The Press Box - Jason Gay on Taylor and the NFL, Michael Lewis, and Six Months Since Evan Gershkovich Was Detained

Episode Date: October 4, 2023

Bryan is joined by Wall Street Journal columnist Jason Gay to talk about the no. 1 topic in all of the NFL right now: Taylor Swift (01:46). Then, they discuss the historic ousting of Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House, negative press surrounding Michael Lewis, and the six months that have passed since Russia's unjust detainment of Jason’s WSJ colleague Evan Gershkovich (19:36). Host: Bryan Curtis Guest: Jason Gay Producer: Eduardo Ocampo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Yo, this is Jason Gough from the Full Go podcast. Me and the crew, we like to entertain you. And we're going to do more of that this football season because the bears should be more intriguing. There should be more fascination. Justin Fields. Is this the make or break year? Is DJ Moore the piece that's going to put them over the top? You can catch us on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, or when we have an emergency podcast, when we have breaking news.

Make sure you follow the full go on Spotify or wherever you get your podcast. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Press Box Final Edition. Brian Curtis of the Ringer here along with producer Eduardo Ocampo who is sitting in for Erica. Today's guest is an old friend

who has been away for far too long. He is a Wall Street Journal columnist. He is the author. Most recently, required to say most recently when someone writes multiple books. Oh yeah. Of I wouldn't do that if I were me,

Jason Gay, welcome back. to the press box. Thank you. And we didn't even need like an octogenarian media person to die to get back on the podcast. I appreciate the invitation. Well, we waited a while and seeing no new opens. People are getting too healthy in media, I think, Brian. It's really true.

It's really true. People are living longer than ever these days, which is bad news for us, I guess. Coming up on the pod today, how to cover the de-finestration of a Speaker of the House, bestselling author Michael Lewis is getting some bad press and the six-month anniversary of the outrageous arrest of Jason's Wall Street Journal colleague Evan Gershkovich. But first, Jason, on a much, much, much less serious note,

the number one topic in pro football is Taylor Swift. And you asked a pointed question in the journal. In the second column, I might add, that you wrote about Taylor Swift in the NFL, the question was this, how much Taylor Swift material can we do without completely embarrassing ourselves and our profession? How close have we gotten to that line? Well, the joke is too late, right, Brian? Like we have crossed the threshold here.

Listen, anybody who follows the Wall Street Journal closely knows that there is no low-hanging fruit of clickbait that we will not grab in the sake of commercial success. Look, this is a home run story. I've seen a little bit of pushback on this. We of course have to have the backlash. And I know there are people who are agitating that football needs to return to being football. But Brian, I don't need to tell you this. We're in show business, man. This is entertainment. And when you have a colossus like Taylor Swift colliding with a colossus like the NFL, arguably the last two slivers of the American monoculture, it is a newsworthy event. And when you see the numbers that are trickling through about how many people are watching what looked to be a terrible jet's game, ended up being a pretty good Chiefs Jets game. It's undeniable.

And so I'm going to milk this thing for as long as it's worth, Brian. I absolutely agree on the nexus of the NFL and showbiz. And I, I, agree so heartily that I wonder, is there really a backlash? Because I feel like when I look at Twitter, I see people on my timeline responding to the backlash. Yeah, that's true. But there's no quote tweet there. Is anybody really mad about this? So it's a straw backlash, like a straw man backlash. Yeah. I mean, look, any of us that record podcasts are right about football or tweet about football. Anybody's really upset that Taylor Swift is in a luxury box and the camera cuts away 17 times on a Sunday night. I know. And also, like, think about, you're in that truck at NBC

and you are tasked with trying to make a Jets Chiefs game interesting. Now, again, this game strangely became interesting on the field. But this is like a gift from the Nielsen gods, the world's most popular entertainers sitting and not just like sort of sitting and hiding behind a baseball cap, Leonardo DiCaprio style. She is very much aware of the fact that she is going to be on television for much of this game and to the point that there were advertisements for her upcoming concert film. Now, I know, Brian, I know you are not a cynical person and you are not of the belief that this is some sort of pure publicity stunt that these youngsters, might actually have feelings for each other.

But I don't care. Either way, it's fine with me. It's entirely entertaining, and it is definitely more interesting than having the 19th conversation about James Harden. No offense. No offense to every other podcast at the ringer.

You and I are old enough to remember like 90s Monday Night Football, even before Dennis Miller became an announcer. It was not unusual to have whatever celebrity was at the game come up into the booth and do a few segments with the announcers. Very famously,

the late John Lennon joining the late Howard CoSell in the booth during a game CoSell grilling Lennon about his impressions of North American football. The entire enterprise of prime time football was

meant to be again, this sort of collision between the sort of glam of the evening and the game and trying to milk all that sort of celebrity juice you can possibly get. And that is exactly the reason why games are on at 8.30 at night. That's where it came from. That was the Rune Arledge idea. And so the idea that Sunday night football, Monday night football, any football is some sort of a gust product to protect from the incursion of fame is absurd. Yes. As soon as Carrie Underwoods sings the Sunday Night Football song, we cannot talk about any other musicians. That sounds like a really, really, really hard and fast rule there. By the way, totally.

You mentioned Lenin and CoSell. Let's not forget the other great meeting in the booth between Brent Musburger and Eminem. And that's one reason I savour these moments is the awkwardness, the serious sports. people and I probably include myself and my regular co-host on this podcast in when we are then required to switch gears and try to talk about pop culture and a figure as big and important to people as Taylor Swift is. I just love, I love that look in Chris Collins wears eyes when Torrico sort of made, okay, Taylor's here and here she is. And he had that look like, wait, am I going to be lured into this conversation? am I

what do I have to know to get through the next three hours I mean they probably left a lot on the cutting room floor don't you think because they predicted I mean they expected a blood I'm sure and it certainly looked like it was going that direction then a football game broke up

but you got to figure there are all kinds of gags they were sitting there lying and wait for and it didn't happen what do you think is the conversation in the truck during the game about reaction shots. Because the one complaint that I did hear, which I think is a valid complaint,

didn't you want to see Taylor Swift's box when the Jets started making moves? Because anybody who follows the high art of the Skybox shot knows that the pinnacle is Jerry Jones, sad Jerry Jones. That is, no offense again, Brian. Ideally with sad Chris Christie sitting next to him, but please,

Sad Jerry Jones is really sort of the vanguard of the Skybox shot. And so presumably Taylor Swift is in the tank for the Chiefs. Don't you want to cut to her box when the Jets tie it 2020? And Zach Wilson is all of a sudden looking like Super Bowl 3 of Namath? So if you noticed, when Patrick Mahomes threw the interception right before the end of the first half to, I believe, C.J. Mosley, they accidentally cut to Taylor Swift during the reaction. shots. I don't think it was on purpose. He was just kind of looking to the side. But yes, absolutely endorse, sad Taylor Swift. Do you think there is an unspoken agreement or spoken, but more likely an unspoken agreement between the truck and Camp Taylor Swift that,

similar to Coach's Corner, we are going to do nothing to embarrass you. We are not going to do cutaways to you in any sort of like embarrassing scenario. Because we want to go to a lot of of games. Don't tell Brian Dable about being cut to on the sidelines in embarrassing situations. Yeah. No, I think you, I think you're absolutely right. I think there is, you know, not necessarily an agreement with her camp, but a sort of taste check with inside the truck that says, let's make sure when we show her all 17 times that it's in a flattering way, that it's in a way she would like to be shown. rather than her, you know, looking at the ground being like, wow, Mahomes is off tonight.

You know, for those of you who are out there saying, I can't believe these guys are talking about this still, this topic has a built-in finish line. I believe Taylor Swift goes off to South America on the international eras tour in November. And so you're not going to see her showing up to game, well, unless, you know, the magic of private jet travel. This is likely going to be a subplot come late November, December, and not the biggest story in sports. I mean, the other part of this, Brian, which I think is kind of hilarious, is that there was no sport story that took off in the way that the Colorado Buffaloes did the first few weeks of the college football season. I mean, it was just absurd. It was like a meteor. I mean, it just went crazy.

and then they lose. It looks like that's stopping. And all of a sudden, you know, like Superman falling from the sky, here comes Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey. It's just been a banner season for sort of like casual football fan obsessions. I always have a mom and mother-in-law test

because neither my mom nor my mother-in-law follow sports, really at all. And I'm always interested in the things they ask me about because those are the things that have punched through at a bigger pop culture level. And the two things this year have been Coach Prime, Taylor Swift. Those have been the moments. And by the way, same thing with Coach Prime. What an absolute gift to anybody who covers college football.

I mean, Colorado games are fun and everybody's talking about it. And you got like 15 storylines buried in there, including what the other coach said about Dionne Sanders. dude. When you're a Texan, like you are, when you're a Texan, do you look upon Dion in the same way that a home state constituency looks at somebody running for president? You're kind of like, I'm very familiar with this. And it's funny to watch the world wake up to this character.

It's a little interesting with him because it's almost like somebody who had been a House of Representatives member or State Senate. Senator in Georgia and then in Northern California. This is true. And then eventually made their home in Texas. So he's he's absolutely a Texan, but but you know, sort of a late comer to Texas. I don't know.

There's not, there's not quite the Troy Aitman, Emmett Smith, Michael Irvin. It's like eternal cowboydom. It's like Chappaqua cowboy. Define that. Like when the. Clinton's became New Yorkers. Oh, sure.

Okay. Yeah. Sorry. I'm just not two terms that I'd ever put together in my head in exactly that way. Three final points on Taylor. Number one, I think we may need to retire any headline or any tweet that includes the phrase Taylor's version. Oh, yes. In parentheses, we got the joke.

Yep. It's been done. Carson Daly just blew every. Taylor Punt into the sun at the beginning of the Sunday Night Football. It was almost like he was just trying to end the bit. It's like when they used the bomb to blow up the other bombs. You know, that's what that was like.

Number two, we're talking about Chiefs Jets. But the Fox game the week before where she showed up the first time was Chief's Bears. Yeah. And if any team in the NFL needs an alternate side topic for the announcers to be ready to talk about, that is not the football game, it is the Chicago Bears.

And first of all, Taylor Swift should just either go to Bears games or they should just provide a list of possible topics that you're going to get to in the second half of a Bears game. Like Killers of the Flower Moon, inflation, I mean, whatever you want to talk about. Anything but the Bears. 100%.

I mean, I believe that the Chiefs are playing on Thursday night football, not in their next game, but the week after, does that mean Al's already cramming? You know, he's sitting in the town car driving around with folklore cranking? I can't tell whether Al would be excited or just exhausted by this. But Al's the last DNA of true Monday Night Football. So, like, if anyone understands that kind of cross-promotional sizz, it's Al.

Absolutely. I mean, I feel Al had Christian Slater in the booth back in the 90s. Eminem. He had Eminem too, and I think Eminem asked to see Al. It was not the other way around. Last point. And something that people are perhaps ignoring when they're talking about sports writers, sports content people, and Taylor Swift. This summer, I'm pretty sure that Taylor Swift became the official singer-songwriter of sports writer. The title was passed from Jason Isbell to Taylor Swift. And I know. this because I looked at my timeline during the ERAs tour, which I was not fortunate enough to attend. But every single sports writer in my timeline was at the ERAs tour.

Yes. Kevin O'Connor, the ringer's very own, was at the ERIS tour. Like, everybody went. And we can talk about this Jason Isbell thing and all these male sports writers groove into that. Yeah, great. Taylor Swift is the official singer-songwriter of this industry. I think that's right. So the the, the, the dented or the chipped Les Paul guitar was passed from Springsteen to Isbel to Swift.

And now seems to be being passed over to the sphere. How did Kevin O'Connor get into opening night of the sphere? You know, I know he's a VIP, but that's a serious business. That's a, abroad is there and Kevin O'Connor. He's, he's really come up in the world. Kevin got inside the velvet ropes in the world. way no ringer writer has before. By the way, I got to call you out in one thing.

Please. You're being incredibly modest because you haven't once mentioned that you profiled Taylor Swift for Vogue. This is true. This is true. You rode around Taylor Swift's native Pennsylvania with her in an SUV. So I got to ask the most obvious dumb guy question. What is Taylor Swift like? I mean, I think that she's this incredible phenomenon as an artist.

I mean, there's just undeniable. I think Closterman said at one point, like if you don't take her seriously as a musician, you're not a serious fan of music. I mean, she's just sort of undeniable as an artist. As a person, as somebody in the public eye, she sort of reminded me a little bit of like a politician in the respect that she seems,

acutely aware of everything that comes out of her mouth. And I saw her, I guess seven years ago now, at a time in her life when, you know, it was quite a bit different than now. Even then, you know, very aware of every comment was open to interpretation and more worrisomely misinterpretation. And so, you know, she was careful with what she said. And sort of in that really talented way that, you know, people like a Tom Brady or a George Clooney can do, she can give you the essence of the Taylor Swift experience without giving you all of who she actually is. I will say this, though. It was a weekend back home in Wyosming, Pennsylvania, where she's from.

She grew up on a Christmas tree farm. I know you know all this, Brian. It sounds like a kind of thing that's fake, but it's actually true. Taylor Swift grew up on a Christmas tree farm. But she was with her parents. and after that experience, I was like, I want to do every profile of somebody around their parents because you might be able to hide who you are from me, from a reporter, from a photographer, from the media, from the paparazzi, but you are who you are around your parents.

It's just, you can't mask it. Your parents bring out who you actually are. And those were sort of the most sort of natural moments that I saw around her was that, you know, issues with her folks and like your parents don't look at her as Taylor Smith on a pedestal. She's their kid. And that was just sort of really interesting and natural. And I had never had an experience like that before. So I did a terrific job of really not answering your question. Kudos to me. So sometimes the celebrity profile move is to get the celebrity with their partner or their spouse. But you're saying even better to get them

with their parents. Because the parents were their day one. Right. I mean, they know the whole story. They were there for the whole thing. I mean, it just is incredible. That was something, you know, again, sort of never had that sort of experience of being around the person the whole time. I had interviewed parents before, gotten that perspective, but like just to sort of have them into orbit at the same time was pretty neat. Next topic. Did you watch any cable news coverage of Kevin McCarthy's ouster last night. No, I quite wisely was watching A.L. Wild Card playoff baseball, but was summoned by 50 bazillion million media alerts to what was going on.

It was not hugging CNN like you like to do. It was an interesting cable TV moment because you'll remember the last Kevin McCarthy TV night we had was a mere 270 days ago. I had forgotten all that back story. I had forgotten season one until I was like, oh yeah. Yeah. And you remember that whole thing. The interesting part was it was the last night that C-SPAN and its producers could cut

to shots they wanted to cut to. Oh, gosh. Yeah, that's right. They were not under the thumb of a Republican majority. So they were like Freddie Goodellie in the Sunday night football truck. Boom, boom, let's go to Taylor Swift up there in the box. I mean, it was an incredible night of television. Last night, slightly more stayed, but we did get some wonderful moments that I think you'll appreciate.

One is getting an ancient year like this has not happened since. Yes. Anderson Cooper said, we're talking about a day unlike any in Washington since 1910. always like a good year. We got the Wojbom, which was reported by Sean Hannity, among others, that Donald Trump is being drafted

to potentially be the next Speaker of the House. Off-sighted historical fact that you don't have to be in the House to be the Speaker of the House. Is that kind of like Tom Brady free agency rumors? Like, you got to call them. You got to make the call.

The Chats have made the call. Absolutely. And then the third one was that unbelievable piece of video of Patrick McKinney, who was the temporary speaker of the house. Oh, yes. I saw that. Yeah. Banging that gavel down. I thought the paradoxical like bow tie aggression was interesting.

Like, you know, you would think somebody with a bow tie would be a little more reserved with the gavel. But no, no, that was a Rex Ryan. let's go eat a snack, slam with a gavel. Slammed gavels don't occur that often in real life, or at least as much as they do in movies. There should be more gavels, I think, in life, right? I mean, I know that Bang's gavel has become kind of a Twitter meme, but I feel like...

Hello, Jay Kang, yes. Yeah, Jay Kang, I think it invented it. Credit to him. But don't you feel there should be just more gavels in ordinary life? Absolutely. Absolutely. We may have one on the podcast next week. That's going to be my bid to match McAfee and theatricality. Overworked Twitter joke from last night. GOP learns the hard way. Turning the base up too high blows out your speaker. Oh, I saw that one. Yeah. Thank you to Derek Burke. Also, we had some great only in journalism words last night. McCarthy is now the erstwhile speaker of the house.

Yes. Nobody says the word erstwhile, but they do put. the word erstwhile in their journalism. Also, McCarthy's Goodbye Press Conference was called a stem winder in one account. Stemwinder is a good one. Political journalism word. I almost typed and battled into a column the other day, and you, like, appeared on my shoulder, like a little tiny Brian Curtis appeared on my shoulder, shortling. Oh, you know, I had to, when I was at the Republican debate the other day,

one of our nations noted political journalists was talking to me and he said, I now just live in fear that I'm using an only in journalism word. And I said, no, no, this is a safe space here at the press box. We mean this in the most caring and compassionate way. But I think the hack is to actually introduce it to the language, like to just start saying and battled in conversation, therefore sort of taking it off the table as an only in journalism word. That's my move.

Thanks to the count of Monte Grypto and Joe Walski for adding those words to our lexicon. Got a new topic for you, which we can talk about in a very provisional way because neither one of us has read the book. Oh, okay. These critiques are based on. Michael Lewis for the first time in my memory is getting some bad press, or at least a sustained amount of bad press. We had the controversy about Michael Orr in the blind side, which was mostly about the movie. And mostly as far as Lewis went, got to the raises questions level of controversy. Now he has a new book about Sam Bankman Freed, the crypto guy, which is called Going Infinite.

It got a negative review in the New York Times the other day. And then there was a long guardian profile of Lewis by Samantha Subramanian, which talked about, the Lewis method. What did you come away with, at least provisionally, from that piece? Right. We should add that this is a conversation between two people who might read the book and think, wow, a masterpiece. All the criticism was wrong.

I think this is part of reaction to Lewis and the inevitable backlash to someone's extraordinary success. But I think what it's mostly about is the hazard of writing about a subject who is wildly in the news in real time. We saw a little bit of this actually with Walter Isaacson's book, which was kind of this impossible task of contextualizing someone who's making crazy news 16 times a day. SBF is the same thing. And by the way, it's SBF. You don't have to do the whole name anymore. But he is an actual, like, news story on an hourly basis now as this case moves to trial. And people are, have their opinion about it. It's obviously very negative. I think there was this expectation that Michael Lewis would come dunking down upon the, you know, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, in a very Michael Lewis way, he does not do that. You know, you know, this is a guy who has been. You know, you know, you know, this is a guy who has been,

built a career out of being heretical. But more importantly, finding people who were out of the news, who were doing heretical things in technology and industry, in sports, but weren't sort of the main protagonist. And SBF is that 100%. And so I think it's a very challenging topic for him, for anyone. And in media appearances, you know, he's not the most guarded person. I actually kind of find like his off-the-cuffness kind of charming in an era where people are

extremely protective of what they say. But there's no doubt about it that he sometimes digs himself into a little bit of trouble in his Michael Lewis way of his candor. Because look, he's somebody who spends, you know, parts of his lifetime with someone hoping for the kind of candor. so I think he actually feels compelled to return the favor when he had doing the speaking. Yeah, one thing he suggests in this Guardian profile in passing

is that Michael Orr's turn against the Tuey family is based on head injuries that Orr might have sustained while playing football. To which, okay, I guess candor's one word for that. The other is, what the hell are you talking about, dude? Yeah. I want to pull apart what you said. The SBF thing happening in real time

is a great point. I think the counter to that or the addendum to that would be Michael Lewis clearly is enjoying this. This book is time to be released on the first day of the trial. Yes, of course. You don't get a $5 million deal

for an Apple series without seeing a word of the book as the Guardian reports without it being something so hot and in the news. No question. And remember the whole wave of when the first criminal investigations

were happening of FTCS and all of a sudden it was revealed that Lewis had been in the company of Bagman Fried for weeks, if not months. And the universe reaction was like, of course he was. Of course he was. I don't know. I'm very interested to read it because I think that that is an actual genuine thing that happened in the course of writing the book. I think that he entered this book, you know, expecting that, you know, this was another version of a Billy Bean, someone who was completely changing the world, and yet it changes on a dime almost instantly. And that presents all kinds of journalistic challenges.

And so I'm curious to see how he wrestles with that. I think all of us who have read him and envied Michael Lewis, I think one thing that was so interesting when we heard that he had been embedded with SBF, was this idea of, wow, does he change his approach now? If the approach, as you said, was I'm going to go find the heretic that is telling you that everything everybody else is doing is wrong. And that's going to be my hero. If the heretic then turns into the accused criminal, do I stay with approach number one? Or do I completely turn this thing around and write another kind of very familiar business book?

Which is how it all came apart. Why this thing was just a complete fraud, allegedly, to begin. end with. I don't think he's interested in those traditional arcs, right? You know, the good guy gone bad. I think that he sees things very gray. You know, that's historically been the kind of material and individual he's been drawn to. And, you know, he's creating a dust up in some of these appearances by not diminishing the charges against Fried, but saying, but but saying that these are, you know, not, this is not a Ponzi scheme. It's not a classic. like Ponzi made-off-style fraud, that there was, in fact, a genuine business being built

and maybe playing into this idea of him being this clumsy person who got in over his head, which I think people really don't like hearing that at all. And certainly the government disagrees strongly that that's the nature of what happened. But it's very on brand for him to be exploring the sort of, you know, third interpretation here. I was thinking of his approach last night as I was reading this piece. And there is something for him that has to be so happy and comfortable about finding these Michael Lewis characters to get it again. One, because as Subramanian points out in her piece, it's almost always someone people have never heard of before the book comes out. Yes.

Or in Billy Bean's case is like a lowish-wadage. A minor figure. Yes, yes. So you are essentially painting the first picture of this person for almost every single reader, which gives him lots of freedom as a writer to do these big brushstrokes that if you were profiling, let us say Taylor Swift or Vogue, you would not quite have the ability to do. That's one. And then the other thing is, when you find the heretic, the person who tells you that everybody else is doing it wrong, you get

to write a positive portrayal of this person, warts and all, quirks and all, a very, very positive portrayal. But then at the same time, there is tension in your book because you get to write a hit piece of the entire rest of the industry. That's true. Billy being good. Other talent acquisition of people in baseball, dumb, bad, benighted. Same thing with finance. Same thing with COVID-19 and the people who were looking at what we do about the pandemic. So it's this place where you're somewhere between a positive piece and a hit piece and you actually get to do them both,

which gives your book this incredible narrative tension, but also allows you to create a hero. Think of the tightrope that he walked with something like the Big Short, where he is, I don't want to say venerating, but he is effectively making, you know, main characters, anti-heroes, out of individuals who bet against the housing market, who foresaw this economic calamity,

which caused a great deal of pain and suffering. Now, he's putting it in the context of an incredible amount of bank mismanagement and just hubris on the part of large institutions. But those are typical heroes either. So, again, I think he is drawn to those kinds of stories. I don't think any of the things that strike you or I as being problematic or difficult present themselves the same way to him. Does that make sense? Totally. I mean, this is a guy who went out to the Republican primary field in, I believe, 1996 and decided that he wanted to spend the most time with Mory Taylor. Who was, God, like a sub-A Hutchinson style character for those who missed the 1996 Republican primary.

He was a tire magnate, if I remember right. That's right. All right, before we go, let us talk about your colleague, Evan Gershkevich. September 29th was the six-month anniversary of his arrest in Russia on patently ridiculous charges of espionage. He has been in a Russian jail ever since with some but not much contact with his lawyers and other officials. What has it been like inside the journal for you and your colleagues over the

the last six months. Well, I want to be very clear up at the front that I did not. Evan, Evan had been working in our London Bureau. He had been relatively new to the paper. I work in an entirely different part of the world, an entirely different department, so I didn't interact with him at all. All I do know is that a great many people who are incredibly talented, brilliant editors, reporters, just thought the world of him. And the proof is in the pudding in the work that he was producing overseas and in Russia and the type of vital stories that he was telling at a very, very fragile moment in that country. You know, you talked about just the travesty of these charges and the fact that, you know, not just the Wall Street Journal and Evan, but the United States

government has come forward and, you know, declared them to be of no substances and declared it to be him to be wrongfully detained, which is an important designation. All I can tell you from the way that journal people talk about this is that we just want him home. We just want the guy back in his home country, you know, maybe doing what he loves, but just back among his friends and his loved ones and family. It's an agonizing situation for them, you know, most acutely, right? Think of his family. Think of his parents who emigrated from the Soviet Union to the United States. it's a terrible situation.

And the silver lining is that a media organization, you know, to use the old phrase, we do buy a rink by the barrel, we do have the ability to keep his name in our publication. And I know everyone's grateful for people across the media spectrum, rivals, competitors, people in all different walks of life who have written about his story, who have talked about Evan, the human being behind. these things can, you know, like, this is not the first time this sort of thing has happened, unfortunately, Brian, but like, you know, they can become kind of sterile political standoffs. And what we really want to underline is, as a person who, you know, incredible personality,

incredible talent was a great athlete, which I wrote about last week, they had a soccer game in his honor and David's adoptive hometown of Princeton, New Jersey. you know, he's a person. And it's really important to tell those stories, to show his picture, and to give him, you know, every means necessary to get back home. I remember when he first was arrested and a lot of journalists changed their avatars to free Evan now. I notice that Maggie Habermans still says that even today here in October, six months and change later. Is there something journalists who aren't on this beat, who are not writing about stories like he is every day, is there something people can do to keep him front and center and to lobby for his release and return home? Well, absolutely, there are a whole set of stories and updates and information pieces that the journal has on its website in a very prominent place.

So you go to WSJ.com. You can learn the whole story, the updates to the story. You have options in there. I think if you want to send a note to Evan, there are means in which he can receive messages from family, friends, and supporters. But I think, you know, again, it's using that megaphone. It's great that a person with the reach of Maggie Haberman has been so steadfast that way. There are a lot of other people who are doing similar kinds of things.

You know, there's a feeling of, you know, distance, obviously. geographically, a lot of mystery about the nature of how it all works over there, and a feeling of helplessness that can come, right? You know, and talking to Evans' friends and former teammates last week in New Jersey, you know, they wrestle with the fact that, you know, this guy was in their lives very recently and all of a sudden has been snatched away from them. What can they do? And I think that what we keep coming consistently back to is the idea of making people aware,

awareness is a big thing. Governments pay attention to public opinion. Governments pay attention to visibility. And that's just a critical component of this. And we feel blessed that we're in an industry where that's an option. All right. You are now commanded to read the book, to read the column in the Wall Street Journal, Jason's version, and to listen next time he appears here on the press box, which I hope will be sooner than later.

and gay. Thanks for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate it. Thank you. Bring Evan home. That's the press box. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Eduardo Ocampo. Shoemaker and I return Monday. As always, with more lukewarm takes about the media. Have a fantastic weekend.