The Press Box - Pat McAfee’s ESPN Deal, the Kevin Harlan Playoff Experience, and This Week in 2024

Episode Date: May 22, 2023

Bryan and David discuss Pat McAfee’s huge contract signing with ESPN, his fit with the sports media conglomerate, and the company’s shift to signing top-level talent (00:32). Then, they’re back with another segment of NBA2Day to talk about Kevin Harlan’s performance during the playoffs, Michael Malone’s “Nobody believes in us” comments, and more (17:06). After, they give the latest updates on the 2024 election, including Senator Tim Scott’s announcement speech for president, Ron DeSantis bypassing the “mainstream media” for his presidential run, and former vice president Mike Pence plagiarizing bits from a Donald Trump speech (29:58). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Eduardo Ocampo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You may find this hard to believe, but 60 songs that explain the 90s. America's favorite poorly named music podcast is back with 30 more songs and 120 songs total. I'm your host, Rob Harvilla, here to bring you more trude musical analysis, poignant nostalgic reveries, crude personal anecdotes, and rad special guests, all with even less restraint than usual. Join us once more on 60 songs that explain the 90s, starting Wednesday, May 17th, on spot. David? Yes. So there was some big news in the world of sports media last week.

Pat McAfee, podcast host, college game day host, occasional professional wrestler. Oh yeah, that's Pat McAfee. Yeah, that guy, right? The one without sleeves? Mm-hmm. He has signed a huge new deal to join ESPN. He was indeed up to something. What do you think about McAfee?

to the mothership. Ooh. Well, it's great for him. Presumably going to be making a fair chunk of change. Eight figures, according to the New York Post. Are we giving quick thoughts here, or is this it? Are we just diving right in?

Let's dive right in. What else we got here? Let's do it. You know, I said this to somebody else. I don't know if this is on my other podcast or what, but forgive me if I'm repeating myself. I've been thinking lately a lot about Stern, about Howard Stern.

After his little moment at the, I was going to say he's at the Knicks game and apparently complained that players don't know who he is anymore and everybody sort of at once on Twitter and in life responded with the exact same sort of headshake. Like, dude, you made a decision

to leave terrestrial radio and live forever in the comfort of satellite. This is sort of the anti-Stern, right? This move is the anti-Hawrard-Stern. Sure. Pat could have lived forever doing his show on the inner webs loosely defined and taking lots of money from Fanduel or whoever was that came after Fanduel, you know, whoever wanted to back the show. And he would have been set for life and his friends, his colleagues would have been set for life and he would have been totally comfortable. Now, not knowing the real financial

disparity between one job neither, I'm presuming he's making more money up front, but who knows, he's decided to take the show into a more conventional, quote unquote, terrestrial space, presumably for a lot more sort of conventional exposure and potential upside, right? I mean, I don't know how much money, again, he's making,

but I assume that the cap hold is higher at ESPN than it is, you know, then it would be elsewhere. But he also is, in you also have to factor in that he's introducing an element of job insecurity that probably didn't exist before to this degree, right? He's going to be one of their biggest stars the next few years, but there's no guarantee of this

last forever. And that's a bet that he's making. He's going into the big leagues, quote unquote, going into the more conventional mainstream path, but in a weird way he's betting on himself because he would have been fine without ESPN. Such a good point. He said something at the Disney upfront that really struck me, where he said, I want to harness the power of basic cable of ESPN's linear television channel while I can. So I got my friends on the interwebs, like you said, but I have this very conventional thing that I feel that I can hook up to my show.

And we all might pretend that cable doesn't exist anymore, but it does. Yeah. And I think that will make my show even bigger. So you're right. It is a reverse stern. And by the way, did you see Al Michaels passing the baton? Al Michaels biggest Howard Stern fan on the planet. Guy who has been on there a million times talking about O.J. and all kinds of things.

He went on McAfee's show and declared Pat McAfee to be the new king of all media. It's true. It's true. The interesting thing, another thing they have in common, Stern and McAfee, is you think you have an idea of what the show is if you've never heard it, but the experience is something totally different. Right?

The clips that you see of McAfee aren't really indicative of what the, watching or listening to a whole episode of the show is about. Just like, you know, watching an episode of the e-show back when that was a thing for Howard Stern or just hearing about it or whatever was not indicative of actually being a listener of Howard Stern. it is an experience.

It doesn't require a full buy-in in some sort of negative way, but it is, it is like an immersive experience. And if you pay any attention to it, you understand on some level intuitively how, why it's as successful as it is. I wanted to ask you about this, because already, before the deal was even signed, McAfee's fans were mad, or at least the ones that liked to tweet at that Maccalfee's account were mad. selling out. You're going to ESPN. You told us we had this pirate ship of a YouTube show. Yeah. That was beholden to no one. Now you're working for ESPN. And my reaction to that was

Pat McAfee is secretly one of the most adaptable guys in this entire business. Oh, yeah. For somebody who is the life of the party, who relies on being a personality, a very, very defined personality. And you tell me this. When he's, you tell me this. When he, he walked into WWE, was he not very, very good at not just putting himself over, but putting other people over within the confines of those television shows? You call them as sometimes wrestler, but he was the color commentator on Friday Night Smackdown for a long time and was just the best. I mean, there are a lot of people, a lot of wrestling fans took exception to certain parts

of his chick or whatever, but as far as somebody coming in with zero reps, I mean, there have been other sports broadcasters that have come in and tried to do this. No one has succeeded to the degree of Pat. We see you Adnan Verk. Anandan was fine. But he was also working, he was a play-by-play guy not the color commentator, but all that's to say

Pat was just seamless. I mean, he was incredibly good at it. He's a total Swiss Army knife. And I will say that for the people that say, oh, you know, the die-hard Maccalfi fans that think he's sold out, we're in a different world now, you know?

I mean, he wasn't BSing when he was talking about a pirate ship. ESPN has changed much more than Pat McAfee's show has changed. ESPN, at some point, just decided that we're going to build a multi-billion dollar cove for all of the pirate ships to luxuriate in, right? I mean, like all of their top-line talent is bigger than, or individually, probably bigger than their roles at ESPN. And that's the opposite of what ESPN was at its founding. This is what I call the max player theory of ESPN,

which I think is really developed over the last four or five years since Jimmy Patero started running the place. Roll with me here. ESPN now has the highest paid game analyst, at least until Tom Brady decides whether he wants to do with his life, in Troy Aikman. ESPN now has the highest paid play-by-play announcer in Joe Buck. Yeah. ESPN has the highest paid opinionator in Stephen A. Smith.

ESPN has the highest paid studio guy or close to it in Mike Greenberg. And now, depending on how this contract shakes out, ESPN is going to have the highest paid podcast host, radio host, whatever you want to call him in Pat McAfee. Now, even if one or two of those are close to the top of the market, rather than actually at the top of the market, I'm pretty sure they're all at the top of the market. But ESPN has five max players. Yeah. That's not even until we get to Kirk Herb Street or Adrian Wojnarowski and Adam Schefter, who are the highest paid insiders out there. It is a network of max players now.

Yeah. Well, just wait until the new salary cap kicks in. But yeah, it is. It's totally different. It's interesting coming from a, like I said, from, I mean, you've talked about it some million times at the beginning of ESPN, the brand was what sold it, right? The Vi was what sold at the. Yes.

the feeling that you were in on a private conversation, sure, but there were like 40 people having this conversation that you were in on. And that's how, I mean, that's where all this begins. And now, the roster is much smaller, or at least the people getting playing time,

that roster, you know, the number of stars is much smaller. But it is funny, they have one of each, you know, it's like they are, no one is going to be as,

as perfectly equipped to handle it. If like space jam comes to life, if aliens come, down and there is like an intergalactic sporting contest that we want our best people on. We got them. We got them at ESPN. You know, we got one of everything you need at the highest possible level. So forget the max player theory of ESPN.

We have the space jam theory of ESPN. Yeah. No, it's, it's totally true. And it's funny to me that ESPN, which was so good at developing talent, which was so good it being like, hey, Colin Coward hosting a radio show in Portland. Hey, Bill Simmons writing for AOL Digital Cities.

Hey, Mina Kimes, business magazine writer, going and finding these people and developing them and making them into the big stars. Now we're playing a totally different game. And I know ESPN's smaller now. I know the future of ESPN is not going to look like

the giant, you know, Star Destroyer that it looked like 10 years ago when you and I worked there. But it just strikes me that at some point, you do want to develop your own people. You do want to go find people who can then become bigger with that fire hose that McAfee's talking about rather than just go shop at the top of the market every single time. Well, right. But in a world in which there is real competition and not just from other broadcast companies, you know,

terrestrial television networks and not just, but including, you know, the internet, everything, everything. Pat McAfee,

you know, Pat McAfee could have literally been doing a show in a piracy. He's still in the same conversation as a lot of the people at ESPN. So in some sense, it makes sense to hire

at the top of the market because you can't just blindly say, we got the best here. You shop at the top of the market and then people, like some of the homegrown talent that's still coming up, you know,

I mean, some of the people that, I mean, you, Mina Times is a great winner. I mean, we have, you know, Malika Andrews is like an ESPN institution that's a homegrown product, but people who are on that level and still coming up too can prove that they're the best, can prove that they're max salary players by coexisting with the ones that ESPN has signed up to these big contracts, right?

I mean, it's not just, it's not just a bunch of mid-level contracts and we're just going to pretend, and we're just going to tell you they're the best. Watch them go head to head, and they'll prove it out. that's fair enough. But I just think like, look, if you developed your own Monday night announcing team that you were in love with, you never would have signed Joe and Troy to begin with. That didn't happen. True. At least in the eyes of ESPN, if you had a radio division or podcasting division, which they don't seem to care about at all, you might have developed your own superstar radio podcast guy who would be in this slot right now.

Maybe you still want McAfee too, but then you'd have somebody else manning a couple moreouts. Well, it might have been McAfee, but would you be paying him less? Would they be in a different situation right now? Or are they just farming out the farm leads? Well, I think that is what they're doing, dude. And I think this is, look, there's, you know, this is this whole false choice. You and I've talked about this many times.

Like, we have to cut salaries in order to do X. And you don't really have to cut salaries. We know that that's just kind of bullshit, at least as a one-to-one proposition. But clearly what they're trying to do is if we have all these max players, we then can push away or be happy to almost push away by office. offering a much lower salary to all these people who are down the roster, right? Because they're on television all the time.

If we have Mike Greenberg also hosting the NFL draft, we don't have to have an NFL draft person. If we have Stephen A. and Greenie handling NBA countdown, we don't have to have a unique cast for that show. And Wilbon, who's also got his own show. We just have the same people doing more work. those max players are on television all the time. And again, that's,

maybe that's the best idea in the streaming world. Well, that comes down no matter of taste, obviously. I mean, there's some people that are going to like, you know, like it when they turn on an NBA pregame show and see those guys you just mentioned. And there's some that'll long for a different cast or fantasy book a different cast if they had their way. But I do think that we talk about this a lot all over this podcast. When it comes to sports broadcasting, I mean, A big part of what you're delivering is comfort, especially when you have so many options.

When you have so many different things, it could be sealing your attention and other channels you could be on. I mean, ESPN has to have factored in that when you flip past them, it pays to know where you are. Right? It's not just by the Chiron on the bottom of the screen. It's because these are the six people who I recognize. You are Rick Dalton pointing at the television. There's Stephen A. Yep.

Stop. There's Pat McAfee. Whoa. or probably on Twitter, right? I'm going through Twitter. Oh, Pat McAfee clip. I'm going to watch this. Yes.

Stephen A being mad about the Knicks. I'm going to watch this. And just to go back to what you said about this. I mean, listen, it's just incredibly, it just feels really gross for McAfee to ink this new deal. For ESPN to ink McAfee to this giant deal right after all the layoffs, right? I mean, it just like. In the middle of the layouts, they're still going on. ESPN, ESPN has set themselves up in such a way that it just, I mean,

the bad optics are just part and parcel of it. And it's not McAfee's fault. It's just the way the ESPN chose to do with business, and it's really unfortunate. But the truth is it's not one to one, like you said. To me, the false premise came earlier. Sure. Where we had to lay all these people off to begin with to juice a stock price.

Yeah. To show Bob Iger, whose job we may inherit someday, that we mean business in our division of the company, whatever it is. No, you hire someone like McAfee to make money for your company, right? It's the projections. It's the, you know, it's the projection of earnings. It's not, you don't, you know, Ford doesn't decide to make a new car and say, okay, we have to shut down a bunch of plants so we can afford it.

You know, I mean, it's, that's just not the way that the business world works. Last point on this before we move on, talking about Pat McAfee and some of your fans, potentially being a little torqued off that you're going to ESPN. If you establish yourself in this business as an independent person, somebody outside the system, or somebody who's inside the system, tweaking the system, it is your fate for being successful that you will be accused of selling out for the next X number of decades of your career. It's indie rock, man.

It's indie rock. I mean, if you get successful, you get successful by framing yourself as an outsider that's part of the success. And guess what? That's, this selling out is, is the bane of the existence, and it's also the goal. So, you know, you've got to figure out on your own terms. And that's nothing exclusive to Pat McAfee or Nirvana or anybody else. Coming up on today's podcast, Kevin Harlan, the nobody believed in us Nuggets, calling your own bang!

And other notes from the NBA playoffs, the Mike Pence plagiarism scandal and news from the 2024 presidential campaign, plus farewell to succession, a show about a media titan who was a sharp reader of the national mood. Wink, wink, all that more in the press box. A part of the ringer. Podcast Network. Hello Media Consumers, Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and producer Eduardo Ocampo here, who's sitting in for Erica.

After last night, David, we got two conference finals that are three games to nothing. apologies to all the NBA podcasters and writers out there. There'll be some major jazz hands going on for the next couple of days. But I am not discouraged because, David, we've got playoff Kevin. I'm talking about Kevin Harlan. Calling the Eastern Conference Finals for T&T with Reggie Miller and Stan Van Gundy. Dude, his fourth quarter of Heat Celtics game one was some of the best Harlan I've ever heard. it was punctuated by this call of Jimmy Butler's three-pointer

that somehow bounced its way into the basket. So love the little Rick Flair woo there at the end. Yeah. Woo! Any call is better when you do a little nature boy there. But you know why that's a great call because it's perfect for the moment. Jimmy freaking Butler is the only person who would shoot. that shot and have it fall just like that into the cup.

But also, when you coin kind of the perfect nickname for a player in the middle of this absolutely mind-blowing run to the Eastern Conference Finals, Chef Skis. So good. You've done your job as an announcer. There's just something like kind of itchy in the best possible way of hearing someone with the gravitas.

that Harlan comes with. And specifically just the tone and tenor of his voice saying, Fricken is just like it was, it's like the first time you heard your parents cuss from like the other room. Kevin Harlan has been calling NBA basketball since 1982. He was at the University of Kansas as a senior, an undergrad. And on the day he graduated, David, he got a message at his frat house on the.

on the answering machine offering him the radio play-by-play job with the Kansas City Kings, now known as the Sacramento Kings. Senior year graduation day. Wow. As I told him once,

he got an NBA play-by-play job. I got a Palm Pilot. That was our graduation gifts. Went to the expansion Minnesota T. Wolves in the 90s. Then got picked up by Turner. obviously he's done football for Fox and CBS and Monday night on the radio. But if anybody is going to get us through an Eastern Conference finals that started three games to none, it's Kevin Harlan.

I go back to this theory Joe Tessator had about play-by-play announcers. This is my favorite theory ever. Wish I'd written it. Joe Tessitore said there are two kinds of play-by-play announcers. There's a classically trained violinist. he called it. Uh-huh. That's Jim Nance.

Yeah. Virtuoso performance. Hitting the notes. The second category is the jazz riffer. Yeah. Also calling a good game, hitting the notes, but willing to let the mind wander, follow your muse, go off in strange direction.

The jazz rifers we've had, Joe Tessitore, Gus Johnson, Brent Musburger in his heyday, and Kevin Harlan, man. Yeah. that's a jazz riffer and isn't it weird to see a jazz riffer in the number one slot

where the network is often like you know what maybe we'll go with not just the classical violinists it suits the plain yogurt here maybe we'll go with that yeah because we don't want anybody to get mad right or somebody who hasn't watched basketball

here to be like what is going on here yeah it's fun though when it works oh that's the best it is and I think you're right it does suit the sport and it suits the playoffs for sure because it feels like I always think like when you have somebody who's who's really exciting when they're too excited that throws it off but the opposite's true in the NBA playoffs too

when they're not excited enough you're like hey man so this fourth quarter there's a more kinetic energy I mean you're watching yeah I mean it's just the nature of basketball I love this too from last night, game three of Celtics Heat, when Bam, Otobio's spin move put Jalen Brown on his butt. Listen to Harlan, call that. Not even particularly memorable verbiage, but the energy, the intensity. That was me on the couch.

When you match guy on couch or gal on couch, you've done your job. Another one for you, the Denver Nuggets, like the Heat, are up three games to none in their series against the Lakers. And can we officially announce on this podcast where such things happen the appearance of a nobody believed in us storyline? Not from the journalists, but from the head coach, Mike Malone, who said this after Denver won the first two games. A lot of our guys, to be honest, they may not admit this or not. You know, you win game one of the playoffs and all everybody talked about was the Lakers. Let's be honest. That was a national narrative was, hey, the Lakers are fine.

They're down 1-0, but they figured something out. No one talked about Nicola just had a historic performance. He's got 13 triple doubles now, third all time. What he's doing is just incredible, but the narrative wasn't about the Nuggets. The narrative wasn't about Nicola. The narrative is about the Lakers and their adjustments. So, you know, you put that in your pipe, you smoke. it and you come back and you know what we're going to go up to a love it when somebody at the podium

after an NBA play a playoff game talks like a character from the 1920s from a ring lardner short story you put that in your pipe and smoke it by the way david those comments were uttered after the nuggets went up two games to none so that was not like the end of some underdog story that was them taking a commanding lead and i think the adjective i'm supposed to use here in the Western Conference Finals. Just want to make sure you media understand this, that you have underrated us this whole time. That's so good.

Michael Malone has been a real national treasure during these playoffs. I'm excited the team is doing well, but I'm very excited to see what his interviews during the NBA finals sound like. A couple more for you. Did you enjoy the Nuggets Jamal Murray calling his own bang during game two? Yes. Hit a three-pointer and he points at Mike Breen from ESPN who's sitting courtside and just goes, bang. And Breen, of course, is busy by looking at a monitor so he doesn't see it.

But Mark Jackson's like, you know, he just looked over here and said bang. And Breen is so Mr. Professional that he didn't even stop and go, oh, all right, Jamal, here you go. Bang, here it is. They didn't actually say that on the shot, by the way. Green then just actually, because he has Mike Green just went in and started giving statistics about what a good quarter of Burry was having. Yeah. That's so fun.

When players are consuming the game, they are currently playing like we're consuming it at home. It's fantastic. What a good, what validation that is to have a player turn to you in St. Bang? A couple little linguistic moments that made me jam on the brakes. during the conference finals. Yeah. After Nicola Yokic's game one triple double, I was turned on ESPN radio in the car,

and an analyst came on and said, what more can you say about Nikola Yokic? What more can you say? A feel I've heard several variations of that. Yeah. I understand the point, but isn't that kind of our job? Yeah, exactly.

But what more can you say? Like if you and I got on an NBA podcast and I'm like, what more can you say about a great player? It's like, well, all right, see you back here next week, folks. We do host the show. What more can you say about Tucker Carlson? Well, you know, part of having a media podcast. I ask myself that all the time.

Well, there you do. The other one, and this may be where the call is coming from inside the house, but when did basketball analyst start saying the word unplayable so much? Oh, yeah. Like he was unplayable. He is unplayable in this series. Yeah. That's got to be last five years, maybe five to ten years in any intensity.

Am I wrong about that? It has been really recent. Who is it, who is the, it was an Oklahoma City Thunder coach that said Ennis Cantor was unplayable and it was caught on, it was caught on camera. Do you remember this? No. So there was actually, okay, this is, okay, I got this now. April 17th, 2017. Okay. Billy Donovan is caught on camera telling assistant coach Mo Cheeks that Innes Canter is unplayable in the series, in the playoff series that we're in. It was a big deal. deal at the time, but no one really disagreed with it.

I don't know if that's when it entered the vernacular. Certainly people have been calling players unplayable before. But there's a real sort of... Well, there's an urgency to the way he's using it there, right? You could talk offhandedly and say, man, you know, so-and-so is unplayable against faster big men or whatever, you know? I mean, I think that's the more conventional usage. You are physically outmoded by this match-up.

And then there's just like, you're no good right now, so please don't play. Well, yeah. Like DiAngelo Russell. In the world of advanced metrics, it's just sort of like, we have, we can tell you right here. I know DeAngelo Russell is making a lot of money, but playing without him is statistically a better idea. How about the world of like, I wear prescription classes so I can see the TV? He's no good at playing basketball in this series. He is unplayable.

You're part of this now. You can look at a play. Well, is it just the fans? They fans all along have been booing time coaches to get somebody out of the game. Now it's just part of the vernacular. I'm glad you had that data point there, 2017, because you cannot have an episode of an NBA podcast where the word unplayable isn't uttered.

Oh, no, the exact word was can't play canter. So he didn't even say unplayable. Okay, but that's the right idea. Yeah. But I don't know. Don't you get fired from your NBA podcasting job if you don't say unplayable? I think so. You got to say it.

Coming up in 30 seconds, David, the latest from the 2024 presidential race, forcing Ron DeSantis to talk to the media and Mike Pence, borrowing from the best. But first, 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 Pressbox pod where they are always gratefully received. Today's winner ties together two big stories we've been following closely on this podcast, as Wolf Blitzer might say. The NBA playoffs and the writers strike. It was an overworked Twitter joke to write. Nice to see that the NBA script writers are participating in the strike because there's no way they would have allowed the Lakers and Celtics to go out like this. Thanks to Biso and Trave.

If you think David Stern never would have botched an ending quite like this, congrats. you made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook dump, let's do this week in 2024. It's actually a busy week this morning. South Carolina Senator Tim Scott announced he is in. Yeah.

Here's a little joke from his announcement speech. By the time I was a freshman in high school, I wasn't doing very well. As he said, I felt four subjects. Spanish and English, world geography, and civics. Now,

for those of you not familiar with civics, civics is the study of politics. I will say this, though. I'll say this. Hey, hallelujah. Yes, yes, yes. I'll say this, though. I'll say this.

After 10 years in the Senate, I am not the only one failing civics in the nation's capital. Really visiting all the stations of the political speech cross, there with that joke. Not only the common man and woman reach out of, hey, my grades weren't so good. And then you bring it all the way back around. They're failing that civics exam too. Yep. All those clowns in Congress.

It's about the most lo-fi presidential campaign announcement I can remember, huh? I mean, I know. Wait for Mike Pence for you to make too many proclamations here, but yes. Yeah, you're right. They're all pretty lo-fi, dude. one that won't be though Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is said to announce this week this is apparently happening Wednesday as you know he has bypassed the quote unquote mainstream media

during his terms as governor of Florida by the way he calls this the national regime media I learned this week not exactly the phrase that rolls off the tongue and now we're getting to a point if he is actually going to be running for president where this might matter. Steve Bannon,

yes, that's Steve Bannon tells the New York Times. The Murdox encapsulated him in a bubble and forced-fed him to a conservative audience. He hasn't been scuffed up. He hasn't had these questions put in his grill. Now, what's interesting about this is that Donald Trump has seen Ron DeSantis's MSM evading tactics.

And he has noted that this is a possible weakness in the DeSantis campaign. So the New York Times story I just quoted continues. Mr. Trump has given seats on his plane to reporters from outlets that have published harsh stories about him. And despite having spent years calling CNN fake news, Mr. Trump recently attended a CNN-town-town Hall. So let's just note the bank shot that is happening here. Donald Trump is saying my opponent has cut himself off from the so-called fake news. Yeah. So in response, I will wrap my arms around the fake news. Never mind that I am the guy who labeled them fake news to begin with. It's like the most Trumpian tactic I have ever heard. Yes. Yeah. And there's no real loss in it for him because he could

just say this is the way this is this is me this is what i've done all along or really more i guess it's more this is me whatever i choose to be me is me and you guys you know should understand that interestingly uh desantis invited or agreed to jonathan martin writer from politico to come down and interview his brain trust down there where they got to make their case while they're still in this race got money we're doing well in the early states i do better than trump and head-to-head matchups with biden swing states so that's i'm etc, et cetera. So maybe there's a little,

we have to talk to these guys after all. Yeah. And by the way, when you're behind in the polls, you agree to interviews. This is why Mike Pence is doing interviews right now. And speaking to which, David,

did you see the Mike Pence borrowing situation? Mike Pence, not yet. No, is it? Yeah, well, he was in New Hampshire. This has come from Politico's Adam Wren,

who's a friend of this program. Pence had some prepared remarks he was said to give it a public policy center. These are very generic prepared remarks. America must be the best place on earth to work, invest, innovate, et cetera, et cetera. Turns out, Ren writes that the two-sentence passage was almost identical to words Trump uttered in a speech in 2019. And what happened was that the person who wrote Pence's speech, according to Wren, used to be involved in the Trump speechwriting apparatus and inadvertently controlled Veed

some text, maybe not literally, but it somehow wound up in the prepared remarks Pence was set to give a New Hampshire. I'm so tired of this. Of the Republican nomination or of political speech borrowing. Political speech borrowing. First of all, oh my God, like, you can't figure this out. But second of all, are we like, we're not, this is not, this is not someone saying that like I am, do this i'm not freestyle rapping here about my about my life you know and this is not supposed to be

some off-the-cuff literary form he's reading from a teleprompter nobody in the world thinks that he wrote these words so we're attributing to him and everyone's come before him a scandal of of staffers messing up or staffers borrowing from another script that was also not written by the candidate. I guess the question is like if you just only borrowed sections of other people's speeches, I know Joe Biden got busted with this once about a time, but how long would it be for take for people to notice? Just the boring parts.

Do you think that mean, well, it would take a while. They're all kind of the boring parts. But this is it. I think that in a world in which real scandal is unimpeachable, right? Like real, real scandal cannot be. the real scandals that are going on are for some reason off limits and the journalistic establishment can't actually like pin anybody down on these things. Then you start going to these sort of tried and true ones, right?

So we can always get somebody, we can always make somebody look like a sad sack for plagiarism. People really respond to that one. I just seem this just so boring. Do you think that people would be, do you think that Mike Pence, for instance, we think there'd be more outrage if he lifted several passages from Trump speeches or if the entirety of his speech was proven to be written by Chat GPT. Ooh.

How much of the New Hampshire primary base is up to speed on what Chad GPT is? I guess it's a question. I think there's two tiers. There's people that have no idea what it is. There's people that have enough idea of what it is to think it's incredibly nefarious. Right? Yeah. So I don't really know.

But we can't be too far away from that reality, right? I mean, no. I mean, that's the thing is there's certain things in this world that are going to be incredibly generic, even when written by human hands with originality. Yes. They are going to sound like every other presidential speech. I mean, this doesn't even sound like particularly Republican.

And like invest in America. America is the best place on earth to work. That just sounds like everybody who has ever run for president. Nobody has said, you know where's a great place to work? Country, we offshore jobs do. No one's ever said that when running for president. Yes. There's some career, there's some writing careers that are going to get swallowed up by

AI and it will actually make sense. I saw somebody online on Reddit or something talking about how they were very, you know, had built their whole career and now it was going to be taken away by AI. And it turned out that their career was, and no offense to all of the, wonderful people we work with, but composing the show notes for podcasts. Like that was apparently the whole job, not producing, but just listening to and making the 25 minutes. Brian and David make jokes about Mike Pence. And it's like, yeah, that that's a job that will be swallowed up by AI.

This is the funniest part of Politico's article. A Pence spokesman told Adam Wren that the speech, quote, was designed for Pence to draw a contrast with the other candidates in the race. Okay, that's funny. That'll do the trick. Department of Media Linguistics, David. This is the week, as you might know, from studying our website that the last episode of Succession is going to air. Sunday night, it's all over.

Skip ahead if you don't want any spoilers, because we will be touching on them here. But, David, I know you and I love a good journalistic euphemism, particularly a euphemism that is part of an obituary for a public figure. I think we might have gotten a few for Jim Brown this week. I wanted to take you back to season four episode four of succession, which was right after, and again, skip ahead if you don't know any of this stuff, the death of Media Kingpin Logan Roy.

I want you to listen as the Roy kids translate some of the phrases from the obids. Anything good? The courier, you need a codebook for this one. You're ready? Yeah. A complicated man. Through phones at stuff. That's good.

Sharp reader of the national mood. He's a bit racist. Well, then he was very much a man of his era. Again, racist, also relaxed about sexual assault. Business genius. Never paid a penny in U.S. tax. text. Oh, that's a

yeah. Sharp reader of the national mood made me smile. Got ratings, got attention in ways I, the obituary writer, do not approve of,

but cannot exactly say that. So, Sharp reader of the national mood, a man of his time. Watch this space for future real life media kingpins who might fit some of those descriptors. And journalistic cliche watch.

You and I, love the phrase on steroids because oh yeah writers use it always to describe something that is bigger than before well listener Tyler asked this do we feel like

it was written by chat GPT has already become a cliche so to your point a minute ago when we see a generic thing out in the world for instance Rolling Stone has a piece about the new movie

Fast X. And the headline is Fast X is so lifeless it feels like it was written by Chad GPT. Are we starting to get a little bit of an overload? Yeah. Yeah, it's really not necessary to use chat GPT in any sort of metaphorical sense, right? I mean, it's there any sort of other sort of literary stylistic flourish. It's going to be used enough, literally, in the coming weeks and months and years. So you think it's like something is, whereas steroids have kind of gone out of vogue in sports.

Has Chad GPT picked up on the overuse of Chad GPT and comparing things to other things? Like if you ask Chad GPT to write a paragraph about a bad, about a, you know, a political speech that just seemed really trite. Would they, would Chad GPT say it feels like it came out of Chad GPT? Ooh, that's a great question. Is that is that? Does that mean

is Rishish Sintians? That's the moment. The T2 style moment. Last one I have for you, David, since we have a moment here is the Larry McMurtry

auction, which a bunch of people sent us. The gallery previews start today. It starts next week at 10 a.m. I don't know if you'll be

taking any money over to the Larry McMurtry auction. There's a link if you want to make some plans in our document there. A lot here, Larry McBerter, if you don't know, obviously the great Texas author and nonfiction, occasional nonfiction writer too,

died recently. Now his possessions are going out for public auction. A lot of this is what you'd expect. His first edition of Terms of Endearment, estimate $2,000 to $4,000. A lot of books. some screenplays, then we get to some really interesting tiers here. Larry McMurtry's typewriters.

Oh, yeah. Do we pronounce this brand of typewriter Hermes? Or is this like the scarf where it's a Hermes typewriter? I think Hermes fine. Typewriters in the $4 to $6,000 range. That would be something if I had massive amounts of disposable income, I would be kind of interested in having. one of Larry McMurtry's typewriters.

You can buy his cowboy boots, some Tony Lama or Lucchasey boots, $400 to $800. You can buy his Dr. Pepper special edition wristwatch. This is really getting into the yard sale portion of the literary giants career. A lot of Dr. Pepper memorabilia, yeah. He's from Texas.

Got a love you, Dr. Pepper. There are a lot of guns, like shotguns. Again, he's from Texas, yeah. There is small rustic wooden bench, which is exactly the kind of furniture I'd hope Larry McMurtry would have. Also, farmhouse table. There's a grand piano.

Seems kind of awesome. I'm not sure that having Larry McMurtry's grand piano is something that sets off a whole lot of sensations in my mind. Well, if you want a grand piano. Yeah. I mean, is it these, I was actually adding a state sale yesterday, but it's not, I didn't know that, you know, the, the, the, the, the,

the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, it's just a, you, the, the, it'd be one thing to have, like, a personal copy of a book or something for one of your favorite author, sure, we've all been there, maybe a typewriter on the outside, if you had a lot of disposable income, like you said, although finding a place for it, I guess you could just display it on the bookshelf amongst his books that, that, that would be fine, but most of this falls in the category of like, I want that anyway, or I sort of wanted one of those anyway,

and this is my justification for buying, right? Yes. That's the approach I took at the Alex Trebek estate sale. When I bought several books that I actually have read and enjoyed from Alex's library. The item I might have to break my no bidding on random things online policy for the group of four Waco's siege souvenir shirts and hats. What? If I see at the mass man bidding against me on this lot, I'm going to know it's, you've taken an interest too.

I don't know if Larry himself bought these during the Branch Davidian standoff or somebody bought them for him. But there's some. There's a T-shirt that has not aged terribly well that says, I support ATF. Wow. The big outline of the state of Texas. Anyway, the Larry McMurtry auction for people like that. like David Shoemaker and Brian Curtis. Speaking of which, it's time for David Shoemaker guesses,

the strained pun headline. Yeah. Last Monday's pun about Google's lame AI chatbot was throwing good money after barred. Today's headline comes from Cade Stone. It's from Politico's Playbook PM newsletter. You've heard all the stuff about the debt ceiling standoff, David, in Congress. whether Biden is handling this correctly or not.

Well, Politico has a kind of a gloomy update. It says that default is almost preordained. Default has been foretold. I think that's enough what was Politico's strained pun headline. The fault is inevitable. The fault is... Is it like a default pun? Is that what I'm looking at here?

Mm-hmm. The fault is... Default? The fault is... Oh, my. The fault is... It's been foretold, David. It's been seen.

The fault is visible... Seen in the heavens. Seen in the firmament. Vision... Default in... In the night sky. The fault in the stars. Oh, the fault in our stars.

The fault in our stars. Yeah, okay. I was going to say a John Green novel that either you and I have read. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Eduardo Ocampo. Thank you, Eduardo. I am back later this week with Press Box final edition.

Maybe some politics. A little break from basketball. On Monday, Shoemaker and I return with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.