The Press Box - The End of the Platner Campaign, Where's Mitch McConnell, and the Future of Youth Sports in America.

Episode Date: July 9, 2026

Today on The Press Box, Bryan Curtis and Joel Anderson discuss the end of Graham Platner's campaign for the U.S. Senate seat in Maine. Then they talk about Mitch McConnell's whereabouts and health before checking in on the Texas Senate race. Plus, they react to the New York Times' competition with AI slop and Alexi Lalas's take on youth soccer in America. (00:00) Intro(01:13) The end of the Platner campaign(09:44) Where’s Mitch McConnell?(21:38) Checking in on the Texas Senate race(27:34) The New York Times trying to outrun AI slop is fascinating(39:46) Alexi Lalas on youth soccer in AmericaHosts: Bryan Curtis and Joel AndersonProducer: Tucker Tashjian Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Pressbox Thursday. It's Brian Curtis. It's Joel Anderson. Hello, Mr. Anderson. Hey, welcome to the East Coast, man. Well, thank you very much. I'm up in the woods.

I looked it up. You know, I looked up at the time. We're not going to say where it is. Undisclosed location. Undisclosed location. But it seems very nice. Very remote. It's very remote.

I was just down in New York this week doing a bunch of interviews. So I'm glad to be up here now. producer Tucker Toshian is sitting in for Isaiah we got a lot to talk about today I don't think I've started a podcast uh over the last let's say four years by saying we have nothing to talk about today we have a lot to talk about today yeah yeah we always think so I mean there's been a few times where we're like uh it's just going to be kind of struggling to come up with something and then inevitably something fills the void but that wasn't a problem this time we we had to whittle things out when I get a texturing in the morning it's like what about this like oh yeah

that too. Today's that too was the end of Graham Platner's campaign. Yeah. Yeah. That, that, that track,

that train seems like it was going to run off the rails eventually. It did. It drew out probably longer than we thought it did. He dropped out on Wednesday, suspended his campaign, if we're being exact. After he was accused of rape,

an accusation he has denied. He dropped out with an 11-minute vertical video. And I guess this is the way we talk to each other now in all circumstances. He's on some kind of deck and you can hear the traffic noise in the background. You can see cars passing him in the background. You know, like there's like a highway or something behind him. I'm not sure what the right way to do something like this is, but it just seems very strange and informal. What did you make of the whole video?

Yeah, that this is the way that people do this sort of thing now because it feels more intimate. And it's a lot better than holding a press conference where you might have to answer questions that you're not comfortable having to answer in public, right? It lets you take control of the narrative. I will say, and we'll talk about this as we get into the conversation, the defiance was interesting. I did not expect him to be so defiant, but maybe I haven't been paying close enough attention. What did you think? Yeah, the defiance struck me too. This is what I wrote down.

He portrayed himself as a regular person. who was railroaded by the forces of corporate media, quote unquote, and the quote unquote political establishment. He did talk a little bit about the Politico story and just saying he had very little time to respond to that story. Suggested there was an effort to do this all a week before the deadline to get him off the ballot in Maine. It's part of the expediency here as Democrats have one week to replace him and figure out who they're going to run for Senate against Susan Collins so that they can hopefully take. back the Senate. That's that's all here. What else did I see? Once transparency going forward doesn't want decisions to happen in back rooms. And other than that, just kind of reasserted his values,

regular people, et cetera, et cetera. I am a, it is interesting because I actually don't know how much leverage he has in the situation. And I was reading some of the scuttle butt on social media. And they're saying that somebody actually should, from the party, should go. with him to make sure that he actually submits his paperwork and that they don't leave it up to him because there's you know there's the feeling that maybe he could decide that he doesn't want to do that ultimately so and and what kind of leverage is he really going to have because you know there's this whole idea of is he going to drop out of the race right that was that was what we spent the last couple of days talking about and he has to do that and so maybe you know maybe he's able to get

some sort of you know i don't know if even leverage is the right word but just some sort of input on the process about who is going to replace him on the ballot. Right. But beyond that, it's like, do you want Graham Platner to endorse you? I mean, if you're the next candidate for Senate in Maine, do you certainly don't want him to campaign with you? Right. Well, he does have a strong following there.

That's the thing. And if you look at the comments on that video, now again, this was C-SPAN, the video we looked at it on, there were a lot of people in those comments that were supporting him and telling him not to drop out. And I imagine in Maine you probably need every vote that you can muster, right? Susan Collins is a tough opponent. Yeah, there's no votes that you can afford to walk away from. So it is interesting that you want the support of Platner's voters because there is a really dedicated hardcore base for him there.

But also like you kind of can't be on stage with that guy. You don't really need. Oh, God, no. You don't want his stamp of approval necessarily. There's been a lot of now they tell us about the Plattenham. campaign and a lot of media recriminations as well. Yeah. People going back and finding those old profiles of the oyster men who was rising out of

the waters and was going to save the Democratic Party and put it on a different course. Yeah. We played some audio last week of Chris Hayes, you know, when Platner came on. This was after the first round of stories in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal in June. You know, saying, you know, usually I have you here to talk about structural inequality, but, you know, I guess we have to talk about this today. And you're going to come on now.

I mean, there's a, there's a lot of that to go around, I think. Mm-hmm. I also think, you know, some of the, some of what people are talking about right goes back to Morris Katz, who's his political guru.

Some of it goes back to, you know, the left and Democrats who wanted him to be a success. Some of it goes back to people who shrugged off earlier accusation saying, oh, never mind the Reddit post, never mind the tattoo. I've seen Bernie. I've seen Bernie Sanders get some of it, you know, a familiar punching bag on the left for the Democratic Party. So yeah, you know, Bernie Sanders is a familiar punching bag here too. I don't, the thing is, is that there's a lot of people who bear the blame for this. But ultimately, and if you read some of the stories that now they tell us part of this, is Grant Platner probably should have listened to some of the people that reached out to them very early.

early in the process and said, why don't you just slow down? Like, why don't you just deal with your PTSD, you know, spend a couple years getting right and then maybe revisit this. Because they, I mean, the thing is, they really did sort of pluck this guy out of obscurity. Very little was known about him before this process started. And was all, all the learning happened during the campaign in real time. Yeah, yeah. So I don't know how you first came across him, but I remember the first video I saw of him.

I was like, oh, I know that they're going to want to get behind. I know the Democratic Party is going to want to get behind him because, and forgive me for saying this, I think that Democrats are enthrall with, like, white guys that look like they don't bathe all that well. You know what I mean? Like, I think their ideal candidate is Jason Mamoa. Like, if Jason Mamoa could, would somehow come over to the Democratic Party is like, oh, man, he can use a crossbow. And it looks like he can fight and he's got tattoos. and, you know, the image of Democrats to toughen them up, because that is always sort of the thing that they're soft and that, you know, they're very cosmopolitan or whatever. And so when I saw

Plattenor, the first time I was like, oh, he is going to be a star. But I mean, again, like a lot of people, how could I have known how he treated all his girlfriends in the past? Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think, you know, there's a lot of stuff in there about him lying to his staff or just not telling everything to his staff. You know, people, the question, and Chris Hayes asked this too in last month was, is there anything more? Is there anything more here? And apparently, again, to read some of these pieces, he was assuring him, no, no, no,

that's it or, you know, answering that question in a way that led people to believe, at least that there was nothing more coming down the pike. But doesn't that actually make sense? Because if you're a person who's had, you know, turbulent relationships, and now I'm using that euphemism, I know that he's accused of rape here, but I'm, I'm not. just thinking in terms of grand platinum you're like i've had some turbulent relationships and maybe you know they got a little heated at times but nothing that would disqualify me because again you know the me too movement is not even a decade old at this point now main moves on and

everybody's getting up to speed on possible candidates like troy jackson and rov shaw can i tell you something okay Troy jackson really fucked me up i expected that to be a black person Like, even though it was Maine, I saw Troy Jackson and I was like, oh, yeah. I was like, where they find this brother from? And I looked him up as a white guy. So anyway, because it's Maine. It's Maine. I love everybody having takes on these guys that they had paid absolutely no attention to a week and a half ago.

How could you know? How could people know? Like, I mean, Maine's not even the size of like Fort Bend County, you know? And so, yeah, I mean, people from outside of there, I mean, these are very people that are very close to the ground there. I mean, if you follow New England politics and main politics, maybe you've heard of these folks before. But yeah, like for us that are far from there, they're all new. These are people that are just popping up. Should we talk about topic A, which I think is where is Mitch McConnell? Yeah, man. Where is Mitch? So this is what we know.

In June 14th, Mitch McConnell, who's 84, was admitted to the hospital. His office has confirmed that. Right. Media outlets, including the New York Times, then got dispatcher recordings. And to quote that paper, emergency responders the morning the Kentucky Republican was hospitalized reported performing CPR on an unconscious individual undergoing cardiac arrest at the senator's Washington address. Yeah. Times goes on to note that McConnell's office has not said anything about his condition, why he is in the hospital, etc., etc. What hospital? I mean, does anybody even know the hospital at this point? That's a good question. Yeah, I haven't seen that. I've seen some suggestions of a hospital that he may be at. I'm not going to repeat it here because I don't know for a fact. But yeah, that's even, people don't even know where to wait outside of, you know. Two media subplots within this story, Joel, that I wanted to talk to you about. One is our old favorite. Why isn't the media getting to the bottom of this? Why haven't we been told the answers about Mitch McConnell's true. condition? I mean, the media is only as good as its sources. The question I would ask is,

why haven't the Democrats got to the bottom of this? Like, they're the ones, this is, presumably they're the ones that we have, they're in a better position to get this information than the media. And I mean, beyond the fact that Republicans, uh, really do have an obligation to tell us what's going on here. They're just not doing it. Of course they do. Of course they do. And it starts with Mitch McConnell's office, you know, has an obligation to tell us what's going on here. Absolutely. This obstucation is just crazy. Like it shouldn't, this should not be allowed to happen, but that's just what politics is now in this country. Well, and it's a hard story to get, right? Like, if you're, let's say you're a reporter chasing this. And I cannot believe any reporter would be

laying up on this story for any possible reason. You know, why? Of course you want the scoop on, you know, somebody who's in the Senate, who's a very, very famous politician who's been a very very consequential politician over the last several decades of American life. Of course you'd want this story. It's hard to get because there seemed to be a tiny, tiny handful of people that actually know the answer. Right. Which is crazy. I know all the details about what his condition is, what his prognosis looks like, et cetera. Do you think everybody in McConnell's office knows what's going on? I'd be surprised. Yeah. I'd be really surprised. I mean, we're talking down to, you know, policy staffers and stuff like that. Yeah. I'd be surprised.

if they had a clear picture of it. They wouldn't want to tell them because, you know, how rumors work in Capitol Hill, it doesn't take long. You can't let too many people know. Yeah, and I just don't, I don't know that, you know, Mitch McConnell's had some health issues over the last couple of years. And it'd be interesting to know, and maybe they'll be, you know, reporting on this down the line.

But how, you know, how transparent were those, even within his world, right? Right. Right. How he was doing. We just, we don't know. It's a really, really difficult thing to report on. The thing is, and, you know, in a more sane world,

we know how Mitch McConnell was doing. Like, we've seen him decline. You know, and on camera. You know, like, he's had moments that have indicated that he is in poor health on camera over the past few years. And so, like, at that point, you know, and this is a, I'm sure the people that,

and the Biden camp are like, why weren't you on that? Like, why weren't people holding them to the, holding them to the fire on that because I mean Joe Biden never fell like Mitch McConnell did Joe Biden never froze up in public like Mitch McConnell did but you know that if you're going to ask where the media was that's what I would ask like why did why was this allowed to go on for so long and that's totally fair because we want to set it during the Biden stuff and I'll say it again it should be applied to everybody equally mm-hmm it should be applied to everybody equally perhaps the president most of all but it should be applied to everybody equally but it should

be applied to everybody equally. Right. Like that didn't actually make any sense to the president most of all, but everybody equally. Everybody should get some scrutiny. The president most of all, how about that? Right. And I get like the fear of like violating hippo laws and, you know, ageism or whatever. But like, I feel some of that goes out the window when you are a public servant. Like you are, you are supposed to be responsible to the public. You are not an anointed king. So voters via their proxies in the media or whatever else. We all should be have some sort of sense for is he able to do his job. The first day that he's not able to do his job, people should get some information on that. 100%. And that is the test, right? One day. It's not weeks later. It's not months later. It is one,

if you're not serving the public that you are paid to serve one day, you owe transparency to the public, to the press, to everybody else. That's just what it's got to be. It's interesting. Right? Because what happens in that case with Senate? Because if you say that you're incapacitated and can't serve in the role of your job, it's not like a mayor or a governor where there's an interim. Like there's a succession plan. And so, yeah, when if a senator is like, hey, you know, let's just let's call this person Dick McDonald. And he has a heart attack. And he's 83 years old. And he's incapacitated. And at what point do people say, all right, like, we've got to, we've got to tell people something here, right? But they just don't have to. Didn't we just have this case with Tom Keene in New Jersey, who was gone for 117 days without an explanation? Later came and said he was hospitalized and treated for depression. But during that 117 days, there was no explanation of where he was.

Right. Or what kind of condition he was in. You had a New York Times reporter, Tracy Tolley, literally going up and ringing his doorbell. as reporters should in cases like this. And I was going to ask you about this because you mentioned Biden. That was obviously an incredibly painful process. The Bidens are pissed off. Democrats who don't even care about Joe Biden are still pissed off.

They're like, Alex Thompson and Jake Tapper, you never said anything about those bruises on Trump's hands. What's wrong with you? Get their bestselling book out of this whole thing. Everybody's pissed off. But don't you think that the happy effect of that whole painful process was that the media has

more elbow room to report on this. They do not fear accusations of ageism. They do not abide by a code where, you know, please respect our privacy in a time like this, which again is a perfectly normal request except when you're a public servant that's being paid by the people

to serve the people. Absolutely. That is a great request to honor for a private citizen, somebody that is not using taxpayer money and represents constituents. Like it's like, you know, votes aren't going on right now, but he's not able to represent his constituents. No. He's not.

Yeah. So that was media subplot number one. Media subplot number two was the efforts of McConnell allies to say that he's okay. To reassure us. The number one and number two Republicans in the Senate, that's John Thune and John Barrasso, both said they had talked to McConnell. Okay. And then on Tuesday, Scott Jennings, a Kentuckian who ran one of,

McConnell's Senate reelects and now is everybody's all American over on CNN tweeted this I spoke to my old friend Mitch McConnell this morning the senior senator from Kentucky oh that Mitch McConnell oh he's still recovering in the hospital we talk for just shy of 20 minutes about Iran Ukraine the unfolding situation in Maine my visit to the TR presidential library and even a little bit of Senate history, I told him we want to see him back at work as soon as possible. So there have been some people that have noticed the phrasing of all of this, and I don't know if you've caught this, that people say that they've talked to him, but not that he's talked

back to them. Oh, that's interesting. That is it that that's a definitely, like, and I have not heard anybody. And I did see the clip of Scott Jennings, and he kind of obfuscated again when they We're like, well, what did he say, blah, blah, what did he say to you? Like, they didn't, it wasn't really communicated that he was talking to him directly. And so that that is something that gives him sort of plausible deniability. And you and I have both been on the phone with people who are having medical travails that are older.

And there is a lot of wiggle room in what constitutes a phone conversation. Absolutely. How much who's saying what, how much one person is saying or the other person is saying? If you listen to our good friend Josh Levine's season four of Slow Burn, he interviews Edwin Edwards, the former governor of Louisiana who's like 93 or 94 years old. But interview is sort of an interesting turn of phrase because a lot of times his wife was answering for him because Edwin Edwards was a non-agenarian who had health problems. And so, yeah, I mean, that's the thing. Like, was there somebody a staffer? Not his wife, because that's another angle of the story that is very strange, supposedly, that his wife took off for China three days after he was hospitalized and hasn't been heard from since.

So, you know, there's just a lot. There's a lot there. And also, none of the people who talked to McConnell, these three people were talking about, none of them said what happened to Mitch McConnell. That's right. They haven't done anything to clarify or add, you know, information in this whole, you know, in this whole blanket. And you saw that little moment with Casey Hunt on CNN was like, actually, can we just get him to,

can you just call Mitch McConnell right now? We can talk to him on the air. Yeah. Man, I can't believe Scott Jennings managed to talk himself out of that, too, by the way, because he really, he never even gave a, pretended that he was going to do that. Like,

he just started talking about something else. He just started talking about how important Mitch McConnell was to him. Yeah, yeah, to him in his career. The other thing that I thought is like, well, all right, well, can I just see a call log? to see if you talk to him. You don't really think he didn't do it, did you? Do you?

Man, you know, again, I guess the issue is like, what is the conversation? What is talking to mean? See, but that's why I think it really happened because there's enough elbow room within that to say I was on the phone with Mitch McConnell. Like there was a phone line, Mitch McConnell was at one end and I was at the other end. If you're CNN, do you need to verify that with him or verify the details of that conversation? I bet they Totenberged it. I bet they said, hey, you know, you worked with Mitch McConnell, your friend of Mitch McConnell's that's on you.

We trust you. I wouldn't think they would look at a phone log. Uh-uh. Not in the case. That's again, it's just interesting because that is a claim you made on their airwaves. So like not, it's not just you opining. You're breaking news. He broke news.

Sure. Just like the number one and number two Republicans in the Senate. Yeah. So if you're going to choose to do. that on my airwaves he could have tweeted that out well i guess he did tweet that out he did tweeted out he did that and then they was asked him about that that's right yeah that's fair fair point so um i guess the thing is is that you know i i just if you're going to make that claim on my airwaves a piece of news it feels like we should have some sort of way to verify that like because that's what we do

with everybody that breaks news on our airways i want to check in on the texas senate race with you oh man oh this is brittosaurus be bad speaking of another thing happened. Oh, yeah. Go ahead. Jasmine Crockett, who ran against James Tala Rico for the Democratic nomination,

was speaking Saturday at the Global Black Economic Forum. Yeah. It was a panel on midterms in voting. Andrew Gillum was on the panel. Oh, man. Just days before he got arrested on charges of drug possession.

Oh, he's facing a felony, by the way, down there at Alabama. In Alabama. Oh, my God. Yeah. here is what Jasmine Crockett said about helping James Talarico win that Senate race against Ken Paxton. People keep trying to say, well, Jasmine has to go and hold his hand. No, I don't.

And don't worry about my math and how it works in my mind. Because the reality is that if you can give people more than one thing to vote for, then you have a better chance of getting them out to the polls. And honestly, some people are just not going to be sold on certain people that are running in the state of Texas. So the best thing that I can do is take down ballot candidates who no one's ever heard of and do my best to uplift them and increase the voter participation in a way that we did in Texas. You see, a lot of haters got a lot of things to say about me and my race and how I ran it, but the reality is that there was a lot of races, not a lot.

It was racist. It was a racist race. It is what it is, right? But we live in America as y'all are celebrating 250. Okay? We know what this country is. Before we came on air, I told you I didn't want you to play this because I think it could make people more racist. And so let me just say what I mean by that.

Like, I think that Jasmine Crockett is right on both counts. And she's saying it in a very terrible way. Like, just her, the way she's going about this. Is race a part of everything in politics? Sure. I'm certain that at the margins, maybe that played some sort of role in why people didn't vote for her

and why some people didn't think she could best represent Texas, right? That is race, playing a role in it, and she can say that that's racism because it affected her, and that's fine, okay? And this is something we were going to ask. I mean, she may be right. Can she really help Tala Rico

on the campaign trail at this point? Don't you think, standing on stage with Tala Rico. Everything's okay. We know, just in that very, very traditional political way where people sort of mean it, but don't really mean it. But you have a united front and you get pictures on the news and you get pictures on social media.

Don't you think that would help Tala RICO at least on the margins? I wonder. You know, the thing is, I don't know how much of how much it. It's tough to tell the difference now with so much of life being spent on the internet. like how deep these grievances really run and like people on the street like my mom is a texan i'm certain she's going to vote for talarico no matter what even though she's fond of jasmine crockett right um but a lot of i mean according to people on the internet that it's going to sit at home and lincoln paxton run to you know win the race and i mean you know hallelujah you know good luck to

them i don't live in texas anymore but it's a good question of how much many people are actually like that. You know, how many people are like, I want Ken Paxton to be the senator. Or I will allow Ken Paxton become the senator. I will not try to vote and vote in a Democrat because I'm mad. But it's got to help Tala Rico on the marches. I mean, don't you think if she called up Tala Rico and said, hey, want to appear in DFW with me on stage next weekend? He's like, yes, I do immediately.

Well, it depends on the stage and where. I'll, again, I don't think that, again, so the, the argument for James Tala Rico that a lot of people have made to me, including your boy, Tim Miller, is that he can speak to Trump voters, or people disaffected Trump voters who keep Kim Paxon is still too far. They can't go that far. They're not that mager to do the Kim. The theory of the case. Do you think Jazz McCrackett being on stage with Tala Rico is going to help him with those

people? I just don't think so. If maybe if she, they go to a very, a church in DeSoto, Texas, and he sits in a pew next to her and they hold an impromptu news conference after or something, maybe. Talking about Claude Mathis and all those state titles they wanted to say. Oh, man, you know, Claude Mathis, man. Texas state great. Yeah.

I think you can do both things, honestly. Okay. I think if the theory of the case is that he can cross over and get enough of those Republicans that are maybe even voted for Trump, but are just Ken Paxon is actually. too far to go for them. He also needs to consolidate Democrats. And he needs to win every single Democratic vote. And he needs Democrats to be fired up to go to the polls for him.

I just think the answer is he has to do both. Yeah. It's going to be tough. I'm interested to know, and maybe I should write about this for the ring or something. Wait, what? You ever heard of that website? Why am I giving myself an assignment on air? But I'm curious how mad black people actually are at James Tala Rico over

Jasmine Crockett. I think it's probably a lot more nuanced and that the community is a lot more divided. That group of voters is a lot more divided on that than people would think. I don't think everybody is sided with Jasmine Crockett on this. And I think that those are people that understand the stakes and are probably going to vote. I think people that were sort of looking for a reason and not like James Telerico have found their reasons. But yeah, I don't know if it's that bad that they're not, they'll allow Ken Paxton to be the Senate. Here we go. Someone's already claiming this is our year.

Someone else said that last year too. A round of Jamison, Ginger, and Lime arrives at the table. Smooth enough for kickoff, smooth enough for extra time. New friends pulling up a stool. Debates about whether that was a handball. Cheers rising like a roar around the room. Because match days are about the shared moments. Added Jameson to your match day lineup.

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Raffle number 155-214. Please play responsibly. Another store for you. The New York Times versus AI Slop. Peter Kafka had an interview with Joe Kahn, the executive editor of the New York Times. And for those who don't know titles in journalism, that means the guy who runs the newsroom in New York Times. Has he not had the- editor?

Has he not had the quietest Times tenure of anybody in the last decade? Oh, my goodness. Really? Yes. I completely agree. I haven't heard his name out there in forever. I didn't forget that he was the executive editor, but he's just somebody who's not a central character in the news

in the same way that it's been in the past with some of his predecessors. Some of that might be that he's low-key and purposely low-profile. It also might mean that we haven't had newsroom conflagrations at the same rate that we've had him at other points in New York Times history. He did talk about the Nick Christoph column today.

By the way, this whole interview is really, really fascinating, because they get into games and what a part of the Times that is. And it's interesting to hear Khan with a little defensiveness being like, you don't really think we're a games company that also publishes news. You, Peter, don't really think that. That's pretty good. He talks about the Christoph thing. He talks about Dina Rusini and the whole, you know, salary thing.

Again, the athletics, not exactly part of the Times newsroom. But if you work for the Times and you find out somebody's making that much money, there's an interesting question. Why don't I make that much money? They get into so many things. So I encourage you to listen to it. But they also talked a lot about video and how the times is using video. Yeah.

A repivoting to video, you might say, Joel. I mean, I mean, you've been in media for how long. How many times have we pivoted to video in our lives? Like four or five or the last 20, 25 years? Khan calls this the biggest and most important transformation that's underway now in the newsroom. And he says that in its way, the time starting to lean into video is as, is as, profound as the times going from a physical newspaper into a digital media enterprise. So that's about as profound as it gets.

Here's what Khan told Kafka about the urgency of the repivit. We will always provide good journalism in text form, but the idea that we can just continue to refine the text form as as people's viewing habits shift, I think is kind of head in the sand. I think we were in a race against time to make sure that good quality journalism competes with AI-generated slop and influencer-generated non-original journalism out there on the Internet. And it's imperative for us to be able to translate the good work that we're doing into the forms that people who are open-minded about that want to consume their journalism in. that's sort of an urgent transformation to me. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, it's right.

I mean, the newspapers and local media outlets like newspapers were really late to this the first time around and can't really afford to be late over and over again in a time when people find less and less use for the news. And I know we were joking about the pivoting to video, Brian, But like, unlike in the past, like back then there was a newspaper and people might actually get it. Now you have your phone and it's easy. It's never been easier to watch a video.

Like it's never been, a video used to be a real inconvenience or we get in the way or like it was hard or your phone. It's never been easier to watch a video. And I often, I find even myself, a person who loves to read is passionate about it. Maybe not as passionate as you, but very passionate. passionate about reading. That's the way I prefer to consume news. And I still find myself probably watching more video than reading paper, right? It's become a native language. Yeah. Of social media way more than it was 10 years ago during the first quote unquote pivot video. Yeah. And it's the way some people just consume everything. Yeah. So essentially what Khan is saying

is we're going to take reporters who have actually have some authority or at least notionally have some authority, we're going to put them out there because we don't want that entire market to be captured by influencers or people who just read our stories and then recap them in front of their phone, right? And to me, that's one of the great enemies here. And I don't mean enemy in terms of like, you know, they're doing something wrong. Though in some cases they certainly are, you know, some cases they're certainly, you know, taking stories and taking reporting without credit. But I just, I just mean of like if you are in a competition and you are any media outlet, especially like the Times that has a paywall, that's who you're competing. You're competing against free and you're competing against close enough.

I think I told you this like a long time ago, my family members are Dallas Cowboy fans. Yeah. And family members just started sending me links from aggregation blogs that would just blog whatever the news was in the Dallas Morning News. And I'd be like, oh, don't you want to get a subscription, an online subscription so you can read that they have no interest in that. It doesn't matter to them. Like, it's just like, why would I do? Why would I pay this thing right here tells me all the news I need to know.

That's what the Times is competing with. That's what we're all competing with. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, we, you know, the bulk of our job is talking. Now we're on video now too. You know, we don't do as much writing as we used to. And so, I mean, or the writing we do is so we can present on camera on the microphone. So a lot of it has changed for everybody.

And so that is the reality. is that if you don't get into the video game, you're, I mean, you're not going to win. It's going to be very difficult for you to win and to maintain the sort of audience that people, that funders and other people are going to want to pay for and support, right?

My question would be, when the times wades into this world or continues to wade into this world, are there videos going to be able to compete with the other videos out there? Because part of what makes podcast culture and video, culture work is that it's loose and that it's informal and it's kind of by the seat of their pants and this is still a media company they when they put out the daily every day etches that thing in stone right so that there are no mistakes and what everybody's saying has been locked down and triple checked and everything like that now a lot of times you know a times video is

just somebody on the scene repeating a story that's already run in the paper right so it's essentially already gone through vetting and reporting and that kind of stuff they're doing a shorter version of that. And that totally makes sense to me. But the bigger question of me is, how does, if you are devoted as the times is to a certain way of doing things, how does that work out there in video world? I mean, will you be able to compete with other people who are like, well, I'm not, I'm not worried about that.

That doesn't matter. Those standards that doesn't matter to me at all. I'm just going to be interesting and fun. That's the thing. I mean, I guess it's like, I don't think you're ever really going to compete with influencers in that same way. But there is a cohort of people, a percentage of people that could support your organization, and they're out there. And like, maybe, you know, you can win them. You can catch your attention with recipes or the athletic or whatever, and you've got to be

able to get those folks. But, I mean, I think that competing with influencers is sort of a losing game. Like, we can tell the difference between, you know, whatever AI model is telling you something in Jamel Bowie. But maybe where the New York Times is going to win. is they'll have higher quality video with a really original reporting that you just can't duplicate by reading and talking to people on Instagram or whatever. So I think they can win, but if they try to go blow for blow with the influences, I think that's just sort of a losing game, but I don't think they will. And con is pretty realistic about that. It's flag planting at this point. Yeah. They're not even really trying to monetize this stuff. He tells Kafka.

And, you know, a lot of it is like, you know, we're just going to be there. We want to be part of that world. We don't know totally what we're going to do with it. we don't, again, we don't want to get behind like newspapers did to go back to your point, right? Like, they just got so far behind and then they could never catch up. It's crazy too, because it was interesting to hear him talk about like their competitors, right? Because I was thinking, who even can do pull off a pivot to video like the New York Times? Like, I guess ESPN, right, of course. But what other new, I mean, but they were a cable channel.

They were a cable channel. They had already, they were pivoting to words. I mean, we see how the Washington Post video efforts are going so far. You know? That is the opinion section, but yes. There's opinion section, right. And very painful. Very painful.

And he mentioned the Wapo basically is their peer in like Bloomberg. And then he quickly got the axios and then a bunch of substacks. So it's just the New York Times doing this. They're just doing it for the good of reading and having a great product because the people inclined to read newspapers. It seems like they've got them all. And so I appreciate them just wanting to be better for the sake of being better. I think what the Times is also doing is something a little bigger.

And I've noticed this when I go to the homepage to look for the latest news on Iran, we're apparently at war with once again. I mean, yeah. What you notice on the Times homepage is not just so much the reporter sitting down for the obligatory into the camera. Here's my 90 seconds of something you can read right now. Yeah. They run a lot of B-roll on there. Mm-hmm.

Here are explosions. here's scenes in the street, here's this kind of stuff. And what you realize is, as the walls have come down between different media, the Times is trying to be television. Yes, man. They're saying, you come here and what you used to like about CNN, where you were getting the very latest, and you were also having just kind of a loop of pictures to make it feel like a certain immediacy to everything. Yeah. We want to be that.

That's what we want to be. And we're actually, we've already taken over the newspaper business. We're just going to also take that business. Yeah. I mean, democratizing video has really enabled a lot of that. And you're right. I mean, very often on the internet, you could look at a story that originated out of PBS or whatever or CNN on a story that came for the New York Times of the Atlantic.

And you really wouldn't be able to tell like the difference in quality. Because, I mean, again, the people that are over at the New York Times and the Atlantic, they are video people. They are TV people. They're just doing it for the New York Times now. So, yeah, I mean, I thought it only makes sense. It's just tough because, like, we're just. do you do if you don't have the money to do that like what if you don't have the inclination to do

that what happens to those outlets meaning another newspaper another out yeah yeah i don't know yeah i don't know you probably try to be small and nimble and beat the times at little things right do go deeper than the times can go on certain things you know we see that with a puck with things like that right they can they can figure you can figure out holes or you can figure out places that people want to read more man then the times is offering but it's tough yeah so well i mean i was thinking about the houston Chronicle, for instance, which is a really, really good now local regional paper. It wasn't when I grew up. People didn't think of the Chronicle is a good newspaper, but now they do.

And I'm like, they're trying to do some of that stuff. But like if you look at their circulation numbers for the fourth largest city in the country, man, it's really, I mean, that article from the Atlantic that just dropped the end of reading is here. Like, I mean, you look at the numbers of newspapers and people, there's so many. billions of people that live in these areas that don't know what the hell is going on around them from the local newspaper like they're getting it through instagram tic talk whatever but it's just it's just crazy that the that i don't know what the chronicle is going to do to win that like that's that's what i think about not the new york times they'll be fine but san francisco chronicle uh you know houston chronicle or just let's name every other newspaper in america yeah right besides the

journal and maybe the post uh last topic for you okay alexie lawless felt that people had forgotten about him for a few days. I mean, man, he kind of disappeared from the pregame show. Did you notice that? He wasn't on for a while. He was on there, less and less. So the last time I saw Alexei Lalas, I mean, on TV, he was infuriating. Terry Henri.

Terry Henri, we can keep that in. We can keep that in. I tried it another time, guys. I didn't get it. Terry and I are still learning the beautiful game. Yeah, right. Yeah. But and he was, I mean, like he, it was really interesting because we've gotten so used to like the embrace debate culture of TV.

And Henri did not was not having it. Like he did not want, he was like, leave me alone. I'm not going to debate you upon this particular point with Alexei Lalas. And I was like, man, I mean, people in our Instagram comments were acting like we're making it up that that guy, that he's unpopular. But like just, man, he's, he's, he seems to be one of the more unpopular people. on TV that I've heard of in a long time. And he wasn't satisfied with merely being very unpopular. Oh, yeah.

After the U.S. lost to Belgium, he decided to wade into the whole youth soccer debate, which is tearing American society apart right now. And this was Lawless's tweet, use soccer, use sports is a competitive market with businesses selling a product that obviously customers are willing to pay for. I'd love if soccer was free to all, but who is going to pay for all this free soccer? Free soccer. Free soccer. He continued. You want to tell men slash women in America who make their living in use soccer that they need to make less. It's a business. I want them to make as much money for their service as the market will pay them. If you can make a ton of money, then they should. And I'll celebrate it. That's a great argument if you don't want the United States to have a really good elite soccer program. I mean, if you want, if you want to maximize the amount of money, people can take out of the system with,

without guarantee any products on the other side, a good product on the other side, then great, you just argued for that. How do you feel about the whole youth sports thing as a dad who's staring down years and years? I don't want to be presumptuous, but I'm assuming years and years of youth sports. You know, it's interesting because youth sports, and I don't know about you, Ron, that's, those are some of the best times in my life, you know. And most of the leagues I played at were originated out of a YMCA or, you know, the little football league I played in was just, you know, just a little network of local football team,

tackle football teams. It was not owned by like a private equity company. No. And so what I'm looking at is totally foreign, even in just like 30 years, it's just totally foreign from what I am used to, but I've seen my friends go through it. And I'm just like, do I really want to spend that much money and waste that much of my time on something like this? Like, is that necessary? What about you? You should be almost kind of in the middle of that now, right? Yeah, and, you know, we've, we've sort of, I say we, but we've opted out of it to, to a large part, I think almost, almost totally. And, you know, partly as the kids, you know, they don't have any interest in continuing the legacy of Thunderfoot and you soccer leagues. Yes.

Which greatly disappointed me. But part of it is just, is exactly what you say is how much of it has changed. And I'm never like, I hate being a decline as like, things were better in the 80s and what, because that's exactly the time I happen to grow up. Yeah. But I'm like you. Like I played on YMCA teams. My baseball team that I played on was the local real estate company.

It was very bad news bears is a Grable real estate, you know, on our, on our jerseys. And but, but the thing about it was it was really easy to play. It didn't require very much time. Yeah. I don't remember conditioning being part of, you know, like sports in elementary school. It was just like you show up to practice a couple of days. days after school, you play games. And I have won.

Yes, it was not professionalized. No. And when I hear this stuff about people just driving on some of our friends and they've made a different choice and that's obviously totally fine, but I'm like driving all over Southern California at a young, young age, we're not talking about high school people staring down possible scholarships here. We're talking about elementary school kids. That's crazy.

And you're just spending all weekend driving around. My test is always. Is this better than staying home and reading a book? That's my personal test and that's my test for the kids. Like, we're a book family, right? Like, would you just, what if we stayed home and read? Wouldn't that be more enriching? As cool as sports are, as invaluable as that experiences,

wouldn't this just be as good or better if we just stayed home? You need to write a book about how you made your family, a book family, by the way. Because, I mean, that is, because I was actually thinking about, well, Brian and then they probably just went somewhere and went to a bookstore on the weekend. Like, they're doing that instead of going down to, you know. Fact-check true. Riverside, to, you know, playing some volleyball tournament. And so, yeah.

And I think there's no, I mean, the only wrong answer is if you happen to be poor. Like, if you are poor in this scenario, you don't even get to choose, right? You're not even, you might want to play travel ball. Yeah. And it's just like, this is not accessible to me. It's not even an option for me. So that is the worst option. But, you know, again, I have my good.

who was just outside of Austin, and he has two daughters who, they both graduated high school now, and they did that thing. You know, they were playing in Boulder, Colorado, and, you know, California and Kansas City and all these other cities. And the oldest daughter, she got a scholarship or got some money to go help play a Concordia University just outside Austin. After her freshman year, she decides she doesn't want to play. So she goes to Texas A&M. His second youngest daughter, She graduated. She was a really good soccer player, really good volleyball player, had some D2 offers, but she just decided to go to, she just decided to go to college with her sister at Texas State. And I was like, I was telling this to Jenae. I was just like, man, that kind of, I mean, all that, and you don't know where, you know what I'm saying? I'm thinking about it like that. And Jenae was like, oh, no, but think about all the family vacations they got to take and the fun memories they have. And the parents and the friends and the friends. that they got to play with and spent time with them. And I was like, you know, I guess that is another way of looking at it that I had not thought

about. I just wished it would be cheaper and require less of my time. Totally. I mean, the camaraderie is awesome. And we often go to games that kids' friends are playing in to just show up and support them, which is really fun. That is really nice. And what I love about it is watching those other kids.

And it's like, the strikeouts and they're upset and they go back to the dugout and their teammates are picking up. It's okay. It's okay. You're going to get them. There's so many little. great moments about youth sports where it's like failing a lot. Sometimes you go out there and just completely outmaned, you know, where the other team looks like three years older, like, oh, we're going to

get killed today. And we still have to play the whole game. Like we can't go home. We're going to get crushed today. Yeah. I mean, it really is one of the reality. It's a really good way for kids to in sort of a low stakes environment. Would it's like to depend on other people? Would it's like to show up and do your job and like what it's like when things are out of your hands you know like sometimes it's so i mean again i didn't lose very much in youth sports when i was a kid i mean just you know to be frank i was really good in sports as a child so like losing to me was very frustrating because it just didn't happen that often but what i would as a kid as a child okay people as a child i didn't say when i was 17 but um the the the problem is that i was like man we played against this basketball

team one time. The Rockets. We were the Lakers. They were the Rockets and we played. And they beat us, I'll never, they beat us 38 to four. And we, I just remember, we, we had real difficulty getting the ball across the line. And, you know, I remember so much more about that and laugh about that more today than anything.

There's so many other great things that happen. And like, that can happen at like a rec league when it's just low stakes, right? But that's the kind of stuff that I think you learn from. And yeah, if it's all about just like, I hope I can get a. the Division III financial aid package out of this. It just seems sort of sad if that's the only thing at the end of it, you know? Yeah. And that experience, that experience of getting killed 38 to 4 should be accessible to

everybody and should be simple. And there should be a whole, and I say this, like, you were, you were a great athlete. I was terrible, right? But I liked, there was something about being that guy and just hanging out and playing years and years when I knew that I was not ever going to do anything else. That was really fun. And, you know, it's like every sports writer, right, is a failed athlete. At some level, you failed.

With me, it was like second grade. Other people, like, lasted longer. But I always felt like a wonderful clarity about that because I was like, well, I'm not going to play first base for the Rangers. So it's time to think about something else right now. I don't have to wait. You know, there is a, there's just like a great hangaround thing. So I just, yeah.

And I hope. And we almost need a secondary league, right? We almost need a D league of new sports. where it's like, hey, we're just having fun here, folks. We're learning the games. We're willing to play. Some good, healthy competitions, some winning, some losing, some screwing up. I mean, dude, and the thing is, yeah, I mean, it, and I'm guessing there probably are leagues like that.

It's just that if you happen to show any competences that people try to rush you out of it, right? Or like, hey, well, you could get into this league. You could do this sort of thing. But, I mean, the great thing about it, man, it's like parents, like at that level, parents have to be involved, too. So you're like your friends, parents, coaches on the team, but like I'll never forget my dad kicked me out of a football practice when I was a kid

for the one day he was our running backs coach. And, you know, it was just like, but it was like that you get to interact in a way at that level that I think that, you know, giving the game over to, giving your children over to experts at 8 to 9, 10 years old just seems, you know, I don't know.

That doesn't seem like what I did, but, you know, maybe it's still some fun in it. I don't know. All right, let's get out of here. Okay. He's Joel Anderson. I'm Brian Curtis. Prodixie Magic.

By Tucker Tash and thank you Tucker for sitting in today. We got some stuff to plug Joel. Okay. When I was down in the big city, I did an interview with the New Yorker film critic Richard Brody. Okay. Which I want you to listen to because it's great and wonder. I mean, we just went in as deep as one can go into what is the job of a critic. How is the world changing?

Our written movie review is important anymore. Should we all get, just get on a podcast and roll out the ball? We talked about Jean-Luc Goddard. The deep questions, all, all consider on this podcast, Richard Brody, had such a fun time talking to him. I also interviewed Frank Miller, who is the comic book artist known for creating the Dark Night Returns in Sin City. Oh, man. That interview will run on next Tuesday's pod. We'll chew maker and I'll tee it up, and then we'll throw it over to Frank Miller to talk about 70s, New York and other fascinating subjects.

we had a great chat. Man, that sounds like a lot of fun. That's a really worthwhile use of your time in New York, it sounds like. Well, there's this whole New York cast of characters that I always want to talk to, but it's hard to get them in L.A., right? And we can dial them up on the Zoom, but I want to sit there and talk to him in person, right? And what a good excuse. We're sitting in the New York office there at Spotify and, you know.

Yeah. There we go. So much more to come on the, go ahead. Can I see. Did you ever interview David Carr? I never interviewed David Carr. Oh, man. Okay. That would have been fun.

I bet. I was thinking, if you had, I'm sure I would have heard about it by now, too. That would be. Yeah, absolutely. Next Thursday, I want to be out. Oh, yeah. You're holding down this podcast. I will be here. I will have a guest host. You will have to listen to find out who it is. It's going to be somebody really good. I just know it. I just know. I'll see you soon, buddy.

I see, man. Hey, y'all. It's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit Wayfair.ca.

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