, I feel the same way when I ask questions that somebody gets offended by. But I asked Jason MoMA, what was probably a clumsy question about

depictions of sexual violence on Game of Thrones. He was on Game of Thrones. The character he played on that show committed sexual violence. And I tried to ask him a question about if he would do that kind of scene at the time we were talking and if his thinking had changed about those kinds of scenes. Because it was also very much at the real height of sort of Me Too. when people were asking these kinds of questions about how sort of sexual dynamics

and Hollywood had changed and how portrayals of sex, you know, were or weren't working. And I think Jason Momoa felt like I was trying to trap him somehow or catch him, or just put him in an impossible position. So he just really shut down after that question.

But, you know, the fault was certainly as much mine as it was his. Let's talk about the future of the format for a second. You were doing these interviews in print for the New York Times Magazine. And then last year, you and Lulu Garcia Navarro started doing it started doing them as podcasts and video. Why did you switch to video? Well, it's not a matter of why I switched to video.

It's why my boss has said video is a thing we're focusing on now. I think, which, you know, I think it's really just a reflection of how people are consuming stuff. And the idea is you want to meet people where they are. So if somebody wants to read an interview, listen to an interview, or watch an interview, we should be serving that person. I don't think there's sort of any deeper explanation to it than that. What changed about your job when you started doing these as podcasts rather than written interviews? You know, there are, well, I don't want to complain about anything.

The workload got quite a bit heavier, you know, because each format, text, audio, or video requires its own editing and you have to go over each format multiple times and things that work in one format might not work in the other format. So it's not like you just do one interview and then like the work is done. And sort of, in a way, the work certainly doubled. So that changed. On a technical level, there's editing you can't do in audio that you can't do in video, that maybe you can do in text.

So there are sort of like formal challenges that are now part of figuring out, now part of my job entails figuring those out in a way that I didn't use to. You know, then also I have noticed a real uptick in the amount of people emailing me, you know, audience, people in the audience reaching out to me positively or negatively, mostly it's positively. And I suspect that's because, you know, being able to hear me or watch me makes people feel more connected to me. in a way that wasn't the case when they were just reading my word. So I think it's kind of connected to what you said, to the question about being a character. I think I am more of like a personality to people.

And maybe that causes stronger feelings or stronger feelings of connection. And as a result, they feel more compelled to get in touch with me. So that's changed. And then the last thing is, you know, I've really had to think about how to manage, self-consciousness in interviews a lot more than I did before. Just knowing how I sound or having some sense of how I might look or if I stumble or if things seem awkward or if I just kind of am not happy with how I sound or look in various ways.

And really trying to ignore that as much as possible because I feel like trying to be unselfconscious is so much a key to how I think about what I do. So that's been a big change also. So on that note, we mentioned Andrew Schultz. He's a comedian. He's a professional talker. You like me are a journalist. Does that give him an advantage when you're doing it on video? Yep. I mean, I'm sure he's got a level of comfort with being in front of camera. that I just don't have. And he knows how to speak in public effectively in a way that I don't. But I don't think about it so much in terms of advantage or disadvantage.

I think about it more in terms of, you know, you're just seeing who he is or who he wants you to think he is. And that goes for anyone who's on camera or on audience. audio. Yeah, there, you know, it sort of goes back to transparency. Like, you just have a, I think, a deeper sense of who that person is and whether, how it compares to me, I think is kind of beside the point. Like, I don't think about it sort of relativistically like that, if that makes sense. That interview was fascinating to me because there was this whole portion of it that talked about the future of asking questions.

Yeah, yeah. And what he's saying, if I can summarize his point. is, hey, when you professional journalists are interviewing politicians, you're asking questions you think you should ask. Yeah. That are traditional questions because you've heard other journalists ask questions like that. Me, podcast guy, I'm actually asking them what I want to know. Yeah.

Is that a fair summary? Yeah. Would you make of that whole idea? I thought he was being a little willfully, willfully, ignorant about what our respective jobs are and what those, sort of what responsibility comes along with those jobs. And Andrew Schultz is an entertainer. I mean, I don't want to speak for him. I don't know how he thinks about what he does, but I would assume as an entertainer he feels like his primary responsibility is to entertain and keep people engaged. I'm not an entertainer. I'm a

journalist. I don't do the most hard-hitting interviews. I'm not interviewing heads of state or things like that. But largely the role of a journalist is accountability and holding people accountable. And along with that comes asking questions that you know you are supposed to ask as part of the responsibility of holding people accountable. And I think he was just not, again, probably I didn't articulate my position well enough in the moment, but I feel like he was not really willing to concede that our jobs have fundamental differences that then manifest in fundamentally different ways we do what we do. And if nobody asked the questions that we were supposed to ask, then we'd be in a bad place. I think so. I think so. And I saw him the other day on Twitter.

a clip on Twitter of him saying, hey, you know, what's this going on with Donald Trump? I was misled. I was like, oh, well, that's interesting. That whole interview. If only you'd had a chance to ask him some other questions. I really liked him, by the way. I don't want to come off like I'm dumping on him in it. I really thought he appreciated what he brought to the interview and how he articulated his positions and interpersonally, I quite liked him. So I don't want to anyone to take this as being at all negative about him. I just think there were some real differences there. To the same end, six, seven years ago, I could have looked out and said, how many people in this world are full-time interviewers? You would have been part of a very, very small number of people that I could have said

that about. And now, and here comes the meta part of this exchange, we're all interviewers, to some extent, all of us that have podcasts. Does that change your job in any way? Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think there are still distinctions to be made. Like, somebody who's on what I would call a chat show, I think that's a little different than someone who's an interviewer. And I think, you know, someone who is a journalist conducting interviews, they're doing a different thing than, you know, someone who's not a journalist conducting interviews. So, you know, someone who's not a journalist conducting interviews. So there are distinctions, but I think the way it's changed my job the most has to do with audience expectations around authenticity. I feel like with the sort of explosion of podcasts and celebrity podcasts and, you know, podcast stars like Alex Cooper or Joe Rogan, sort of the sort of energy. that they get and I think that people are attracted to do is the idea that they're just sort of talking unfiltered.

You know who they are, what they care about, what their biases are, what they don't care about, sort of let it all hang out. And I think the dominance of that kind of interview show and that kind of energy has filtered down to journalism. And I have to understand that the ecosystem, that my work appears in is this is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, is, or Andrew Schultz or, or Joe Rogan. Um, and so I, I think I have a very different, I have a different kind of conversation. And I, I, I, I, I understand that I'm competing in, in, in a different things than I would have, even five years ago. And, I, I, I, I, I understand that I'm

competing in a different world today than I used to be. And the expectations are different and what people think authenticity is is different and what their expectations for authenticity are is different. So yeah, it has changed what I do. You say compete. What are some ways you're competing? Well, you're competing for guests often. You know, there's this is to do with celebrities. Celebrities have so many places to go now to publicize whatever they want to publicize.

And there are places for them to go that I think are that probably feel safer and easier than the New York Times. So I feel like there's some way in which I have to be able to demonstrate to

publicists or managers or to the subjects like, hey, look, this thing I'm doing, it's different than what, you know, Dax Shepherd is doing. But like the vibe is not that different, you know? It's like we're having sort of a long, long, form, wide-ranging, hopefully meaningful Q&A. With like the unspoken thing that I might actually ask some questions that make them uncomfortable, you know? But yeah, the competition is just with other outlets, mostly.

and for attention on some level, too, for audience attention. Last question. One of your dream interview guests is Bob Dylan. Yeah, yeah. What's one question you would ask Bob Dylan? Oh, my gosh. It's so hard to think of one. You know, the thing that's, I sort of, my thinking about interviewing Bob Dylan has flipped a little, where now, you know, a thing happens where, or it has happened where I've interviewed real.

artistic heroes of mine. And then whether the interviews were good or or or or or not good, every single time afterwards, there's a long period where like the magic from that person or the magic of their art is really diminished for me. It's like, you know, you met the person and then they're they're no longer what they were in my mind. With one exception, I realize that I'm giving a very long-winded answer to your question, but the one I want to hear the exception was a Nicholas Cage, who probably my favorite actor, certainly the actor I find most interesting. And I just found the interview with him to be like,

oh, you are a wild unicorn walking through this world, somehow making it more beautiful. And I'll just share one very quick anecdote. I got him back on the phone for the follow-up. And I think this didn't make the piece because it was too hard to render in text. But we were talking. And I was asking him about that reputation he asked

for being an oddball, you know, and he was answering the question. And suddenly he says, well, outside my window, what, what is that? What, what is that? And I realize he, it seems like he thinks he might be seeing a UFO out his window. And he's like, it's silver. And I hear a voice in the background, wherever he is, go, it's a balloon, Nick. That would be even weirder than seeing Robin Williams. Yeah.

But so my feeling with Bob Dylan's, I love his music so much and it's so meaningful to me. And I know he can be a difficult interview and he famously has like a very limp handshake. So just like having to have the physical memory of going to shake his hand and getting the wet fish, I think I don't know if it's worth going through that to then make me, you know, to diminish my feelings for Bob Dylan's music. So maybe as a result of that sense of caution or defensiveness, I don't think I can give you like the one question I would. have to ask him. But you would still power through the limp handshake and interview him, if given the chance. I don't know. I don't know. Probably. Probably. But I honestly, there have been, without speaking out of school, there have been email discussions in the last month here at the Times about the possibility of interviewing him where I've expressed these same

doubts. So I don't know what the answer is. You can watch and listen and read David Marquesi's work at the interview podcast at the New York Times. David, thanks for coming the press box. It's really my pleasure. Thank you very much. All right, David, a couple more things before we get out of here. You've been observing all these book crossover events. James Patterson writes a mystery novel with Bill Clinton. He might have also done one with Hillary Clinton. Am I remembering correctly? Oh, yeah. Well, I found one in the book. No, no, no. Hillary Clinton did one with, um, uh, what's her name? Uh, every woman in my life loves it. Um, Louise Penny.

Louise Penny. The great Louise Penny. The great Louise Penny. Well, I've found a crossover event that will truly blow your mind if you don't already know about it. Random House in October is bringing out a novel called Remain. The byline is Nicholas Sparks with M. Knight Shamelham. Oh. That's a real thing that's happening in bookstores everywhere this October.

Can we put together a list of our dream master? mashups? Yes. Should we start a press box contest? Yeah. The do you remember Louise Penny's name contest? Send in your favorite mashups. We might send you a press box button.

Wait, do we get, what about, does the Michael Crichton James Patterson mashup count here too? Yeah, that was after Crichton's death. So it was a little weird. But yes, that was a strange group of superheroes coming together. It was about a volcano, right? If I were a Nicholas, if I were James Patterson, if I could be bothered to lift my pin with the amount of money that James Patterson has,

yeah, wouldn't the thing to be to do just to call up the celebrities and directors and actors and whoever else that just sort of enthralled you and said, I bet you got a good novel and you let's do this thing together. Or you got an idea for a novel, and I'll write it. Yeah. Just give me some characters in a situation.

Yeah. I just want to know how long. long it's going to be down this mashup trend before one of the two authors does the old Charles Barkley and memoir thing and says, I didn't read any of that before it came out. A lot of violence in some of these books, you know. That character has got some other blue things in chapter five there. It's like, sorry, I have no idea what you're talking about. Finally, David, Zoran Mamdani, fresh off winning the New York City mayoral primary is going to

Uganda, the country he was born in. He did a very clever thing. He decided to pre-write the New York Post headlines about his trip to Africa. Here is Zoran Mamdani doing the work of pun headline writers everywhere. Here are a few of my humble suggestions for headlines. MIA, Mamdani in Africa. Uganda missed me. He's Kampala lately crazy.

The Afra can't be serious. Carl Kampala Neely investigated. Gates, Mum Donnie. Zoe running away. A lot of respect for using Kampala in a strain pun headline. Speaking of which, it's time for David Shoemaker, guess is the strain pun headline. Yeah. Last Monday's headline about preserving a restaurant in Toronto's Chinatown was a walk

to remember. Today's headline comes to us from Logan Stair. It's from the New York Times book review, David. Gilbert Cruz and Company over there have been Karen the Rock for this feature. summer. Mm-hmm. The review in question is about a new book that covers homemade submarines. Submarines that any person, David, including you, can make.

What was the New York Times book reviews strained pun headline? Sub homemade submarines. What did you think of famous submarines in world history? A kind of submarine, not a particular sub necessarily, but. A U-U-boat? Oh, D-U-U-Bote? Yeah, well, that's no, you're right there. So I made the submarine, so it's a DIY boat?

No, D-I-U. We're just changing the spelling up here. It's a Y-O-U boat. Thank you. A U-boat. Yes, it's a U-boat. That's great. He is David Shoemaker.

I'm Bradford's Plexi Magic by Kyle Crichton here on Thursday. Joel Anderson's going to do. join us and then Shoemaker. I'll see you next Monday. More lukewarm takes about the media. Talk to you that, David. Bababooey.