The Press Box - How to Cover a Vaccine. Plus, TV Legend Maury Povich.

Episode Date: December 10, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker discuss media coverage for the COVID-19 vaccine (3:35) before Listener Mail, where they answer a question about the dramatic license taken in the portrayals of the royal family on ‘The Crown’ (23:10). Then, Maury Povich joins to discuss his career in media and his experience with 'A Current Affair' and 'The Maury Show' (41:10). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David, Elon Musk has moved to Texas following the California exodus of Joe Rogan and many others. What I want to know is, as Texans, do we get a vote? I think we learned last month that if we did, it might look like we'd un-invied Elon Musk until about 9 or 10 p.m., but then I think he'd end up getting to stay by a tiny margin. I don't know, like I know that he's doing the SpaceX development there. There are some cool parts of Texas. There are parts of Texas that are on the come-up for sure.

Hell yeah. Texas is great. I'm not exactly sure what Texas, why someone's just like, now I'm moving to Texas. Don't you always get suspicious about, Texas chic. Yeah.

It was like when all those people we met in Brooklyn who had never been to Dallas or Fort Worth or Houston, suddenly we're going to Marfa all the time. I was like, I don't even know what that is. Marfa is its own thing. Yeah, you know somebody's never been to Texas when they're taking a trip to Texas for work or, you know, for something to visit a friend and they think they're going to road trip to all the other cities in Texas. Like that's that's the naive Texas.

It's just like, yeah, yeah, yeah, my work sending me to Dallas. I hope I'm going to get to, like, San Antonio and Austin, you know, over the, over the couple of days that I'm there. It's like, no, that's like driving through half the country. I remember about 20 years ago, some friends and I were down in Austin, and it happened to be South by Southwest time, and we're just driving down a city street in Austin. And this is before Uber, before any of that stuff. And somebody, obviously in town from out of town, was standing on the corner.

are holding their hand up waiting for a cab. And we're like, should we pick this person up? That cab is not going to come. It's not just going to drive by you on an Austin street. You could call a cab, but even that would take a while. I don't, yeah, it's a, it's a lonely place to be in Texas without a functioning car. Let me tell you, the best kind of Texas exceptionalism is from people who moved away decades ago, but still insist on getting to be.

the arbiters of who gets to live in Texas and what people say about it. Is that, are we included in that number? Of course. Did you just hear the last two minutes of the podcast? I have many times in my life, I have credited you and our friendship for being the reason that I got out of Texas. It's nice to have a dear friend who saw that the world was bigger. There was a larger destination in sight than Austin.

You're killing my Texas credit. Just stop this right now. No. Nobody needs to know this for us. There are definitely times where I look back now and I say, well, have we gotten to Austin, The people that thought Austin was the B-All-Indol own houses there now, so they're rich. Yeah, fellow Texans, I was wrong.

I was completely wrong. California sucks. Coming up on today's show, how is the media covering the coronavirus vaccine? We'll answer your listener, mail, plus TV legend Mori Povich, all that and more on the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network.

Hello, media consumers. Brian Curtis and David Shoeaker here. David, there is a coronavirus vaccine. It's been cleared in Canada. It's being distributed in the UK. The UK's vaccine is the one that's made by Pfizer Bio-Intech and is one of two candidates currently been considered by the FDA for approval here in America. I want to talk about how this is being covered. First off, and maybe the most striking thing, is that in the hellscape that is 2020, it's really weird to hear good news. like, oh, wow, something good could be happening. Thursday's New York Daily News cover was dose of hope talking about how all these vaccines are being delivered to New York City health care workers. And it's not an uncomplicated good news because there's still a lot of bad news about the coronavirus in the United States right now.

But isn't it weird just to hear this upbeat note at the end of a pretty horrible year? Yeah. I mean, it's a I don't want to overstate it, but we did sort of forget what it felt like, right? Yeah. We've got, we've, we've traveled a long distance since March or February of this year, whenever this whole thing started. And not just the, I mean, obviously the first things that, you know, you think of are probably personal ones, right? But just like, just having to wrap my head around what this actually. means is maybe more jarring than trying to wrap my head around COVID in March. Yeah.

And it's also a reminder that the news is always has bad stories in it. You know, there's never, there's never a good news day. But the news usually does not suck as much as it did in 2020. It usually does have rays of sunshine somewhere, even, even false hope. 2020 has been sort of unusually terrible. But here we are and we can actually get a good front page in the New York Daily News.

We also enjoyed these interviews in the UK with some of the first recipients of the coronavirus vaccine. Yes. This was 91-year-old Martin Kenyon, one of the first people over there to get the vaccine. He did a man on the street interview afterwards. Listen to how that went.

And no, it didn't hurt at all. I didn't know the need to have gone in until it comes out. It's very interesting. No, it's painless. How do you feel that you have now one of the first people in the country to have received the first dose of this vaccine? One of the first people in the world.

How do you feel about it? I don't think I feel about it at all, except that I hope I aren't not going to have the bloody bug now. If there's one thing that will, that is, that brings our entire globe together, it's that from the age where you can string a sentence together until you die, you will almost always respond to getting some sort of shot by saying, I didn't even feel it, right? I mean, it's like you're always surprised when you can't really feel the needle. We're all like little kids. I don't, I cannot read Martin. I don't know Martin Kenyon's life story. My guess is he's probably gotten 100 shots

in his life. And my guess is 50 of them were probably feeling free. But you're still say, I hardly felt it go in, didn't feel it come out. Didn't, didn't, for some reason, feel the him being injected into my bloodstream. It's a, it's a miracle. There's also this 81 year old man in England in Warwickshire who got the vaccine. His name was, and I'm not making this up, William Shakespeare. If you think that's going to come back in the overworked Twitter jokes, you're right. But they showed him getting it on camera too, and he's old and he's bald and he's thin.

he looks just like a person. And the healthcare worker gives him the injection of the arm. And guess what, David? He didn't feel it either. But as kind of cute as this is, I feel there is a real sort of upside for the media here, which is just showing people getting the coronavirus vaccine. The media normalizes it. Part of this is making it look like it's easy and painless and that you should do it.

And I think the way that that's almost best achieved is just putting the whole thing on camera. I agree. It's also, I can't help but think of all the things in media is sort of normalized over the past, well, I mean, think about starting at the beginning of the Trump campaign. That just sort of, I mean, that was the big, that was one of the critiques of media's coverage of him, right? That they put him on for ratings, but putting him on the air sort of normalized him as a candidate. And listen, I'm not going to get into the politics of whether or not he was legitimate at the beginning of his campaign or not. But there does seem to be, you know, obviously no one's complaining about the vaccine, the coverage of the vaccine.

This is a really positive outcome of the vaccine. I mean, the positive outcome of the coverage of the vaccine. It is interesting to see this is a little bit of, I mean, if there's sort of like a mission statement involved, though. I mean, well, whatever. Everybody's getting better. This is a wonderful thing. We do know that people's willingness to get the vaccine, break. down on political lines. Last week, Pew said that 60% of Americans would get the vaccine if it was

available. Sixty-nine percent of Democrats said that, while only 50% of Republicans said that. So we know there's a political thing there. We know there is an anti-vaxxer strain that runs across both parties. But David, am I wrong that part of resistance to the vaccine, some non-zero part of it is just people that are scared of shots. Sure. Yeah, I mean, we need to as a media have the conversation that you and I have with our kids. Yeah. Every time they get a shot, it's like,

it's just going to hurt for one second. I promise. Oh, man. Well, I have, that's the conversation I have with a 12 year old. It's still, well, his mom is still, like it's still a negotiation every time. Got to make it seem like it's his choice. The baby is just about to be two. it's the most heartbreaking thing ever when he gets shots. I'm sure every other parent can sympathize because usually the first,

the first shot doesn't, he doesn't even notice it. It's like the second shot if he gets to where this look of, this look comes over, this like at two look comes over his face. He looks at me and or his mother with this look that we've betrayed him. And it's the most jarring thing in the world now. You know,

there's also firsthand ever. evidence there that he cries for about two seconds and then you can just distract him and it never bothers him again. It's almost like professional wrestling when Hulk Hogan doesn't feel the pain anymore because they do the little kids do this day where they go and it's just stone face and you're like, what just happened? Yeah. It was like the worst thing that's ever happened to you. Yeah. And then you're not feeling it at all anymore. I mean, listen, nobody likes to get shots. But a little bit of this feels like it's a little bit overblown to me too, right? They like I think that there's probably a lot of people, you know, everybody tells, no,

everyone's not like 100% with the pollsters. And we learned that in the past two elections. I feel like there's a lot of people who are, who don't like the idea of getting a shot, who are probably saying no or I'm on the fence, who are just obviously going to get a shot when it's, when like, you know, their loved ones or their boss or someone is just like, yeah, you got to do that.

So this is like a shy anti-vaxxer? Yeah, it's a shy, well, no, it's not anti-vax. Or shy vaxer? It's not, it has, It has nothing to do with the vaxers or non or anti-vaxers or whatever else. It's just someone is like, if someone comes up to,

if a stranger approaches you on the street and says, hey, do you want to get a shot? You're probably going to be like, no. I mean, I don't really want a needle in my arm. But, you know, once you weigh the pros and the cons. And again, this is going to come with a lot of, with a lot of social pressure, and that's a good thing, right?

I mean, it's going to end up, it's going to show up with, like I said, for everybody that says, everybody that's having some sort of disinterest, presumably there's someone very close to them in their lives who are not going to be so averse to it and who are going to say, if you want to come over for dinner,

you better do this. And I guess when it comes to fear of needles, the difference between yea and nay, it's a very fine line. It's not going to take a lot of convincing for a lot of these nose. That's my hope anyway. Boris Johnson's press secretary

floated the idea that the prime minister might get the vaccine on television. which brings us to this whole category of famous people getting the vaccine and showing themselves getting the vaccine as a way to push you over that little thin line you're talking about. Are we in favor of that, of famous people getting the vaccine on TV? I am personally very in favor of it. I am a little bit from the famous person's side.

I'm a little bit worried where it's going to lead. As a famous person myself, I was... No, if I can put it. put myself on the shoes of a Boris Johnson. There we go. Right. So like I, if, if, if 10 people, if one person gets a vaccine that wouldn't have otherwise because Barack Obama or George W. Bush or Boris Johnson, whoever got one on, on, you know, television, then it's, you know, a net positive. However, are we just going to be

able to get on Twitter and demand that our former or current world leaders just take, just do whatever we want because you say you're scared? I mean, this is my only trepidation here. Do I get to insist that, you know, that Michelle Obama gets like a flu shot next year just because I'm having second thoughts? No, I mean, obviously this is a much bigger deal, but it does sort of set a weird precedent. And it's also true that there's this whole group of social media people, famous people, semi-famous people that are going to really want to get the shot publicly. they're going to want to have a camera running when they get the shot. Because of the attention, it'll bring them or because they're going to use that as an excuse to because they just want the shot? Well, remember like three weeks ago when everybody had the I voted sticker on your social media feed?

I voted. Oh, I'm doing this because I want to encourage other people to vote. No, you're not. You were going to put a picture of yourself on social media today. Yeah. And putting the I voted sticker gave it this little public service aspects. That's what you're going to do with the vaccine. Listen, that's true. But also I would like to volunteer. If anyone is listening to this and would think it would help if Brian and I got shots on the air, if that would help Brian and me get to the front of the line,

I'd be like, I eagerly would be right now. If I can help the world and get to the front of the line, I'm very willing. If you were a celebrity, let's say, who had medium clout, would you consider getting the shot live and just screaming out as soon as the needle went in just for the comic potential of that. And then just being like, oh, this is the weirdest feeling ever.

My arm hurts. Just, just leaning into comic, the vaccine is bad stick. I'm trying. I mean, does that, does that fit ideologically?

Like, is that, could you be a right? Could you then be a right wing convert? Like a Fox News talking head? Or like, if, or does that,

is this not an ideological issue? I don't think it's a game. It's a bit. It's like, like Zach Brack. is screaming on camera and he's like, by the way, my new film is coming out VOD in February.

I'm just saying 100% of people are going to be like, I didn't feel that at all. What if you decided to be the one person was like, I've never felt pain like this before in my life. And I've had major surgeries. I don't think that would work out well. I'm sorry. There is a lot of bad news here, David,

amongst the smiley faces about the vaccine. Here's the bad news. 3,100 people died nationwide yesterday because of the coronavirus. Single highest total so far. Government advisory panel meeting today did it make a non-binding vote to clear the vaccines,

but there is a ton of carnage happening while we wait for that shot. I'm looking at my print New York Times today. Top story. Virus beginning to overwhelm many hospitals. Very ugly, very fast. A dateline from our home state of Texas,

nowhere for the sick to go in rural West Texas. It's virus cases. as virus cases sore Big Ben region is ill-equipped. So there is also this strange sort of aspect where you have this kind of upworthy story happening and William Shakespeare getting the vaccine and the celebrities getting the vaccine. Meanwhile, thanks to a lot of factors, one of which is complete political inaction by the Trump administration, people are dying. And lots of people are dying needlessly,

whom if we were able to keep them alive might be able to get the vaccine in a couple of months and might be able to make it through this thing. I mean, there's just a lot of people who are incredibly negligent who are, I mean, there's a lot of people

who don't believe in COVID or the ramifications of it or whatever else or just completely or utterly misunderstand that what, you know, what spreading the virus could do to other people. That is more than just a personal journey.

Certainly our government has done a terrible job and, you know, obviously the president, first and foremost, it's sort of leading us and explaining the stakes. I think more than anything, though, now we're saying people who are, one, we talked about this before, but just sort of exhausted by the quarantine or whatever, it are acting out in various ways because of it. But I mean, and I don't know that the number, the uptick really has, would, would show this yet, but the real worrisome part now is that people are going to see all these articles about the existence of the vaccine and use that as an excuse to be even more reckless when, you know, the practical response

should be, now we have a timeline, now we can actually be safe. We should double down on the quarantine because we can see daylight, you know? But I can say with absolute certainty that this is just going to, that every article, every upbeat article about William Shakespeare taking the vaccine in the UK is going to lead to another like lakeside keg party somewhere in Texas. Then there's this political element to it, David, which is how is the vaccine going to play on places like Fox News and Newsmax and those other conservative networks?

Do they trumpet the vaccine as this is Donald Trump's vaccine, right? This is a glorious victory for your president. So maybe you should take the vaccine. Or do they play into some of these various conspiracy theories that are there and sort of, you know, the coronaviruses, the flu, et cetera, et cetera, that we've heard. Well, I think we're going to learn a lot. I mean, specifically talking about the Trump-friendly outlets, the, you know, OANNs and newsmaxes and everything.

This is when, I mean, this is like, this sounds almost ridiculous to say. But at some point, a, I mean, that this is the conversation we're having about these, quote-unquote news outlets. Oh, it's so sad. At some point, at some point a person with any awareness or an organization with any awareness would realize that they have to sort of pivot away from Trump is still our president because Trump is not going to be our president shortly. And the best possible place to pivot from there would be look at all this great stuff Trump has done for America. See, he did succeed. See, he did succeed.

Yeah. See, he did succeed is a great point of view. But the question is, are they savvy or are they, you know, are they? are they self-aware or are they just nihilistic? Is this just the Trump death cult? You know, that like we're just going to go down with the ship. It doesn't, I mean, listen, since, literally since the beginning of this, you and I have been sitting here talking about how Trump has just missed every opportunity that was handed

to him on a silver platter to be presidential, to lead this country through this crisis. And this is one where it should be totally self-serving. It's in his self-interest. All you have to do is say, yay, everybody. take this. I invented it. And no one's going to be like saying don't take it because it came from the Trump administration. You know, I mean, it's his opportunity to take it. But it seems like he's more invested in, well, in nothing. And he's like he's just not in not doing work than to even take credit for it. Yeah. And like you said, it's such a debased conversation anyway. The here are

networks that are entertaining the idea that Trump could steal the election. Maybe, maybe, maybe they'll be pro vaccine. Yeah. on purely Trumpist grounds. It's just such a pathetic conversation to have. But, you know, maybe it's a few people to take it. So this 45 minutes ago, Daniel Dresner tweeted that Redfield just stated that for the next 16 to 90 days, the U.S. will experience 9-11 level death tolls and vaccine approval has no effect on what will have no effect on that.

So this is where we are. And there are, you know, we still have a president and his ancillary news networks who are you know, maybe not directing people towards this. It's, if this is a political, you can be afraid of needles. We'll get over that. All right. As a society, we can get over that. We can't be misleading people about the efficacy and importance of this.

All right, David, let's do the overward Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. David commenting on that coming coronavirus vaccine, Joe Biden promised, quote, 100 million shots in the first 100 days. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write. James Harden has also promised this. Thanks to Craig Meyer, Scott Tobias, Nigel D. Greaves, Daniel Offman, Alexander Frost, Pickle Ball, Hero, and Shane Nyman.

David, some recent surveys conducted by Nepal and China have revealed that Mount Everest is two feet taller than previously known. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write. Sounds like Mount Everest just got back on Tinder. Thanks to Michael Jones. And finally, one of the biggest overworked Twitter jokes of all time. I mean, so many people sent this to us that we cannot possibly thank them. It would take 400 tweets just to get their handles in.

one of the first people, as we mentioned, to get the coronavirus vaccine was William Shakespeare. It was an extremely overworked Twitter joke to write, The Taming of the Flu. We would have also accepted Vacbeth. I feel this is a missed opportunity for bookcase credibility. A non-good nurse. And my personal favorite, I heard the second person to get the vaccine was Christopher Marlowe, but Shakespeare took all the crap if you showed off your Shakespeare knowledge

and didn't feel obliged to wear it lightly. Congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, David, in the notebook dump, let us do a little list or mail. Did you see that Time magazine this morning announced their four finalists for Person of the Year? Yes, I did see this.

They are Joe Biden, Donald Trump. And boy, Trump would be an incredible upset winner of the person of the year 2020. Dr. Anthony Fauci and frontline health care workers, they count as one, and racial justice movement. Surely protesters would be a better person or persons of the year than racial justice movement. But okay, it just seems a little awkward. Yeah, especially because Fauci gets frontline health care workers mentioned as sort of a unit with him too. I mean, listen, this could go, I think, in a couple of different directions, probably one of the latter two.

But yeah don't count out Biden though They do like when when presidents win especially when presidents defeat in Cummins Has there ever been I mean there has I'm sure But it's hard to sort of put into put into perspective The degree which Anthony Fauci Tony Fauci as we call him around my household went from relatively I say almost completely unknown to a government official fixture of our lives on the level of like Henry Kissinger and and now we'll presumably stay there. I mean like you know Biden might send him out, we'll probably send him out in front of cameras, you know,

two, three times a year as like any sort of medical event dictates, right? I mean, now Anthony Fauci is a, is a signature part of our lives. He's got at least five good, the old guy still got it years left in him as a public servant. Our friend Dan Diamond also emailed to say that there is an interesting thing going on with the time person of the year where there's a reader poll in addition to whomever the magazine pronounces and essential workers won the reader poll person of the year so maybe you give the actual person of the year to somebody else uh yeah i mean this feels a little bit like the old college football system right we're like anthony well i mean fouchy's going to win or the racial justice movement's going to win and and the other one

going to get when the when the readers pull and then somehow Donald Trump is going to be like the the the the USC who's just so claiming like you know four times person that year victories in four years even though you know he didn't actually win any of them um it's a yeah i don't i mean i i get why they do it i don't know that and i'm sure drums up interest too i feel like i remember a couple of years where pro wrestlers were they were like the winners because the pro wrestling internet that were very active both in all in those days. Yeah, sure, sure. I don't think anybody really cares about the popular vote though.

This is just who's on the cover of the magazine. And none of that even really matters either. It's just a funny thing, fun thing to argue about online. It's part of the awards creep we've talked about on this podcast many times. And my still, my favorite all time story is somebody on my Facebook feed said, hey, my new book is on the New York Times bestseller list.

And I happen to think that was sort of unlikely. And so I clicked through and it was on the, the New York Times espionage bestseller list. Like that existed. Like how many espionage books have come out in the last couple weeks? People are coming through your Twitter followers right now just to see who you're talking about. Good luck. If you're a longtime listener of this pod, you know that we are fascinated by the strange new respect for TV chef person Guy Fietti.

People hated Guy Fietti. There was the Pete Wells Review, donkey sauce, etc, et cetera, and then his public rehabilitation began, I think, with a Drew McGarry profile in GQ. Well, now our friend Liz Gardner points out there is a Bloomberg Businessweek article out that says Fietti has raised $21 million for out-of-work restaurant workers. $21 million. David, should Guy Fietti be the Time Magazine person of the year?

Are we all the way back? Our own David Chang and Guy Fietti are the two heroes of the restaurant world right now, I guess. That is really, really incredible. It kind of makes you wonder what if Guy Fiati could do, I mean, can he raise that much for like any good cause? That's, that's a, maybe he's like a force of nature that we just need to learn how to harness. In your household, they're going to be talking about Tony Fauci and Guy Fietti pretty soon in terms of those people who've climbed to that. we got to get Guy Fietti interested in the plight of local newspapers and see what you can do that's right

you have any jobs that you want to offer sports writers Guy Fietti we can save that too while you're at it also in a recent discussion we wondered who 60 minutes could put in the Andy Rooney slot that is the person that does a little comic button at the end of the show well thanks to Dave Andrew Joe Potter Josh W and make face masks great again we have been informed

than on a recent edition of CBS Sunday morning, David Sedaris, did exactly this. He is Andy Rooney 2020, is he not? For better or worse? Yeah, that's a fantastic choice. Yeah. Kind of sad we didn't come up with that on our own, but thanks guys for pointing that out.

All right, to listener mail, Jay Indiwala asks, do you expect the media to be critical of the Biden administration while keeping what the Trump administration did in context? For example, appointment X from Biden, is questionable, but it should be noted that the Trump administration in the same situation did, why?

I mean, frankly, I'm more worried. I mean, I think that they will be critical of the Biden administration out of a, out of a, you know, to feel like they're being even-handed, out of a sense of the obligation to being even-hand in this. The thing I would be more worried about is the context thing. I mean, I don't know that that's, I think that you see a, on cable news shows all the time, even in writing all the time, that the hardest thing is, you know,

being fair without, you know, giving credence to bad faith actors and everything else. But I do think they'll be critical of the Biden administration. I think that, and frankly, governance for the next four,

eight, 20 years is all going to come with a sort of asterisk that, you know, that relates back to the Trump administration. I'm not sure. I mean, it's going to be really interesting to see what Biden does. He says he's going to do a lot of stuff with executive order. He said he's going to be, you know, kind of circumspect in the way that he chooses to do those things.

He still sort of thinks that he's going to get a lot of done with a Republican Congress. I mean, Republican Senate, if that indeed is what he is left to work with. Doesn't seem to be at all scared about giving up congressional seats by appointing Democrats to the government positions. this whole thing is kind of interesting. It's very intriguing, but I don't expect him to do anything particularly questionable, which is what I don't know that he'll be able to. But will they be, will they be critical?

Yeah, I think they should be, and I think they absolutely will be. The way the scoreboard works at the New York Times and Washington Post and those high-flying newspapers is, you are judged by the number of scoops and critical scoops you get without context. By which I mean, if you're a political reporter and you're covering Biden, nobody at the paper is going to be like, yeah, that's just not such a big deal because Trump did something worse. I just don't think that's how those newspapers work. I think there'll be a lot of pressure applied by political Twitter to people like, you're just doing a but her emails here thing, right?

You're just trying to find something on Biden to justify to show that you're covering him critically. But inside those institutions, those reporters are going to be getting promotions or getting, getting patted on the back or whatever it is because they got scoops about Biden. So yeah, I think they're going to be critical. You think if Trump actually tries to do the presidency and exile bit and is still tweeting with the significance and volume that he's that he tweets, you know, that he tweeted as president, do you think that would be, do you think Biden will reap some of the benefit that Trump actually reaped for himself by like, by like obscuring the issue?

by making people report on Trump's tweets instead of actually reporting on the things that Trump and now the Biden administration are doing? Yeah, so you're saying like Trump puts out something that's so like comically bad and crazy that it makes whatever Biden is actually doing in office look sane. Or just makes it or whatever Biden's doing is like not part of the news cycle

because we're just interviewing Republican congressmen about what Trump said. Totally. So Biden can basically do the basement strategy in the White House as well. Exactly. on the way to the White House, I think you might have something there. This is from Aaron. What is David's job?

He'll mention making art sometimes and has mentioned he's moved a suspicious amount of times throughout the eastern U.S. Deep State Liberal agent, perhaps. Yeah, I'm an art smuggler. A lot of it, that's the, my new place is by the pine barons. I just had like an incredible treasure trove of Rembrandt's just stuck in the trees. I am the art director of the ringer.com. That's not true, the art lead of the ringer.com. I do my small team and I do all the lovely art that's at the top of the stories on the website.

I also do this podcast twice a week and a wrestling podcast and very, very occasionally right. But yeah, you know, we do logos for podcasts too. That seems to be an increasingly big part of the job. If you ever want to understand how good the job David and his team does on the art on this website, look at any other daily website, just putting up as many stories a day as the ringer does, and look at the quality or lack thereof of their art and compare it to our art and then come back to us. And that's David's job,

and that's why he's so great at it. No comment. This is John Paul Roman. Can you comment on the Twitter moment when people were falling for the fake Bob Costas Twitter account? Did you see this the other day? No, I totally missed this. Somebody claiming to be Bob Costas with a very generic, you know, former NBC broadcaster bio got on Twitter.

I do not claim to know Bob Costas super well, but I know Bob Costas a little bit. There is zero chance that Bob Costas was going to come on to Twitter that way. Just like Al Michaels isn't on Twitter, just like I'm pretty sure Pat Summerall was not on Twitter in his final years on this planet, there's kind of this class of play-by-play guy, high-flying broadcaster who it's like,

and that's the last time I'll use that adjective today, there's just nothing in it in Twitter for them at all. It just could only be bad, right? You just give people a chance to mess with you, and you don't, you know, your job is on television. No, no chance. Bob Costas was going to mess with Twitter. Yeah, I mean, certainly there are exceptions.

to that. But Costis is just, you know, sort of in a rarefied air, right? Like, that he would feel no need to do that. No, just no interest in it, I think. Yeah. Just not wanting to be part of that strange world. This is from Chris Dahl.

From my wife, also a press box listener, but not on Twitter, because she's smarter than me. Do you guys have any thoughts about the media controversy surrounding the dramatic license taken in the portrayals of the crown? Should the show require a fiction notice.

Don't we do this all the time? I am more I am more offended that like every website in the entire world felt it necessary or decided to cash in on the myth buster economy then published a piece about how the crown is

actually not 100% factual and explaining the differences. I mean, listen, we know this is what the internet is for. I'm glad we're all out there making money, but there seems to be, I mean, and we've all had this experience, right? I mean, everything that I watched that has even a sniff, a whiff, sorry, of truth or history to it, you find yourself looking up Wikipedia pages the whole way through, right? I mean, like, we know Shakespeare and Love didn't happen, but you were like Googling, you were like, you know, like, you know, I mean, we all, like, we all know about this. Was Google around for

Shakespeare? Well, whatever. I'm just, that's, we were just talking about Shakespeare, so this is in my mind, but even something, I mean, like, like, what? Like, I mean, like, anything that's just set in a previous period, even if it's totally fictionalized, you're, you're Googling around about stuff. So, you know, I'm reluctant to, I'm reluctant to say we should be like labeling it or even outrage or even, you know, whatever, but you do have a sort of certain sympathy here, right? I mean, there is a, there, you don't know what's true and what's not, and the expectation is some significant portion of it is true, right?

Or the liberties that are taken, the changes that are made are, or might even seem so insignificant, you would never question them. Certainly, they meant a lot to the creators, but, you know, to an average viewer, does it really matter,

you know, did the changes they made? Do they feel like important enough to warrant an up? I don't know. I mean, it's a very interesting project because so many people are learning about this.

learning about getting interested in British royalty through this show. I think it's totally legitimate if you watch a show based on real life to sort of wonder, you know, what's true, what's not, where did they take the liberties? But it just feels every time there's anything that is based on fact, everybody rediscovers what historical fiction is. Yes. This is a genre that's been around forever. And the idea that every time we're going to have to explain, well, you know,

know, this conversation inside Buckingham Palace didn't actually happen. Now, we don't have a transcript of the conversation that happened that day. Stuff that happens behind closed doors and society. That's not like a court case. So somebody's going to have to imagine what happened. And of course, they're going to compress events and move things around and stuff like that, but it's a television show. I wouldn't expect it to be 100% right.

But it's not a Wikipedia page. Yeah. It's like people don't even understand the concept of historical fiction. This is what people do. This happens all the time. I mentioned a million little pieces on a podcast a couple of pods ago. And, you know, I'm not a fan of the book, but it was a weird thing when that, when that fictional, fiction versus memoir thing happened where everybody suddenly got all uptight about

the degree to which our expectations were that memoir should be literal, right? And that was nonfiction. Yeah. at least build as nonfiction. But the, you know, and without any sort of frame of reference of the history of the genre, you're absolutely right. I mean, and do we, this is, we all know they've taken some liberties, like you said. And the expectations of what we're told is true.

I mean, I'm sure that Netflix or the showrunners would probably think it would be a detriment to the show to say, to put a this is highly fictionalized warning at the beginning of it. But, you know, nobody's, this is the opposite, but, I mean, no one took great offense to, like the Cohen brothers saying Fargo was a true story, right? I mean, like, it's like, we're not, like, there, we have, our expectations change based on the way that we perceive something. You know, it's, it's, it's, you shouldn't, we can't make blanket rules of, on a media, or medium or a genre based on how confused we were in the moment, right?

So, you know, I, you know, I think you kind of have to take it case by case. In the instance of the crown, I don't know, I mean, tell me what the, big offenses. I'm not, I don't, I don't, and I think I think that people, I think that people are actually invested in, in this history, this, you know, and this information. And so any deviation from it seems like a greater offense than maybe it would be if this were a, you know, different story. Right. Well, go read a book. You know, like, there are plenty of books about this that you can read if you want to have stuff that does not take liberties with timelines and places and events. one last one for you David we got to talking about the rock

dwayne johnson and his political support for joe bide in the other day ed wood writes i do not want to i do want to say how disappointed i am and david in particular then when talking about the rock and his many followers that he completely passed on using the millions and millions of the rocks fans oh yeah i'm disappointed myself in the guest slot today david i have been fascinated with forever mori puffy Now, most people know Mori as the daytime talk show host who declares, you are the father while somebody passes out on stage next to him. And he is that, very happily, by the way.

But before he was that, he was a big news anchor. He had designs on going to the networks. He hosted Rupert Murdoch's A Current Affair, which was very much a show of its time. We got into all that. Here's Mori. All right, Mori Popich has never claimed to be the father of daytime television, merely its wicked brother. Povich is in the 23rd season of Mori,

before which he hosted the Mori Povich show. The news magazine, A Current Affair, and anchored local news from coast to coast. He is kind enough to come here and talk to us about all of it. Thanks for coming on the press box, Maury. Nice to be with you, Brian.

All right, Moe, let me start here. What's the weirdest thing about hosting your show during a pandemic? Well, you know, the weirdest thing is, a, you don't have the audience reaction. I mean, that, you know, in my life, that's kind of crucial. That also determines whether you've got a good segment or a bad segment. I mean, if the audience is quiet, it just didn't work.

But then, you know, if the woman finds out the guy, she's accusing of being a father, is not the father, runs off stage, collapses on our sofa backstage, that's not happening. And guys, if they're not found to be the father, they're not doing backflips and front flip. and things like that. So you're trying to get emotion and trying to get drama essentially out of a Zoom call. Yeah. And although, you know, I miss the audience. There's a great feeling of delving into the story deeper.

You have more time to do that. The guests now can react without the audience being there. And, you know, at times the guests turn their attention to the audience and away from the storyline. So there's more of an intimate flavor to it. What's the role of the audience on Mori? Well, the audience is the court. I mean, they're the jury. They, they, sometimes they're very wrong. But I mean, what happens is that, that, you know, by their reactions, as the story goes on, you can see whether they're for the guy or therefore the woman. And that's, and that's And the lie detector test results.

And if we do out of control teenagers, those teenagers get a real fast feeling about how the audience doesn't like their kind of what they're doing in their lives, running the streets and doing all kinds of things. So, yeah, the audience is the jury. And instead of 12, we have 200. The episode of your show that's airing today is called Three Furious Moms, Three Babies Denied, Who's the Dad? What gets you excited about coming out and doing that episode in season 23? Well, because I've always, you know, I've had a lot of criticism over the years, whether it be from TV critics or politicians, and they think that I'm exploiting these people. and quite frankly what I'm trying to do is if these guys are proven to be the fathers of these children that they get into their lives because everybody knows that a two-parent co-parenting situation

is a heck of a lot better than a single parent. Speaking of fathers, your dad was Shirley Povich, legendary sports columnist who wrote for The Washington Post for seven decades. And you once wrote that you have a memory of watching your dad sit in a press spot, and try to write a deadline story. What do you remember about that? Well, I'll tell you, it's, I mean, I really learned my craft, especially early on when I became a journalist, at his knee.

And, you know, I, he was the last person to leave the press box. It's remarkable. He was, I mean, and if it was a big event and his, his journalistic brother, his sports journalism brother was Red Smith. They were the last two to leave the press box. I mean, I mean, I could tell on the inside both of these great, great writers, I mean, they were bleeding. I mean, they just bled every single time, especially in a big event. and for instance my father won the biggest sports writing award there is the headliners award in 1956 writing on deadline of Don Larson's perfect game in the world series and knowing him back

then in the 50s I guarantee you he went through a pack of cigarettes during that game and he was he he he really felt the pressure and I think so did Rick. The better writer you are, the bigger the pressure is. And I think that they, you know, they had a common bond. And the common bond was they wrote their stories for themselves and their readers. They didn't care about going down to the locker rooms and looking for quotes about, you know, what pitch did you hit or what pitch did you throw this batter? They didn't care about that.

They felt that their readers wanted their observations and what they saw during that game, because quite frankly, the next morning, when they read about it, it was different than what those people saw on television when they watched the game. Did your dad want you to follow him into the media business? He, you know, I couldn't follow him into the print world because there were only two. newspapers in Washington at the time, the Washington Post where he was writing, and the Washington Star, which was then an evening newspaper, the Star wouldn't hire me because I had my father's name, and the Post didn't hire me because there was an epitism policy, and so therefore you couldn't write for the Post. So then I, my father always, my father always used to say this.

So I got a job as an assistant to the broadcaster of the Washington Senator Baseball Games. This is in 1955. His name was Bob Wolf. He's in the Hall of Fame. He was a great broadcaster. And I mean, no kid from the ages of 16 to 23 could have had a better job. I was in his assistant. I traveled with the team after I got out of school every single year.

I was on their plane. I was on their buses. I was shagging flies in the outfield. And I learned so much about broadcasting. In fact, early on, my father said to me, seeing that I was just a gopher in the beginning, and I was running around getting coffee or getting film equipment ready or something like that.

And my father said, so what are you? I said, I'm an associate producer. And my father said, son, I think you're looking to get into the right field because you've already got the big shotitis. So I went in the television barrier, in the media very early on. I mean, it was a classic story. I got out of college and I'm looking for a job and I had worked for Bob Wolf. And I thought I could, and back then in the early 1960s, the only way you got on television was if you were on radio.

So I went to a radio station to think that I could be a reporter or something, a sportscaster or something. And the guy says, we're not putting you on the air. I said, what are you talking about? I said, well, you have to have experience to get on the air. Well, and so it was a catch-22. I couldn't get on television unless I was in radio. And I couldn't get on radio unless I had experience. So I started as an assistant publicity writer, hung around the newsroom in this 5,000-watt radio.

radio station. And after about six months, they saw that I was so interested in news, I was a reporter and a sportscaster. 1963, you went and covered for that station Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream Speech. What do you remember about that day? Well, when I tell you that I covered it, I was on the fringes of it. My assignment was to cover not the Martin Luther King speech or March, although I was at so far at the other end of the reflecting pool at the Washington and the Lincoln Memorial. I was so close to the Washington Monument because my assignment was I was to cover the counter-demonstration by George Lincoln Rockwell,

the American Nazi leader, who was bringing out his folks, all 10 of them, for a counter-demonstration at the other end of the reflecting pool. I could hear the speeches, but because they were all on loud speakers, but there were 10 of the American Nazis there, and about 50 Metropolitan Police Department personnel from Washington, D.C.'s police department. So that was my, that was my, that was my, that was my memory of Martin Luther King's speech. But it was still, it was an eye-opening year for me because later on that year, I was at Andrews Air Force Base when, unfortunately, Air Force One came back, and I saw Jackie Kennedy get off the plane in that blood-spattered pink suit

and that casket of her husband coming out the back of Air Force One. You broke into local TV news in Washington. What kind of news anchor were you? Well, I started as I got there because I was a sportscaster at the radio station and a news reporter, and the only opening there at the television station in 1960, fall of 66 was they were looking for a sportscaster and I was hired. And then what happened was, I mean, this is all serendipity. The general manager of the station, a fellow named Bob Bennett, who was my patron, the late Bob Bennett, one of the greatest television broadcasters going in terms of management.

He started the first 10 o'clock news on the East Coast, and I was a sportscaster. And within three months, he decided because he was in Washington, he wanted to put on a three hour a day, live news show from noon to three o'clock in the afternoon. And he had hired an anchorman from, he wanted a three-person host. And he hired an anchor man from Los Angeles named John Willis, a young woman who was just in broadcasting named Pat Collins came out of Boston. And he turned around and he said to himself, holy, I got this three-hour show in Washington. I don't have anybody in Washington who's from Washington. I can't have a show about Washington without a guy from Washington.

So he went into the newsroom. I was the only guy from Washington in the Channel 5 newsroom at WTTG in Washington. So I'm now into the daytime newsy talk show business. And that show became very, very successful. After about four years, the other two people left, and I was a sole anchor for the next seven or eight years. And it became a very, very popular show. And by that time, I was anchoring the 10 o'clock news.

And your goal at that point in your career is to become a network news anchor? Oh, yeah. Of course, everybody's goal. is. And so what happened was, so this is now 10 years later, I said, well, you know, since I was my father's son and my father was so popular in Washington, I mean, can I take my show on the road? And I got a job in Chicago co-anchoring the NBC owned and operated station WMAQ. In fact, I was Jane Pauley's replacement when she went to the agency. the Today Show because she had been working in Chicago.

But that started a seven-year Odyssey that was not in my plans because in those seven years, I worked at five different stations. And so I had a great friend of mine who was a great writer for the New York Times, Richard Reeves. And Richard Reeves was the White House correspondent for the Times. He wrote several books on several presidents. And at that time, he was writing a big column for Esquire magazine. And so his column one time was my friend the anchorman, Mari Povich.

I have seen him on four successive St. Patty's days anchoring from four different cities. He's the only person in television trying to go nationwide city by city. because in those seven years, I worked in Washington, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and back to Washington. Wow. It was a, it was, you know, I almost felt like Ulysses. I'm just trying to get home. And it's in Washington when that station gets bought by Rupert Murdoch that Murdoch then sends for you to come visit him in New York. And what comes out of that conversation?

Well, it was remarkable. I had no idea. I didn't even know the man. I had said hello to him. He had bought all those stations and turned them in the box about a year before that. And this is 1986. And we have been very successful in Washington with his station. We had won the Emmy Award for Best Newscast.

I had won the Emmy for the Best Newscaster and stuff. And he says, come to New York. I want to see you. Okay, fine. I'll go up there and he says, I want to start a show. I'm going to have you work with my friends. I said, really, who are they? Because I had been in the business a long time.

They were all from Australia. Didn't know a damn thing about them. Didn't know who they were. They were so strange, not only in their way they talked. I mean, even their lexicon for television was, I mean, for instance, they would not say, man, on the street. they would say vox pops. I mean, they would say

there was no such thing as a teleprompter. It was an auto queue. I mean, it was completely, I mean, foreign to me. And I was thrown together with these guys. And it was, believe it or not, it was, without a doubt, the best thing that ever happened to me and the best thing that ever happened to them.

Because they were wild, crazy, awsey, tabloid, journalists and I was this kind of recalcitrant, irreverent, news guy that was much different than your normal anchorman because I just, I mean, I was so different that when I read an introduction to a news story for the 10 o'clock news or any other newscast that I was doing, I would almost and live the introduction because I didn't like the way it was written. I mean, I was kind of nutsy, which is why I had so many. any jobs over those years. So anyway, the collision of the Australians and me ended up being an unbelievable, successful. Nobody could have done it this way show called a current affair,

and it dominated, just dominated the 7 to 8 o'clock ratings from 1986 until 1991. For people who don't remember, what kind of stories did you cover on a current affair? Well, I mean, we would, we would in the beginning. First of all, we did stories no one else did because network news back then was so buttoned up. And they just, you know, all they did was follow each other or follow the morning stories in the New York Times of the Washington Post. We would do these crazy stories. I mean, we would do these stories. For instance, we broke the Jim and Tammy Faye Baker's story with Jessica Hahn, the mistress of this evangelist, this televangelist, Jim Baker, was a very, very successful televangelist. Nobody had done that story. We broke that story.

We broke a story with a woman named Mary Beth Whitehead, who was the first person. She was carrying a child as a surrogate for a couple, and she decided, no, she wasn't going to give the child up. Nobody did that story until we did that story. And as a current affair got more than, more successful, it kind of opened the gates for the regular network television shows to newscasts to say, oh my gosh, look at their ratings. Well, if we want a better rating, we better start looking at these stories instead of throwing them in the trash can. And so they changed their whole view.

And I mean, I know all of my friends in television network television news, people my wife used to work with. I mean, they were so pissed off at me and pissed off at a current affair and how we changed the news business. But, believe it or not, the creator of 60 Minutes, Don Hewitt's daughter worked for a current affair. Don Hewitt would see me and he was so curious about a current affair and the stories we were doing. And by the way, we were doing the same kind of gotcha stories that Mike Wallace was doing. You know, we would all of a sudden ambush people. I mean, the same way Mike Wallace was doing it on 60 Minutes.

So, I mean, Don knew that we weren't far from, our Apple wasn't far from his tree. Where do you see the DNA of a current affair on TV today? Is it in those dateline mystery kind of shows or where did it go? Yeah, I mean, I'd say that's true. I'd say the datelines were that way, about 48 hours. Same way. First of all, back then, you know, if it bleeds, it leads. I mean, I worked a lot of newscasts in my life where that was the management style. If it bled, you led with it. And so crime was very big on those shows and big with our show. But our show was steeped in the classic Shakespearean themes of conflict and drama. and lust and love and money and and crime.

I mean, it was, I mean, it just works. It just works. And it and it works today. I mean, you, you get, you get one of those stories with those themes. Boy, you can't go wrong. Did you tell me this story one time? Tom Shales back at this page is a big TV critic, The Washington Post, and your dad works.

What happened when he? he reviewed a current affair? Well, that's what happened. I mean, it was, Tom Shales is a Pulitzer Prize winning television critic. I mean, there aren't many television critics that get the Pulitzer Prize, but Shales was such a great writer. So I see him, he's reviewing a current affair, I guess after about a year or two, especially after we got popular, he's reviewing it. And he is just brutalizing me. I mean, he's calling me every S word there is. I mean, sorted, smarmy, slutty, I mean, everything, smutty, I mean, every possible word. So I call my father up.

My father's very, he was a, my father was a very genteel man. And, you know, I said, dad, I said, shales really blistered me today. I don't want you to read the comment. Please don't, don't show it to mom. She'll get all upset. He said, son, oh, don't worry about it, son. You know, don't worry about this. You just go about your business.

I said, yeah, Dad, but this was really bad. I mean, he said, look, you know, I helped to hire Tom Shales at the Washington Post. You know that. I said, yeah, Dad, but I'm your son. He said, yeah, son, but good writers are hard to find. So he put me in my place. In fact, I did a panel one time with Shales and, of course, told him the story. and he'd always love my father.

I love this story. Not me. He liked my wife. He didn't like me. Speaking of which, you married Connie Chugg in 1984. And I love this story you told in your memoir, too, because her career is taken off at NBC. Yours is taking off at a current affair. And you would, what is it, leave messages for each other about why you were going to miss dinner?

And it was kind of who could leave the most glamorous message? Right. Yeah. I mean, yeah, first of all, Connie's would say, I won't be home today for Thanksgiving. I'm on my way to Pakistan. Really? Really? And so, but, but, you know, everybody says, you know, what is this successful marriage?

I mean, that's the fact that we were in the same business, we understood it. We got it. I mean, there was, you know, we gave each other a long leash. And especially back then. I mean, the career led led the whole marriage. I mean, whatever had to happen had to happen. You didn't want to, you wouldn't say, I can't go because my wife wanted to do something because, are you kidding?

I might miss the biggest story I've ever seen and vice versa. And you wrote, too, that she really built you up during this period, the period you're talking about where you're bouncing from station to station and local news. Yeah, she sure did. I mean, she was, I mean, she was, I mean, she, we dated for seven years before we got married, but we didn't date exclusively. But as I bounced around, she really understood it. And she understood it because, I mean, I was in such influx.

I didn't know what at one point. I was unhappy in San Francisco. And I knew I couldn't. And I, and I, I knew I was either going to be fired if I didn't leave, and so I was fired. And I lay down on a couch for about a week, and I said, you know, maybe I shouldn't be in this business. Maybe this is the end of it. And I started watching newscasts, and I said, you know, I'm as good as these people.

I mean, I might not be better than they are. And she gave me the confidence to continue. and that's when I came back east and first started working in Philadelphia, which was a great godsend for me because I had really been out of sorts. I didn't know where I belonged. And they, that community, the people in Philadelphia and I was anchoring the news and doing a talk show called People Are Talking. They just gave me the greatest reception as if I was just a local kid. It was great. So you say a current affair becomes a big hit.

1990, you decide you want to host your own syndicated talk show. What is the appeal of that? What did you want to do at that point? Well, I had done a current affair for five years. I had done talk shows locally throughout the country. I always felt that, you know, when it comes to storytelling, that if you were going to, if you were going to just intro a package, when you're doing newscasts and then the reporter does a minute,

or you're doing a report, that's a minute 30. And you never get a chance to tell the full story. You never get a chance to really dig deep into a story because you don't have the air time. And at that time, Phil Donahue was very successful. Oprah was very successful. I mean, first of all, in 1991,

everybody has to understand this. There were 10 daytime talk shows on the air. Ten, I mean, between Geraldo and Oprah and Phil and Jenny Jones and Sally, Jesse Raphael and Ricky Lake, and all these people had talk shows. And I thought I thought I was going to be a good talk show host. So Paramount and Fox started bidding for me. And finally, Paramount got me. and to do a talk show.

And the irony was it took me several years later to figure out why Paramount was so insistent that I go to them and be a talk show. And I found out, current affair was so popular that we had topped of entertainment tonight, the Paramount show,

as the biggest seven to eight half hour show in television. And Lucy Selhaney, the president of Paramount Syndicate, She didn't care whether I was going to be a talk show host. She wanted me off that goddamn show so entertainment can I could regain their status as the top rated show. And that's how I got to be a talk show host. Not that I thought I was good or they thought I was good. They just wanted me off a current of air.

They'll neutralize you from that show and then they can get back. They win that time slot and get win the other times like. And believe it or not, that's exactly what happened. why did daytime talk shows take off in the 90s in that way you're talking about? You know, it's very interesting. I think, first of all, I think Oprah had a lot to do with it because of her success. And by that time, she was hugely successful. And Phil had been successful for many years.

And so I think, and it's a lot of money in daytime talk for these big studios. I mean, there's a reason why these studios do all. all these talk shows. And so I think that there was a captured daytime audience back then. You have to, this is before cell phones. This is before the internet. This is, I mean, the only, this is before Fox, all news, Fox, the Fox News channel. Only CNN was on in terms of news. So you had a captured audience. And there was no other, I mean, think about it. I mean, people don't realize today it's different today because you have to go for niche programming because there's so many platforms that people want to use during the day and not necessarily your television set. One thing I think is so interesting about Mori and I had a conversation with you and your producers about this one time is that you don't want a show where two people just argue essentially for 30 minutes.

there has to be something at the end of the show where some truth is revealed. So you mentioned the paternity show. You are the father, you are not the father, or a lie detector kind of thing. And that is what? Because the audience wants full drama, act one, act, two, act three. What is the reason for that that you found? Well, because you want a climax. And fortunately, you know, I've got an envelope.

And then that envelope is a result, whether it be a lie detector test or DNA test. test as a result. Then you get the result and then you hopefully get the two colors of the people because I've got a result in my hand. And now I'm going to tell you what it is. And so we're going to find, you know, a guy has proven to be the father, didn't want to be the father. They might give me some lip service about, oh, I'll live up to my responsibilities. I'll take care of that child. Yeah, right. But guess what? what guy six months later down the road i'm going to check on you see what you did so i mean that's that's the key and you do not know the results that are in the envelope when you're holding it up on

the first time the first time my producers came to me with with the paternity theme and the lie detector theme they they i had read the story i knew about the people and everything and they said okay marie now at the end the result is i said i don't want to know the result if i knew the result then i would know something my guests would not know, my audience doesn't know, my viewers at home don't know, I would skew my questions because I know something they don't, that's not right. I want to be as surprised as everyone is at the result. So, you know, I just used human instinct and it worked. And how many paternity shows, if that's the mother of all Mori shows, how many can you do out of five a week so that you have just the right number. We don't, we don't get overload.

I'd say, I'd say we do right now because of, because of COVID, we have to rely on those particular themes. So now between paternity shows and lie detector shows, we're doing, like the 1920, the 2020, 21 season, as of now, it's full bore paternity. and lie detector. That's it. Because that's, I need a studio with people in the studio to do other shows, like out of control teen. I can't do an out of control teenager show virtually. I just can't do it. See, these are some of the after effects of the pandemic we haven't quite come to grips with us as a society. Now it is more Maori paternity and more lie detector shows. Exactly. Brian, you found me. You found me out.

Oh, it's all been revealed. Right here on the press box. I want to set you up for one more story if I can. And you told me this one too. Gary McCord, your pal, former long-time CBS golf analyst, who was playing golf with you one day? Do you know where I'm going here? Yeah, yeah.

First of all, I'm an inveterate golfer. I've got the addiction. It's interesting. I got the addiction when I was about 30 years old and I was in Washington. I was doing this local talk show and doing the news. And my father said, well, and I didn't ever play golf. And so not much.

I play, you know, baseball, basketball, football, and high school. And that was what I played. So you got to join the country club. You don't join the country club by the time you're 30. It's going to cost you about three times the amount. And I'm not going to pay for it since you don't make that much money. You better join. So I joined.

And what happened was the moment I, the moment I, the moment I, drove up to the clubhouse. And for some reason, all the things that I was thinking about, all the burdens that I had, whatever it was, it just kind of left me. And so golf has been my great source of comfort all these years. And so when I got to be 50, Connie bought for me for my birthday. I had never had a golf lesson. I had gotten very good. I had won some club championships and things like that. She bought me, she researched this guy, she says, I'm going to get you this,

I think is the golf god of when it comes to teaching golf. And so she bought me a fellow named Peter Costas, who is the great CBS golf, former CBS golf analyst. And so Peter came to our house in New Jersey for the weekend. He has been one of the most important people in my, life ever since. My Connie calls him now the golf devil because I chase him all over the country looking for golf lessons. So he and Gary McCord set up a golf school in Scottsdale, Arizona, at Greyhawk. And this was in the 1990s. And so I played a lot of golf with Gary McCord and

Costas, of course. And they really, they got me to the point where I got pretty good and I qualified for a U.S. senior amateur tournament, and I made match play in it, and I played in three British senior amateurs, and I played a lot of competitive golf later in life. So I'm playing with McCord, and we had a standard bet. It's like a $50 bet for nine holes. And so McCord, he's such a yapper. He's such, he plays games with you all the time, especially if he's down in a match. And of course, he gives me shots. So he's down in the match, and now it's the ninth hole. And the first $50 bet was there. And he's saying, you know, Popovich, he was down, down, I think he's down two at the time

and he's pressing or something. You know, Popovich, I'm flipping through those channels. That's stupid show. I wouldn't do that show for $5 million. And I said, Gary, neither would I. Well, that's gone viral. That's gone viral with all my golf buddies all over the country. Absolutely fantastic.

And Gary, of course, lost the hole. That's the only way I was able to get Gary to shut up. Neither would I. I love that. All right. Watch, Mori, however you watch it in whatever form where he's going to be mainlining, paternity shows and lie detector shows until the nation gets back to normal. Everybody gets a vaccine.

Yeah, we'll do a lot more. Out of control teenagers will return. Thanks so much for doing the press box, Maury. My pleasure, Brian. It's good always to see. you and good luck to you and Dave, I guess. David's working with you too. That's right.

That's right. I will pass on your regards. Okay. Thank you. All right. Take care, Maie. Bye. How did it feel to get that nice little shout out from Moli Povich there, David?

I'm honored, man. I'm honored. That was a great interview. Now it's time for David Shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline. Yeah. Monday's headline about the Austin mayor who broke his own travel advice was Cabo Sandufus. Today's headline comes from almost as many people who sent in the Shakespeare thing. It's from the Washington Post, and it's about the Colonel Sanders Lifetime movie,

which I feel incredibly bad about giving publicity to in any possible form. But it was a good headline. David, your pun subject here is a popular KFC menu item. A popular menu item. What was the Washington Post strained pun? headline. What is their what is on their menu besides like a bucket of chicken?

I'm sure they have chicken nuggets or chicken fingers or chicken sandwiches, chicken fingers? Not nuggets, not fingers, but, kind of a happy medium. Popper, um, chicken, uh, oh, oh, um, keep going. Chicken, what are, uh, tenders, chicken, oh,

chicken tender, oh, chicken tender, Chicken, chicken, uh, uh, it's a romantic movie. Tenderness. It's romantic. It's, it's about, uh, falling in. Oh, love and tender, uh, time love and tenderness or, uh, love and tender. Think a song here in Elvis song. Um, love me tender.

Love me tenders. Love me tenders. That took way too long and that's amazing. I'm amazing. Love me Tinder. That's so good. I almost ate at KFC yesterday. Because of this? No, no, it was not because of this. But I pulled into the drive-through and I looked at the menu and I had the same reaction you guys did when I asked you to name a KFC menu item.

I just kind of looked at there. It was nothing there. It was a desert. It really was. We went to Taco Bell the other day and I'm a big supporter of all of these restaurants, but they changed their menu. and I spent five minutes staring at it trying to figure out where the, I don't know what I want. I'm not one of these people that goes that has my order memorized.

I was trying to find the things that looked familiar that I would order. And then the only thing I could think of was the seven-layer burrito when I said it and they said, we don't have that anymore. No, they don't have any. Everything's changed.

We're old men now. Everything's changed. And I looked at this menu for about 10 seconds. I said, I went out of here. So I started to back up and there was somebody right behind me. They started laying on the horn, almost got a huge,

car accident in the KFC line. God. All right. David and I's fast food podcast will be coming on the spot on Spotify any day now. He is David Chewaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Research by Chris All made up production magic by Erica Servantes. On Monday's show, David, we have Ken Lane, the creator and writer and conjurer of Desert

Oracle. Very cool publication based in Joshua Tree, California. And a big one on Thursday, David Axelrod, CNN analyst and architect of the Barack Obama campaigns. Plus, of course, you know lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. Later, Brian.