The Press Box - Pat McAfee, Chris Wallace, a Texas Sportswriting Legend, and More

Episode Date: December 13, 2021

Bryan and David start by talking about Pat McAfee’s new $120 million deal with FanDuel (3:26). Then they discuss Chris Wallace leaving Fox News for CNN (21:10). Then they wrap up by talking about Dave Campbell’s Texas Football magazine, '80s and '90s commercial fiction power rankings, plus David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Production Assistant: Isaiah Blakely Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Derek Thompson, long-time writer with the Atlantic Magazine on tech, culture, and politics. There is a lot of noise out there, and my goal is to cut through the headlines, loud tweets, and hot takes in my new podcast, plain English. I'll talk to some of the smartest people I know to give you clear viewpoints and memorable takeaways. Plain English starts November 16th. Listen for free on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. David, you remember I read an English. email on the last episode of this podcast from Slovakia. Oh yeah, I remember that well.

We were talking about the Spotify listenership data. Well, it turns out neither you nor I can read Spotify listenership data, which is probably kind of alarming since we work for Spotify. But we had this listener, Dennis Schwarks, in Slovakia. And I said, well, he is, he listens to the press box more than 96% of, you know, of people in Slovakia. Well, Dennis sent a very, very polite corrective. Any email that I'll read to you.

The message from Spotify, he writes, was that I am listening to all Spotify podcasts, more than 96% of my fellow Slovaks. Not that 4% of Slovaks listened to the press box more than me. That I believe is not possible, as I am pretty sure I have listened to every episode in 2021, start to finish. Well, in my defense, I just responded to what you read to me.

So I'm guilty of not preparing for the podcast. I'm slightly less guilty about not understanding the data, although I probably wouldn't have understood that either. It was actually even more flattering to us. Sure. He's number one by default because he has listened to every single episode of the press boxes here in its entirety. Yeah, he's in a tie for number one with who. knows how many people, maybe none.

But he's certainly number one. I'm going to go none for every episode all the way through. Dennis, our friend here continues, I believe you and David should make it to the Slovak podcasting convention. And I would be happy to arrange. David, can I interest you in a trip to the Slovak podcasting convention? I could not say no to that offer. That sounds fantastic.

I wonder who else is going to go. I don't know, but listen to this update. He says, My country is in the growth phase of this industry, which can be a bit painful. Everyone who can speak has a podcast now pretty much. Well, what are our country that sounds like? Yeah, sounds like they're right on track to follow in the U.S.

footsteps, sir. Yeah, absolutely. Anyway, best from Bratislava, Dennis. So thank you, Dennis, for listening. Once again, thank you for the update and the corrective, because David and I clearly don't know what we're talking about. Coming up on today's show, we're going to try to do better. When we answer the question, why did Pat McAfee,

the sports podcast host, Get Paid, and also who's going to fill the Chris Wallace-sized hole at Fox News? Plus a pair of writer obituaries, all that more on the press box. A part of the ringer, podcast network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here, along with producer Isaiah Blakely, who is sitting in for Erica. David Pat McAfee has cashed in. He is the former Indianapolis Colts punter who started a podcast after retiring from the NFL in 2016.

He has Aaron Rogers on the show every week. Now he's making Aaron Rogers money from Fandul. The deal is four years, $120 million. What McAfee himself says is, quote, absurd money. David, what do we make of Pat McAfee's new deal? wholeheartedly agree that it's absurd money, but it, given that it's sort of imaginary money, something's worth what it's worth, but it doesn't have to necessarily have a relationship to someone else's salary in the non-broadcasting world, whatever.

I mean, I struggle to think what the right amount would be, right? I mean, I think a lot of people are saying, wow, but I think you'd be hard-pressed to be like, Fandler should have made that deal for $10 million, not $30 million a year or something. You know, I mean, I'm not exactly sure what the coherent argument is for that. Because obviously they paid what they're going to pay. I mean, I have a lot of different reactions. One is, I mean, both as a professional wrestling fan and as a just general sports media fan, I am a big Pat McAfee guy.

I've met him a time or two. He's sweet and, you know, he's smart. And there's something about maybe it's just a podcast. era. And maybe it's something more specific to his brand, his persona. But he's so himself, he's so fully himself out there that you do feel connected to him and you feel a sort of joy when he has this kind of success, whether or not you're an avid listener, right?

I mean, I guess there's a lot of people out there who are like, I feel, you know, like I'm very aware of who Pat McAfee is and he's not my kind of guy. you know, whatever, but I don't know. As far as I'm concerned, he's he's sort of an irrepressible force. And this is, you know, a great deal for him. It's also, you know, a great deal for him when he, it's a great move by him to announce that he's giving, what, $6 million to charity upon the signature of the contract. He's giving $250K to all of his, like, day ones.

When he signed, I don't even remember what deal it was that he signed when he kind of went door to door to his, you know, day one, you know, producers and stuff, uh, and gave them each a bag of $50,000. That was a previous windfall, but it was just some of the best YouTube content you could imagine, right? I mean, and, and it's sort of, it's sort of markets the, the, the, the Robin Hood style generosity that he portrays, but it like, I think, you know, you could point at it and be like, well, he's just PR, but it's also like, it, that just goes

back to what I said before. He's sort of inseparable from the machine. The Pat McAfee person is inseparable from the Pat McAfee machine. And you could say that in a negative way about a lot of people. I think for McAfee, it's a positive. Doesn't he feel to you like an ex-athlete who didn't go to media training and have all the personality and spontaneity sucked out of him by that process? Well, I mean, that was his, he absolutely does. And that was sort of his gimmick, if you will, in the NFL towards the end.

He was more loudmouth than he was in dispenseless. I guess at times. But he did seem to retire on his own terms, you know, at a time when he could have stuck around and played a few more years. But, you know, he was getting, he was making, making his, you know, entries into the, into the media world before he retired. And I think that's the right way to put it. You know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of athletes out there.

A lot of them work very hard at sort of being media personalities and have kind of followed a certain track to do that. And, you know, McAfee, I think from the beginning was just determined to be himself or to be a different kind of sports media personality. Yeah. And it feels like there's a way to do this where you come out of the league and you go through this ropes course where you learn to talk in 10 and 15 second bites after the play is over. So, but oh, you know, Joe, I think you're absolutely right. Here we go. And let's show you what we're doing here. but as he's shown and Tony Romo in a very different way that sometimes when you leap out directly,

you didn't learn any of that stuff. And you're not sort of talking like everybody else is talking. You're just talking, it's not even when you're saying different stuff, though that's true in McAvee's case. You're also just talking in different rhythms. Like he can talk really fast when he's doing his podcast a lot of the time and he can just kind of go in all these really different tangents.

And I'm like, that again, pleasingly, that doesn't sound like a guy who's gone to the broadcast factory and come out the other side. It's funny. It makes me think of,

just yesterday I was watching the NFL, whatever the NFL countdown on the NFL network is before kickoff. And Kurt Warner was hosting his little like, out from behind the desk segment and Steve Mariucci came up to be a second. And Kurt Warner's like,

actually, no, we've blocked this incorrectly. I don't need you, Steve Mariucci. I need Michael Irvin. here and he replaced him and Michael Irvin was surprised to get up there and they showed a clip and Michael Irvin reacted to it and it was clearly impromptu because he wasn't planning on being there but it sounded exactly like everything else Michael like the tone of voice was this very practiced like very Michael Irvin sitting behind a desk tone of voice and I know Irvin does radio

and like he's not a robot but it's the but that but he's learned to be a certain style of presenter that is that is uh I mean it's impressive that he's doing that and thinking on his feet simultaneously, right? I mean, I was just sort of like, wowed by the whole thing. But it is. It's a very different generation or iteration of sports media personality. And McAfee's sort of just decided to be, I mean, to call him sort of, you know, the podcast generation seems like an oversimplification.

He's doing things in a very unique way. But it is just a lot more of a, despite the, you know, the sort of like inherent motion and anxiety in the show, it does feel like a very laid back sort of way to do the sports world. That's a good word for it, because so much of the stuff we see on TV

on sports television feels very airless. Like you've just, you've sucked any spontaneity out of it. You've sucked all those kinds of things out of it. And I just feel that when you put air back into something when you give it. By the way, the Manning cast is another good example of this now. Those guys are much more buttoned down in their presentation than Pat McAfee, I would say, but it does feel like you don't know what they're going to say next. And you don't exactly

know how they're going to say it. And the program does have some spontaneity into it. No, for sure. And it's such a good reminder that television cannot be, okay, now Boomer Ossiason is going to talk. And now James Brown is going to talk. It can't be that. Or it gets so boring. and so stilted. Yeah, there's a lot of conversations if you had about the sort of evolution of the media here. I mean, it's even worth mentioning

that McAfee's show is on, what, XM radio, on Mad Dog Station. But, like, but, but I think, I mean, I know it as a YouTube show, right? I mean, that's how I engage with it. And I know, I'm sure many other people of my generation or the generation beneath us know it the same way.

When, when the news are, reports have had him come out. He's referred to as a as a satellite radio host, right? Which is true, but because that's a sort of like old fashioned point of reference when it would be, it would sort of be, seem to carry a different meaning to call him like a YouTube personality or something, right? So it's, but he just sort of straddles these two generations in the same way, it's sort of a parallel to what you were talking about before. And incidentally, people keep waving around this Fandul deal as if he's going to be.

to be a broadcaster on like fanduil.com or like on the fan dual television network this is just I mean they've they've paid him a whole lot of money to be their exclusive but like gambling lines provider for the next three four years and I guess I mean without like you know going down any kind of like inquisitive path I think if this were somebody else we probably would be rightfully asking the question of like how do you structure your priorities when you're just getting such an overwhelming income stream from one place that's not your host and it's not anything else. You know, I mean, it's not your, your owner. But fan duels, you know, there's a whole lot of gambling money in sports media right now. And I think McAfee's probably better equipped to

handle it than just about anybody else who'd be given that bag. But it is a really interesting place for us to be. He seems right in that zone. But if we're going to ask, hey, you know, what are what are the kind of consequences from getting so much money from gambling, who are we not going to ask this question to at this moment in history? Everybody's getting the gambling money. Yeah. Everybody's getting the gambling money. Let us include the ringer in that statement. And I think what one of the interesting things is, what are you doing with the gambling money? And you talk about like Meadowlark media, Dan Labatar, John Skipper, that whole group. Now that seems a lot less adjacent to gambling culture than Pat McAfee does or Barstool does.

But they're apparently taking it and going off and doing their very particular things. And that is in a way part of what is allowing them to leave ESPN or at least in Lebitard in his particular cast case, leave ESPN and go do his own creative stuff on the side. So gambling becomes this way to leave the mothership. And Pat McAfee, by the way, started at Barstool's. when he left the Indianapolis Colts after he retired in 2016. He leaves a couple of years later and you can go be a free agent now. If you have talent, obviously we're talking about very talented people here, but and go in that money in a way allows you to just go do your thing.

Well, and if you're, you had the opportunity to work, I mean, to have a much, you know, to tighten the belt and have a much more streamlined operation. if you're just doing a podcast or then you're doing a podcast with cameras on you, you know, you're kind of rebuilding, you know, reinventing the wheel, although, and which is something that most people who have the opportunity are rightly scared to do, right? Because you're used to the infrastructure of your previous employer. But when you look at an operation like Metal Leg, like you said, or, I mean, you know, any of these that we're talking about, a little of gambling money or advertiser money or whatever else can go a really,

long way if what you're producing is a podcast with like just you talking to a microphone or just you and like five people who were just sort of hanging around doing it right you don't need to pay for the light bulbs at ESPN you know you don't need to me you don't need to be subsidizing the rest of an entertainment empire uh you don't have to meet the you know necessarily like the the profit margins of the Disney corporation is demanding of you you can do it uh in a much more streamlined way and then you know eventually you don't have to be worried about the profit margins anymore because somebody's giving you $120 million.

Did you see the Dave Portnoy tweet about McAfee's deal? I did. I did. Far be it for me to, do you want to read it? I'm sorry. Sure. This deal is specifically because of us.

Portnoy tweeted. Fandle declined to make an offer on Barstall and they could have had myself, PMT, McAfee and everybody else, and they balked at $100 million. Barstool has redefined everybody's worth by our success. To which McAfee, We're lucky to be a part of the incredible collection of folks that have gotten the opportunity to work for the pirate ship. Thanks for leading the way. Cheers, boss.

I don't, for me it for me to defend Portnoy, but I mean, I don't think that that was like an irrational. That was not amongst his most outrageous tweets. And I don't think it was particularly galling in any specific way. I mean, yeah, it's probably largely true whether or not it was, you know, the time or place to say it, I think is sort of beside the point. McAfee obviously took the, well, you'd have to sort of define the low road to say took the high road, but he kind of took the smart way out. There's no reason to be poking the bear right there. But like, you know, I mean, it is true. I mean, and it's got to be, I mean, you know,

Barstool is not hurting for money, but, you know, when you're in that position, you're going to see people getting rich off of your, you know, whether or not it's off your coat tails or just like, just people who are tangentially. potential to your sphere, that's what's going to happen. And, you know, Portnoy's going to stir some stuff up whenever he gets the opportunity. Well, that was certainly the launch pad for McAfee. But this kind of deal and that kind of success relies on him actually being really, really good outside of that zone. That was not going to happen just by being barstool adjacent.

I know you're not saying that, but that's the kids. It's not because of Barstool, Barstool. probably helped it in the in the long run. But, yeah, I also wonder, what's Pat Maffa going to do? What else is he going to do? Remember, there was the Monday night football thing for a while. Should he be in the booth for Monday night football? He was on with the Mannings the other day.

Does he have another like, so he does this, does he have another big mainstreamy kind of football thing, sports media thing in him, do you think besides this? Well, I'm sure he does. You know, he managed to travel to wherever, Macdown is taping every Friday night and do that show. I mean, he's an incredible entertainer. You know, some wrestling fans are split on whether he or Monday Night Raw's color commentator

Cory Graves are the best at their jobs. But McAfee has been an incredible breath of fresh air to that product. Now, so, you know, you look at his schedule and it's kind of hard to imagine what else he would do, but I guess he's got weekends free. You know, if he wanted to do a national broadcast, I'm sure. he would find the time. But I don't know. I don't know.

It's kind of interesting. It's one of those things where I would be hard pressed to imagine him saying no to a huge platform. But at least now, he certainly got the ability to wait for the exact right opportunity to come along. I'd be very interested here to find out what he would be looking for. David, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly.

the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. Everybody, David, love that Jeremy Strong profile in the New Yorker last week. Everybody that is, except for some of Jeremy Strong's collaborators

in the entertainment business who don't understand that a great journalistic profile is not a binary, this person good, this person bad. It could be have shades of things, right? It can be out to describe somebody and what they really like.

One of the objectors in particular was Aaron Sorkin, who had a response to the piece but doesn't have social media. So it was posted on Jessica Chastain's Twitter account. Chastain wrote Aaron Sorkin doesn't have social media, so asked me to post this on his behalf. It was an overword Twitter joke to post something

else on Aaron Sorkin's behalf. I saw the hello Mr. Police thing. from the movie, the snowman, anyway, et cetera, et cetera. Big moment on Twitter for that this week. That's good stuff. In other entertainment news, David,

there was a profile of actress Gabby Hoffman in The Guardian with this headline, Gabby Hoffman, colon, I really love my job, but I don't want to do it that often. It was an over-war Twitter joke to write, this is also how I feel about my job. From journalists, we would have also accepted,

this is how I talk to my editor. And finally, David, the Hollywood reporter, a lot of entertainment news this week, has a story about Jennifer Aniston that got some attention. Turns out that Friends reunion was pretty emotionally complicated for Aniston. She wound up confronting a lot of old feelings. Time travel is hard. She tells the magazine. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, so no one told her life was going to be this way. Thanks to Gibb.

the Rembrandt song on Jennifer Anderson's behalf. Congrats. You made the overworked Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook dump, David. There is a job opening at Fox News. After this fairly shocking announcement Sunday morning from one Chris Wallace. But after 18 years, I have decided to leave Fox. I want to try something new to go beyond politics to all the things I'm interested in.

I'm ready for a new adventure. And I hope you'll check it out. And so for the last time, dear friends, that's it for today. Have a great week. And I hope you'll keep watching Fox News Sunday. A couple of responses to that. How much did you love the old-fashioned television goodbye to dear friends? Yes.

Yeah, dear friends is really top-notch stuff. You don't hear that much anymore. That's kind of more of the Paul Harvey Radio Generation. uh goodbye also he mentioned adventure what's the most adventurous thing you can imagine chris wallace doing on television i don't know i just don't know i mean you could take it really literally and put them on you know animal planet shark diving or something some sort of like you know house renovation travel log i guess might be more his speed i it seems like all these guys just end up like, you know, taking photos of national parks and publishing them for Father's Day.

I don't really know what like the, what the most shocking thing he could possibly do would be. There are a lot of low grade travel shows, aren't they in the world? Aren't there in the world? As I used bookstore up in Pasadena this weekend, I was in the travel section. There was like a Billy Connelly's Route 66 book. It was from like a British travel show and stuff you didn't even know existed. like every celebrity eventually will have a travel show. Yes. The actual answer in Chris Wallace's case is that he's going to CNN.

As the New York Times notes, he will expand his portfolio beyond politics to include business, sports, and entertainment. He will host an interview program starting next year on CNN plus a new digital streaming platform. All right. That's David's reaction. It feels like for our purpose, or for the purposes of a strict. media podcast. There's a lot of the story that's left to be told, right? What details of the contract negotiations with both sides were and everything else. That doesn't seem like a particularly shocking

move for this sort of, you know, retirement plan for Chris Wallace. I think that he will probably do these other things that he's interested in and they'll probably largely happen on the over-the-top platform. And then we'll see him pop up to like interview presidential candidates every four years. Details of the contract negotiations and also how much of this was the pulling the rip cord after the Tucker Carlson documentary series. Yeah. Which people said that he was one of the people who was concerned about, as you could imagine or had some objections to. We've seen people like Jonah Goldberg and Stephen Hayes walk out the door of Fox News in the last couple of weeks.

So there's a big point of how much was I was I like, okay, I've tolerated a lot. Okay. That's it's it. But it's, I mean, at the same time, I mean, listen, that's probably the story. But at the same time, it wouldn't be shocking to find out that his contract was up. and Fox is ready to move on. You know, I mean, there's just anything as possible. I mean, obviously, he has a lot of value to them as the sort of most impartial anchory person

that they could ink to a deal. But who knows if that's something that they value at this point? It certainly is going to be interesting to see who replaces him, right? I mean, it's going to be this incredible proxy battle that everyone's going to have an opinion on. You know, I mean, there's the sort of, there's, you know, a lot of conservatives who've hated him for a long time to think that he's just like, just a ball and chain around the ankle of Fox News. It's like trying to drag it down into like the mainstream media abyss. And then there's, you know, obviously the more liberal side that finds, you know, takes exception to him at every opportunity, sort of like Shepard Smith, you know, but like still thinks it's important that he's there in that seat and understands that the alternatives could be. much worse. I mean, sometimes it's like people treat Shep Smith. People are like, Wallace and Shep

Smith is like, like, Supreme Court just are like somehow morally obligated to stay in their seat for as long as they can until like a liberal president can can replace them, you know, or whatever. But like, but it's, it's, it's going to be very, I mean, I am actually like, geared up for the conversation of who's going to be hosting Fox News Sunday. It'll probably end up being a total let down, but just in terms of excitement, but it could be, it's going to be crazy. Just searching Twitter for that clip we listened to. Oh my gosh, the reactions to Chris Wallace from conservative blue checkmark people that I have never heard of or I've vaguely heard of them, but I'm not sure what they do or what they did. I mean, you kind of forget that there's a whole

galaxy of people out there who think Fox News is too ideologically. heterodox. Like here, like this guy was, this guy was pushing us in directions we didn't like every Sunday. Thank goodness. Chris Wallace is gone. And just this venom and you're going, what?

Okay. And as you say, this is Fox News that has held him and Brett Bear up and gone, no, see, look. He criticizes Chris Wallace, Brett Bear, now holding them up. These are real journalists right here. it's just a really, really interesting world pool of whatever it is.

Yeah, I mean, and it's for that reason that I kind of have to imagine that, like, Fox News would just rather not be having to deal with this right now, or ever, you know, I mean, unless they just had decided specifically to go in another direction, a specific direction with somebody else, you know, reaction to be damned or, and the reaction is going to be great PR one way or the other, all good press is bad press, whatever. It's not going to be a fun time for them if they're actually starting from scratch. No.

And he was a guy who could host presidential debates. I mean, look, there's a real prestige factor. I mean, fewer people watch Fox News Sunday. If he's not on it, I don't know. I sort of doubt it, given what we've seen Fox News ratings over the years. But there is an advantage to having a guy you can push out there in the debate. he hosted the extremely memorable for bad reasons first debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden this year. He spent the whole time trying to get Donald Trump to stop talking.

But that was their guy. And that was a guy that Joe Biden and his camp could be like, okay, you know, he, we can, we can roll with us. Yeah. As a possible debate host. It's, it's interesting. But anyway, Chris Wallace, off to CNN. David, I got a couple of obits for you. This one came our way from Obi-Wan Jacobi.

I'm glad he suggested it. Dave Campbell, Texas sports writer of many, many, many years, has died at age 96. Did you ever buy Dave Campbell's Texas football magazine? Oh, yeah, absolutely. Possibly at a Kroger or Tom Thumb in the checkout aisle. Yep, yep. I mean, it's maybe that sounds great. crazy to someone listening to this that's not hasn't spent any time in texas or in you know

the south southeast or whatever but yes um the texas dave campbell's texas football was a magazine that was probably was closer to the register than people magazine and most of the places that we went when we were growing up and it was certainly a lot bigger it was like the september issue of vogue i mean it was this huge magazine as for people for for the non-texans among us Dave Campbell was a guy sports writer in Waco, 1960, he found this magazine called Texas football because he's dissatisfied with how the National College Football magazines are covering Texas colleges, in particular Baylor, David's alma mater, once got left out of a national magazine. So by the time we're in high school, Dave Campbell's Texas football is this huge magazine

that includes a write-up on every high school in Texas. every high school football team, even lowly Pascal high school and our crappy football team where David and I spent our Friday nights. We were written up in Dave Campbell's Texas football. And, you know, I often think that the Friday night lights Texas high school football mystique is kind of overdone in a way. Like are people in Ohio or Florida or California really less? Is the high school football any different?

really in those places than it is in Texas. One way that Texas was different, that magazine. Yep. And that idea that there's going to be a magazine in the state that is going to be just for people who love high school football and football generally in Texas. Yeah. And you may never read the write-up from Abilene or El Paso or, you know, Houston suburbs, but you just want this thing to kind of sit on your coffee table for six months.

Truly awesome. He sold the magazine in the 80s. It still carries his name. Greg Tepper and those guys do a great job down there now. Anyway, farewell Dave Campbell. Another media obit for you, David. Best-selling vampire novelist Anne Rice has died at age 80. Oh, man.

Did you ever read an Anne Rice novel? Never read Anne Rice. Don't have any, you know, snarky objection to it. But I never read Anne Rice. I don't think I was really down for the vampires when she was big and is not reentered my rediscovery library in my in adulthood. So maybe it's time to check her out. Were you interested in vampires at another time, just not the time Anne Rice was big? Is that what's implied to that thing?

I've read some, you know, some kind of interesting. I mean, listen, who doesn't watch what we do in the shadows? I've read some sort of post-apocalyptic vampire fair. in my and over the past decade. Yeah, sure. So I'm pretty unfamiliar. I don't even think I've seen interview with the vampire, but I was,

I was amused to note in the New York Times obituary. It features a solitary vampire who is telling his life story to a reporter that that is the divisive interview with a vampire. She gets a lot of credit for bringing vampires back into Vogue. She told once told ABC, when I go to my signings, I'm the most boring person there.

Everybody else is dripping with velvet and lace and bringing me dead roses wrapped in leather handcuffs, and I love it. And of course, part of that is bringing vampires, which are cool back into the popular imagination. The other part is using a vampire, the New York Times says, is this kind of literary vehicle to reach people

who might feel isolated and lonely, right? You're hitting these kind of notes and putting it in your books. I love this quote, David, because you and I are always so interested in genre fiction and how it matches up with capital L literature. This is a great one. What matters to me, Anne Rice once said, is that people know that my books are serious and they are meant to make a difference and that they are meant to be literature. Whether that's stupid or pretentious sounding, I don't care. They are meant to be in those backpacks on the Berkeley campus along with Castaneda and Tolstoy and anybody else. When I get dismissed as a pop writer, I go crazy. Yeah, that's a familiar refrain, especially from that era, right? I mean, it was sort of the, that was not when her heyday was not exactly when, like, popular fiction was being defined, but it was sort of being redefined for the future, right? I mean, it was these big, like, tent pull authors who were sort of a separate category from serious fiction.

I mean, that was, that was, that was the glory days, wasn't it? Yeah, those big, fat books. A book could still stir the popular imagination in that way. You really would have an everybody's reading this kind of feeling, or at least all your parents and your parents and their friends are reading this kind of feeling when those books came down the pipeline. When we were, I mean, in the year like 19, pick your year, in the year 1995, you would know a movie was big because you would see a line outside the theater.

and you would know a book was big because you'd see a, you'd see a fifth, like a 50 or 100 book stack of it in Barnes & Noble. Like it was the physical space that it occupied in the store was all you needed to know.

Yeah, and people would tell you about it. On that note, David, I put together some 80s, 90s commercial fiction power rankings. Ooh, all right. Would you like to respond to these? Number one has got to be Stephen King. My only question is whether Stephen King's on the list

because he has transcended it not just in terms of being more literary, like the Anne Rice complaint, but he's just sort of transcendent literature. I mean, he's just a thing. But yes, if he's on the list, he's number one. Okay, but by what you just nailed down, like new novel out,

everybody's talking about it, in the bookstore, the display, everything. Stephen King, by the way, I'm going to guess, I'm going to guess that there's a lot of people on this list. I can imagine a lot of people on this list. I'm going to guess Stephen King, compared to some of them,

also had a more probably low wattage releases than other people. Stephen King would always have that one book that was just like maybe under an assumed name or whatever, but you'd all know it's Stephen King and it's like 95 pages instead of 500 and it would just show up and you'd be like, is that, is that a new one? Should I know about that? And it was just one they decided not to push as a big Stephen King book, but yes, he's the best. He's the greatest.

But also with him, he was so prolific that the releases did not quite have the just gigantic event thing because he didn't wait three or four years between books. Yeah. But a lot of these, a lot of the authors of this year have figured that out. pretty quickly too. It was a book a year for just about all the big names at a certain point. But let's keep going on the list. Number two, Michael Crichton. F, without a doubt. Now, he spent some time between books. He was just, you know, he took his time. But man, every book, every. And it was like, it defied, the readership defied categorization.

Yeah. And the New York Times op-eds were coming out like as soon as the book was in publication. He had a run there. Number three, Robert Ludlow. Yeah. Maybe a little looking back, given the Born movies, but that was big. Number four, John Grisham. I would put Grisham above Ludlam. Ludlam falls into a group category with all the American, is Robert Lutton American, all the American dudes writing the sort of CIA, you know, six days of that Condor influenced,

like Marathon Man sort of, like, influenced stuff. Yeah, it's by stuff. But it was, but yeah, for sure. Grisham was a one-man machine. And, you know, I love John Grisham. I mean, I've read a good bit of John Grisham, but the greatest thing about John Grisham was that I shared his taste. Like, all of his favorite writers were my favorite writers.

He liked the music that I liked for a long time. He, like, subsidized the Oxford American magazine for a while. Like, he's just a, he was fantastic, fantastic human, good writer. I didn't know where you're going with that. I thought you both liked, you know, ideologically. ambitious young lawyers. Well, I can't deny that. Number five, Anne Rice, for the reasons mentioned.

Number six, Amy Tan. Oh, another one I wasn't sure if she was going to fit the categorization, but absolutely. Yeah, and again, not trying to put her down with us, but those books were big. Number seven, Terry McMillan. Mm-hmm. Number eight, Scott Thoreau. Yeah. Sort of John Grisham, but less productive and without the kind of gigantic bestsellers,

but presumed innocent in its day. Also, book publishing, I'm sure this is widely known, but book publishing lore, he obviously he could have gotten a lot money, a lot of more money from a publisher that wasn't FSG, but was committed to the ideology and the idea of keeping the great literary publisher for Rastroo and, you know, helping them make cash. Number nine, Judith Krantz, just to get that whole part of the commercial fiction spectrum in there. And number 10, Clive Custler. Oh, yeah.

And I was going to put somebody else because I know there's another writer who's just like Clive Custler, who I always got confused with him. Didn't read him. Didn't read the other guy either. But I just can't remember his name. So Clive Custler and the other guy sharing the number 10 spot. Also receiving votes, David, Tony Hillerman. Oh, I forgot Hillerman. Am I one of my mom's favorite writers of all time? All right. See, I'm just going here with the names I scribbled down that you didn't mention. Sydney Sheldon, Danielle Steele. I mean, this is obviously a little. bit more. Daniel, Sierra can have the Judith Krantz slot. Exactly.

Also, Jackie Collins. In the, in the horror category, right below Stephen King is Dean R. Coontz. But, I mean, he was been around for a long time, but he sold a shit tonne of books. Oh, yeah. Not quite the event, perhaps the other ones were. But that's a good. Was Ken Follett on the list? Ken Follett sold a billion books in for like a five-year window.

Yes. I feel he was a little bit before this time and then slid into this period, but absolutely. A lot of the names that I just said were. Yeah. Also in the before this time, it continued, James Mishner, Mary Higgins-Clark. What about James Clavel, another sort of like, Oh my God. Yeah. Pat Conroy.

There's all these old, like, 70s, like sweeping narrative writers that kept going. Oh, Nelson DeMille. That's another word. That's the Clive Custler guy you were thinking of. That's it. Yeah, that's who I thought. All right.

Clive Custler, Nelson DeMille. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. Yes, the James Mishner thing was particularly fascinating because those books were all looked to be like 800 pages long. Every friend's parent had at least one of those on their shelf. I think when my mom started letting me buy hardback books,

just, you know, like you're trying to follow when your parents' example would be like, I would like James Mishner's Alaska for my book this month. I didn't read it. And I still have very little idea of what his books are. They're like about locations, but they're fiction. Yes. We can get my dad on the phone. I think he would know the answer, but I don't know.

There's stories told to kind of conjure the history of a place, perhaps, like a fictionalized retelling us? Great elevator pitch. Yeah. Anyway, farewell Anne Rice. All right. It's time for David Schumacher guesses the straight-butt headline. All right. Last Monday's headline about an assessment of the recent UN climate change conference was Glasgow half full.

Today's headline comes from listener Liva. it's from the LA Times. I'm going to read you the top of the story, dateline Milan, Italy, David. This is a great one. A dentist in Italy faces possible criminal charges after trying to receive a COVID-19 vaccine in a fake arm made of silicone.

A fake arm made of silicone. A nurse in the northern city of Biela, Philippa Bua, said she could tell right away that something was off when the man presented the phony limb for a shot Thursday. When I uncovered the arm, I felt the skin, I felt skin that was cold and gummy and the color was too light. She told a newspaper.

So a man is getting an injection in his fake arm. I'll spot you a few words here. He figured using fake arm what was the Los Angeles Times as Strain Punt headline. He figured using fake arm. Yeah, I remember this is newspapers. So sometimes there's not the articles. And figured using fake arm was as good as real arm. Fake arm would pass...

Keep going. Pass inspection. Infection? Passing... Maybe he didn't know it would work. The ruse, David, but... Figured using fake arm... Was worth a shot?

Worth a shot. Figured using fake arm was worth a shot. Yeah, that's great. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Kern. heard as production magic by Isaiah Blakely. David and I are going to be back next Monday to send you off into the holidays. And we need to do our year and media show, David.

All right. Year in media, let's do it. Make your list. Number one, Rachel Nichols. All right. Number two, Rachel, I'm sorry. We're going to do all the big stories, run them down from the year in media. I'll be back this Friday.

We'll have some stuff planned for over the break as well. Plus, of course, more look more takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.