The Press Box - Thanksgiving Listener Mail. Plus, Podcaster Josh Dean.

Episode Date: November 26, 2020

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker are answering your questions for a Thanksgiving edition of Listener Mail (2:30). Then magazine writer, editor, and podcaster Josh Dean joins to discuss his new podcast Chameleon: Hollywood Con Queen (37:45). Plus, David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Happy Thanksgiving media consumers. This is the press box. Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here. David, what is the most southern or Texan thing that's going to be on your dinner table today? I don't even know which things qualify. Corn pudding probably. That's a southern delicacy. I introduced it to everybody I know up here.

Where does your non-southern slash non-Texan family fall on pecan pie? We actually had one last week. Pro pecan pie, although I think it was determined the one we had was too sweet, which is not, I don't, I've never uttered such words. Uh-huh. I mean, listen, like so many other Thanksgiving time traditions, pecan pie is, to me, it's sort of a vehicle for an experience. It's not that, I mean, I could have the world's greatest pecan pie and I'm sure it would appreciate it on its own, but I need whipped cream. I need some vanilla ice cream. I need it to heat it to the right temperature.

you know, and it's, and generally pecan pie, more often than not, there's a sliver of pecan pie next to a sliver of pumpkin pie next to some something else, whatever. I mean, so, but, but I, but I, the short version is I love pecan pie and my family is learning to love it as well. I'm, I'm glad you said that because I've been getting some

bacon pie pushback in the Curtis household as well. Well, I was in the store last night looking for, like, with the express purpose of buying a pumpkin pie. My wife wanted some pumpkin pie. So I went to the store. store, but I was like, maybe I'll get two pies, right? And I was just like, I don't even know what kind of pie to get. Once the pecan pie is out, I mean, it's like apple pie.

Is anyone really clamoring for an apple or for like a cherry pie? So I ended up getting like half of a blueberry pie, which is incredible, but it just kind of tasted like a breakfast pastry, you know, like a toaster strudel or something, which wasn't exactly the mood I was going for. May I put another fruit somewhere high in your power rankings? Yes. Boys and berry pie. Okay. All right. I'm going to go pick up a boisenberry pie today.

It has a little bit of that cran sort of tartness. Yeah, not right. That's so much. Kind of a lot of sweetness. Underrated. All right. Under and I'm not sure if that's Southern or not, that feels more like the Northwest or something, but we'll go with it. We're going to talk to Josh Dean about his new true crime podcast, Chameleon, Hollywood Con Queen. But first, David, why don't we answer a whole bunch of listener mail? Yes. first up from Peter Hartlob

Love the premature John Williams Ulogy Who Among Us doesn't have a story of casually mentioning the death of a living person On radio podcast or God forbid in print Mine was Ricardo Montalbon If you missed Monday show, David announced the death of beloved movie composer

John Williams News slash John Williams is not dead Well listen I'm following in the great tradition of well we're at Grantland where we prematurely killed off Gene Hackman there's the giant

there's a huge Gene Hackman profile I forget it was a freelancer who wrote it I'm sorry I can't remember who did it but it was the head the way the headline and the positioning of the piece was was composed everybody thought oh my god I didn't know Gene the reaction was oh my God how did I not know

Gene Hackman was dead and so that we kind of had to apologize for that Listen, I think the greatest compliment you could pay somebody who's still alive is that you think they're dead. Well, no, that's not the compliment. It must feel great to find out that you're still alive when other people think you're dead. Yeah, did you see the premature death call on MSNBC this week? No. Oh, good.

I'm not alone. Oh, listen to anchor Richard Liu. This was a few days ago. $1,000 to an anonymous buyer, the singer of many anthems of the 1960s, Dylan dying, last year at the age of 79. More than a week with Joshua Johnson right after the break. Yes, Bob Dylan passed away in 2019, David. And what's so eerie about that is he's reading a news item.

It's really specific. Yeah. How did you, I can understand getting it wrong, but how did you think Bob Dylan died last year? Wow. That's a weird one. That's a really specific. Maybe you just, I have no idea how that would happen.

That's just incredible stuff. The reason we were talking about John Williams was we learned that he wrote the theme song to meet the press, which is called the pulse of events. Can we hear just a little bit of the pulse of events, Erica? Can we freeze it right there for just one second? That opening little part right there, doesn't that just make the hairs on your arm stand on in because it's also what NBC uses when there's breaking news? Is that the same? I'm pretty sure they were playing a piece of that. that every time they called a state on election night, which that's why, that's like my stomach

is flipping when I hear that, but maybe it is just the breaking news thing. But speaking like for a major death, right, that's, that's, we're breaking in. You know, you hear that, then it's, you know, Lester Hold is straightening his tie and about to tell you something really, really important. Oh my God, yes. You would just let that roll a little bit more. God, I could listen to the pulse of events all day. Right. Just for the record, I'm just Googling this right now. There was an Australian TV show news show that accidentally referred to Bob Dylan as the late singer. I don't know if that influenced Richard Luling, but it was the same day. And yeah.

I feel when it happens once, if you're an older person, it's kind of like funny and it's a great anecdote. When it starts happening two, three times, it's bad news. I have so much to contribute to this conversation that I feel like I'm just going to, it's like such a bad karma to even go on with it. So let's let's move. Let's let's let's move forward. Can we listen to a little more Pulsive events?

Come on. I was just getting into that. Well, yeah. No, no. By all means, let's just pivot hard to the, to the John Williams half of this. And then it soars and sores. Listener, Mike Herman says, David, a listener note that John Williams medley, I often played in middle school slash high school band contained themes from his NBC news compositions.

Can you imagine the high school marching band marching around at middle? Midfield playing the pulse of events. That really makes me laugh. My goodness. As the brother of an ardent member of the high school band and I guess my wife's dad was a really significant influential high school band leader for a long time. I guess I can say, and I knew a lot of people in the band. I can say with confidence that any John Williams tune or medley you could play in the high

school band would have been a very cool thing for someone who is in the band. This is from Mr. Media X. Does the departure of Vox founder Ezra Klein to the Times and Matt Iglesias to substack and the merger of BuzzFeed and Huffpo presaged by Smith to the Times signaled that the promised new media revolution is petering out? Why were the legacy behemoth papers harder than expected to topple? In other words, do the old print rags still got it? I mean, there's also a sort of corollary question of this, which is that like, if this podcast had been going for the past 10 years, you would have us on tape many, many times. And probably just in the two years we've been doing, you have us on tape many times saying, why doesn't, why doesn't historic news institution X do the very obvious modern technology thing, why? Right? And, and the answer is they just needed slow and steady wins the race, right? I mean, the Times obviously has pivoted, I mean, not pivoted, has moved into.

the prestige podcast territory or just podcast territory of late. But there's a lot of things that have been sort of, you know, from blogs onward, there have been a lot of things where people would just said, why doesn't the Times invest in that? And, well, I mean, they went out in the end. So maybe the idea was just to sort of just keep your coffers full and wait for the opportunity to hire everybody's talent away. Well, yeah. And I don't think we, any of us really saw how big and powerful the Times was going to get over the last couple of years. You know, the Times has always swooped in to hire who they want. But we have gotten to a crazy point where they are hiring everybody. Yeah. And first they hired all the political reporters and now they're hiring all the

opinion people. Remember, it was not that long ago that the Times had a tiny number of columnists who were appearing on the opinion page and then they were, you know, running op-eds. Now everybody is a New York Times columnist. Yeah. If you weren't already an Atlantic columnist. So I don't think these upstarts, you know, or any of us who work in the non-Times part of journalism saw just how powerful they were going to get, partly through their own savvy, like you said, making good podcast, doing all these things, and partly because of Donald Trump and the amazing amount of news and subscriptions that he would drive to the Times.

Question number two, if you could be given the keys and a fair budget that would remain reliable for five years, what magazine would you choose to take over? It can be any magazine, but has to be principally a print magazine. Oh, man.

I mean, this is hard. Print magazines. I mean, I mean, I could tell you what my favorite magazines are, but I don't think that that's not the right answer to this, right? I mean, if I said, I love,

I don't know, I mean, should I be talking about like the Oxford American here. And I mean, they're doing fine the way they do it. We could have some fun with that as a kind of Graydon Carter and Kurt Anderson,

the Oxford American. But can I give you one? What about Texas Monthly? Okay. That's actually a hole that I would not have even thought about. That would be a lot of fun. Two of us in Austin,

some long form, great barbecue columnist, you know, good covers. Willie Nelson, once a year on the cover hell three times a year on the cover. Yeah. I don't want to displace anybody,

but that would be a hell of a lot of fun. Yeah, that would be a lot of fun. I mean, listen, the way I was thinking through this, there is, you know, the magazines that still exist, it's a little bit arbitrary, but like the big, the big mainstream magazines, you know, you'd have fun with, with, I mean, GQ's an incredible periodical as it is. I mean, you'd have fun if you got the keys to that place, you could make a lot of fun out of like Esquire or something

like that. You could also just do the Vanity Fair thing and just like bring back an old magazine. I mean, although that'd be a lot more work to sort of bring something up from the, just, you know, just the Saturday evening post or something, Life magazine by Brian Curtis and David Jimmy. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, it would be fun just to do a, to do it. I mean, the great thing about Texas Monthly, and this applies to other magazines too,

but it's like you have i don't i don't want this to sound derogatory because you're not because it's not at all the bar if the bar feels a little bit low right or not that's not true we everything you do super well it just feels like you're doing like like just such an incredible moment um whereas i think with some of the big new york monthlies it just feels like you should be doing it no matter what i don't know it's it's Texas monthly is just such a good magazine and has such a good history, that would be a lot of fun, man. Let me tell you what the trick is. If you took over a magazine,

you need to declare that you're bringing back the spirit of like two or three editorial regimes ago. That's the trick. That's what Tina Brown did with the New Yorker. Said, no, no, I'm not going to do Robert Gottlieb's magazine. I'm not even going to do William Sean's magazine. I'm going to do Harold Ross's magazine. So that's me.

I want to do Bill Broils as Texas Monthly. I'm going back, baby. You know, we're going all the way. We're going all the way back to the 70s, even beyond, right, for a magazine. Because the thing is, nobody really remembers what that was like. They've heard about it. They've read about it, but nobody really knows that was like. So you're surfing off all this goodwill.

And if you don't ever really achieve that nirvana, nobody can prove it because they don't remember what those old magazines are really like. This is for Matthew Lee. Which reporter is most likely to become the Maggie Haberman of the Biden presidency? in terms of accents, influence, etc. Is the answer, Maggie Haberman? Well, I think Maggie Haberman certainly has a head start, right? Unless she takes a bunch of time off to write a Trump book. I mean, there was an article about this the other day,

and I didn't read past the first sentence, and now I feel like a real idiot. There's an article about how the Trump, I mean, how the Biden presidency is going to differ from the Trump presidency significantly in who they kind of consider the important influencers, and how, you know, Trump obviously is a, thinks the reactions of the opinions of people on like Fox News primetime shows are what's more

important and Biden is sort of the old school where he's he caters more to like the entrenched opinion columnists at places like the New York Times. I mean, I remember when like Obama was running for his first term there was a whole there was a whole thing about how he he valued Maureen Dowd's opinion to just some like incredibly high degree, right? I mean, they're just like this is the very kind of traditional well, it's a it is a, it is a, new, it's an old, it's an, how to say this, it's like an old person's idea of a new idea. I mean, we're going to go after the opinion columnist, right? But I don't know.

I mean, there's, I don't know who's going to have the inside track. I really don't know who's going to have the inside track. I mean, certainly, I feel like it's easy to say that, you know, John Meacham's going to have the inside track for the, for the book length, uh, reported. Yeah, I wonder why. but I don't know. Who do you think? Is there, I mean,

are there any names that just sort of leap out at you? Biden's going to look across the Oval Office of John Meacham's to be sitting there with a notepad right in the book in real time. Hey, he's right there. Oh, wow, this is easy. How does John Meacham do it? John Meacham writes like a lengthy book a year. Mm-hmm.

Do you think he just dictates? Do you think it's just straight from like tape to paper? I mean, someone else is typing it up for him? I don't know. It's incredible. He always has his eyes on the prize. I remember when I was working at Newsweek and he had just like,

left, but he had some period of time each year that I think he went to Tennessee at Newsweek and was, you know, and I just imagined that time he was just churning out books. You know, he was like, all right, what's the next John Meacham title going to be? On the Maggie Haberman thing, I certainly think she's capable of doing it. Two interesting questions are, is news just going to be so different under Biden? Not just that Biden cannot possibly be as leaky a ship as Donald Trump, which was leaky in the extreme, but also that there will just not be like bombshells to leak every single day. There will not, there'll be tons of news and there should be tons and tons of critical coverage. But will they just be as much

material for any reporter, even a reporter who totally owns the beat? And then the second part of that I would say is like, can anybody do that job for multiple years at that level? Aren't you just going to burn out? Yeah. I just, oh. Listen, I'm, I just clicked on the times right now. Michael Crowley has been,

has been, laying claim, I think, to some of this territory in the beginning. I'm sure there's other names I could, you could point to as well. Yeah, I mean, I think it's probably going to be a new person. I think going to, to your,

to your larger question, and, you know, this is certainly going to be fodder for many, for think pieces in the coming months. I guess there's a question as to whether or not Trump not only like changed the way we looked at the presidency, but changed the way we report on it.

Like did he sort of usher in the TMZ era of presidential journalism to the degree that like there will be a Maggie Haberman, there will be stars made and the Biden presidency for as boring as it may be will be covered. People will attempt or be inclined not through ill motives, just be inclined based because we've been through it for four

years to cover Biden in the same way we've been covering Trump. I think they'll do something because I think there's so much of a news apparatus built up that they have to just fill that hole somehow. I'm just fascinated how they're going to do it. Like when the, presumably Biden's going to, the Biden, President, the Biden White House will take back over the POTUS email, I mean, a Twitter handle, right? Not be tweeting from real Joe, at real Joe Biden or whatever. But wouldn't that just be wild if every time the POTUS Twitter handle just tweets

out some like anodyne like we're gonna we're issuing a you know or a signing statement or whatever that's going to really just help the dreamers today or something and that just become and they just try news networks just try to just spin that out into hours of you know hours of news coverage i mean it's it seems pretty impossible but they're going to try imagine the kairon on cnn says Biden colon happy arbor day or happy earth day or whatever it is i don't think I'm, I don't think I'm, I'm imagining too much to say that would actually be Tucker Carlson's perfect world. If he could just, if he could just, if he could only go nuts about completely imaginary things, I think he would be a happier person. This is from Chris Rolls in

Australia. Which non-ringer podcast do you regularly listen to? Both sport and non-sport. Love what you guys do. Oh, man. Well, I mean, sport. I mean, I don't even know if there's a low post even count as a non-ringer podcast. It's kind of in the family in a way. It's in the family. That is definitely my number one podcast, the sports or basketball podcast that we don't do. I mentioned how does this get made in some of their

context a couple weeks ago and I still am just like ridiculously addicted to that show. I mean, I'm trying to think. I don't know. I could pop out my phone. What are yours? My big one for non-sports is the BBC podcast in our time. You ever listen to that? Yeah, of course. Of course. People have it. Melvin Bragg is this novelist writer, been around the UK for a long time, and he gathers three academics to talk about very, very lofty subjects and manages within an hour's time to sort of corral them and shepherd them into having a really accessible, interesting conversation about all kinds of topics. Here are some recent episodes. This is not a joke. Coffee. Lawrence of Arabia.

Echo location, the Inca. And it works. And it's incredible. And I listen to that when I'm jogging. And I always think like, man, I want to read more about the Inca or Egyptology. And that never really happens. But I'm sort of glad at least I gave it a whirl. That's fantastic.

Two more. I got a name because your last podcast on the left is an obvious one. But I often enjoy the subject matter they cover. And this is really obvious. but reply all. I mean, I guess it's part of the Spotify family now, but they're just working at a level that all of us podcasters only dream of getting to. Related question from Elizabeth Gardner. If you have downtime over the break, what movies slash shows you'll binge and or books you will read? I wish you and yours a happy Thanksgiving. And my memory for what I need to read or watch is so

broken now. I can tell you today the things that I mentioned. My wife and I discuss is one, we have to hate watch Hillbilly Elegy and two, I only just found out that this Netflix show kingdom is actually a, I knew it was like a Korean show. I didn't realize it was a zombie show. I've done art for this show. I didn't realize there were zombies, so now we have to watch this show.

Having just come off of Train to Busan Peninsula like two nights ago. So the most southern thing at your table will be a hate watch of hillbilly That might be true. I mean, listen, is it... Can you zoom me in for that? I want to be part of that. We also need to talk about what hate watching means right now.

I mean, the idea that you would plan out a hate watch is not exactly the same thing as a hate watch, right? I mean, but to say like we're going to do... You know, I mean, it's not just bad. It's not a bad. It's not like we're watching this because it's the room. You know, I mean, we're not what we're just like, but like we're watching it. We can have a premeditated hate watch, I think. Yeah, we're not watching it because like, we're not watching it with the expectations. You know,

you know when you put on a movie because you got a recommendation and 10 minutes in, there's this really awkward tension between you and your wife about who's going to say, who's going to voice the potential. This is a bad movie first, you know? He's like, I don't want to say anything because I don't want to ruin her experience.

And she's like feeling the same thing. Like that's like, that's a different thing, right? This is we're going in knowing this. We both know that there's no high expectations for I just want to see kind of what the fuss is about. But yeah, the fact that we, that everyone in the world hate watches on purpose now is, is a, is a bizarre, it's a bizarre feature of the world we live in. What are you reading?

So I went to Roman's bookstore up in Pasadena the other day. And I was ambitious. I bought the Day of the Locust by Nathaniel West. Oh, I love that book. On our collective reading list since Mr. Reed's English class sophomore year or past, Haskell High School in Fort Worth. I've never read it. I'm not sure I knew it was about LA even. I was I was ignorant, David. So I've got it. Now, will I read that over the break? Will I have time to and be awake after my kids are in bed to read that? That's a big maybe.

But I really want to read that book. I read that in a creative writing program. I was suggested that I read it. And yeah, it was super good. I just bought. That was David's draw. I read that in a creative writing program. I did not go any deeper than that because I did on purpose. I just bought this Rich Cohen book, The Last Pirate of New York, which I'm very excited to read. Big Santa Rich Cohen.

And now, and I'm, and I'm, I don't know, like I want, maybe I can, maybe the listeners of the podcast and give me some recommendations. There's like a, there's like a half shelf of books that I was,

like when I was writing my book, just like my favorite nonfiction books. And they're all books that I keep coming back to. Usually for most of them I can find, when I'm in the mood for mystery train, I can find something else that I want to read in that vein. The book that I keep on picking up and rereading, because there's nothing like it is Luke Sants low life.

I love the book low life more than any book, any novel that's, I love it. I love it, love it. If there's any book, and I'm like a low wattage version of that, I don't need that level of quality. If you love low life and you're like, this is a book. If you love low life, you'll like this.

If you work in a bookstore and people ask you this question, you know the answer, let me know, because I want to read that book. If you walk into a bookstore and someone says, I need something like Luke Sontz low life, and you've answered that question correctly, contact David right now. I know that that happens because if I had those answers when I worked at politics and pros, I knew the answer to I've read X, you know, what's next for me. And they weren't, I hadn't, I hadn't read any of these books, but I knew what to say. This is from Will Holland.

if you two had a morning radio show, what would it be called? Would it be nickname-based, BC and the masked man, more conventional, press box AM, boring, Brian and David in the morning,

or something else? I actually like all of those because I just like, again, the low stakes of Brian and David in the morning or press box AM, maybe even lower stakes. If it was sports radio,

it would definitely be BC and the mast man. Yeah. Because it would have to be the stupidest type of, I mean, there is an incredible payoff. I mean, just whatever the opposite of payoff is to having like the radio voiced intro like BC and the man and just like, you know, like spring sounds and explosions going off in the background. And then this is the show. It's just you and me babbling about things nobody cares about for two hours. That would be just fantastic. Oh yeah. Surprising our parents at home with a call.

We'd be just ripping everything off from all the radio. By the way, sports right. I mean, I don't, I mean, sports radio is doing fine, obviously. Sports radio is doing fine. Kind of surprisingly. Yeah. I mean, obviously, we listen to a lot of Dallas area sports radio when we were coming up. You probably still, I know you still listen to some. Yep. New York sports radio is really big. I listen to a bunch of Charlotte area radio when I was living down there long ago. But man, living out here in New Jersey, Philly Sports Radio is all that it was cracked up to be in more. It is your God. It is, it's amazing. Like the detail, like, I understand why everybody that we know from Philly is absolutely nuts now. It is, it is, you know, where it's like, like, I get that like, like, kind of the most amazing thing about Chris Ryan is how, like, how, how much the Philly teams mean to him. Because you'd think that would, you know, we're all a little bit evolved past that, you know, in some degrees, you know? But, like, it, it's just, Philly sports radio is just amazing.

And that's all I'm going to say. This is from Andrew 3,000. What would each of your preferred cabinet positions be in a presidential administration? We don't want a big job. We do not want Secretary of State. This is us right now. No, but big job. You could totally do Secretary of the Interior.

Literally what I was about to say. But that's a big job, I think, is where I was, where my head was going. But it's not big in the sense of like you're on TV. every day. Secretary of the Interior is great. I mean, I also don't want like, I mean, I know that Secretary of the Interior's job is actually weirdly specific and low wattage,

not low wattage, low phi, but it certainly sounds cooler than transportation or energy or, you know, HUD. So, I mean, I feel like Secretary of Labor would be, if you were really feeling energetic, that would be a cool choice. But other than that,

I mean, any given, I don't have like the qualifications to be attorney general or anything like... We don't have the qualification to do any of these things. You're right, you're right, but I, for some reason, just through attorney general

and secretary of state out the window at the beginning of this. I think Interior is the answer because I'm either disinterested or ill-qualified for absolutely everything else. This is from Lee Dong. Have you done?

decided what diehard fans of the pod should call themselves yet. Off the top of my head, I'm thinking press boxers, press heads, or the box squad. Anyway, you've got to come up with something for me to call myself, so come on. I have no idea. Press,

pressers, pressers. Presser is like a press conference, right? Short-hand for a press conference. I've thought about this since I read this question the other day, and I do not have a great answer. Is this another one to open up to the readers? I mean, it's a perfect one to open up, but I am flattered and alarmed that anyone would call themselves anything who listens to this show. Yeah. But let us think on that, and we will get back to you.

I love this from Kunjali Padhaya. Do you talk to each other and your families in pauses and varying intonations? I think I get called out on it when I do. How many times? How many times? What is the over and under a number of times in a month that your wife or someone else in your household will say to you, Brian, this is not a podcast? I think I told the story before, but one of my kids started calling the other kid a podcast. You are such a podcast.

and it was totally in the negative because I think I would disappear to do a podcast so it became a bad thing in our household. That's fantastic. It is, don't underrate how much of fatherhood is just vocal performance. It's so true. Like tone is everything, right?

Like kids are hanging on your tone much more than any podcast. Yes. But yes, you can overdo it, right? Can you please put your dishes away after dinner and, by the way, put that milk in the fridge? It is an incredible exercise in what, well, maybe this is a podcast, there's a lesson I should learn for the podcast. You say a lot of words. You realize every day you say so many, there's so many words come out of your mouth.

The entire thing is making sure that you focus them in on the words that matter, right? you slow down you repeat yourself you say look make eye contact with me right now i what i'm about to say is important so yeah it is it is it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's really underlining things by the way my wife got into it i'm not going to go into too much detail but got into it the thing the other day because she was in a text message back and forth with somebody and said something the effect of like and you just in it more than one person and you just went anyway but somehow it auto-corrected to and you joysticks went anyway. And she didn't realize why the person was really mad and on and on and on until the person was just really pissed off because she had called him and his girlfriend a couple of joysticks totally by accident.

And that's not even a word that's meant to be a derogatory term, but now it's become around our house the meanest thing you can say to anybody. That is fantastic. This is from listener Ben. My question is simple. were either of you into comics when you were younger. Oh, God, yeah. Yeah. He's pointing at that guy.

He's pointing at me through the screen. Yes, a big X-Men guy. And then, I mean, just a big comic book guy that, you know, more of Marvel than DC. I guess, I mean, I read a lot of, you know, Batman or whatever, too, when that was cool. But yeah, and I still read comics. I mean, I don't keep up, you know, would go through stretches in adulthood where I would go every week. and then kind of phase out for a while and go back. And now I still read what people tell me to read,

although most of my traditional sources of, you know, advice and encouragement have dried up too. But I read, you know, now I'm, you know, I'll read, there's some things I still read. I'll read Saga or whatever Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips are doing or I'm dipping in and out of, or reading the Hickman X-Men stuff in chunks. But I wish I knew more to read too.

So, I mean, that's, you know, I walk into comic book shops now and just feel, I guess, a little bit of what everybody else feels. And they walk into a comic book shop and they're just like totally confused and overwhelmed. And I was up in Beacon or somewhere in upstate New York on a cute little main dragon. They had a comic book shop. And I was like, I'm going to go buy some comic books. And I walked in with like my baby, 11 year old then and my wife. And I was just like, I just asked him, what do I need?

I haven't read a comic book in three years. What do I need to read? And just immediately realized I did not want to be in that conversation. I was getting like really, really bizarrely specific answers that didn't have anything. It held any interest to me. And I was just like, God, now I don't know how to find this out. So anyway, if you tweet me about that too. I mean, as long as everybody's tweeting me, let's just let me know what I should read.

It's an interesting question because David and I in many ways are exactly the same person, by which I mean, we are both huge nerds or were huge nerds. Yeah. But I was more in the Star Wars, Star Trek, classic H.G. Wells branch of nerddom, whereas David was comics, graphic novels, and 900-page Anne McCaffrey novels. I don't know if I read Anne McCaffrey when I knew you at all,

but that certainly became part of the mythos. Yeah, I mean... I stand by my story. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know if we even talked about it in the show. our friendship basically began when we were at a mutual friends ninth grade birthday party, whatever age that was. And Brian brought over a WWF video game.

And I was just like, Ro-Rumble for Super Nintendo. I didn't have this game and not played this game. But more importantly, I don't think I'd met anybody in the state of Texas yet who liked wrestling. I was new in town. And I, you know, you don't normally just,

I didn't have any like wrestling support groups or whatever. So that was pretty great. I will always remember that moment looking over at you, And one of us said, do you like wrestling? Here we are, David. 20 plus years later. This is from Politico, Steve Shepard. Remember that New York Times story about cable news commentators who have Robert

K. Rose, the power broker on their bookshelves in the background of their TV hits? Yeah. Well, have you noticed the same thing on ESPN, but it's the network's talent with the James Andrew Miller, Tom Shales, oral history. Those guys have all the fun in the background. I say this as someone who has both books in the background of my at-home setup. Can I comment on that? That was the reader or the listener saying that he has both books on his, he or she has both books on his show.

Yeah, that was Stephen Shepard saying that. All right. Here's the thing about the Miller Shales thing. It kind of works on a couple of things. I mean, one, it is basically the official book of ESPN. It was not an authorized oral history, but it is the oral history of ESPN. So a lot of those people had it. But remember at the beginning, when it first came out, there were a lot of embarrassing stories in that book or there were a lot of thorny stories in that book.

Yep. And I felt you would see people like Dan Patrick who had left the network making extra sure to prominently display that behind them. Or maybe somebody who was kind of a renegade and still at the network making an extra special effort to have that at the bookcase behind them. Mm-hmm. And I felt it was a little mini act of rebellion. Yeah, I mean, I don't know if it's an active rebellion so much as it's a little bit like, well, I mean, it is an active rebellion, but it's not like a particularly powerful one. It's like, it's like, you know, I'm going to, you know, wear my favorite punk rock t-shirt on casual Friday or something. It's like no one's getting fired over this, right? But, but yeah, it is, it is, it's, it's the most, it's the most countercultural book that you're still allowed to have on your shelf and, and, you know, bring, you know, be carrying on the way into work saying you're, reading on the train or whatever. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's an incredible book.

It's an incredible genre of book because these are books that we never get rid of, right? Because they're both, they're both resources that you would go back to. And they're also sort of, and I mean this is a huge compliment, they're sort of just like the platonic ideal of like a bathroom reader. Like there's never, there's never a moment. If you're just like, I have three minutes to kill and I have to read someone is making me read a book, like, that's the book you would pick up, right? No matter how many times you've read it.

I can turn to any page and just start reading. Yeah. It will be interesting. But I think that the big thing in the era, I mean, at least I can, this is maybe my two personal interpretation of it. Having moved across the country, twice and then to another state and having to purge my library every time, there's a certain set of books that you just don't get rid of. And that's like the best example of it.

You can never get rid of the oral history of such an institution. Fun guest today, David, Josh Dean, who has this new podcast out about what he calls the most wanted person in show business. Now, you've heard a lot of true crime podcasts. This one is really something else. We got into the story a little bit and also about a magazine writer going into podcast world and trying to figure out, what he's supposed to do. Here's Josh Dean. I've known Josh Dean, a magazine writer and editor for 15 years. So I was excited when he told me his new podcast was, quote, a story about Hollywood. But boy, I did not predict any of the twists and turns of chameleon Hollywood con queen,

truly wild crime story that stretches from the upper crust of Hollywood all the way down to the industry's gig workers. Josh is here to talk about the pot and how he made it. Thanks for coming on the press box, Josh. Of course, man. It's good to talk to you. I'm going to resist the urge to do that MSNBC thing where I say, how are you, my friend? Good to see you, my friend. It's been too long. Yeah, exactly.

So before we get into any of what Hollywood would call the story beats here, how did you get the tip for this thing to begin with? You know, it's a Hollywood story and it has like such an appropriate Hollywood beginning because, and this is going to, the first sentence of this is going to sound really boring and wrote. So please stick with me, people, don't tune out. I got a call for my manager. Oh, man. But he was, and he was calling me about a job.

However, he was calling to say, like, there's this other guy at our company who is in this workout class with a producer, and their trainer just fell for this crazy con. And we think it's this really big and involved thing that goes back a long time. And you should talk to these guys and see if there's a story in it. So I went out for one meeting, and here we are a year later. having like i'm not just my like top of my head is poking out of the rabbit hole but i'm mostly still in there so this weird story he just happened to have was more interesting than the actual job he was calling to talk to you about yeah well no actually this it was like it was a job call but not in your traditional

manager job calls because i thought it was just oh yeah here's here's a podcast you should host one because i had just made the clearing and i was looking for my next project and i thought it was like oh some company wants to hire you to make a podcast but it was more like you have to hear the crazy story that happened to this friend of my friend of this other manager. So it was like, okay, I'll hear you out. I'm glad I did. So we'll be careful here about spoiling too much. But what was the con that happened to the friend of a friend? So the friend of a friend was in a training class with this guy who drove down from, oh gosh, which town is that? I don't even remember the name. I was going to say San Bernardino, but now I can't remember up the coast about an hour anyway. So he would drive down to Santa Monica and

teach these Hollywood people just like fitness in the park kind of thing. And he told them he had been hired by this woman he thought was D. Bakkech, she was the wife of Bob Bakkech. She was the head of Viacom. Huge executive in Hollywood. Exactly. Right. So the wife of a very powerful Hollywood executive had he thought called to say, hey, I'm producing movies now. I saw your work on, he had done work on, I think suicide squad and as like a junior trainer, training actors. And I think you're great. And I think you should come to Indonesia for this movie that I'm making, and I want you to train the staff. So you're going to come over and scout locations for your gym, and you're going to teach these guys how to act like whatever their characters are. And he's like, oh, my God, this is an amazing

opportunity. I'm going to be like the head trainer on a movie. He flies to Indonesia for like three days is driven around and paying like admittance fees to parks and paying drivers and fixers and like, oh, by the way, there's this other charge. And then four days into it, like, he never met the director. he never met a producer he's like what is this thing his back is bothering him so he hops on a plane and goes home but he still isn't totally convinced it's a scam he thinks like maybe it just went wrong and then over a series of days he makes his phone calls and it's revealed to him that the whole thing is bullshit there is no movie that was not debackish on the phone and like it wasn't a crazy one-off experience he was one of we now believe up to a thousand people who've had this experience who have

flown to Indonesia for a job that does not exist on a movie that does not exist. A thousand people. Because that's one of the things you point out here is that this guy, this very first guy you interview, goes over there and he buys his own plane ticket. He spends maybe a few grand in Indonesia. But he is not conned out of a huge, huge, huge amount of money. It's a lot for him, but it's a relatively small amount of money. But the con is to get this much money out of a whole, whole bunch of people. That's part of it. I mean, it's, yeah, it's very hard. Like from day one, the question we've asked the most in that people still ask me every time I tell this story is like I don't understand it. Like it seems like so much work to get a few thousand dollars. And it is an incredible amount of work to get a few. Because the, you know, the person on the other end has like a tremendous amount of logistics. Well, you have to be able to pull it off for one thing. You have to plausibly convince someone in Hollywood that you are who you say you are. And in that case, it was debackish. But we also, it's been D.D. Snyder.

Stacey Snyder and Sherry Lansing and you name a powerful woman in Hollywood, this con artist has represented that woman. So you can imagine the logistics and like the spreadsheets this person must have laid out. Like this is who I'm impersonating and these are all my marks. So over the span of time, we think six, maybe seven years now, over a thousand people multiplied to buy a few thousand to 10,000. We're into the millions at this point. But I still think it's more than that.

like this is a game for somebody. And what kind of marks is the person targeting? This is one of the brilliant things about the scam, I think. I mean, obviously Hollywood is a town built on ambition, and everyone is told that like, you know, it's very hard to break in, but you just need that opportunity, right? Your break will come.

If you try hard enough and you're willing to stick it out, eventually someone will discover you. And that's exactly what the scam is. So it targets below the line people. so not actors, although there is an actor variation we can talk about, but like makeup artists and trainers and stuntmen and security guards and set photographers, but not at like a top level, like have had some success. You're probably on IMDB, but you don't have a lot of experience. So the con artist knows that this is a person who's like working hard to break in but hasn't

quite had the opportunity yet. And that's the person who's going to jump at it. You know, It's like in our world, if you're a young magazine editor, like an assistant or something, and the New Yorker calls and says, we want you to write this amazing feature, the ambition and the drive and the want in you isn't going to question, like, is this real? Like, why would they call me? I'm just an assistant. You're going to think, like, I'm talented. Somebody saw my work in, like, my college magazine.

It was like, that guy should be writing features for the New Yorker. And I totally understand it, right? It's kind of brilliant. I want to pursue that sort of parallel between gig workers in Hollywood and gig workers in journalism in just one second. How hard was it to get the people who fell for the scam to talk? Some people were really willing. And I feel like I was telling Vanessa Gregoriatis, who's like my co-detective, not quite co-hosts, but sort of co-show runner on it. I was telling her last night, I've become like a part-time therapist for people who've fallen for the scam.

Because I think everybody comes back feeling humiliated. like depressed, like I'm such a loser that I fell for it. And then when they hear that there are other people, they start to feel better. And then when they hear there are more people, they feel even better. And then when they can talk to me and I can say, hey, man, you have nothing to feel bad about.

I've talked to it 100 people now who have had your experience. It could happen to anyone. So surprisingly, there have been a number who were willing and ready and just wanted to unload. In other cases, it's taken some work. And the series, we feature quite a few anonymous people, just because in some cases, they're quite prominent in their fields, like a very famous chef is on episode seven.

And then in some cases, you know, there's like an ex-special forces guy who, for a lot of reasons, didn't want to be identified. Some of it was humiliation. Like, this is not a great advertisement for my security services that I fell for a scam. But also, I think he's just like, you know, those special operations guys don't like to be identified sometimes. Totally. And he felt, seemed to feel genuinely remorseful that he let all of his friends into the scam

in addition to falling for it himself. Totally. He had four. Yeah, so that guy in particular had four of his, you know, former teammates. So other security guys who he vouched for all went and fell for it.

And that's part of it, I think, is another brilliant facet of the scam is that what he does is that con artist finds people who then recommend their friends. And it like kind of works as like a working way up the food chain. So we talked about the marks. How hard was it to get famous Hollywood producers who were impersonated in this whole bit to talk to you.

Well, we were lucky that, so Deb Snyder, producer of many DC movies, Batman versus Superman. Her husband is Zach Snyder and they make movies together, you know, small movies like Batman versus Superman and Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman. She was actually pretty angry. So we have a whole episode that sort of centers around her, which is, you know, we'd spend so much time on the victims, like what I was just talking about, the people who were actually flown to Indonesia. and lost money and were humiliated.

But then there's these women in Hollywood who, it's a fairly traditionally male business. I don't think I'm breaking any news here, where women have had to work really hard to succeed. And now you've got quite a number of women in power positions. And they find out that their name is being used by this con artist who's sexually harassing people, who is like humiliating people,

who is like ruining lives and careers. And so they were pissed. And Deb in particular was very eager to, I mean, I can part clear her name to be like, this wasn't me, but also just like, screw this guy. Like, let's figure out who this is. Let's get the word out. Let's stop this. Tell us more about sexual harassment, because at this time, the Harvey Weinstein story is unfolding in Hollywood. And now what is happening with these fake executives?

Yeah, so I mentioned earlier that actors do play into it. So there are some, at various times, the con artist representing different women, Deb Snyder, it was one of these women, has recruited actors too. And for the actors, you know, they're like, again, day players, people who have not had their big break. And this woman calls, it's Deb Snyder, and I'm making air quotes here, and says, we want you to be the lead alongside the rock. You and the rock are going to be. And again, it's like, when you, when you like step away from it, you're like, that's absurd.

and this guy who's in episode six with us is like, of course I realize how crazy that sounds that like somebody would just call me who's never been a star and say, you and the rock are going to headline this movie, but also like, what would I be if I didn't have that belief in myself? Like if I was just like, no way would you want me, I'm a loser.

So of course, these actors are taking the opportunity. And then she, the dev, starts to push it a little bit where it's like, well, we're going to do some auditions on the phone before you go. and I'm going to send over some sides, and you and I are going to do this. And again, like not questioning whether, like, that's not something the producer would be doing, but these guys really want the break. So she starts with, like, romance scenes and she, you know, talks about how this might be a little uncomfortable,

but we're both professionals here. It'll be fine. And it gradually escalates to, like, full-on phone sex. And quite a few men have been subjected to multiple bouts of, you know, coerced phone sex in the belief that they're acting for a movie or auditioning for a movie. And, you know, this is one area where a lot of guys didn't want to talk about it. But we have, we have an episode with one. I spent an hour and a half on the phone last night with an actor who is really broken up by this. It happened to him. What was, you know, what's sort of sad about him and a lot

of others is that, like, he was like, you know, I'm a guy who's almost 40. I've been working in this business for 20 years. I basically given up hope of getting the big break. I'm just trying to grind out a career. Like, I gave up that dream. And like for, for a week, this, this thing fell in my lap. And I genuinely believe my life was going to change. And so he kind of went through the, the failure all over again and was feeling really low about it. And it's hard to hear because you think, oh, big deal. Like, you got harassed a little bit. You lost some money. But like, it's really having your hope destroyed, you know, and I think without that, then what are you even doing? Oh, absolutely. And like you said, this is the call all these people have been waiting.

to get their whole careers. Totally. And then for that to be a scam. Yeah, it's a line Hollywood sells us, right? Which is like your life could change in an instant. Back in April, you and Vanessa, Gregoriatas, whom you mentioned, Matthew Scher, form this company, Campside Media. You're all magazine writers. Now, are you forming a podcast company in response to what has happened to the magazine industry?

I mean, I'd be lying. I said that we were leaving magazines because the magazine industry is thriving and it seems like that as a great place to be like banking my children's future. So part of it certainly is looking for ways to apply our skills to a medium that's actually thriving and not dying. But also all three of us made podcasts in the last two years and really liked the experience and realized that like with this kind of show, the serialized narrative, that it's such a similar skill set to what we all do as magazine feature writers and authors that, you know,

of course, you need great audio producers in this case instead of magazine editors. But like breaking a story and reporting a story over a year is like something we know how to do. So we, yeah, so Campside is a company built around shows like this. So like eight, 10, 12 part narratives. You spent your whole career thinking like, what, does this make a good magazine story? How do you have to sort of shift that thinking to wonder, does it? this make a good podcast? You know, the stories start almost the same way. Like our, like, I always say our slack chain is, you know, is like a really contentious

magazine pitch meeting, like the three of us and our fourth partner who's not a magazine person. We sit there and just throw ideas around. So the first bar is basically similar to the magazine pitch. It was like, is this an incredible story people would want to listen to? And then, of course, there are other steps to that. Then you have to realize, do you have the participation of the main side suspect? suspects, subjects, which, you know, in this case, yeah.

In a magazine, of course, you want that ideally, but there are ways to work around it. It's very hard to do, like, a write-around in a podcast. And then it's more about tape, right? Like, you know, audio is not just turning along an interesting story into spoken word instead of written word. It's all about, like, who are the voices in? Are they good on tape? And if it's an older story, like with the clearing, which was my last show, it was a lot

of archival tape. That show would have worked without it, I think. what really made it special was that the woman who was the main subject of that, her father, who was dead, had left behind a trove of tapes of himself. So like often the podcast, it's just obvious sometimes when you're like, okay, that's a podcast. We have like 80 hours of amazing tape that no one has ever heard before, plus a host who can report and tell a great story. But I do think you're seeing a lot. I mean, I'm sure you see this. Like, because podcasts with the hot new medium, there's a lot of like, holy shit, that's an amazing story.

and then someone tries to turn it into a podcast, but it's almost like an e-book, right? They're just reading their magazine story out loud. So I do think we're kind of figuring out what works and what doesn't work and we're trying to be really specific at campsite about what should be a podcast, not just what can be a podcast. Reading their magazine story aloud in a really annoying narrative podcast voice sometimes. I know.

I'm trying not to become that guy. Do you have to interview people differently for a podcast and you would have a magazine feature? Completely, yeah. I mean, the thing about magazines or books, you know, you can write your way out of trouble. Like, let's just, like, even if you, like, showed up for a key interview, and this is like a nightmare scenario, but you're like tape recorder broke, there's a way to, you can remember enough, you can scribble stuff on napkins. You can, like, do, like, mnemonic exercises to remember stuff. Like, with a podcast, you have to have the tape or, like, they don't care that I talk to Brian Curtis. What did Brian Curtis say? Like, if I just give all your answers,

for 20 minutes. That's not exactly interviewing you for a podcast. So you have to make sure that the person is obviously good on tape, but also asking them questions in a way that they give you the answers that you need as opposed, because you can't, I can't say, well, I mean, I can, I guess. Well, what Brian meant to say there was this, or he was doing this and this happened. Like, I have to say, make sure that I'm asking you the question so that you can tell me the story without my interruptions, without me needing to do more than frame it, you know? And I think, when I was making the clearing, my producer was often like budding in and saying he would ask the question in a slightly more pointed way that in some cases meant they were trying to get the subject to answer me in a specific way, like the complete sentence, like, oh, I remember the night I got that call. This is what happened. Whereas in a magazine story, you would write that part and then you'd do the quote. But there's also a lot of like, what were you feeling at that time? Take us back to that. What did the room look like? Because you kind of have to paint the scenes for people in a way that. that, you know, you assume most people are in their car or they're on their headphones on the subway.

And they don't necessarily know what that room that you're talking about looks like or that place you're talking about. So there's a lot more of like having your subject describe things to you. Sure. And when you get all the material, how do you then go about deciding how many episodes can we stretch this thing over? Great debate in podcast right now because I think most there's a lot of like, God, that show should have been six episodes or wow, that should have been four episodes. I mean, the cynical answer to that is, like, you have to make money or these companies won't last very long. So it's pretty hard to monetize, like, as four or six episode serialized narrative at the moment.

I think that's going to change over time as the advertising industry realizes that, like, not only is there a lot of audience for podcasts, but it's a really engaged audience. It's a pretty educated audience. It's really desirable for advertisers. But at the moment, like, you're, the market forces are to make stories longer. Now, I don't think in the case of the two shows I've made, like either of them is too long. I mean, some people might disagree. I feel like Chameleon is such a wild story.

We could probably go on for 16 episodes. But I do think six to ten is often the sweet spot. And, you know, six can be really satisfying if you can make money on it. It's sort of like a, you know, a story or a book. You know when you're done. As the journalist, you know when it's done. And you feel it when you're stretching, right? Like, I don't know what we would have done because we promised so.

Sony is our distribution partner on this, and we promised them 10 episodes. I'm not sure what would have happened if we'd just gotten to seven and been like, you know what? It's over. They probably would have said, can you fill three more episodes? Yeah. I mean, the other thing I was thinking when I was listening to it is this is a detective story. So how important is it to have a resolution to the case to even make this pod work? Well, we're sort of all following the footsteps of serial, right?

Like, serial is the prototype, literally named itself the thing that we're all doing, you know. It is the definition of the medium, like this kind of podcast that Campside makes that I make. And it didn't solve the crime. So I think, like, when you consider that what's, you know, often cited as the most important and maybe best serialized narrative podcast of all time did not solve its case, that it's kind of provided a blank check for people to make interesting shows that have no resolutions. And you could argue that the clearing didn't have an ending, that we didn't necessarily set out to solve one particular crime.

It did feel like it could have gone on infinitely in some ways. And I think there is a lot of podcasting being done where the journalists start or hosts. They're not always journalists thinking, this is an interesting story. Who cares if we don't make it to the end? At some point, we'll say, who knows? Those are the facts. I feel like we argued a lot Vanessa and I and Matt and our partners about

because when we started Camellion we didn't know that it would have an ending and I think I can say without spoiling it that Camelion has a very satisfying ending I think it's okay to say we solved it we figured out who's behind this crime you will enjoy the show just as much knowing that but we did not know that when we started it

and I argued repeatedly partly because I really wanted to make the show that it didn't matter, that we would be fine, that even if we got to the end and we hadn't solved it, like we would be able to figure out how to land the plane, you know, with everybody still alive. I'm not sure I believed that when I said it, because I don't really know if, you know,

if I'm an audience member and I've just spent 10 hours of my time listening to your story, and you're leading me to believe that, like, we're on the hunt for this person and we're going to solve it. And then at the end, you're like, oh, sorry, we didn't. Yeah. It's, it's, I think you're going to see, more and more shows aren't landing the plane

and I do think it's a problem and I do think listeners probably resent it I mean TV shows do that too right like it was sort of like you watched I love season one of the killing and then at the end you're like wait huh okay you're not going to tell me what happened because they wanted to stretch it into a second season

right to make money in podcast I don't think it's so much about that it's more that everybody thinks in audio for some reason that it's all about the story being like holy shit enough that people will come and listen if it's crazy enough. And I do think maybe that's true, but we should probably start raising the bar a little bit. Yeah, I mean, it's funny, right?

Because going back to like the old date line mysteries on TV that you'd randomly, you know, watching your dorm room on Friday night or whatever, oftentimes when it was inconclusive, they would at least have a suspect or they would have somebody in prison who had been convicted and did he really do it, did she really do it? But if you have something like yours,

and now I have most, most of the story so I can I can confidently think I know where it's going, but like, which is just a scam. And at the end, you just kind of put your hands up and went, eh, I don't know, you know, this is a weird deal. There would be, there would be a final beat, I think that would be missing for the audience. But I guess the other answer, right, is you can do more episodes, right, as you learn more. You can't, right. Like, you can't, yeah, I mean, let's say we had set out to do 10 and we weren't able to solve it. Yeah, we could, we could continue, we could go on pause while we

I don't think you would want to like make 39 episodes where you're like incrementally less interesting developments where it's like, today we send out three faxes and called a few people. You know, but like, yeah, it's certainly cheaper to make than TV, although it is still very time intensive and difficult to do well, I think. I've been humbled many times by how complicated and difficult it is to actually make good compelling audio. It's so collaborative. But yeah, and also, I do think we've trained the audience, and it's a small audience. And if we say, like, serial is the, like, origin event of this kind of podcasting. It hasn't, it's only been, what, five years now that we have trained people to accept that. But I think you're right.

Like, if you do it too much, or let's say you really lead people to believe you're going to solve it and then you don't, like, how many times are those people going to come back and listen to your next show? I probably wouldn't do that. And I think if you're trying to build a company or build a reputation as a host, then you kind of want to tell people that they can expect a satisfying ending. There's a reason TV shows and movies end are not, except for like French New Wave or something. I don't know. I'm sure there are genres where like you're purposely not ending it because people are supposed to be confused.

That's not really great. I just had a vision of the French New Wave narrative podcast coming and I'm already, I've had that queasy feeling in my stomach. Last question for you, now that you are co-running a studio, how many projects do you have happening at one time? Oh, this question will give my partner, Adam, off a heart attack. Because it depends on how you define in production. Our spreadsheet gets longer by the day.

I mean, I think we have 20 shows on it at the moment. Now, not all of those are actively in production. Some are, like, hung up in deals. I would say confidently we have 10 that, like, have either, started or are starting soon and at least another three or four beyond that that I would say we'll be in production over the next year. Yeah, we meant to start with like six or eight and somehow we're already at like 12 or 14. I don't know what happened. Yeah, well, you guys are magazine veterans, you know, you take the assignment, right, and figure out how to get it done later. That's what I

feel. Like, yeah, let's just do it. And, you know, if we run out of money, it will have been fun. If we have to work 24 hours. I mean, I'm too old to work that many hours, but I guess I'll do it. I have a stake in the game now, right? There you go. There you go. All right. It's Josh Dean.

The podcast is Camelian Hollywood Con Queen. Trust me. Check it out. You don't need to go two or three in. You'll just go one in and you will be going all the way down the line. Josh, thanks for coming on the press box. Thanks, man. All right.

It's time for David Shoemaker. Guesses the string pun headline. Yeah. Thursday's headline about a radio telescope slated for demolition was dish-leveled. That one has stuck with me for some reason. Dish-leveled. Today's headline comes from Dave V. It's from the Washington Post, David.

It is about the annual and now very strange ceremony of Donald Trump partying a turkey on Thanksgiving. This is a longtime president. traditional tradition obviously takes on somewhat of a surreal air when you have a president who is about not to be the president but is refusing to admit that he's not about to be the president i don't think i really need to give you more here wait it's about a turkey pardon or it's about it is and let me just give you a little uh a little help blank pardon's turkey blank pardon's turkey it's not like a 70s game show what was the washington post's strained pun headline.

Trump. Donald Trump is a one-term president. He's a lame duck pardon's turkey? Lame duck pardon's turkey is correct. That's fantastic. All right. Lame duck pardon's turkey. He has David Shoemaker on Brian Curtis, researched by Chris Almeida, production

magic by Erica Servantes, who is a real champ for doing a ton of podcasts on Thanksgiving week. Hope everybody listening to show, whatever you want to call yourselves, as a fantastic Thanksgiving. We're going to take a deep breath and huddle with our immediate families. Next week, David, Emmanuel Atcho is here. Here's the guy's gone from NFL linebacker to FS1 talk show host to an author of a new book from Oprah's imprint, Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man.

He's also a University of Texas alum. So Eric and I get to give each other a virtual high five. That's Monday. And then Thursday, we're joined by BuzzFeed's Ruby Kramer. to talk about her very interesting reporting on the death of herman kane the 2020 collection and other subjects plus of course more lukewarm takes about the media see you then david see you later brian