The Press Box - The ESPN-NFL Wedding, Hunter Biden Speaks, and Pat McAfee’s Apology

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Bryan and Joel start the show with J-School, reexamining Zach Baron's interview on profile writing, before discussing the news of Hulk Hogan's death at the age of 71 (1:03). Next, they run through some headlines, including the possible marriage of ESPN and the NFL, what exactly is going on regarding the Epstein files, and Hunter Biden's three-plus-hour-long interview with Channel 5's Andrew Callaghan (14:07). Finally, they discuss Pat McAfee's belated apology and Jon Stewart's reaction to Paramount dropping 'The Late Show' (53:21) before making some weekend recommendations. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and Joel AndersonProducer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, Hey, Danny Hyfitts here from the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. We're coming to you multiple times per week to tell you

who to draft, who not to draft. Honestly, that's kind of most of it. The Ringer Fantasy Football Show, YouTube, Spotify, wherever you get your podcast,

the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Press Box. It's Brian Curtis, Joel Anderson, and producer Kyle Crichton here on a Thursday. Coming up on today's show,

why is ESPN about to buy the NFL network, a cable company in 2025? Why is the episode? Stee Files Story a story. Hunter Biden did a podcast, and we have a few words about Pat McAfee and John Stewart. But first, let me take you to an outlet that has a valuation of way over $200 million. Here's Joel with J-School.

If you are interested, I'll sell it to you for a hundredth of that value, though, just in case you if there's any prospective investors out there. David Ellison and Skydance, take note. I mean, $2 million. That's a good deal, sounds like to me. Man, Brian, well, first of all, it's good to see you again. We didn't get a chance to see each other last week. It's good to see you.

We were doing wellness. Your 25 for 25 interviews over the past week were fascinating. And I wanted to particularly point out the one with GQ's Zach Barron about celebrity profiles from last week. I mean, David Marquesi was good. And if only because it reminded me of that great Quincy Jones interview from 2018. Oh, my God. I'm going to give you two sample quotes from that because I ate that shit up so much. Like it was so great.

Here's one quote. Elon Musk keeps trying to get me to go to Burning Man. No thank you. Or he'd fuck anything. Anything. He'd fuck a mailbox. James Baldwin, Richard Pryor, Marvin Gay. That was about Marlon Brando.

So it was just, I mean, that is one of the most iconic celebrity interviews of all time as far as I'm concerned. But anyway, yeah, it was just inspiring to hear them talk about how they go about their craft. And that's really the spirit of these 25 for 25s, right? Like there were parts of the interviews that were a little frustrating. And I'm mostly speaking to kind of, I thought Zach was sometimes a little dismissive about the challenges that other journalists faced. I've had the opportunity I've talked with GQ and some other places

about doing celebrity profiles before and they have leverage that not a lot of other media outlets have when they're going to talk with these people so that's, you know, I'm always speaking up for the people without favor, so to speak, I would say. I think that's right. And I think, you know, when you're in the room

with somebody, a lot of his focus on craft comes there. Right. So you've been given the opportunity to sit down with Ben Affleck or Andre 3,000, let's say that. Right. Then what are you going to do with it? Right. Because we've seen a lot of people screw that up. Oh, absolutely.

Absolutely. And again, you know, sometimes, and you never know, like who they've assigned, how they've got it or whatever. Yeah, you know, I don't, there's, there's times that it can be difficult. But I, but to, to your point, it was just, it made me want to meet that standard for our future editions of the series. And also when I interview people in the future for work, and in some ways, because I think I write differently now, like, that's sort of a point in your career where people will ask you to write things that don't require you to talk to anybody. Right.

And there's like, can you muse. And I think that can. Yeah, riff. Riff on this, do that. And that can be corrosive to thinking and writing. And I was just at an event in Baltimore Tuesday that I'm going to write about. And it really got the juices flowing, just talking to people, like just being in the room with people. and, you know, feeding off their energy, trying to ask those questions.

And also the same frustration of like, why can't I have more than two questions? That kind of shit. But it's still a valuable. And I think Zach mentioned something about interviews, not wanting to feel like an ambush. And it reminds me of something my mentor, Mark Shoes, the great Mark Shoes, he was my editor at BuzzFeed. Now he's a professor at USC. He used to have me do. And I don't know if I've talked about it here before, which is like, if you were going to write a story about somebody, a big story.

whether there was a profile or, you know, an investigation or whatever, you would essentially write them a no surprise letter where you would outline everything that you were going to put in there that could be like a contestable fact or whatever or something that might be controversial or something that they said. Just sort of to remind them, hey, you said this, it's going to appear in print. And what do you think about that? This is an actual letter that you're writing to them? It was a no surprise letter. I had to do this. I wrote a profile on Michael Sam's father, for instance. And I had to send one to you. to the father and I had to send one to Michael Sam. And that's a particular case because you're talking about somebody who is in a public figure. Right. Who may not understand or have the, let's just say, have the experience with talking to the media. And oh, yes, if you say this, this is going to be in the newspaper or on the website in that case. But yeah, it's funny.

I mean, I do share the no surprises thing. I mean, I think I share it in the sense of there's a lot to be gained by talking that stuff out before publication. And it doesn't mean that you're going to back down on it. It doesn't mean you're going to throw it in the trash because the famous person doesn't want you to put it in the story, but you can often learn a lot about whatever issue it is, whatever it is you're going to print by talking it out with them. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, I just, it really instilled in me a desire for when I publish something about somebody, for them to not feel surprised when it appeared in print. Right? Like they don't know necessarily how I'm going to lay it out. You know, the particular touches or the things I'm going to focus on necessarily. But I didn't want anybody to feel surprised, which takes me to a piece I wrote about Ice Cube for Slate. It's the last thing I wrote for them before they laid me off a month before the birth of my second child. Not that I'm bitter or anything. But I talked with Cube. Once my favorite rapper for about an hour when he was on tour in Great Britain. Brian, what's your favorite Ice Cube song?

Give me one second on that. I've been thinking about Zach Barron and celebrity profiles. Yeah. Well, you know, no vast name. Give me 20 seconds, yeah. Okay. I want to kill him, whatever. But anyway.

And so I wrote this piece, for people that remember, it was pretty critical of him and other rappers as we headed into the election season. And I did send a note to his representative. It didn't go very well. They were not very happy with me. Published the story anyway, obviously. But I still left thinking after this conversation. you had with Zach and David, I kind of left wishing I had another crack at it, if only because I wish I could have talked through everything before I finished the product. And that second conversation that both David and Zach talked about is a huge thing. Again, very few people can get that out of a celebrity, but it made me endeavor to be like, you know what, in the future going forward, if I can ever say, hey, look, can we do this twice? Like, it's something that I would like to do. So, could I slip in a little B-school here before we get to the news of the day? Of course. Do we need to say a word about a Hulk Hogan, man, who just died at age 71, according to TMZ?

I would think so. Man, do you think a four, well, do you think a 20-year-old would understand how famous Hulk Hogan was in like 1988? They could not possibly. In the same way that I could not understand how big the Beatles were. Right. I mean, that's because that's what it was. and like the first time I saw him in person, I was in second or third grade

and my uncles wanted to take me to a wrestling show. Oh, man. Now, these are bachelor uncles. This was at the Tingley Coliseum in Albuquerque, New Mexico. And my mom, Jill, was a little bit against wrestling. Really? I mean, you know, the violence, the, this is just something

that you impression. Jumping off of stuff. Yeah, you impressionable young man should not be paying a ton of attention to. But she consented that they could take me to see Holkogen. And I remember this day very clearly because one of those last days of my life where I was forced to take a nap so that I would be ready to go that night. I love that. Kind of late in the nap era there, second or third grade.

But I remember him walking out at Tinkley Coliseum, and it was just like nothing I'd ever experienced. and it was as close as I would get to the Beatles of the Stones or one of those groups where it's just, it's not about, hey, I'm a big fan of yours. It's about like this, this is an out-of-body experience. Absolutely. No, I wholeheartedly agree. And I was a huge wrestling fan of that particular era of wrestling, right?

Like they had video games. Like even Nintendo had like a WrestleMania game. I got that and I was always Hulk Hogan or, you know, this is very early in TV, but when that WrestleMania did the pay-per-view events. Like the first, I saw WrestleMania's 3 and 4 on pay-per-view

because that's how big of a fan I was. I got a book on the, they would as in called the WWF celebrities, and it had Hulk Hogan on the front, you know, like, you're with this, you know, showing one of 24-inch pythons. And I think they listed him in that

book is 6'8. I don't think. is accurate, but whatever. But yeah, so I was a huge Hulk Hogan fan. Like, I mean, he was a bigger deal to me than like Michael Jordan or, you know, I mean, a bunch of people. And it's just funny to think about it because I've been looking at the social media reaction to his death today. And it is incredible to think about where he was to where he is today. Because the response is there's not a lot of like warm, heart.

memories of the guy today, unfortunately. There's nothing uncomplicated. Yeah. And I'll add another memory, which is this January, WW had their Netflix debut in Los Angeles at the Intuit Dome. Yeah. And I was there, and Hulk Hogan comes out, waving an American flag with Jimmy Hart. So we got all the old time, hoaxter, patriotic feels,

and Joel, that crowd booed like crazy. Man. And it wasn't wrestling. You're the bad guy. We don't like you, boo. It was, we hate you, the person, get out of this arena, boo. What do you think that's about? Because I would imagine if I had the guess

and not having been part of that world anymore, that that would be a crowd that would certainly not boo him, right? They may not applaud him, but they certainly wouldn't boo him. What do you think is going on there? It was shocking to me. And I think, you know, the mass man, my other tag team partner will be covering all of this and do a great better job than I can. But, you know, when he and I were talking about, it's a combination of Trump and Hulksters embrace. We figure, like, we forget, Hulk Hogan

spoke at the last Republican convention. That's a thing that happened. It's the stuff Hulk Hogan was recorded as saying. It's his strange relationship to the wrestling business. And this is just kind of absolutely, I mean, maybe there's some people in there that were like, I was a fan of old Gawker, you know, you, you, sir. Oh, I'm sure. or the reason I can't read it anymore. But I think it's this cumulative second half of his career and now second half of his life where he was not that guy that you and I were going crazy for when we were kids. Yeah.

That's actually really interesting because, again, like, I would have thought that crowd, you know, given like the origins of wrestling and, you know, the, I mean, the complicated. Many of the things that have happened in wrestling rings. Yeah, relationship with race that wrestling has, that, again, which really speaks to how far he had fallen. And I had to say, like, I mean, I was a young black kid. You know, people know that. But I mean, I thought that he was immune from racism because he was the only white guy knew that said brother like that. And I just thought I really, I thought that gave him some sort of credibility with black folks.

You know, obviously I had that wrong. But, you know, something, brother. Yeah, brother. I was like, oh, man, he says brother for real, okay. Shoemaker and I talk about this sometimes. There's this list of people in America that everybody knows how to impersonate. Yep. And in the old days, it was John Wayne.

Everybody could do John Wayne. Everyone could do Howard Cosell. Hulk Hogan was on that list. Oh, my God. And may still be on that list. Oh, yeah. Take your prayers. Take your vitamins.

I believe in yourself. I mean, everybody can do that. I'm like, and I was thinking today, I was like, is Hulk Hogan an A1 obituary in the New York Times? I mean, he might have me do, I think I could probably, I'm not going to do a fair. I might remember the lyrics to I am an American. You know, fight for the rights of every man. Fight for the rights of every man. Yeah, man.

I just, yeah, he's, that's a, that's a great question. I would love to be sitting in the New York Times editorial meeting today, see where they're going to place that. For his just roles as a pop culture figure and for everything else we talked about, everything else, because all of that will be in that obit, and I can't wait. to read that. Bubba the Love Sponge. I went to thinking

that I was going to call him today. Oh my God. Not sure I know how to access Bubba's content, but there's somebody

will figure it out. Let's do some headlines. All right. How about the marriage of ESPN and the NFL? I thought they were

already married. Well, they have been married. They're consummating the marriage one more time, Joel. Oh, God. Okay.

Renewing those vows. Good for them. Renewing those vows and then some on a beach in some beautiful sun-drenched country somewhere.

Not Hawaii anymore. Maybe I don't know. No. We got some news this week that ESPN may be close to buying the assets of NFL media. What are those? Well, that includes the NFL network,

the Red Zone Channel, and other things. That's one part of the story. And then we got a second part from Alex Sherman on CNBC this morning. The NFL has a lot. has had discussions and is currently in talks to buy a 10% stake in ESPN. Now, that is a moving target. Discussions continue. That they end deal if a deal is done, where as you mentioned, ESPN would take over NFL network, NFL Red Zone, some other NFL media assets. The deal could

be some combination between equity and cash. Man, that's really interesting. Again, I guess it sort of formalizes what everyone has always sort of assumed anyway, going back to the coverage of concussions, the swift cancellation of playmakers, the NFL, the football drama that the NFL hated and did not want on ESPN. So it just, yeah, I guess it formalizes what we've always sort of known that they have a very close relationship. ESPN's not going to do a lot without checking with the NFL, and the NFL has a lot of interest. and having their programming and product play so prominently at ESPN. But yeah, this is kind of weird.

Like, it makes me wonder what is going to happen to the journalists involved here, though, right? So I think there's two parts of this that are fascinating to explore. One is the journalism and the other is ESPN bidding for NFL rights. Yeah. But let me underline what you just said. Absolutely, the relationship between those two entities is always fascinating. Mm-hmm. You mentioned, you know, ESPN running away from things like that.

like playmakers because they love that relationship. And Andrew Marchand made that point, I thought very well in the athletic where he talked about when ESPN first got Sunday night football. The old Sunday night football, when that was the crappy game and Monday night was the real game. When they first got that, that was a deal that made modern ESPN that put them on the road to becoming the juggernaut. And one of my favorite lines of all time is Steve Bornstein, former president of ESPN, president during this period.

Used to call the NFL ESPN's crack cocaine. That is a direct quote. I love that. We're not to the Hunter Biden segment yet, but he called it ESPN's crack cocaine because ESPN was hooked on it. That's like crazy. And Dole Joel also don't forget the John Skipper era where that relationship kind of went into the toilet for a while.

I mean, we work at a place that is sort of a fallout from some of that the troubles in that relationship. Is that fair to say? at least a buts, a period of ESPN where the relations were not great. I remember Jimmy DeTaro, Pitaro had to come in, and they actually used the word reset. Same word that the Obama administration used about Russia to talk about the way they had to try to make good with Roger Goodell and get back on his good side because things were so bad. So let's talk about journalism. Let's say that the NFL owns 10% of ESPN.

What does that mean for the way ESPN coverage? the league. I mean, it's funny because 10% is it wants a tremendous amount, but also it's not, right? Like, I mean, if you only have a 10% stake in something, how much of a call can you make about programming and journalism decisions, right? Like, are they going to have somebody from NFL network now moving to the editorial staff of this sort of things or production meetings? Like, yeah, I mean, obviously there's already a lot of closeness in both between these two entities. But yeah, like what does 10% mean? It's such a curious figure to me.

And is it that different than the relationship now? Right. You know, it's not like the NFL, you know, in Roger Goodell's office is calling and applauding. Right. Every time Seth Wicker, Sham and Don Van Neda pull down the commissioner's pants or pull down an owner's pants. Like that stuff is very, very embarrassing. Right. Would that continue a pace if the league had a formal 10% stake and he has a small?

So I don't consume an awful lot of NFL network programming or content. I have in the past, though, seem that they've been at least somewhat, they've been able to do somewhat critical work. Like again, not, you know, not huge exposés or anything like that. Like they haven't done anything like what Pablo Tori did, right? But they have, you know, said critical things. But I guess it's sort of within the realm of what they probably consider to be a fair shot and not, you know, taking a shot at them about the way they run their business or like really large things that would, you know, call into question, you know, the integrity of the league or anything like that. And so yet to that point, yeah, I would be interested to see what's going to happen going

forward. I mean, because, man, that's a, even though ESPN isn't like, you know, living off of its investigative journalism, that is a big part of what they still do and what brings people back to that website, man. Yeah, I mean, it's the stuff that brings people to websites. It's the stuff that you and I read on the website. Maybe that's a better way to put it. Absolutely. You know, 95% of what ESPN does with the NFL is celebrate the NFL or criticize the team for making a bad trade, which also drives more interest into the NFL, like that none of that will matter at all to the league. They like that stuff. You know, if you're saying like, the Cowboys are stupid, they're terrible, they made the wrong decision. That's just great, right? That drives programming.

and drives numbers to the league. But it's those, it's at last 5%. And I do wonder about that. There's two ways to think about it, right? Would somebody from the NFL actually be able to prevent that at ESPN? A new ESPN that we know is not as interested in journalism as old ESPN? Or would the people who are so good at getting those stories want to continue to work at ESPN? That's a great.

I mean, it's funny you say the NFL, because the NFL is not Roger Goodell. The NFL is those 32 owners. Yeah. Right? Like, if he doesn't make those decisions, yeah, he's not making those citizens unilaterally. Like, he's doing in conjunction with Jerry Jones and all these other folks.

So, yeah, like that expose that ESPN did on the former SunZone or Tarver a few years ago. Will we see something like that anymore on ESPN about, you know, the Cleveland Browns owner, Jimmy Haslam, anything like that? Like some of the critical reporting about him, you got to think that, like, if I have a stake in this stuff and I'm Jimmy Haslam and I hear about. that you got to be absolutely the fuck not right and then there's the deal making part of it so we know ESPN is heavily invested in the NFL right now with Monday night football uh you know all the highlights they're able to show on their various studio programs well the NFL can tear up that television deal

that media rights deal after the 2029 season so now when I first heard this at the oh ESPN is buying the NFL network, it's buying Red Zone. That's going to give ESPN a ton of goodwill when it renegotiates these deals. That might help ESPN keep away Netflix or Amazon, at least from its own stuff. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, and it sort of protects them against some of the other wins against cable networks now, right? Like, I mean, if you've got NFL I mean, the NFL already gives them a huge leg up, but like it really reassure, it

reinforces their future stability, right, if the NFL's got a stake in it. But now think of that Alex Sherman's scoop. What if the NFL actually owns 10% of ESPN? And ESPN, a thing partially owned by the league is bidding on NFL rights. I mean, there's no way

ESPN's going to get the crappy package. Absolutely. There's just no way because the NFL would be hurting its own asset. it's really crazy to think about how like the way things have like sort of intertined in recent years because I felt like this would have been a crazy story 20, 25 years ago. They'd be like, what?

You guys are media in a journalism operation? You're going to be a business with the NFL in that way. And I feel like steadily and slowly but surely over the years, we've just kind of grown to accept this like over the last 20s. It's like, okay, like, again, I think this would have been a different podcast in 2005. And now we're just like, yeah, I mean, kind of makes sense. I don't think the journalism thing's going to come up all that much. I really don't.

I mean, I think there are people at ESPN who are certainly worried about that. Maybe the people whose bylines we mentioned would be a little bit concerned about that. But you're right. In the larger conversation, that's just not, again, it's just not what ESPN is anymore. It's a different place. I'll throw another log on the fire for you, too. Just about everything that's happened at ESPN can be read. as something that is going to help or hurt the launch of the ESPN app here in a few weeks.

This is going to be ESPN's opportunity to go direct-to-consumer for $30 a month. And I always look at it was like, whether it's around the horn or whether it's this person stayed or this person who got a new contract. I'm like, that's all about the app. That's all about what is going to work there versus what worked at ESPN, the linear television station that you and I grew up with. Well, here, if you acquire the NFL network, you get a bunch more games inside your company because the NFL network does have the rights, so a small number of games, but as we know,

any NFL game is important. Red Zone is also important. Because if you think of the app, I'm like, wait a second, who is the sports fan who's spending 30 bucks a month for just ESPN? Yeah. Because most people are sickos like us, I think, and they're like, well, I want to watch all the games. I don't want to watch some of the games. but what if you can sell them a red zone through that app,

a point that Marchand made in the athletic. Now that's interesting. Yeah. I mean, I'm a guy who many years ago, and I think people are, there are parts of families with kids that have to make this decision, you've got to become a Saturday football guy or a Sunday football guy.

I've had to become a Saturday football guy just because that's where my interests lie, but I still had Red Zone for a number of years. That's how important it was to me. It was like, well, if I get a few seconds in front of the TV, I want the Red Zone. And, you know, I have the ESPN app on my phone right now, but, like, I definitely will not get rid of it.

And I definitely will pony up and pay $30 a month if I can get Red Zone on my phone. One last note for you here. About the NFL network itself. Yeah. It's 22 years old. So founded in 2003. And part of the subtext of this deal is the NFL saying, look, we just don't want to be a media company in that one.

way anymore, even though we're buying 10% of ESV at the same time, apparently. What is so fascinating to me, and I've written about this for the bringer before, is that part of the raison de etre, if I may use the only in journalism term, of the NFL network, was to advertise the league. It's a cable channel that's advertising our product. But a secondary reason, and this is not a secret, this is something the founders of the network and people who still work in the NFL have told me is, we wanted to force other media partners to cover the NFL even more.

So the NFL network, Joel, is the entity that invented the schedule release show. Oh, man, yeah. Which is the biggest bag of nothing in the history of TV sports, and that is saying something. Yeah. But when they invented them, they knew very well that ESPN would see that strange, contentless television program and be like, we have to have one of those too. Right. So what happens? ESPN has their own schedule release show, which by the way, they were like two different versions, I think, the last couple of years of this.

They actually had multiple schedule release shows. And you're like, oh, now they're advertising the NFL even more than they already were. Same thing with the draft. You remember ESPN did the draft. And the NFL network says, oh, we're coming in. What happens? ESPN says, well, we want to be the best draft telecast. So we invest even more money in this off-season event.

So what the NFL network was doing was not just advertising the league itself. They were forcing ESPN to do it more. And of course, ESPN was happy to do that. They wanted to do that for all those reasons we laid out. Now we've come full circle, halfway through the circle. You help me with the geometry here where ESPN is buying the thing that forced it to cover the NFL even more. They're buying their own assignment editor. They're bringing the assignment editor in the house.

that's just fascinating to me. Well, they don't have, I mean, as much as it pains me to say this, they don't have any real true competitors anyway, right? Like, I mean, I guess like the NFL network did force them to do more, but like when you think of the media environment for the most part, nobody is as well resourced as them, right? And so you kind of be like, well, if ESPN's on that, ESPN's on that, and I'll take whatever,

scraps we can get or whatever. So I don't think they would have to pull back on coverage, but I wonder if it would just sort of lessen the incentive to have all these, I mean, they're not going to have, there's not going to be 64 beat riders for the 32 teams or maybe, maybe 96. I don't know how many, you know, ESPN has one per team and NFL network has one, but like, there's not going to be that we're going, I get the feeling that we're going to lose some degree of coverage. just because they can't duplicate that stuff anymore.

Because you're going to want to combine roles and that kind of thing. You're going to want to combine roles. I understand that. But if the NFL is a 10% owner of ESPN, right? I don't think the volume, maybe the head count goes down, but does the volume of NFL coverage go down? I think it probably goes the other way, if that's humanly possible. That's a really, yeah, that's a really interesting.

Also, you know what I was thinking about? Man, nobody wants to do the network thing anymore, man. Like the Longhorn network, the Pat 12 network. It feels like those are things. Like, remember, just everybody got a cable network. you know and it just kind of feels like this isn't the end of that era necessarily but it is sort of like it feels like an inflection point like we're not going to go back to you know that era that era before where every every you know league or whatever sports organization is running

their own tv studio right absolutely now you just start a podcast the new train network infrastructure let's make a very awkward segue Joel to the Epstein files oh I know you you've been following this story. And a plugged-in media friend called me yesterday to ask an interesting question. One that I suspect journalists, even those covering the story, have been thinking to themselves. The question is, what's the story here exactly? Great question. What is? I mean, well, yeah, I don't want to interrupt. Go ahead, because I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, that over in my head, so please. Well, no, I want to hear your thoughts about it because

I think there's an obvious, the number of obvious things to cover here. Right. Like, nobody here is disputing that this is an important story that would Jeffrey Epstein was alleged to have done, was terrible, it affected the lives of many people, and it has had political ramifications before in the past.

I think, is this maybe more the question, which are going to do about it, though? Is that kind of the thing? Or like, is anything really going to happen to Trump? Like, is this actually going to hurt him? I think that's what everybody's trying to figure out. And obviously, people fall a lot of different sort of ways about that, because there's a contingent of people that think, Maga's fracturing over this, man, Bondi and Bonkin, they're going after each other in meetings and stuff. And then there's people and I can admit I'm more like this. I mean, he ain't going to step down. So, what are we doing here.

Nobody's not force them to. Uh-huh. Yeah. Well, the Maga Revolt has definitely been part of the story. Right. And that gives the media something to cover because, as we've seen, there have been so few breaks between Trump and the movement. What is, I'm glad you said, what is, what have they revolted?

What have they done? They recorded a podcast where they were mad about the files not coming out. Yeah. Okay. I was like, they haven't. And then they stopped saying that after a while because Trump told him to stop saying that. Right, right. There's administration stonewalling, which I think is always an invitation for media coverage.

Because, you know, we love a reversal. Absolutely. You said you were going to do this, but now you say you're going to do something different. Right. And having both sides of that on the record, that gives journalists something to write. Oh, absolutely. And again, the journalism on this is important. I'm glad people are pushing back on this, forcing them in.

to the uncomfortable position of having to defend positions that they, positions that are totally different from the ones that they took even months ago. I like that part of it. But yeah, it's just, it's just really sort of funny because it's like, all right, well, it's a, it's going to be a real test because the one thing that Donald Trump has been fantastic at is changing the new cycle to whatever the hell he wants it to be. And this is like the one thing. So I guess, you know, if we're talking about the revolt or the consequence, it's like the one thing. It's like the one thing that is kind of like sticking a little bit, right? Like it keeps coming up even though he doesn't want it to come up. And he's like, I might indict Obama. He should be charged with treason,

you know, all this other stuff. And, you know, but it seems like every day, like we're talking about it. It's those stories that keep coming out about it, right? What about Trump's own very strange sounding denials? Oh, man. We've seen all those sound bites when the Wall Street Journal had their story about that quote unquote body letter that wound up. and Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday album, Trump's response was, I never wrote a picture in my life. And then people on Twitter,

of course, immediately produced pictures that Donald Trump had drawn or written, I suppose. Right. You also have weird actual news, right? We learned this week that the House is on vacation as a way of not having to have votes on the release of Epstein-related documents. Right.

And then, of course, you got scoops appearing every couple of days to keep the story alive, two of which have been from the Wall Street Journal. Right. I mentioned the bawdy letter, and then there was the one

yesterday, that is July 23rd, that Pam Bondi had gone to the White House and informed Donald Trump that his name was in the so-called Epstein Files. Journal, of course, notes that being mentioned in the records is not a sign of wrongdoing. Can I stop for a second? Because I want to ask you this.

does that not feel like that should be a huge story? But it just, I felt like it's a big story, but it's not the story that it should be. Right? Well, so it's a, that's a very, very good question. Yes and no to me. I turned to Julie K. Brown reporter who did so much great work for the Miami Herald and it should be the first reference on every Epstein story. And this is what she tweeted.

Trump's name, along with many other names, was on Epstein's. plane logs. His name is in his blackbook phone directory and his name was on phone message pads seized by police from Epstein's Palm Beach home in 2005. All these have long been part of the federal investigation into Epstein. So the idea that Trump's name would be in the files isn't new. And having your name in the files in and of itself doesn't implicate him in any wrongdoing. So I guess the question you're asking is, is the fact that Bondi said this and his name is mentioned along with other friends of Jeffrey Epstein. We know that they were friends at one point.

Is that what should be the big story or just the relationship between the two of them at all that Donald Trump was trying to point or his allies at least were trying to point at in other directions? I think a little bit of both, but also the idea that they had to inform him that his name, like, I, don't you kind of, I mean, he's president. Don't you think he should have known that before February? Yes. Yeah, and surely he would know that, right? If there was an investigation in Jeffrey Epstein's entire life.

Right. Like that should not be like, hey, man, we've got to sit you down. We're going to bring you in and talk to you about this. Your name is in the Epstein file. Of course, I knew that. Right. That's what you think the conversation should be, but it doesn't seem like that's what happened here. I also think this if we do journalist truth serum, which I'm always in favor of doing.

Look, journalists share one thing with frustrated Democrats. Some of them are frustrated Democrats, but they share one thing with frustrated Democrats, which is that what happens? There's a huge Trump scandal. And as you note, nothing sticks. Right. He does not resign in shame. His poll numbers don't even move all that much. So if you're a journalist, you think, wait a second, I've kind of done my job.

I've delivered you a world historical scandal and nothing happened as a result of it. Right. But here's something that has had some kind of effect. if just to turn, you know, our websites and social media feeds for several days. Right. Here's something that is sticking in whatever way, even if his approval ratings haven't moved all that much. Right. And I think there is something about, for a journalist that is, oh, satisfying is the right word, but it just hits you different. Right. Then all those other, quote unquote, scandals that just went away because Donald Trump deflected them like DeKembe Mutamba at the room.

Oh yeah, right, like the big tax, the big tax scandal, all the things that were supposed to. Yeah, like the things that were really supposed to happen. And it's like, oh, that kind of, you know, Donnie slipped away again, you know. I mean, it was actually to that point, like Elon Musk said that his name were in the files like a month and a half ago, right? You know? He tweeted it. He tweeted it. And it was like a bit, it was like, ooh.

And then it just kind of, you know, here we are. And it's just like everybody's just sort of been on the edge. is like we kind of know this already, dude. Again, the issue is which are going to do about it? Like, what's going to happen? And again, the media is doing their part, but the part that makes society function, you know, is this like, okay, society, you know, media has said,

hey, man, there may be an example of tremendous wrongdoing here, a horrible scandal affecting young girls. Some affected to this day, one of the victims, you know, died by, suicide within the last few years. But nothing has happened, bro. You know, and so, like, that's like, now it's incumbent upon society and our systems to say, okay, this actually matters.

But that's always just been sort of the thing. You talk about the frustrated Democrats that the media sometimes can be. It's just like sometimes you report things and you want people to take it seriously. It's just like, like the people that say, well, I didn't know that that was in Project 2025 or why didn't? like people reported about it, right? And this is like, sometimes as a media person, you want your work to matter and it doesn't break through. And like, yeah, like maybe this, maybe this will be that time. But it just seemed, I'm sort of dubious, I guess. Let's talk about somebody else who's a little frustrated with the media. Oh, man, I got. So we're talking about the guy I think we're going to be talking about, right? We are. Hunter Biden. Have you, had you ever heard Hunter Biden talk before? I was thinking about that exact question when I was listening to this podcast

and I think the answer might be no. Yeah. Yeah, I hadn't either. I'd never even heard his voice. So if I had, it wasn't particularly memorable. But if like us, you hadn't and we're interested in hearing him talk at length

about everything, pretty much almost everything, his addiction, the laptop, his art show, his pardon, George Clooney, David Axelrod, you are very much in luck. The perpetually embattled Biden,

embattled being a media word that seems to be associated with him a lot, he sat down for a three-hour interview with the YouTuber, influencer, all-around media personality, Andrew Callahan on his YouTube network, Channel 5. And it was, I would say, am I wrong in thinking that it was about as revealing as one of these sit-downs can get, Brian? Oh, absolutely. And about as complete, because in your very good list there, of topics covered, you do not include the fact that Hunter Biden told us about the founding of Delaware as a colony. That's a great point.

He gave us some reconstruction lessons, too, by the way. We got all kinds of history. I mean, it was a wide-ranging interview. The cliche does not do this justice. Absolutely. So I was thinking about this because, and he even mentions this at some point in the interview, but he had been. come to believe that the media was, that there was nothing he was known. He said, a friend had recommended to him that just let this stuff kind of blow over. And he realized that's just not going

to happen. Like, I'm going to be in there. So like, why do you think Hunter Biden did this? I have a theory, but I'm curious what you think. Let me rattle off a few things here for you. Okay. No lingering legal jeopardy. So you can let it all hang out. I think in a way, the weirdly enough, the Biden story is one story from this election that has not really been told or not thoroughly been told by the participants themselves. And there's obviously a lot of hurt feelings here. You only need to listen to Hunter for a few minutes to talk about how he feels about other Democrats. It pushed his dad off the ticket. How he feels about the media and the way they covered his dad's age.

That's all mixed in there. And then, you know, part of this just feels like a recovery exercise by Hunter Biden himself. I'm in recovery. That's a word that's used a whole bunch in this podcast. And part of that is me talking about what I've done, me telling the truth about my past, or at least his version of what happened in his past. And this feels like part of that exercise.

Absolutely. And I think that was kind of the big thing for me is that I did think it was a big part of his rehab. And it seemed like it wasn't an unburdening in a lot of ways. Because he talked about, I don't have any secrets, right? Like he kept saying that. And that must be sort of freeing for him in a lot of ways.

And so it enables you if you can sort of go through that and unburden yourself, then you can spend time going after George Clooney. Like I thought that I didn't know if the interview, I would like to talk to Andrew about how he constructed the interview because when you start out, it allowed him to go through the depths of his addiction, right? And it talks about how bad he was, some of the places he had to go. He almost OD'd and somebody like helped him. like crack houses, all this sort of stuff, you know.

And it allowed, if you were willing to sit in there, and I imagine if you made it all three hours, you probably developed some degree of empathy for Hunter Biden. And then now you've got empathy and you're like, this guy's not that bad. He's really smart. Now he can go on and defend his dad in a way that's not possible if that's the way that that interview had started, right?

Or if he just comes out of the blues saying, you guys fucked my dad, you know? I completely agree. It just puts him in another context. And like you said, most of us know him from, if not the Fox News caricature of Hunter Biden, then at least the kind of remote character of Hunter Biden that came through in the mainstream media. Yeah. I mean, he would never heard him talk.

He was really upset about the New York Post, for instance, and their coverage of him. He talked about like every time that they ran a picture of him, it was him shirtless, right? Or like naked or whatever. Yeah, and he had this great line where he said, look, I'm either a fail son or I'm a criminal mastermind. It's hard to believe that I could be both at the same time. Absolutely. And there was so many interesting little parts of that, too, because Callahan asked him, do you think the fact that you were addicted to crack as opposed to meth or some other drug contributed to the way people saw you? Yeah.

Because there's this whole stigma with crack, a racialized stigma with crack. And I even looking at the reactions to this interview, I mean, how many people on Twitter were so excited. to use the word crackhead when describing Hunter Biden. Absolutely. It was, yeah, I mean, that's kind of the, and there's been a lot of other interviews and segments that have been, that have focused on the crack of it all, right? Because that's, I mean, it's funny if it's not affected your life, right?

And it can sound funny. I think Dave Chappelle once made a joke that, like, the crack isn't funny. It's just the way that people are addicted to it that makes it funny. But even then, like, it's still just kind of like, if you've actually known people in your life who've been addicted, it's not quite so funny. And I mean, he was really, really charming.

I thought that he was really, really smart. I mean, again, like, you don't, I don't even think you have to share my politics to think that he comes off a lot differently than he does on the pages of the New York Post, right? But yeah, as anybody would, when given three and a half hours, mostly sympathetic hours. Most of what I was going to say.

I was wondering, I mean, obviously he picked this guy, He said something that they had a, they had a connection, somebody that put a mutual friend. And he got familiar with his work. And I wonder how that would have, because he was still sort of explosive. He was still mad, right? But you wonder how that would hold up against somebody that was a little bit more antagonistic. There was a little bit more dubious of the things that he was saying, right? Pushing back and stuff like that.

Yeah, I think so. And I think Andrew Calhant did a really interesting job with this interview. He's somebody. I can honestly say I was not super familiar with him, but I had not listened to his podcast. Kyle has been putting him on our radar and being like, there's something here, you guys. And I feel, Joel, you and I discover a new podcaster like every two weeks. Absolutely. You're like, time to finally bite the bullet and listen to Tucker Carlson. And there is, you know, look, when I've just read an election memoir about 2024, had Josh Dossi on the podcast the other day to talk about this. And Hunter's a big figure in there, you know, because he has a lot of insights. You know, he was, again, it was a great question about, is, is, he a reliable narrator or how reliable a narrator is he right because talks he's talked about all of

his problems he was there for so many big decisions in the 2024 campaign remember this is before biden pardoned his son right like so he's around at all these family events which is just a fascinating story in and of itself right and so you're wondering and of course he's very very aggrieved about the way his dad was treated and about the way the fact that don't Trump won the election. So there's just a fascinating, you know, side discussion of, okay, here are his opinions about all of these things. Absolutely. It's funny that matter that you mention it that way, because one of the things about Joe Biden that he was always been effective about him as a politician and a person in the media, he's a really empathetic figure. And he's like he's had, he's endured so

much tragedy, right, that people could really see through him. And it sort of came through when he spoke to people and he talked to people. Well, imagine if you had all that same stuff and a drug addiction and you were the subject of media scrutiny, media criticism, it even goes like that almost underestimates or undersells like what he's had to go through in that way over the last few years. And so imagine if you had all of that. And you could really explain yourself very well. And you could explain it. You could just like, I'm showing off and telling you about my art and how I did this and I almost died and I found the love of my life and the hardest thing that never happened is my brother died, things like that. It was just, yeah, it was a really interesting thing.

It makes me, it almost wonder, like, do you think anybody else was in the running for this interview? I would love to know if, like, if Hunter was willing to sit down with somebody and Andrew emerged or if, you know, it was only ever going to be Andrew. Well, two data points on that. He also did Jamie Harrison's interview. Jamie Harrison, former chairman of the DNC, who was a very pro-Biden figure and continues to be on Twitter, at least in terms of how 2024 shook out. And I believe, I'll happily withdraw this if I'm not right, but I believe he was a named source for a few things in the 2024 book that I just read. So he's been out there a little bit. This is obviously a big, let it all hang out interview of a very, very different

kind. And it goes back to what I was saying about the Biden perspective of this is something, we haven't heard all that much of. No. I mean, and again, like, we're not even really going in on some of the things he said about Clooney and some of the heavyweights of the Democratic Party. Just go back with me one year. Joe Biden was the least defensible person in American life. There's a reason we made him America's softest target because there was nobody who was like, you know who's getting a raw deal here? Joe Biden. Right. Nobody thought that. So I think part of this interview, what makes it interesting is where there's a lot of you're going to be a raw deal here, Joe Biden. I don't know, you agree with the sentiments or not, and I suspect a lot of people disagree with a whole lot of

them, you are hearing something, you are hearing an indefensible case being defended. You are hearing somebody speak up from that group. That's not Mike Donald and some of the other voices that we've heard, issue squeaks of protests from time to time. Also, in terms of building sympathy, not just for himself. I don't know, and maybe I took it the wrong way. You tell me what you thought. I thought it sounded soft launching like how poorly Joe Biden is doing health-wise. They spent a little bit of time talking about the cancer and how he was doing. And it kind of sounded. I just remember when Joe Paterno got diagnosed with cancer, right?

Like near the end. It didn't, you know, and people, they said at the time it was like a mild cancer diagnosis. There's no such thing when you're 80 years old. There's no mild cancer. So anyway, it just made me think I was like, huh, I wonder if this is also, yeah, the beginning of the, the, the writing of the Biden legacy from the Biden point of view. And that was always going to be a thing, right? Like he's so many Democrats, why doesn't he just go away?

We're so mad at him. A completely understandable impulse. But also, that guy, you know, through a book, through interviews, through his son's interviews, is going to fight for his legacy. All presidents do in one way or another. And yes, it is absolutely, whether it's that, whether it's that about Biden or not, however that turns out, it is absolutely one of the opening salvos. that war of what is the true legacy of Joe Biden.

Last thing here. I'm cynical, okay? I'm a cynical guy. I'm just, I wonder if there's going to be Hunter Biden for president talk at some point. For president? Man, look, man, I'm just, I don't, people are going to call me crazy and I say, Joel, that's ridiculous or whatever. Joel, that's ridiculous.

Thank you for saying it. I just, I don't know. Anyway, I could. There's a lot. There's a, the people that were talking to me about the Biden interview, just offline, a lot of them. It was just, I mean, they were impressed with him in a way that I just remember when people have emerged over the past, not that he would win, but just that, you know, he would be somebody that would be a figure going forward. But anyway, that's so fascinating. Does he have to start with the presidency? Can't we replace Chris Coons in the Senate someday and

work from there? I think that's kind of what people do now. I think you just run, you know, you just go see. There's no, why would you wait, you know? We heard Don Jr. talk for a while, so I guess that's all I'm saying. One thing, Joel, people might not know about journalism is that in the summer months, late July, early August, that's often where you park a feature that doesn't really have a huge newspeg or you do the kind of project that you've really been wanting to do that your editor wasn't so enthusiastic about. That's how it normally goes. But for some reason, this has been wild-ass podcast month. Oh, man, it really has. We had Medi Hassan debating the

those college kids. I hope you watch some of those clips because that was some wild stuff. I couldn't avoid those clips even if I'd wanted to. The Nelk boys who you and I might get to discover someday in person interviewed Bibi Netanyahu. Okay. That's a that's a big get of course. Ram Emanuel has been on a right wing podcast tour. So I'm talking to Bari Weiss today.

I think they're probably more critically aligned than that. Like, actually, him on a right-wing pod tour probably brought the friendliest audience he might get in some instances. And then we had stage, sage, steel and Sam Ponder. I'm glad the Wheel of Fortune Point in a Hunter Biden. I really am this week for us. I mean, also, you know, was it Mike Wise went on with Michelle Tofoya? Because remember, Michelle Toffoya. That happened to?

Yeah, Mike Wise loved Michelle Tofoya, not so long ago. He criticized her, you know, Michelle Tofoya was a lot of. kind of busted for retweeting or repackaging a compliment she allegedly got on a flight and you know she seemed like she kind of seemed to imply that it had happened again when it seemed like it was just her

you know it was a weird tweet telling that story over again anyway Mike Wise had criticized her online they reached out and went on and apparently it was fairly cordial I gotta listen to that actually I don't but thank you for putting out my radar there's a lot out there as you see

we still got the knelt boys in head of this so two sound bites before we get out of here. Okay. One of them is Pat McAfee. Yes, Pat McAfee issuing an apology yesterday. As a lot of you know on February 26 of this year, we're down to Combine

on this particular program. We discussed a very viral internet story about an Ole Miss college student. We weren't clear at that point where the story originated from. It was all over the internet. Yet by the time we talked about it, the story was everywhere. I have since learned that the story was not true

and that my show played a role in the anguish caused to a great family and especially to a young woman, Mary Kate Cornett. I think you all know from tuning into this program that I never want to be a source of negativity or contribute to another human suffering. And I can now happily share with you that I recently got to meet Mary Kate and her family. And I got a chance to sincerely apologize to them and acknowledge that what I said about Mary Kate was based solely on what others were saying on the internet or had been previously reported by others and that we had no personal knowledge about Mary Kate or her personal life.

As a girl dad, I also was very thankful for the opportunity to let Mr. Cornett know that I was wildly regretful for the part that our show, our program, played in his daughter, Mary Kate's Pain. I know many of you are wondering why I or we haven't addressed this topic until now. It's a fair question.

But as you might imagine, there was a lot going on behind the scenes since this all happened. The most important element on the timing is I, personally, a decision that I made, wanted to talk to the family first before addressing it publicly. and I can now say that I had the opportunity to meet them, chat with them, and they're

wonderful people. And I'm very thankful that they gave me the opportunity to tell them how sorry I was that this all happened and that our program was a part of this. All right, Kyle. I think we got the jest. Yeah, I mean, he said a lot was going on. Do you think the attorney wrote the Girl Dad part or do you think that got to add that in himself? There was a lot going on behind the scenes.

Yeah, I bet. I bet. I've bet. I got so many reactions here. One is thank you to Pat McAfee for reminding us that those comments were in February. I mean, man. It's July. The barstool guys got in front of a camera in April and apologized for this. So you're three and a half months behind the barstool guys. Well, Brian, I mean, he demanded that he meet the family first. So they'd probably take it a little bit longer. to coordinate their schedules. And that sounds noble in some sense, but like if you said something like that on a television show that turned out not to be true, wouldn't you want to get back on the television show

as quickly as humanly possible and tell us that it wasn't true and then go meet the family? Would you kind of keep us in suspense for all these many months? Absolutely. I think the thing is, though, is with the Corvette family. And if I'm coming from their perspective, I'm just like,

I want people to know that's not true, but I want people to stop talking about this. Right? Wouldn't you? I mean, if that were you. Sure. Sure. But there's an, you know, it's like, and people have told me, well, you know, maybe there's legal stuff going on behind the scenes and all that stuff.

I'm like, as somebody who watches TV, I don't care about that. That has nothing to do with me. Like, you said something on television. There's barely been a peep from anyone at ESPN, most of all, McAfee about this. Right. And now in July, we get, you know, the finally get the apology. Right. It's, I mean, man, it used to be, and you worried about getting in trouble at ESPN a lot.

Like if you worked there, like, it was just something to kind of hovered over your head, you know, the sword of Democles. Like, you just, you know, you're, you didn't want to step out of line. And obviously that era is over there, which gives you a sense of the pressure that he was facing when all those things are going on. in the background. Like I, if you had to guess, and this is maybe not responsible, I assume there's some sort of a settlement that was involved with this.

It is, it seems that there will be lots and lots of legalizing. Yeah. Going behind. If you go back and watch the clip, I encourage people to watch the YouTube version of this, Pat McAfee looks very, very different. Looks very, very different than when he is doing,

you know, a break-it-down football segment on his show. Did he have sleeves? Did he have sleeves? See, you ask all the good questions. I'll see, I mean, how serious is it if you didn't wear a sleeve? He did have sleep. Thank you, Kyle. Okay, that's how serious it was.

He just had to wear sleeves. And by the way, for people who are connoisseurs of televised awkwardness, I just want you to also go back and watch. Just rewind like 30 seconds and watch how Pat Back if he transitions from football talk. Football is back to this, which is even funnier than me going. from NFL network to Epstein. So anyway, thank you to all involved there. Another piece of audio.

I think everyone was waiting this Monday, Joel, for John Stewart to weigh in. Yeah. On the cancellation slash defenestration of his old pal, Stephen Colbert. There was even this idea, hey, maybe Stewart's going to come on the air Monday and quit. I think we got something even better.

So here's the point. If you're trying to figure out why Stephen's show is ending, I don't think the answer can be found in some smoking gun email or phone call from Trump to CBS executives or in CBS's Quickbook spreadsheets on the financial health of late night. I think the answer is in the fear and pre-compliance that is gripping all of America's institutions at this very moment. Institutions that have chosen not to fight the vengeful and vindictive actions of our pubic hair doodling commander-in-chief. This is not the moment to give in. I'm not giving in.

I'm not going anywhere, I think. Don't you love the phrase pre-compliance? Yeah, man, that's a really artful turn of phrase, isn't it? It is, because there's actually been two kinds of bending the knee here. There's, hey, you said something on television, or you edited a clip a certain way. I'm going to sue you. Oh, uh-oh, he's suing us. we'd probably win in court, but let's give him or his library or who the hell knows who millions of dollars didn't get him to go away.

That's one kind, but then there's pre-compliance where Trump doesn't even have to ask for it. Right, right. It's like, you know, did you ever used to play the game? We're like, you flinched, you know? With somebody do something to you try to punch you. I love you flinched. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you flinched. And so, yeah, and that's another, like even, it's even a more gutless kind when you're a media company, right?

Like that's really discouraging if you work for an organization that is just an academic institution that is just like, please don't hit me, you know. Nobody ever won you flinched. Like there was not a winner at the end of the day. You could get somebody. I don't know, man. But there was no point system, at least in the versions of the game I played. My argument against it, it was like, I think flinching is the reasonable response to this. not you know not flinching in the face of

a pre-compliance so to speak but yeah i'm not going to make me feel back because i don't want to get hit but go ahead let's do some blurbs before we get out of here jol i want to pick tom boswell because tom boswell is a sports writer who you know and i know he is getting the frick award on saturday which is the formal way of saying that his picture is going to be in the writer's wing of the baseball Hall of Fame. Man. You hear me, trained sports journalist here.

He's not getting into the Baseball Hall of Fame, but he's winning the Frick Award, and he will be celebrated with the other great writers in the Baseball Hall of Fame. I don't know about you, but Tom Boswell to me was somebody I read when he was a columnist of the Washington Post. I've owned his books. I've gone back and visited his baseball writing, but I had never done the full immersion into the Boz bubble bath until a couple of weeks ago. And I brought the books up here and I read as many pieces as I could.

And I got a few observations about the writing of Baas, which I will recommend this week to anybody who's similarly interested. Okay. Number one, he's a great writer. He's a great deadline writer. Number two, I have never seen a sports writer use a reference to Emily Dickinson or Turgenev. more artfully than boss. The rest of us try it and we're like, what are you doing?

Right, right, right. What, come on now, really. That's, that's who that shortstop, who turned the double play reminded you of. He could really do that.

There was a certain elegance to his writing that allowed him to do that. There's an art, yeah, again, artfulness is the sort of word that I think about, you know,

yeah, when it's like, that kind of writing really doesn't, it's tough, not that it doesn't exist anymore, but it certainly doesn't exist in quite the way that it used to for sure. Third observation about Tom Boswell is, you know, I would have expected the love of baseball

that seems to infuse the writing of baseball writers in a way love of football doesn't infuse football writers or basketballers in quite the same way. It's that, it's that, you know, kind of older idea of just loving the game so much, being so interested in the game that I think was just so unique to baseball. I would have expect that. What I didn't expect is when I read his deadline pieces after the final games of the World Series from a couple of years, 84 when the Tigers won, 85 when the Royals won. And dude, those pieces are so good. And I hate doing historical comps because they're never right.

But I would encourage everyone to go read those and not be reminded of someone like Zach Lowe and the way he talks about basketball, where it's not, there's nothing stately. or removed or romantic about them. It is somebody who has such a great command of the game and understands what happened, why it happened, why the Royals in 85 were kind of a bad team that kind of won the World Series, and is happy to say that in print.

Somebody that just knows the sport and loves the sport so well that he could do that on deadline in a press box with actual deadlines, not like Brian and Joel dead. but actual deadlines. Yeah. And just do it incredibly, incredibly well.

We should, I don't get somebody on here to talk about that because I think in my youth, I observed people, right? So if you, you know, set along somebody that was writing on deadline and you might just look at how they were putting it together or just try to get a feel for it. But like now we can ask people. Because I've always just kind of wondered how people do, when you read a deadline story, a story on deadlines, like, you know, write up a, the World Series game or the game seven NBA finals and it reads like a feature right where it's just

like oh like you just there's a magazine piece that you just happen to written moments after the final buzzer and uh i would be i would love to know how he was like did you do boilerplate graphs like this kind of thing like you know did you have a slot for a quote here like how did you actually technically write that and i've seen versions of that where clearly 85% of it was written before the game Right. And even newspaper writers use tricks like that because you just didn't have, sometimes you had no time at all. But these pieces were not written like that. These were about the details of the game that just happened. And the only way that they could have been done was during the game or right after the game. Amazing. They were awesome. Anyway, my rec is the baseball writing of Tom Boswell.

Joel, what is yours? Yeah. So obviously, you know, first of all, thanks to everybody that reached out about our episode on Curville from a couple weeks ago, It really meant a lot to us, and it was Brian's idea to even do it in that way. And yeah, so it just, it moved, obviously moved a lot of people, and we're still moved by it. And there's still lots of great work being put out about the Curveille flood and the devastation there. And I especially wanted to point out Aaron Parsley's first-person account in Texas Monthly of his family home on the Guadalupe River being washed away during those floods. He and six members of his family were inside at the time, and they couldn't evacuate. It's a full of water rose or whatever.

And it's just a terrifying, poetic, just gripping narrative about what happened that night. And I can't recommend it enough. Here's a graph from it. In Elisa's waking grief-strength moments, we told her over and over that saving clay was impossible, that she did all she could, that the flood was in control. And the days since she has talked about feeling clay in her arms and then not having her in her arms and how she understood in that moment that he was going to die. She said over and over while we were in the house waiting for the first responders, he can't swim, he's a baby. I'm not going to, you know, spoil it.

Just keep, it's a tremendous narrative. And I'm just grateful that Texas has a media outlet like there, down there that's capable of doing that stuff. And even the Texas Tribune is a lot of great stuff too. I also wanted to, as an old dad, who sometimes has to put his kid to sleep and can't read like I used to. And I don't know, Brian, do you consider listening to books the same as reading them? I don't like it as much, but sure. I'm not deducting any points. Okay, yeah, so thank you.

So I've had to become less rigid about that because I was one of those people who was like, that's not the same as reading. That's not the same thing. But sometimes when you don't have time and you're laying in bed waiting for your three-year-old to go to sleep and making sure that he's going to stay asleep, I mean, you want something in the darkness with you. So I have this Apple News Plus narrated subscription. And I've recently started to take, taken to listening to these articles. And one of them just last night, or this was this morning actually, really, you have no idea how furious Canadians are. It was a piece in New York Magazine.

And it's really interesting. It's sort of funny, fascinating, all that other stuff. I can't recommend it. I also had listened to a piece that ran into Rolling Stone about a CrossFit athlete who drowned during a race in Fort Worth. Oh, wow. It was really good. Another about how suburbia is going to become expensive in places like Vegas space. Anyway, it's a really good service.

Like, I know that, you know, man, Apple's not a perfect ally of journalism, you know, right? We don't get into all of that. But for at least this purpose, it has been really useful to me. And if you're kind of stuck in a place where you can't find yourself reading as much, but you got a time to listen to things, I wouldn't do it. Aaron's piece from Texas Monthly is also on that news plus narrated stuff. So again,

if you want, maybe you can check it out that way too. You have anything to say about Malcolm Jamon Warner? Because you wrote a hell of a piece of the ringer about that. Oh, well, thank you. I was just going to skip because I was, I was afraid that I'd gone on too long. But thank you.

Yeah, no. First of all, thank you for saying that. And yeah, man, like a lot of kids that grew up watching the Cosby Show, and we've talked about how you watched it too. You probably came to think of Malcolm Jamal Warner as the character at Theo Huxdable or somebody you actually kind of knew, you know? And it, I mean, I yelled when I saw that he had passed. Like it was really, I was like, oh, shit, you know. And it, you know, we all get older. You know, mortality is something I spent a lot of time thinking about.

And instead of focusing on that, I ended up have been privy. to have seen just so many great Malcolm Jamal Warner videos like of him dancing. He's been some rap video, special ed. I'm the magnificent of video that he also directed, a video that I talk about in the piece, a new edition, any heartbreak. And it's just really cool to see him as a kid, because I was actually thinking about this, Brian, I didn't get a chance to talk about it. He's sort of LeBron, and that, like, he's been famous for a long time,

had a lot of opportunities to veer off the path, like be an asshole or just screw it up, squander it, do whatever. That didn't happen, man. Like, he really, like, as far as we can tell, lived a pretty good, clean, you know, thoughtful, purposeful life. And so, like, it feels, you know, you don't want anybody to pass, but you want to feel, when you pass, you want people to feel good about who you were and the life that you lived. And watching these videos kind of helped me with that.

little bit too. So yeah, man, check out some Malcolm Jamar Warner videos if you get a little chance on the YouTube. And check out Joel's piece on the ringer.com. You will not be sorry that you're dead. He is Joel Anderson. I'm Brian Curtis Pidexie Magic by Kyle Crichton. Shoemaker is back on this podcast on Monday. I think we might record it a little bit early on Sunday. Joel, I cannot wait to see you back here Thursday with more

lukewarm takes about the media. Likewise, buddy.