The Press Box - How to Write About Mask-Wearing. Plus, Listener Mail!

Episode Date: May 6, 2021

David Shoemaker is joined by Ringer writer Claire McNear to break down the Atlantic story "The Liberal Who Can't Quit Lockdown." They discuss readers' reactions to the piece, how it was reported, and touch on the related news about herd immunity (3:40). Then, Listener Mail, in which they answer questions about the audio-book process, who would make the best 'Jeopardy!' host, and Mike Greenberg hosting ESPN's NFL draft night (28:22). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week! Host: David Shoemaker Guest: Claire McNear Associate Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

On TV concierge, the ringer staff delivers a guide to the vast streaming landscape by discussing one show or movie per day, including premieres, the latest surprise Netflix hits, periodic check-ins on favorite TV shows, new movies available for streaming, and the host's favorite shows to watch right away. Check out TV concierge exclusively on Spotify. Claire, we had two incredible instances of sports and pop culture symmetry this week. Marvel Super Heroes invaded an NBA game, the Warriors Against the Pelicans on Monday. And then on Tuesday, the Yankees Astros MLB game became a celebration of Star Wars Day. We had obviously the NFL Nickelodeon crossed over not too long ago, but this is my question for you.

Is Synergy just the way of the future for sports? Is this going to be a part of our lives forever now? It felt like Disney kind of rubbing, rubbing our faces in the Marvel ESPN universe that they have now. I mean, the thing I, this is like an open question for you, for listeners, for the world. I don't know what the answer is, but like when did Star Wars and baseball get so tied up in each other? Because obviously, you know, May 4th, May the 4th, it's fine. Listen, I love baseball. I love Star Wars.

They're both very good. But I don't under, like every single team has a Star Wars Day. single season where people, you know, wear their Star Wars costumes, they do silly graphics on the board and this has gone on for decades. And I'm sure Disney makes so much money from this. And I just, I have no idea why this franchise and this sport have have united seemingly permanently. I don't know, like maybe George Lucas is just a huge Giants fan. I have no idea what happened. So I would love to know the answer. I don't know either. And I got to be honest with you, I wasn't aware that was such a thing. I guess

I don't know if there's any logical connection there but I you know I guess if you can get some baseball games of all baseball I mean you know baseball better than me baseball seems to always be sort of grasping it

sort of disparate but like significant fan bases right they always have like you know like crazy wig day at the ballpark but then after that it'll be Star Wars Day or like whatever just to get you out there

like I like to drive you know I drive a Ford day you know whatever and then you get a free thing Charlie Finley has just been resurrected. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's probably the answer to this is that, you know, if they can get even one child to become a baseball fan, they will have like doubled their five-year intake of newly coined baseball fans in the U.S.

So that's probably the answer and it's just been going on for so long that it's become a tradition. But it is, and again, I've got nothing against it. I just don't understand why it happens. and where it came from. I just want to know the answer. I just want to tell it. Maybe it's just the time, the ages old story of one person

with a long cylindrical object rising up and coming from the, you know, the dusty nowhere and becoming a universe challenging star. I don't know. Anyway, coming up on today's show, how to write or not write about mask wearing. We'll have a whole bunch of listener mail

and, of course, the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All that and more on the press box, part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello, Media Consumers. This is David Shoemaker here with special correspondent Claire McNair. Brian is out this week. Let's start off today with a discussion about a minor internet squabble that became a very important discourse earned journalism or something like that. On Tuesday, the Atlantic's Emma Green published a story called The Liberals

Who Can't Quit Lockdown, which wondered aloud whether liberals who still insist on mask wearing and other pandemic era cautionary tactics in a post-virus world are being anti-science. I'll start as I probably shouldn't by reading the author's pitch tweet. Quote, a while ago, I started noticing something strange. Very progressive people who love to talk about believing in science were adopting COVID restrictions over and above CDC guidelines. I thought, is there a story here? And well, wow, there is. I can see why this people. Scott Greenlit. But let's get into the piece a little bit. I'm going to read some quotes here at length, Claire, to make sure that we get the breadth of the argument. Here's one. This is a different story about progressives who stressed the scientific evidence and then veered away from it. See, there's the turn. Here's another one. For many progressives, extreme vigilance was in part about opposing Donald Trump. Okay, we'll give her that. Here's a longer one. This is a quote for Monica Gandhi, a professor at UC San Francisco, professor of medicine. Those who were vaccinated on the left seem to think over caution now is the way to go,

which is making people on the right question the effectiveness of the vaccines. This is the author. Public figures and policy makers who try to dictate others' behavior without any scientific justification for doing so, erode trust in the public health and make people less willing to take useful precautions. The marginal gains of staying shut down might not justify the potential backlash. Okay. And one more here. Even as the COVID-19 vaccines have become widely accessible,

Many progressives continue to listen to voices preaching caution over relaxation. Dr. Anthony Fauci recently said he went to travel or eat at restaurants, even though he's fully vaccinated. Despite CDC guidance of these activities can be safe for vaccinated people. California Governor Gavin Newsom refused in April to guarantee the state schools that are reopened. We'll get more into schools later. And Claire, let me tell you, when this came out, the internet reacted. To some, the argument was music to their ears. This is Brian Stettler's reaction on Twitter.

Last month I used the phrase pandemic addicts. Some said it was a straw man. No one's addicted to the pandemic. They said, well, emigreen has documented it. But to many myself included, I must say, this whole thing seemed reductive and unnecessary. Why question anybody's motives in being cautious is what I thought to myself, right?

Yeah, I mean, this piece was one of those ones where you see people being mad about it before you actually even see the piece. It's like the cursed Twitter. experience of opening it up and just being like, okay, like piecing together what specifically people are mad about. And I made it like a full day, even after I figured out what it was. I was like, I'm just, I'm not going to read it. I know it's going to bother me. All these very reasonable people are raising great points about why this is problematic, but it just really,

it really lit Twitter on fire. I know. And I, first of all, let me just say, it seems very talking about straw manning. I mean, I don't know how you can say or even, quote somebody with a straight face that it's over caution that's making people disbelieve in the vaccine's effectiveness. When you set that aside, major magazines, major outlets questioning the integrity of the public health officials around the world, like, that is what's, I mean, that should be just as problematic, right, in terms of making people disbelieve in vaccine efficacy, which has been, which has been the case for months and people didn't believe the vaccine was going to work a year before the vaccine existed.

I was so disappointing for me is like the Atlantic has had so much excellent, excellent coverage of the pandemic over the last year in change. Like I feel like I've read so many pieces by like Ed Young and James Hamblin and like Caitlin Tiffany just had an amazing, amazing piece last week about the kind of cult of Pfizer, which I think she called like the hot person vaccine. But it had really good coverage and like both, you know, very, very good like kind of scientific medical coverage of like the various risks. and facts and stuff about the vaccine and lots and lots of reporting, but also these kind of fun cultural pieces as well. And then to see this kind of sort of lazy reactionary straw man piece with like not that much reporting in it come out was kind of surprising to me. Yeah, I don't know.

I mean, you're right about the Atlantic. But the Atlantic's also, I mean, of late, found a little bit of a niche in this sort of anti-anti or whatever, counterintuitive pro-vats. Like Latter-day slate, yeah. I mean, listen, when I, and, you know, I hate to take a totally anecdotal stand against this sort of anecdotal argument, but, but it, I thought about when I left the former Lord and Taylor where I got my vaccination. And as I was leaving my second shot, my wife and I saw somebody sarcastically take off their mask and sort of spike it on the way out the door and then sort of sheepishly put it back on. That was a joke, but I couldn't help but see some of that mask spiking in the contingent of people who are, who take the argument of this Atlantic piece.

It seems like I know I'm oversimplifying here, but it does seem like the people who are motivated who are interested in believing this and taking this up or the sort of, or the people who are very, who are interested for other reasons than science in getting back to normal life. you know, I mean, you saw the sort of people who were who were anti-mask at the beginning, you know, anti-shutdown, I guess. And by and large, there was political motivations, but there are a lot of people who are like, I don't want to stop going to bars. So let me try to find the loophole in this science, right? And now I kind of feel like there's a big push of people who are like

desperate for this to be over for very, I mean, I don't mean that as like a condition, but you want it to be over. And so you start eyeing the sort of inconsistency or whatever else. I mean, the whole thing is just, I don't, don't know. It just feels, it just feels like if belief in science is this very sort of placid, very philosophically straightforward point of view, I feel like it's moving away from, I mean, insisting that we should be putting masks behind is not the natural progression of

where we've been for the past year. And who, like I said before, who's to, who's to question someone's motives? What if you just want to wear a mask? Well, and I, I, I mean, I don't think, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's some like bank robbers aspiring bank robbers out there. But like I don't think anybody who is wearing a mask now or has been wearing a mask over the last year is like great. I love this. I just love having to wear a mask. It's so fun to me personally.

I mean, like I live in Washington, D.C. wearing a mask in the summer here. It's hot and it's humid. Awful. It sucks. It sucks. I didn't enjoy it last summer. I have not enjoyed like as it's getting hot here when I.

I, you know, I'm wearing a mask outside. It's not fun. Like, so nobody's doing this because, like, this is great. I just love this. And, like, it, it just. I have to interject to say that there is a incredibly wonderful conspiracy theory on the loony right that the mask, the mask wearing now is helping, uh, Antifa and child smugglers. I'm not even joking.

That's a sort of Q&A sort of thing. But the piece goes on, the Atlantic piece goes on to cite, to take as a case point, this the Somerville, Massachusetts school system where they're sort of interested, there's all this proof that we can go back to schools. It's a very, very liberal place, I guess, is the point of the article. It's a Bernie Sanders voting district and everything else.

Yeah, it's right around Harvard, right? Right, but they are so invested in these sort of like deep cleaning various safety measures, constantly like looking into figuring out how we can make the schools as safe as possible beyond any point of reason. They call it hygiene theater, which is actually taken from a previous piece in the Atlantic

part of the same sort of line of argument. Here's the thing. Schools are maybe the most inane data point possible, right? Because you can make this case a million different ways. But I can tell you, well, we can just look at the ringer, for example. Like, I think, you know, it's, I think most people at the ringer, if not all, are pretty conscientious mask wearers for the past, for the past year. and I think that people are kind of getting back

into sort of quote unquote normal life in various degrees, but the place on ringer slack where people are sort of the most level-headed but also the most utterly perplexed about what they should be doing right now is in a Slack room called Parent Corner where all the parents of the ringer hang out. I mean, literally it's a daily conversation

about what age of their kids and what do we all feel okay about doing so we can just sort of bounce it off each other. I know logically what the situation is. Right. But you can't, you can't, there's nothing that the CDC or anyone else or the Atlantic or anybody's going to say that's going to make you feel emotionally comfortable with sending your babies out into the world without a mask or a vaccine or without every single thing you can do to protect them, you know? And I, and so to look at schools, I mean, we're like, there's so much, there's so much irrationality that goes on in school boards and parent teacher associations and whatever. It's just like, I just, I think the fact that this was a data point in the piece made the piece even less reliable to me than it would have been without it.

Yeah, I mean, so I don't have kids. So I did not experience that particular facet of the pandemic and I'm not experiencing it now. But I think the thing that what you just said made me think of that I was thinking of a lot as I was reading this piece is for me as somebody kind of passed my two weeks of vaccination kind of slowly starting to go out and, you know, like timidly. be like, I don't know, maybe I'll have a drink on a patio. Like, we'll see how that goes. But for me, kind of starting to do those things and to slowly start to interact with other friends who are kind of in the same place as me, I think what has become really clear is, like, everybody's going through a slightly different kind of trauma, right? Like, everybody had very bad last year, but I think everybody had a slightly different version of what was awful

about it. And I think parents of young kids had a very specific experience. I think people who live alone had a very specific experience. I think kids, teenagers, college students had a specific experience. People with roommates. I mean, like everybody kind of went through a very disparate, difficult thing, but it was different for everybody. And I think asking people to be like, well, the science says that you should just be totally fine now. Just deal with it. Like, it doesn't, it doesn't work that way. Like, we all went through something really hard and it isn't, you don't just get to like wave a magic wand and be like, oh, now you feel better. It's great. everything's good now.

Yes. As like thousands and thousands of people are still dying around the world. So, you know, it's just, it was, it was such an unsympathetic, uncompassionate story. I agree. I mean, I have members of my, I mean, we'll extend it, but very, very close family who have basically been shut-ins for the past year. I mean, I've taken this to an incredible, incredible, like, compulsive degree, washing food before it comes inside.

I mean, leaving food outside for two days, washing it, not coming into contact with people who, I mean, even the safest possible ways out of just an abundance of caution. And to the point where it said

there's been rifts in my family, you know, about people who... Totally. Certain people would see other members of the family because they knew how safe they were being, but like people who, whatever. I mean, like, people who spent more time in the city, you know, like they were held up as suspect.

eventually you just all kind of come to a point where you're just like it's sad. There's various that you understand, but you've got to understand where people are coming from. And especially if people are making decisions, even if you see them as irrational, people are making them out of an abundance of caution. Right. There's a big difference between like saying live and let live when somebody's, you know, like shooting up heroin on the weekends and saying live and let live when someone is making themselves as safe as humanly possible, right?

It's okay to be like that person can make that decision for themselves because the worst case scenario is they're going to be okay at the end of this. You know what I mean? There's not, it's really not. It's, it's, it's sad and it's a sad place that we've been for the whole year, but it's like you have to understand that. And also it's wild that that sort of experience isn't factored into the story too. It's not a scientific data point, right? But it's still like a real lived thing that we all see. I understand the drive to get back out there and more importantly to sort of normalize getting back out there. But there's also really other basic things.

Like a lot of people who responded to this piece with, you know, very loudly. But like, what if you were wearing a mask because you don't know who else is vaccinated or because everybody doesn't know else is vaccinated? Maybe you're just wearing a mask so that people don't have to anxiously worry about whether you're an anti-vaxxer. I go through that constantly, constantly. When I'm walking down the sidewalk, you know, I think about, like I said, I am now vaccinated, but like I think about how scared I was seeing people without masks a month ago or two months ago

or three months ago before I was vaccinated. And I don't want to make anybody else feel that way. And of course, we know that, you know, even if I were unvaccinated, passing somebody on a sidewalk outside fleetingly, we know that that is quite a low risk thing. But also I know that I had a very real fear. And a lot of people have that because this has been terrible. This is been really, really bad. And it's just, you know, trying to be caring to your neighbors and your community. And it just, I, I'm so blown away by, like, how callous this piece was and how, like, totally unwilling to accept that that existed at all. And see, it just seemed a little bit blinded to a lot of that stuff. I will say, you know,

sometimes the best, you know, way to see how well you, you mean, a piece has been received is to look at how it's received in which, you know, there's a, um, uh, a nice response here from Clay Travis who said good read here. Ted Cruz, Ted Cruz eagerly pointed out, hey, it turns out Democrats aren't the quote party of science. And then this is,

you know, I always hate to give credit to, you know, little lofi accounts that nobody really pays attention to, but this is my favorite thing. It was a count called Hermetic Seal. Just really put a bow on the whole argument.

This is a quote, pointless self-quarantining has become the soy-sipping bug man's bogus counterfeit version of Christian asceticism. I don't know. Listen to that back at half speed. Maybe you'll get it. You know, I think it's fine to complain about this sort of weird phenomenon of over-caution

in our medical or public health culture. But to come at it as if this is a thing specific to COVID is a historical. I mean, it's like, these are things that you can complain about all the time. but like our medical infrastructure is based on over caution. I mean, if you're really interested in this cause, you know, I recommend everyone to like go research or look into all the deliberate paternalistic bullshit that goes into pregnancy guidelines and all sorts of women's health. I mean, our medical system is incredibly sexist.

And there are many ways that like, do you think your dog, you know, your OBGYN really believes you shouldn't drink during pregnancy? Or do you think they're telling you that? because they're worried that if they say one drink is okay, then you'll have 10. Like, think about, think about the, and by the way, maybe someone should do the studies on that, too, but no one wants to do it, right? Now, everyone's afraid to be the person coming out and saying anything that is actually pro-woman in any of these arguments. I'll set all that aside, I'm sorry for the rant, but there's a lot of reasons to still wear masks,

and there's a lot of, like, reasons why people are, you know, are overly cautious, and it's not just that they're being, I mean, they are being duplicitous maybe on some level. But it's sort of that it's not like they're doing it maliciously. They think they're doing it in the, they're doing it with the best intention possible. Maybe it's wrong, but this isn't the only time that's ever been done. Well, and for this to be published, you know, like a week or two weeks after Tucker Carlson's whole, like, shame people you see wearing masks on the street thing. Oh, God.

Where it's just like, it has already been weaponized. The worst bad faith reading of the points made in this Atlantic piece. had already been made and were already out there. And this was clearly just going along that same path. And it's just like, what are, what are we doing here? Like, that's, that's not, this is not a good approach. I want to get out of here, but I, but there's one piece that I have to bring up, you know, in related story, in a related story,

the same day or the day before the New York Times put out a piece by Pura of Amanda Vili about how herd immunity is an unlikely goal in the United States. and, you know, everyone kind of thought of herd immunity was it like a natural conclusion, but because of variance and unvaccinated people and a bunch of other sources, you know, it's still, we still might be dealing with this in the, we still might not have anything resembling herd immunity for a number of years. That's the argument of the piece, right? But there were a lot of conditionals in the piece that weren't really backed up by

specific facts. If even more contagious variants develop, or if science is fine, that it immunized people can still transmit the virus, et cetera, or highly contagious variants may develop that can break through vaccine protection. There is a lively debate on sort of egghead Twitter about this stuff, too. Madaglaseus and Nate Silver had a very, you know, almost impenetrable back and forth about the whole thing. But I don't know.

I mean, I don't know where any of this leads us, but I do think that. that this kind of opens up a broader discussion that we should be having about about the marketplace for sort of difficult ideas about COVID. I don't think we should be lied to by our public officials. I want to make that really clear. I wish we had all the information that they have and everything that we could possibly know.

But, you know, there is a very big, I think part of the thing about this New York Times piece is that the headline was much more alarmist than the body of the piece itself. and it was snapped up by an alarmist audience. And I want to point that out because it's sort of the opposite of what happened with the Atlantic piece. I mean, there are constituencies for people who want this vaccine, who want to take their masks off and start playing beer pong again.

And there are constituencies for people who want to keep wearing masks for another year and want the world to do it along with them, you know? And I think that as, I don't know, I mean, what do you think? as a writer, as a journalist, to what extent is it your responsibility to sort of thread the needle? I mean, I, you know, obviously being a layman in terms of public health, right? Like, we've all, like, had to learn at least, like, the, you know, the basics of discussing it over the last year, but that hardly makes me any kind of expert with any kind of informed opinion. But I did actually, I mean, I found the substance of that New York Times story to be really interesting and really kind of fairly

laid out. You're right that there are a lot of hypotheticals and ifs and, you know, worst case scenarios, right? They talk about one where it kind of mutates and it breaks through. I forget exactly what they call it, but basically makes it so that you can now get infected even though you've had Pfizer or Moderna or whatever. And, you know, we just kind of go back to square one and it's horrible again. And probably it's a worst version of the disease. So, you know, I, but I do think that there were a lot of subtle, you know, truths in that piece. And they are hard truths and they are things that, you know, we, we as people in this pandemic society, but also our leaders probably do have to find a way to explain. I agree that the headline on that and like the social media

advertising of that were probably more alarmist and it probably was foreseeable that that was going to happen and that the people who are not going to, you know, accept all the nuance or really dig into the meat of this story. We're going to take that and run with it. But, you know, as a writer, I know that, you know, headlines happen very quickly. Social happens very quickly a lot of the time. And sometimes one or the other is an afterthought. The writer may or may not be involved. Like it's, you know, it is such a team effort.

And those things are often the most widely seen things, but are not necessarily like the biggest piece of, you know, a story, a deeply reported story especially. So I think, you know, is it incumbent on whoever wrote that headline to try to steer the public health debate in the United States? Like, no, but... We try to steer away from, like, the headline versus bog to the article discussion

as whenever possible on this show because it's sort of the same rabbit hole every single time. Totally. But I don't know. I mean, I guess on some level I am interested, I would be interested to know if there is like a caution edict at the, on the copy desk at major outlets. So, like, which way do we bend

when we have to pick a word, you know, in a headline? Should we be... Should we sound like, overly cautious or overly optimistic or what i mean it's it's you know it's tough because even at least at the atlantic there is the understanding that there being the the stories might have more of an ideological bent you know and and in sort of the straight news places obviously every week we talk about on here have more liability in those areas but anyway it's not an easy subject um but it is easy to not ride people for continuing to wear masks in an ongoing pandemic.

Anyway, moving on. Welcome, Claire, to a segment we like to go on this show, the Overwork Twitter joke of the Week. Apologies to Brian Curtis for not doing it as well as him. And this is a segment where we celebrate a gag, so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod. It was announced this week that Donald Trump has launched a new communication platform,

Team Trump has, called From the Desk of Donald J. Trump. If you wrote, or if you tweeted, why doesn't the Trump team just opened up a word doc a la creed thoughts and call it a day in reference to that old, hilarious office joke? You may have made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. Also, in baseball news, MLB tweeted a photo of Yankee Stadium. the text of the tweet was the Yankee Stadium looking like Tatooine hashtag baseball sky the only problem here was that the tweet

the photo didn't really look at all like Tatooine some people replied this is how you say you've never watched Star Wars without actually saying you've never watched Star Wars another good one was this one was forced you get that Claire

Forst like used the force and I don't know I really I really appreciated this one from at Harris VT Tatooine known for its green grass It's not actually Thanks to Zach Waters President Nick Harris And Laura Ismont

I'm not sure if you saw this week But Tom Brady was at the Kentucky Derby Dress up in a dark blue suit sunglasses and a fancy hat I would say sort of a borderline pilgrim hat. I'm not exactly sure how to describe this thing. It was quite a fashion statement. Like a patriot.

Patriot three corner. No, it wasn't quite three corner. It was more of like, I don't even know. It was a black hat. Frank Polata tweeted Tom Brady's dress like he's going to kill Roger Rabbit and the rest of Toon Town, which I thought was really great. He looks like a Spider-Man villain. That's a really good one. but if you said Tom Brady looks like the mask trying really hard not to be the mask

you may have made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. Thanks to corporate Mark, Xavier Dilloo and Frank Pulada for all those overworks and get your recommendations into us for next week. Now time for the notebook dump. We got a bunch of listener mail this week. And Claire McNair, I'm excited to have you hop in and answer some of these things.

Usually I'm put on the hot seat. I'm going to put you on the hot seat for the beginning for some of it. of these. All right, here we go. Number one, what event in human history would have been most, it would have been more sensationalized with today's media and how would you cover it? I don't even know that there's like a right, a wrong answer to this. What wouldn't have been more sensationalized? What event? What do you, what would, what would, what event from? I don't know, how do we answer this? Yeah, I don't think social media has cooled down the temperature on anything, right? Like, I don't know, the 24 hour news cycle really seems like it's going to, like, I don't think the bubonic plague will

very big on on Twitter. I think that we've seen evidence today about how the bubonic plague probably would have been covered in today's media. Maybe it would have been less sensational. You know,

then it was just sort of like an act of God. There's nothing more sensational. You are a coward in anti-science if you're still wearing your beak, your beak mask. Beaks. I love the beaks.

I always think back in so many different situations to the Onion headline is actually from Ardum Century. It wasn't actually when they did the, their first book they put out

about just headlines throughout history. And when, for the moon landing, the giant like, like, you know, size 100 font headline was, holy shit, man walks on fucking moon. And at that point, you know, the joke's evident, but part of the joke was that a newspaper would never write this. And I sort of feel like maybe in 2021, a newspaper might actually write that, right? I mean, if something that just incredible happened, then we're in an era where you might just go, size 100 cussing from a major media outlet.

Maybe Elon will get us to Mars and we'll get to find out. Lucky us. Yeah. Yeah. Hooray! Yeah, I mean, honestly, I mean, if you could imagine something like anything, like the moon landing is actually an interesting one, although, you know, we're kind of limited with the amount of camera shots we get,

but we would be following that second by second, right? I mean, I've been watching for all mankind. I don't know if you are for all mankind, if you were, but just finished season two, exceptional. So I am very primed to think that, you know, there is high drama to be had on the moon that we have not fully loved.

Well, yeah, no, these things are kind of circular, right? I mean, they saw, didn't they just say that, um,

uh, that Prince William was going to start vlogging or something like that? There, there is some like royal, I'm sure it's not going to add up to much. But that sort of seems like the end result of what the crown has done, you know, in our pop culture,

that those things, that now we have, the, the bases for these, you know, for mass media now have to sort of engage. I mean, it's sort of silly, but, you know, if we had embedded journalists at like any military moment in world history prior to the Iraq war, that would be, that would really obviously change the way, the degree to which we engaged in it, right? I mean, if you had, if somebody had a GoPro on D-Day, then, like, we would all be, if we wouldn't just be waiting. for we wouldn't be waiting for Steven Spielberg to like reimagine it

you know we would be it would be sensationalized in a whole different way I don't know it's it's really hard to imagine the past but yeah it we're in a very strange world now all right here we go ultimate ringer press box crossover question which former professional wrestler

would make the best host of Jeopardy I don't know if I don't know if you can even begin to answer this clear I don't know how you know what I don't know the first thing about wrestling I'm so sorry to say that in your presence. It's okay. I should do better, but I could not.

But I, you know, defer to your wisdom on this. This is a crossover because Claire is the author of a new book called Questions in the Form of Answers. It's a history of Jeopardy. It's a fantastic book. Multiple members of my family are big fans of it. And it's fun to see it in the bookstores, too. It's fun to be, it's fun. People keep sending me pictures of it in bookstores.

Isn't that a great feeling? So charmed. Yeah. It's, it's been, it's been delightful. And this is like a weirdly newsy year

for Jeopardy, right? I was going to say, it couldn't have come out at a better time for, you know, for, you know, Jeopardy being sort of

part of the public discourse. The new hosting has been a big deal. It has. You made some news on the Aaron Rogers front. And I don't know. I mean,

do you have a historical figure slash other pop cultural figure? I mean, do you have anybody that, even someone that's now that you thought, man, if I were running the search, this is who I would have picked?

You know, what has been a surprise and kind of, in retrospect, a bummer is we sort of always knew that they were going to be very interested in people in, like, the news broadcasting mold, and that has been the vast majority of the people who have been named as guest host for the show. But then, in fact, Aaron Rogers, who was this kind of out of left field, who totally mix of the sports metaphors candidate that they put in, I mean, he'd been on celebrity, Jeopardy and like is a slop, or excuse me, is a Jeopardy fan, but like did not necessarily seem like he would be hosting a game show even for a couple of weeks. He was really good and people really liked him and it has been like very exciting and obviously getting a lot of press for the show,

but he, I mean, has kind of said that he might want to do it permanently. We'll see how serious he actually is. But it has made me wish that they had kind of gone with a few people who were a little outside of the mold of what we kind of knew years ago they would be definitely looking for. So, you know, like we're going to see Myambialik, the actress, an actress and neurosurgeon or neuroscience PhD, I should say, soon. So she's kind of not in that mold either. But I wish, you know, like, would George Clooney have done this for two weeks? Like, maybe.

I don't know. Like, I don't know that he should be the host of Jeopardy, but I wish they had turned to people. like what's Julie Roberts doing? What's Reese Witherspoon doing? These are people who might have said yes to two weeks of hosting Jeopardy because they film it in just three days for the guest hosts. And I wish they had gone to just kind of people who did not immediately seem known just for being scholarly, but kind of do have that side to them.

Not that Dirk Clooney necessarily does. Maybe he does, but just a name the first name that came to mind. In terms of just scholarlyness to answer the original. question. It would be, of course, incredibly funny to see Leaping Lanny Pafo, who briefly appeared as a wrestler called the genius in there. He wore a full

graduation robe in one of the mortarboard hats and had like a scroll or something. I mean, come on. Like how that would be... I don't know if that would keep going. That joke could last for two weeks, but it would be a funny day.

And there have been, you know, a lot of great announcers over the years living and dead and who would all be, you know, have a lot of, like, little, I mean, there's names like Gordon Solie comes to mind, like, old people who are just, like, just personality, like, totally, like, reserved and probably think that they were calling it straight, but just have a lot of personality built into it.

Lance Russell is another one of my favorite talk about a lot. Mick Foley is a living legend, professional wrestler, who has all the personality in the world, and it's just inherently brilliant and funny, and he would be really good at it. But I don't know if there's, like, a really, obvious. I mean, aside from just the physical comedy of seeing a giant musselty person host Jeopardy. You know, Aaron Rogers is a little bit more spelt than, two's felt to really like be a

walking punchline in that way. So I mean, but if you throw the punchline part out, I don't know. I mean, I think probably the best ever would probably have been Gorilla Monsoon because he was a good announcer, but he's a former wrestler. And he was also, he was like six nine and just enormous. and he died, you know, 20 years ago, but he would be, he would have been fantastic. But yeah, I hope they get somebody good. Yeah, I mean, it's like long been like the best job in Hollywood, right? Like people were kind of courting it way before Alex Trebek, you know, even got sick. So we'll see what happens.

I mean, they've heavily hinted that it is going to be one of the guest hosts. So it almost certainly will probably be in that group, but. It's funny that you mentioned Clooney, because weirdly when I asked you the question, he was the face in my head and I don't know why. I mean, he's trending on Twitter today. I think it might be his birthday, so I feel like I have been Inceptions,

and maybe you also did. I just think about George Clooney. I mean, I think what makes, the fact that Jeopardy is still a thing is almost entirely attributable to Alex Trebek. And I think that to define what made him so successful will almost inherently fail to make it a failure to try to reproduce that.

I mean, there's just so much that's, you can't really, that's like, you know, you can't put into a jar. But the thing that you, I mean, the real thing is just the sort of coolness of him, you know? Yeah. Part of him was like he was almost not self-aware in the sense that like he maybe thought he was cooler than he actually was. But it was that just the pose of someone with that level of self-confidence. and maybe that's the Clooney connection. Because Clooney's a little self-effacing, but he just has so much confidence in just his bone structure

that you could, you know, it lends a little bit of gravity to his presentation. Yeah, I mean, I think that's what we're seeing with some of the broadcasters they brought in who, like, do have that sort of academic air to them and that gravitas, and you believe that they know the answers, but they're kind of, they're kind of boring, right? They're a little bit stiff and they don't have that. I don't know, like you said, if like it's exactly coolness underneath the surface, but like this sort of like kind of offbeat charisma that that Trebek would show it, you know, just very select moments, but it made him kind of so magnetic.

Yeah, I think the great thing about Trebek was not that he was a brilliant guy that knew all the answers, but that he was like totally comfortable with acting like he knew all the answer when he read him off the car. He was, he was an exceedingly talented actor. He really, really was. I mean, he was playing a character and he played it very, very well for a very long time. Okay. we got a book publishing question,

which is a wonderful part of this show. So I'm glad you're here as a recent part of the book publishing conveyor about. At what point in the book publishing process, and by whom are audiobooks decisions made? This person says, I'm feeling bamboozled by Michael Lewis. He reads chapter one of his new book in his podcast feed, and it's excellent,

but the full audiobook is read by a robotic-sounding, decidedly worse narrator. I'm interested to hear what happened with you. I will say that the advent of podcasting, general has changed the arithmetic a little bit, that there's more people who are established vocal talents, writers slash established vocal talent in a way that five, ten years ago, that wasn't the case, right? I mean, no one, when I wrote my book, no one bothered to ask me if, I mean, no one thought for five seconds about whether or not I should be reading my book,

because why would that have ever been the case? I don't know if they would now, but at least I have like a, I don't even know if I'd want to do it, but at least I have like a real, you know, Like people have like heard me talking on microphone a whole lot. But anyway, what was the process for your book? Yeah. So, I mean, I obviously can really only speak to my own experience. I think with, you know, celebrities and really big author names and especially for people who write kind of big novels, I think that they often turn not only to established readers,

though, of course, people like Jim Dale, of course, exist who are these kind of superstar are audiobook readers as well as well as actors, but, you know, first and foremost actors. Like, I just read Piranesi, or I should say listen to the audiobook of Piranasi, and it was a fantastic audiobook. I mean, I loved the book, but also for the audiobook, it was Chuitel Ageofor, the actor, who was so good. I mean, he was as amazing reading this as, as you would think. And, you know, fortunately, I mean, like, he kind of balanced it not being distracting that it was

a very famous actor doing it. So they had that. I did not have that because I am not a celebrity and did not write a big book like that. So for me, my wonderful publisher 12 shot me, they basically asked me what I wanted to do and then shot me a few options of, they have like a person who specializes in just this and sent me kind of clips of that. They also, though, gave me the terrifying option of doing it myself. And so I sent it. in a clip of myself reading a chapter, which was just like so nerve-wracking, even though obviously like I wrote this book and I know how it goes, but just like, oh, God, I've never thought so much about needing to swallow in my entire life. So having spent like 45 minutes recording like

five pages or something, I turned it over to one of the professionals. But they were kind enough to kind of let me make that choice myself and to sort of give me veto power if I had wanted it. So I had a fair amount of flexibility, but it was, it was pretty late in the process. Like the book was done at that point. Yeah. I mean, traditionally it's been an afterthought for most, for most but the very highest level books. You know, I mean, like your very topline books at a publisher, like you said, either like superstar novelist, Stephen King's or your, or, you know, bestselling nonfiction authors. You have a discussion then, right? Is this, should we get like the top, like the number one voice talent in the world to do the new Stephen King novel?

Or do we, you know, talk about the author doing some of their own stuff for nonfiction work or, you know, do it more documentary style? Yeah, because it is a draw too, right? For, you know, the very, the very famous authors, you know, as the person who sent this question in, said, like, you know, having Michael Lewis actually read the book was a big deal. Or, like, Trebek, since we're just talking about Jeopardy, just put out his kind of memoir just a few months before he passed last year. and he read part of it, but the bulk of it was done by Ken Jennings, who of course is kind of a Jeopardy draw in his own right. So I think for people getting the audiobook, it was like, it was like, oh, yeah, like this is a perk of it. You get to listen to Trebek and Jennings do this.

Yeah, I'm not sure that they, I'm not sure that Claire McMere would have been even given the opportunity. Nobody wants those in my voice. I was not going. No, no, but I mean, this is, this is totally an outsider perspective because I haven't been in the world for a long time, but it does feel like just the existence of podcast, not just people who have their reps, but the idea that readers would rather hear the actual writer, the actual thinker, the actual researcher, say it even if they don't have

a, you know, commercial voice. Like that, I think there's just more openness to that. You know what? I had a, I have been doing a lot of audiobooks actually the last couple of years, and I, again, quote unquote read, listened to three women by Lisa Todayo, and she did a really interesting thing. I don't know if you read it, but it's basically, you know, three different stories. And each of the three stories had a different reader, but the actual author, Lisa Tadale, read the intro and I want to say the end of the book herself. So I found that really, really cool to not only have all these different voices, but to really hear from the author herself. Yeah. I mean, the other big component of this is that doing an audiobook takes up a lot of time. And I mean, for famous people and non-famous people, that's an incredible commitment to do the whole thing.

I don't know about you, but by the time, by the time I sent my book to press, I was happy to never read it again. You know what I mean? Yeah, totally. I was like, I will learn what typos are in there from angry readers six months from now. I do not need to know that this is about to happen right now. Exactly. Yeah, oh yeah, the typos thing is just, I would, yeah, never again. So yeah, I guess there's a lot to go into it.

Let's see what else we have here. All right. This is a good, this is a good, just general one. We talked about, you know, COVID restrictions being eased. When international travel starts back up again, where are you going to travel? Well, I think we've maybe talked about this. Where do you want to travel is the question. But you might have, you know, you can answer it however you want.

Like dream travel. Well, so I was supposed to get married on March 28th, 2020. I did not get married then. Canceled the wedding two weeks out, having paid all the deposits, which I personally would not recommend doing if you are ever aware that a global pandemic is about to shut down the world. Don't pay the deposits. But as a result of that, we still have not actually gotten married,

but certainly have not taken a honeymoon. And I think we had kind of imagined that at some point, maybe we would go to Italy and just have a lot of cheese. a lot of pasta, a lot of wine, and just like, it seems very nice. I haven't really, I've spent like a couple days in Rome, but that's it. So I know that's kind of a boring answer, but, um, you know, it would be, I feel like a kind of fondness to, uh, the idea of carrying out a plan that I had in the before times. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I have, you know, a family. And so there's a lot of, there's a lot of, you know, imagining bringing the kids to places and stuff. Now,

there are different shapes and sizes when this whole thing began. We talked a lot about going to sort of doing the Scotland thing and being in castles in real life and that sort of, you know, doing some of that. That is really great. My 12-year-old just really wants to go to,

you know, Sardinia for some reason. She can come with us and you guys can go to Scotland. But so, but yeah, I, I don't have a good answer. I mean, you get like, I guess at some point we got to take our, I mean, you know, our Spotify boot camp trips too. So, you know, that's all. True.

I don't know. Mid-summer, yeah. I don't know. I mean, you know, I'm a bad vacationer. I hope that my wife drags me somewhere soon. But I'm bad at executing it. I hope that I'm just more than anything, I'm glad that it's going to exist in like the the realm of imagination.

like the realm of possibility. I think it's a weight on you when you think you're, when you feel trapped, you know, but now I might never go anywhere again, but at least I'll know that I can go somewhere.

No, it'll be good. And I mean, I think there, what I am hopeful is that, you know, even going to these kind of, you know,

touristy places or places that at least see a lot of tourism, like they obviously have been hit very hard by the absence of tourists. So, you know, getting, getting a tribute to the economy,

but I think that like, there will be kind of this, this feeling of, of excitement around that, whereas maybe I'm just, that's just wishful thinking, but often, often these places seem, you know, very like, oh, God, this again, horrible Americans, they're here. That's great. Oh, nice tour bus guys. But maybe it'll be, you know, novel and nice for everybody for at least, at least a week or two. here's a good question does anybody but my father care that Mike Greenberg was hosting ESPN draft

night there was a lot of like talk about a story that you don't get into until like a couple of days like I was just avoiding until a couple days later there's so much Mike Greenberg there's so many Mike Greenberg tweets and not a lot of there there were you watching the NFL draft I did watch it it was

I mean it was kind of a strange it was a strange scene I mean the whole the whole armchair thing was really weird and I mean speaking of, you know, still being a little wary of acting like COVID is over, there were a whole lot of people in that area. And obviously they had the kind of like COVID safe area up front near the stage and that's where they were pulling people on stage from. But like in the back, I mean, people were just crammed in there. And I just, I mean, I had a lot of anxiety watching that.

And also it seems so cold. It was a very strange. I did not wish I was there is what I would say. Greenberg's a funny guy, and he comes up on this podcast from time to time, but in many ways he's like not an old media figure, but sort of a last generation media figure. But for a place like ESPN that kind of has a lot, puts a lot of stock in continuity and like, you know, the perpetuation of the old TV model, it makes a certain amount of sense that you have these big, sort of big names and lights that sort of do exactly what they want to do, you know, and, and, and you want to get as much, Marley. out of them as possible. You want, you know, you have these, these stars of sports television. If Stephen A. Smith wanted to host draft night, he probably would have been able to do it, you know, but Mike Greenberg is their sort of MC of note for, and, you know, big headline, I mean, big, big time stuff. It shouldn't be a shock that he's there, even if he's, like, not the regular host of NFL Live or whatever. But anyway, I mean, it, I thought it was fine. I mean, I don't know,

you know, I feel like we get in the weeds and judging these sorts of shows all the time. And I think that you're right. This one was a deeply weird one. And even in the best of circumstances, it's not like, I don't know. I think that every, I think that it's really easy to criticize. It's really hard to find like a better solution for a lot of things. I'm excited that they announced they're doing the next one in Vegas. And I think we were all talking about it in Slack the other day.

But I hope they do end up doing the draft island that we were promised before the pandemic. We need the draft island in Vegas next year. So I've just got my fingers crossed for that. I hope in a post-pandemic world, people still see the value in islands. Islands, a great marketing campaign, a great marketing employee. Put everybody together reality show style and just see what happens. All right, we are going to get out of here. We're going to skip the strain pun headline because we switched chairs and Brian actually

holds a very, very ironclad copyright on that gimmick. So until next week, hopefully Brian will be back. But until then, Claire, thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate you coming by. This was a lot of fun. Yeah, thank you so much for having me. We'll be back on Monday with a new episode of the press box. I have no idea what we'll be talking about,

but I'm sure it'll be fun. And, you know, as always, many, many lukewarm takes about the media. See you later, Claire. Have a good one.