The Press Box - Mailbag Episode: The Best Biden Books, Overlong Docs, and an “Embattled” Update

Episode Date: March 25, 2021

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker are answering your Listener Mail in a mailbag episode of 'The Press Box.' They answer questions about upcoming Biden books (2:50), the “embattled” journalism debate (16:45), Curtis's high school yearbook signed by the one and only Shoemaker (34:15), and much more! Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Ringers Charles Holmes and co-host Grace Spellman present the most notorious new podcast in the industry, the Ringer Music Show. Every Tuesday, they'll bring you the latest news, the hottest takes, and the deepest reporting about the wild world of music and the chaotic industry that creates it. Check out the Ringer Music Show exclusively on Spotify. David, NBA insider Adrian Wojnerowski got a tip this week and actually broke a trade while he was on ESPN talking. about the trade deadline. What I want to know is what would be the ultimate example of a journalist doing all their expected jobs at once? Oh, man, nobody has the expectations like Woj does right now. He is in a very particular place.

But I mean, is it like, are you thinking like when you see somebody typing out a story on their laptop from like Media Row where they're like otherwise, where like the person next to them is doing an interview, like that sort of thing? Or like, what would be the... What if Woj was on ESPN given an update about all the trades and was also doing a long-form podcast? He was just like recording his intros.

Being followed by a camera crew for a documentary that's going to air on the over-the-top platform. Okay, there's that, right? That's one. So he could be breaking news on Twitter, being interviewed on ESPN, being followed for a documentary about himself, maybe a 30-for-30 type thing for ESPN Plus,

writing for the website. Should we throw that in there? Well, yeah, or at least like dictating the piece that's going to be written to somebody. 50s newsman style. Got it a hot exclusive here. Stop. The Nets have made another trade. Continues. Spelling out the names. Okay, I got that too. Is there anything else he could possibly do at ESPN these days? I mean, yeah, I guess he could be hosting a show or he could be, um, uh, uh, doing a radio hit. Yeah.

What about like he's talking to Pablo Torre and actually doing the next day's edition of the daily at the same time? We could do picture and picture. It'd be the new ESPN game show. Coming up on our show today, we answer a mega mailbag of listener mail, including the question, why is every documentary and produced podcast

twice as long as it needs to be? All that more on the press box. A part of the ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers. Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. David, it's Thursday, and that means it's time for what? Listener mail? That's right.

That is right. I think that's right. A whole bag of listener mail. Let's get right to our pal Adam Wren, who asks which reporters slash reporters are most likely to produce the best book-length account of the Biden administration. I feel like, did we go over this before? I think we went off post-Trump books, and this is a slightly different question. But can I throw out a semi-hot take just to start us off?

Yeah, go ahead. Is there a chance that Joe Biden's political book kryptonite? And it's going to be really, really hard to write a best-selling book about the Biden administration? Yeah, that wouldn't be that shocking, right? I mean, this is the... I mean, Trump was the anomaly, right? And Barack Obama, obviously, spawned a whole little subgenre of books about him on either side,

but we're not that far from a world where, like, the Woodward book about each, or books about each presidential term was, like, the only one that really mattered, right? And like former, said, and then former administration, you know, memoirs or whatever, you know, your old secretary of state write something after leaving. I mean, that would matter, too.

it wouldn't shock me at all. I remember Dave Weigel, sometime during the campaign, I think doing an item about how even the right wing regnery types were not churning out Joe Biden books at the rate that they were churning out Hillary books, Obama books,

certainly Bill Clinton books back in the day. So that's another interesting aspect of it. What if, like, Byron York is not working on a Joe Biden book right now? And he's just sort of missing a lot of the literature and perhaps I use that term loosely that a president gets, even if it's not a down the middle, big political reporter with from a newspaper type of book.

Yeah. Yeah. I just don't, you know, I think it would, it would, the kind of, I think what Joe Biden ran on was this sort of return to normalcy,

right? And the sort of low key presidency and the subject matter. I mean, the, you know, the laws that he passed, the, the,

the, he fights for what's going to define the presidency, not the, not the man who's in the White House. Yeah, there are a number of campaign books still on the way that might show us some Joe Biden ride, Olivia Nuzzi and Ryan Liz's book, which I now see is scheduled for 2022. John Hylaman is allegedly writing a campaign book. Edward Isaac DeVier of the Atlantic has a book coming out in May. So we'll probably get pieces of Joe Biden, or at least the Biden campaign in those books. Are you upset that Seamus Heaney? died in 2013 and cannot pay Joe Biden back for constantly quoting him by writing a Joe Biden book.

Like a poetic hagiography? Is that the idea? It's just like some epic, epic poem about the triumph of Biden. I mean, I would read that. That's what they, so they should just commission these things. Let's get, let's be like old timey American myth making. Let's just find some grand old poet to just like, just, you know, write the like the battle cry of Joe Biden. I do think there's potential for something you brought up a second ago, which is the staff member, semi-a-stranged staff member writing the dishy book about Joe Biden in the mold of George Stephanopoulos, Bob Reich during Clinton. That could definitely happen. Joe Biden does seem to inspire more loyalty than somebody like, say, Bill Clinton did, at least so far. But given like the

cross currents in the Democratic Party right now and on the left, I could totally see somebody saying, you know what, I went in with high hopes. We didn't get done what I wanted to get done. Here's what happened. Yeah. I mean, and regardless of what we're saying now, this goes to what you're saying. I think that there's a chance for a, you know, sharp turn at midterm time, right? I mean, if Democrats lose seats, lose control, if it doesn't, or regardless, if it seems like there, if the perception is that this has been a sort of ineffectual presidency at that point, I think that, you know, I mean, if you look at, you know, I mean, if you look at,

when you're looking ahead to the next election, we've talked about this before, the names that are at the top of the popular polls don't usually reflect who ends up being there, right? I mean, it's usually people will come out of the, come from out of the woodwork, I mean, come from relative obscurity and sort of claim that role.

The difference in Democratic Party is that like the sort of the opposition has a real face with a real political future, and that's AOC, right? I don't think she's going to write a book that's going to be, you know, that's going to go at Joe, Biden, but there is like a sort of market for, you know, leftist Democrats. And I bet, I mean, it wouldn't

shock me at all if there were, you know, books that kind of came at Biden from, there will definitely be books that attack the Biden presidency from that side. And it wouldn't surprise me if they gained a sort of cultural currency that they haven't traditionally had. Other than like the Obama's or maybe even Trump himself is AOC, the most valuable political memoir out there right now? Yeah, sure. I mean, because there's, you know, I don't know how much story she has to tell, but there's certainly a lot of unknown, or at least a lot of people, you know, I mean, she's told her

her life story in pieces and whatever, but just to have it down, I can't imagine, almost separate from the content of the book. I can't imagine anybody that would kind of, you know, get bigger lines at the Barnes & Noble signing. Totally. Oh, my God. I mean, that would be closer to the Michelle Obama. arena show than your typical political memoir line at the Barnes and Noble that maybe goes out the door.

We have been on kind of an amazing run of presidents that inspire books. Donald Trump, no explanation necessary. Barack Obama, starting way back with the David Marinus, David Remnick run at the beginning and then going all the way through his presidency down to like Jonathan Chate at the very end. George Bush, largely because of the Iraq war. and 9-11 absolutely inspired a ton of books. Bill Clinton, largely because of impeachment and some of those disaffected staffers we talked about

inspired a lot of books. You really have to go back to HW as a one-termer who just was not like a literary gold mine for presidency. So Joe Biden would definitely be something of an outlier there. This is from Rudy Clanknik. I love this question. Is it me or is every documentary about twice as long as it needs to be? I'm as interested in creepy hotels,

the origins of the whack jobs running Q&N and college admission scandals just like the next guy. But these documentarians must get paid by the minute. Yeah, they actually do sort of. They don't get paid by the minute per se, but they, I mean, just about every platform has constantly shifting, but,

you know, significant, I mean, serious guidelines. but how long they think the optimal viewing experience is. And if you go to Netflix and you're like, yeah, I know that we talked about an eight episode documentary about this murder and there,

but there's really only the content for four, Netflix is not going to say okay, right? I mean, they're going to, they might say our algorithms have changed and we decided the ideal number is five, not eight, and so shoot for that, but they're not going to do, there's not going to be less, the documentary,

the documentary is not going to get shorter, because, you know, because of artistic consideration. But yeah, I mean, there's just so much of a thirst for these things that it's, it's easy to understand why there's more and more. I mean, I think, I feel like half the documentaries I watch are way too long, but when I love a documentary, what do you always leave saying? Man, I could have watched eight more hours of that, you know, I could have, like, I would love to just see the footage that was on the cutting room floor.

If you could have, Brian, if I sent you a DVD with like 100 hours of, you. of interview outtakes from the last dance, you would watch that immediately, right? I would say, why didn't you send me 101 hours of outtakes? No, I mean, this is a platform thing. Is it not? Yeah.

Because in the old days, like, I want to make a 10-hour documentary about whatever. Well, sorry, movie theaters don't show 10 hours where the documentaries. Or you'd have to book five separate Sundays on HBO in a row. And HBO might do that for a few mega-documentaries, but they're not going to do that for every documentary. Well, guess what?

Now there's Netflix. You have all the time in the world. And they just want to keep you on Netflix, as you say. So they want that eight-part documentary. And by the way, can we rope long-form podcasts into this discussion? Every single long-form podcast, with the exception of the great ones over here at the ringer, are way too long. They're too long.

There are very, very few that I've said, that was the right length. usually even the great ones I get into like episode six and I'm like we could have lost episode six. No, I'm a shorter as better person, but I feel I feel that way almost every single time. Listen, this is obviously an oversimplification, but it's hard to, there's basically no such thing as a documentary or long form podcast that needs to be 10 episodes long that you could possibly pitch concisely enough to get made. Right? It's almost, they're almost contradictory. Yeah, I mean, I feel like some of the, when, when Slate has, okay, it's David Duke or it's the Iraq War or Watergate. Okay, that's a big topic.

Yeah. That's a big book. That's a big podcast series. But when I hear somebody got murdered one time, I don't necessarily know that I'm going to need eight parts to unpack that whole story. I just don't. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it works. But often it doesn't.

This is from Corbin Dubois. I've been seeing a lot of don't share the name and info about the shooter with recent events, referring, of course, to the murders in Atlanta and Boulder. How should the media be covering these events and still communicate the reasons these terrible events are happening? Many times the beliefs they hold are a big part of the reason why. I think you and I both, David, are pretty safe and saying we're against glamorizing the people doing the killings either on purpose or accidentally. that's obvious. The argument is, does the media give these people too much attention and infamy and then inspire people to do the same thing because they are seeking that kind of attention

and infamy? And it's interesting because on the one hand, there is obviously, I think, a very notable public interest in finding out who did these things, who they were and why. You know, there is not really a world you can live in where it's like there was a mass shooting in your hometown. We can't tell you who did it. We can't tell you who got where they got the gun. We can't tell you these facts because a lot of those facts turn out to be facts that are important in inspiring policy. Like, do we need to make new gun laws? Do we need to change the safety regulations at schools?

Whatever it is. It's often wrapped up in all that. And I think the point most people make, and there was a really good 2019 New York Magazine article about this, is the media overusing images of the shooter, the shooter's name. And can you just take that down several notches? Yeah. So you don't wind up making them the focal point rather than the victims of the crime. Mm-hmm. And there's a lot of obviously countervailing forces in media, right?

I mean, I feel like the past two have been handled relatively well in that regard, right? But you understand, I mean, even, you know, absent the specific facts, you understand why journalistic outlets that are used to reporting facts as they receive them and also, you know, outlets that are in a constant SEO battle with everybody else out there trying to get, you know, clicks and being the first one of the search results. You know, I mean, there's a lot of reasons why you would do the opposite. But yeah, I think that it's, I think that taking it down a couple of notches is exactly the right point and is the sort of, um, low key middle ground answer that it's sometimes really hard to get across to people, right? I mean, it's just hard to, it's hard to convey to somebody.

There's not like a hard and fast rule here. We just have to sort of be like human and tasteful about this. The New York Magazine article had a great, a couple of great examples, but I love this one. was from the San Diego Union Tribune. They made a new policy that when they do an editorial that involves a mass shooting, they don't mention the shooter's name in the editorial. So the news pages of the paper will, in a lot of cases, mention the name because that's news, that's happening, who did this, you're answering basic questions for the reader.

But if you're doing an editorial about, hey, we need tougher gun laws, you don't need to mention that person's name again. It's not even really germane to the subject. you can simply refer to the shooting, refer to the victims, however you want to do it. Yeah. And you could just imagine the same thing for cable news, right? At the beginning, probably in the immediate aftermath, there is a time where we need to show you the mugshot of who did this. We need to mention the name.

But day two and day three as we cover this, we might not need to as much. But again, you're right. It's a kind of subtle solution that maybe doesn't quite, it's just hard to explain. but it's certainly something news organizations can do. David, I have an embattled watch for you. Oh, on this program, we contend that the word embattled is actually fake

and only exists in journalism. Nobody says, I'd love to introduce you to my embattled son, David. That does not happen in real life. We got a page six headline this week that reads, Embattled Bachelor host Chris Harrison hires L.A. power lawyer. Chris Harrison is embattled.

Jake Christie and WM. Can point us to a New York City police officer who the AP says, quote, has been arrested twice for alleged brutality and was arrested again Sunday. Now, no conviction on those charges, at least yet. So the AP's Twitter headline said that officer was embattled. We also got an amazing chart. And I encourage you to look at this in our Google Doc here from Stephen Hockey and Tony J. I believe this chart is Australian in origin, given the spellings. But it has a list of the journalistic adjectives you apply to politicians as they get in trouble. So when we're not quite in trouble yet, the politician is colorful.

They're saying stuff that's on the line, right? Nobody's quite objecting. We're still all writing it down to journals. Oh, isn't that a funny quote? Then they become controversial. Right. then under pressure, we might say under fire here in America, troubled, then beleaguered, then embattled,

then former, and finally, disgraced. I like that. Yeah. So you start out as a colorful politician, you end as a disgraced politician. That's fantastic. We should keep track of this and add more words to the list. This is from Thomas M. Hill Jr.

with the NHL firing referee Tim Peel for his hot mic comments in a Tuesday night game, should all leagues mic up or demike their officials? D. Mike might save them from embarrassment, but mic up may increase transparency. I don't know if you saw this, but there was a Predator's Red Wings game this week. Tim Peel, this referee got caught saying on the hot mic after a tripping penalty in the second period, it wasn't much, but I wanted to get a fucking penalty against Nashville early. basically admitting that all penalties are not exactly called strictly based on whether I saw the penalty, whether it rose to the level of a penalty, etc.

Now, wasn't Tim Peel's mistake just saying what we all know is true into the hot mic? Yeah. And I mean, I think that, like, everybody hates the refs, right? I don't think there's any pro-ref contingency amongst fans of any sport. Even if they were unobjectionably, even if they were, rest for robots, you know, we would hate. It's like everything that surrounds officiating, right? Everybody beats the drum for instant replay and football until we get it. Now everybody's trying to get, you know, everybody desperately hates every decision that's made via instant replay.

It almost made matters worse, right? I think that you're right. He's saying stuff we already know. And there's this sort of objective way in which what he said isn't really problematic, right? I mean, what you want the referees to do is, well, I guess to call things right down the middle, but you want them to manage the game. They're there to, like, give us a presentable version of the game and have it not devolve into chaos. Clearly, they're going to work a little bit outside the lines to do that because they're human beings.

But, yeah, as far as the bigger question goes, I mean, if somebody asked me to, mic up to do my job every day, I think I would probably put in my notice. But I think Thomas sort of brings up an interesting point, which is that how much transparency do we sports fans really want? Because if you interviewed the refs after a football game, they say, hey, look, I called pass interference once, but they grabbed him on every play. And if I called it on every play, the game would just, would take four and a half hours. So at some point, I stopped calling pass interference. That would be the truth.

But if we knew that, we would all lose our collective shit. Yeah. We just would be like, wait a second. That guy just cost my team like 100 penalties. But surely those kinds of decisions, you know, well beyond like, is that a penalty or is that not a penalty? It goes into every single game ever played by referees. Yeah. So I think part of this is like a media thing and we catch these guys on the mics and stuff.

but part of this is just a sports fan thing. We say we want transparency, but I don't know that we really do want full transparency. No, probably not. And listen, and like I said, nobody likes the referees. As far as how much we really need to be, how much information we really need to have

about every single second of a game, I mean, everybody would love to hear their favorite players miced up for a whole games, but all we take is for one favorite player to get suspended for something they said before every fan would just be saying, take away the microphones, let these guys play. I know one person that likes referees.

Our friend Adrian. Really? Yeah, he was objectively pro referee. The only person I've ever known. Now a 508 high school football in Texas. Well, there might be a little bias at play there, but yeah, okay, that's fine. No, he was always, when we watch a football game,

and he was a huge Cowboys fan, but he always took a really special interest in the referees and an admiring interest. But that was the only person I ever met who fit that description. All right, David, let's take a break for the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. Somebody on Twitter wrote me this week and said, can you explain what you mean by overworked Twitter joke of the week? And I was like, don't I explain it every time we do the feature?

But I'm happy to explain further if anyone still doesn't understand. David, according to the AP, Dan Snyder, the owner of the Washington football team, is, quote, buying out the team's minority owners in a move that gives him total control. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write, is this what everybody meant by the Snyder cut? Thanks to Salaris Prime and Daniel D. Clark for that. Major Biden, the president's German Shepherd, returned to Washington from his brief exile in Delaware. after he nipped a secret service agent. It was an overwork Twitter joke to say Major Biden is out of the doghouse.

Thanks to the drizzle. And finally, David, controversial remarks from Golden State Warriors Guard Andrew Wiggins Monday about the coronavirus vaccine. Quote, I don't really see myself getting it

anytime soon unless I'm forced to. Wiggins said. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, we finally found the shot Andrew Wiggins won't take. we would have also accepted Wiggins doesn't take high percentage shots. Thanks to Eric, Ethan Carter, and Evan. If you gave us some mandatory ringer NBA talk, congrats.

You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, notebook dump. Let's continue with listener mail from our pal Dan Diamond. What are your favorite embedded reporter stories or books where a journalist takes you inside a previously unknown world? I remember John Feinstein's a season on the brink. and David Simon's homicide a year on the killing streets as two very good early reads.

David, do you have favorite immersive books? Oh, man. Or I should say embedded books. I'm going to think of more as this conversation goes on. At the top of my head, the last shot, Darcy Frey. I mean, he was fully embedded in Coney Island High School basketball. Can we do the Darcy Frye double play here too? Because he asked for articles.

Do you remember the article he wrote about air traffic controllers? Oh, yeah. That became the movie Pushington, which I don't want to see because I don't want to ruin the experience. That piece, which was in the New York Times magazine in 1996, it's called Something's Got to Give, is incredible. And he talks about the stress the air traffic controllers are under. And they have this term whenever they freak out, which is called going down the pipes. And nobody wants to go down the pipes because they have like the most stressful, job in the world, that's a great piece of embedded journalism.

Yeah. God, there's so many. There was such a heyday and I'm blank on everything. Salvation on Sound Mountain is a really, I love that back in the day, Dennis Covington. It's a fantastic book about snake handling and healers. How about the whole Ted Conover opus? Oh, yeah. New Jack, coyotes, rolling nowhere.

Really good embedded reporting. I'd love to have him on the pod sometime to talk about. about one of those books. I don't know. What else do you have? That's my list for now. But we will think of more and please suggest more on our Twitter account. We'll throw it up there. This is from A.J. Schneider.

Is Megan McCain actually doing a bit at this point? And the joke is on all of us. A day after the March 16th murders in Atlanta, McCain, who is one of the hosts of the view, tweeted, Stop Asian Hate. John Oliver in a typically inspired bit. Pointed out that last year, Megan McCain was saying it was

okay for Donald Trump to call the coronavirus the China virus. If the left wants to focus on PC labeling, this virus is a great way to get Trump reelected. I don't have a problem with people calling it whatever they want, she said. After the Oliver segment, McCain's rep apologized. Then, on the view this week, McCain said, we've only had one Asian American host co-hosts this show. So does that mean one of us should be leaving at some point because there's not enough representation? we're talking about is identity politics more important than qualifications of the job

leading to Whoopi Goldberg giving one of her now trademark deep breaths after Megan McCain completes a thought. I want to ask you something. Should there be a part of media called the Megan McCain zone where you and I only see what the commentator says when it has been harvested by media matters or someone on Twitter? Because I know we're there with a lot of Foxos, but I feel that should have a name. We're not actually watching this day to day. We're just getting this as Twitter content every few days when they say something like this. Catch it on the rebound, sort of.

You know, my temptation when you ask the question was to say that there's no way she could possibly be doing a bit. But in a larger sense, that's the goal, right, is to go viral one way or the other. I mean, Megan McCain is not going to, Megan McCain is not going to go viral by saying something that conservatives approve of. There's very little virality in potential for something Megan, when you do the Venn diagram of something Megan McCain might actually say on television and a thing that would go viral in conservative circles, there's no overlap there.

But she can go viral saying stuff like this. And as, you know, it can get you fired justifiably. But if you don't get fired, you know, he probably gave a lot more eyeballs on you than you did before. This is from Jason McGenzie. How does one become a friend of the show for a podcast? Is it afforded to all former guests? Is it a designation that means friend of the host with a little journalistic remove? Relatedly, when do we get a proper Scott Tobias interview?

To take the second part first, Scott Tobias is welcome any. time here. A true friend of the show. There's nothing, there's also nothing better than just putting out the open invitation on the podcast because he, his options now are to, I guess, DM or text one. I don't think I have his phone number. It texts one of us directly, or just be humiliated. So the, um, the friend of the show thing is funny to me because I don't actually, and I think I think I said that about a couple of journalists as we were going through these questions, but I always just say our pal when it's any name I recognize

from past listener mailbags folks we have an incredibly low bar for a friend of the podcast here we can't afford to be picky if you help us out you too can be a friend of the podcast yeah yeah it's David and I aren't like the popular kids at school that are rejecting people

no no everybody come in our club oh please you want to be our friend great you're in this is from Ken Barrett probably too late for a listener question, but what's your typical selection order when hitting up a used bookstore? Because I was at half-priced books here in Fort Worth, Texas last night. And I was posting some pictures.

You know how I like to find the God bless used bookstores, you know, just thing you can only find at a used bookstore pick and put it on Twitter? Of course, yeah. I was doing it. So can I give you my order? Yeah. Sports, travel.

if there's a media section, I'll also hit that. Though at the generic used bookstore, that's likely to be just the Anculture Bill O'Reilly backlist. So that's a quick visit. But my first stop at a used bookstore, and tell me if you agree with this, is the specialty section of that particular used bookstore. Yeah.

What do they have? There's this great one in Albuquerque called Page 1 that has this amazing western, southwestern section. I go there first because I'm going to find something I can't find at any other bookstore. at half price last night it was a section called Texana which was just all these books

about Texas and Dallas and Fort Worth and stuff it was right up front usually that section is right up front but that's my first stop then the sections where I'm likely to find familiar things with other used bookstores around the country what is your route David

the specialty section is really huge and you don't always know going in right but if you know if you're familiar with the store you do you know there's a great used bookstore, expansive use bookstore in Charlotte, North Carolina called, I think it's called book buyers. And it's a, they, and they just happen to have like an incredible regional section. And it's not just North Carolina. It's sort of like like low country, like southwest or southeast sort of like all kinds of

stuff. And I found some just insane cool stuff, just by nosing around through there. But as someone, I mean, in a more general way, I, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I spend more time on the, on the fiction side of the story than the nonfiction, at least compared to you. But as a general game plan, I divide and conquer. I'll go to like the most manageable section first, not knowing when I'll have to leave for whatever reason. So I'll like check out, you know, mysteries before just literature or literary fiction, right? Because I can look at every single spine in the mystery section if it's, you know, if it's a smaller one, if it's one shelf or whatever. same thing with science fiction then I'll kind of maybe if I had time step back and just start

nosing through the bigger ones but sports yeah and then the nonfiction breakdown is key you know some places have if it's just like US history then I'm probably not going to spend any time there but if they haven't broken if they haven't broken out by sub subjects then I could spend a lot of time there and you're right you're talking about the and culture stuff the quality of the the quality of the contents of the store you know is it makes a huge difference. I mean, the difference between a well-cureated true crime section and, you know, a bunch of mass market books about Charlie Manson victims or something is, you know, it's, it could be night and day. And so it's a lot of it's just up to the, up to the, you know,

the buyers and the shelvers. I find there's a couple of tells. One of them is, do you have a shelf at least for different countries when I go into the like the history section, nonfiction section. Is there a shelf that says Mexico and one that has Europe and one that has Asia, one that has those kinds of things? Yeah. That's a, that's a sign that we're getting somewhere and that we're likely to find good stuff. The mystery section is a great tell because is it just going to be John Grisham and a couple of used Ait Conan Doyle books? Are we actually going to find things that are interesting there? I was in the shipwrecks ocean exploration section yesterday. Yes. And somebody had put a mark.

Lilla book. You remember Mark Lilla from a few years ago? Oh, yeah. Shipwrecked mind in that book, which I'm pretty sure is not about actual shipwrecks. And anybody that was into like treasure diving would be very disappointed by buying a political tract from Mark Lilla. But that was in the, that was there. Finally, David, a question from me. Yes, me.

Hosted the show. Brian, you're back home in Fort Worth. What have you been reminded of about the way David Sonson, you were high school yearbooks. Oh, so glad you asked. Oh, my God. So remember how people had a bit whenever they signed a high school yearbook? Like that day, they brought like a really thick green marker or something so they didn't

look like the pens that everybody else were using. David had his own bits. Junior year, David, this was what you did to stand out. You signed my yearbook upside down. Oh, man. Wasn't that cutting edge back in 95? In 96, you signed it in kind of a spiral, like you started in the center and then you started writing sentences that spiraled out. And then you drew and with marker, and by the way, I'm really glad that I still have this a illustration of the former professional wrestler, Hacksaw Jim Duggan.

Without any, not for any particular reason, right? No. There wasn't any Haxel references in what I wrote. No. It was just kind of like a shared interest between the two of us. Yeah. But I can look at that. And if anybody ever comes to me and says, hey, I'm writing a long article about David Shoemaker, when did you have an inkling that he could be a great wrestling writer, the best wrestling writer that ever exists? I'm like, oh, if I got a picture for you right here in my high school yearbook. Now, I also told David this before somewhere, and I actually couldn't find it last night. I had a picture. I had a picture for you. I had a picture for you. I had. have the literary magazines from when we were in high school that David wrote for. And that's my version of Compromont. David ever pisses me off. I'm going to go find the poems. I'm going to do just, I'm not going to invite David on the press box that day. I'm just going to do an hour long reading over and over again. Oh, man, now I know. Isn't it crazy, though, because like I, it didn't seem like I was doing a demonstrably more embarrassing thing with my time when we were in high school and yet you wouldn't be like appalled for me to read articles from the pantherette.

Oh, oh, let's just tell. There we got it. Turns out double compromise. Let's just call. Never mind. You would be embarrassed. Okay. I think so. I think so. By the way, I was looking at all the generic yearbook signatures too last night. Remember the generic yearbook signature? Hey, David, you're a great guy. You kept me laughing in algebra class all year. Hope you have a great summer and stay in touch. You know what it reminded me of? It reminded me of the way. It reminded me of the way. journalists praise each other's articles on Twitter? David, you kept me laughing all year,

was the original, quite the lead by David Shoemaker. It really was. That's where everybody learned it. All right, it's time for David Shoemaker guesses the strained pun headline. Yeah.

Thursday's headline about Sister Jean at the NCAA tournament was none and done. Today's headline comes from two guns. It's from Bloomberg Business Week. I'll give you the magazine summary. quote, America's COVID swab supply

depends on two cousins who hate each other. Three weeks before the White House called this company, one of the cousins filed a lawsuit against the other to dissolve the entire business. That's all you get.

What was Bloomberg Business Week's strained pun headline? Is Q-tip in there? Cotton swap, cotton balls, cotton, is this a Hatfield and McCoy situation? Like, what are feuding cousins? Family feud. Family, family,

family, um, I would stick with swab. Swab, swob, swobing the deck, swab, uh, swab stumped as swab. Ha, ha ha ha,

swab like swabing spit. A little simpler, a little more elemental. Swab the floor, swab the deck, swab the, this is about feuds. It's very sad.

Very, very sad, David. Uh, A sad tale. Swab story. Swab story. He is David Schumacher. I'm Brian Curtis.

Production Magic by Erica Servantes. We're back Monday with the writer Alexander Wolfe and more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.