The Press Box - The Media Makes Amends With Donald Trump, NFL Audio, and an Icelandic Christmas Tradition

Episode Date: December 16, 2024

The Media Makes Amends With Donald Trump, NFL Audio, and an Icelandic Christmas Tradition Hello, media consumers! Bryan and David kick off the show by discussing Max Tani’s interview with Kamala Harris campaign manager Rob Flaherty, who talked about key sports podcasters that turned down interviews with her (01:02). Then they discuss how ABC News settled its case with Donald Trump (9:56). Later, they talk about the following; Greg Olsen being happy to call his first Panthers game this year (14:40) The backlash from Larry Fitzgerald Sr.'s tweet about Randy Moss’s cancer diagnosis (19:27) Words you will hear only in sports broadcasting (24:45) Whether or not The Athletic is OK (27:00) And in the Notebook Dump, Bryan introduces David to Icelandic Christmas (32:29) Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, Only in Journalism, America’s Softest Target, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Brian H. Waters Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's happening? It's Todd McShay and I'm back with a new home and a new show at the Ringer and Spotify. The McShay Show. It's a video and audio podcast coming to you year round with all my NFL draft information, big boards, mock drafts and player movement. Plus, I'll be chatting with some of my best friends in football, including some of your favorite football analysts. During the week, we'll have episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays that will include discussions about my player rankings, who's rising, who's falling, and who your NFL team should be. keeping an eye on. Plus, we'll be reacting each week to the college football playoff polls and giving you previews and picks for each Saturday slate. In addition, I'll have episodes on Saturday nights with my immediate reaction to the full day in college football every week. So if you love the college game, the NFL, the draft, or all of it like me, make sure to like, follow, subscribe,

and get ready for the McShay show on the ringer, Spotify, and wherever you watch or listen to Podcasts. David? Yes. I was all set off to lead with ABC News and Donald Trump. But then Semaphore published one of those stories that just makes for podcast discussion bait. All right. They have a knack for that.

It's by our friend Max Tanny, who has an interview with another Kamala Harris staffer who's on the What Went Wrong to her. Yeah. This tour feels like when Elton John was always appearing for the last time over a period of three or four years. Yeah. One last show. In this case, the performer is Deputy Campaign Manager Rob Flaherty. I'll read you a couple of sentences to get to the gist of his point about that campaign.

Soon after Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee, Tanny writes, deputy campaign manager Rob Flaherty turned his attention to sports. But one by one, the biggest personalities and shows that is in the sports podcasting arena politely turned them down. Yeah. Farity declined to say who turned Harris down, which would be helpful for our purposes here, but she didn't appear on key shows hosted by sports figures sympathetic to Democrats, like Colin Coward,

Bill Simmons, or the Kelsey brothers. Tanny does note that Harris appeared on Club Shayshay, which if you and I had had to pick like, what's a top five podcast hit period

in 2024? I think Club Shashay would have been near or at the top of the list. Yep. Somewhere up there with Rogan. She also did all the smoke. Mm-hmm. So do we have any theories

about why sports podcasters who might have been friendly to Harris didn't want to get involved in the 2024 election. I mean, is it just too pat to say Republicans by sneakers?

I mean, is that is, is it no matter how whatever, left-leaning you may seem to certain people. I mean, your audience is still going to be not just divided, but largely in the span of time that they're listening to your podcast, largely apolitical. I mean, Colin Coward did those, like, hits about Donald Trump and whatever else, but I think that was all actually, like, separate from the actual, like, you know,

fabric of his, of his regular show. And I think that's sort of deliberate, right? I mean, it's not just that you, I think it's actually, at least in the, at least in the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the response. that you get from listeners, it's, it's less problematic to have a political, to have a political bias. And the bigger,

but the bigger problem is the stick to sports thing. You know, it's like, and that's, and that's, not even in like the demeaning way that's normally said, it's that for the,

for the amount of time that I'm listening to your podcast, the goal here is to be, is to not be caught up in political discussion. The goal is, to get away is to get away from those sorts of things. And yeah, my guess is that that's why. Now, listen, obviously, Bill interviewed Obama.

And, yeah, I mean, there's some crossover. But I do think some people, Obama is probably, you know, on a very short list, if not the only person on the list, are sort of bigger than politics. But, but, yeah, I mean, that, I think it's pretty straightforward. Why risk bothering people But why risk alienating your listenership? And not again, not just because of the politics of it because of politics. I think you are exactly right.

And I think that's a fundamental difference between some of the Trump-friendly podcasts and some of the pods we're talking about here. And we should note we haven't asked Bill about this. Bill can speak for himself. He wants to talk about this. but you know those Trump friendly podcasts are not bridging into other worlds like the Kelsey brothers are yeah you know Travis Kelsey is doing national commercials and walking into a locker room every day and doing all kinds of things and you're right I do think forever the walls have come down

between sports and the rest of the world sports writing and podcasting is still seen as a place where people are going to go to escape that stuff. Yeah. I'm also interested that like Tim Walls and Doug Emahoff both did sports shows. Yeah. So, you know, Tim Walls did Lebitart. Would Lebertart have not taken Kamala Harris for an hour? Mm-hmm.

For Dan to do a probing South Beach Sessions hit with her. Yeah. I mean, I think it's a fair question whether that was, whether he was even on the list. and one can imagine a world by sports podcast, they really just do mean people like Bill, you know, people who for whom, who kind of are mostly about sports, but sort of transcend sports in the public consciousness.

I don't know if Lovettards there. I don't mean that as a knock. No, he's certainly straddling two worlds. But he was, again, he was happy to have Tim Walls on. Sure. So, you know, Doug Emhoff did the Ringer fantasy show and Rich Eisen's show and a bunch of other hits. Yeah.

So this just feels more complicated to me than people pieced us out. Flaherty also has a line in this story. When it's not cool to talk about politics, he said you're kind of afraid of the audience. Wait, say that again? When it's not cool to talk about politics, you're kind of afraid of the audience. Okay. I just don't know. I know that the people that ran the Harris campaign are America's softest targets.

TM. Yeah. But seriously, like, this is the campaign, right, that didn't want Harris to give an interview after she got the nomination for a while. Yeah. That stuck religiously to the script and wanted controlled, either controlled environments or for her to act in a very, very controlled presidential way when she was in unpredictable environments. Mm-hmm. You're the ones who we're talking about being afraid of the audience? Yeah.

Okay. That must be what it is. Yeah. Or you just have a show and you want to conduct it in a certain sort of way. I mean, also the flip side of that is the, I mean, the Joe Rogan show, I mean, experience, for example, not only treads in the waters of politics, despite being, you know, having a much broader base than that in terms of subject matter, they do politics a lot. And also, as with a lot of sort of right-wing outlets are trying to sort of position themselves as, you sort of position themselves as. the future of media, right? And so there's an obligation.

I mean, you saw how he didn't go out of his way to accommodate Kamala Harris, which is not his obligation at all. But there's a sort of obligation of doing these political interviews because of the way you're positioning yourself, right? It's, you set the bar for yourself. So, but when it comes down to it, is that really what you want to be doing? I'm sure Joe Rogan would have preferred to be, you know, talking about just about anything.

than having to stress out about a presidential candidate coming on the show. This whole process is so funny where we're just going to find people to blame that aren't the Harris campaign. It's very strange, right? It's the hot ones that wouldn't have us on. Now the sports podcast wouldn't have us on. Yeah. It's weird.

I mean, we talk a lot about like the post-campaign books, but this is, this is like the first presidential campaign where everything is just playing out in real time on podcasts instead of like waiting for waiting for the you know the double byline book to come out in six months. Oh, it's like we said it was the podcast election because, you know, Trump was going on Rogan and there were all these interviews. Yeah. It's the podcast election because now all the recriminations are also about podcasts from the losing side. Exactly. Again, like the hot ones was a big takeaway when they were on Pod Save America.

They didn't want to have, they didn't want to do politics. Okay. you guys got to figure it out, you know. You guys got to figure out how to get your message out, how to get a candidate and get her on these shows. That's kind of your job. Yeah. I don't know what else to say about that.

Question for you, David. Have you donated to Donald Trump's inauguration yet? No. That makes you an exception. Among the media technology class, million dollars coming from Amazon slash Jeff Bezos, a million from META slash Mark Zuckerberg, and OpenAI slash Sam Altman. ABC News, we learned last week, is going to give $15 million to what the New York Times

describes as Mr. Trump's future presidential foundation and museum. And they are doing it to settle a defamation suit. You're just catching up on this, George Stephanopoulos, who is kind of Mr. ABC News. Yeah. Or co-Mr. ABC News with David Muir. Mm-hmm. Was interviewing Nancy Mace,

representative in the U.S. House, who had an interesting week last week herself. He said in this interview with Nancy Mace that Trump was, quote, found or found, quote, liable for rape in that 2023 New York case. Mm-hmm. Turns out Trump was found liable for sexual abuse. Yeah.

There's a definitional distinction in New York. So Donald Trump filed suit. Now, you might think it is really, really hard to defame Donald Trump. Given that he's a public figure, given the bar one has to meet to do that. Yeah. And you would be correct. ABC News, though, settles the suit. I think the quickest.

Point between A and B here is just to talk about all these media institutions that are trying to get right with Donald Trump. Yeah. For the new administration. Uh-huh. But I got to say, man, to me, the more obvious point is this isn't going to work. When somebody is either threatening to sue you or filing lawsuits against you, and you're like, what if we just give money or what if we capitulate in some way? It's not like they're going to be like, okay, now I'm satisfied for the next four years. years. Yeah, of course. I will go away and not complain either legally or otherwise about your

media institution ever again. I mean, he's just going to do it more, right? I mean, this is, this is one would assume, yes. Yeah, now he now he smells blood, right? I mean, now it's like, it's it works. Yeah. It works. I mean, David Enrich has a piece in New York Times that's good about this. It just reminds you of all the things. He sued CBS News and Ritch, in October because of that 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. The interview that Donald Trump did not do, because remember that was something looked different in the little teaser that 60 Minutes released versus the edited version that appeared on the show.

He sued them for that. Yeah. A lawsuit. Enrich writes, he currently has a pending libel suit against the board that hands out Pulitzer prizes. So I understand there's a certain corporate. aspect to this and Oliver Darcy points his finger at Bob Eiger in his newsletter status. I understand for a news organization, you're trying to then cover this person and cover their administration and just hoping to have something other than a door slammed in your face or a lawsuit

filed against your institution. Yep. But just seems like a loser of a strategy all the way around. Yeah, for sure. I just, I don't, I don't know what the ultimate plan is here. And it also just makes your new, it means like George Stephanopoulos is your anchor. Yeah. And you're just like, oh, well, you know, him miss speaking on television is something that we need to then have, you know, settle with 15 million going to the presidential foundation. Yeah. It's crazy. I mean, you'd have to put a bias meter on your articles to undercut your news organization any more than that. Oh, wait, that might happen too.

All right, coming up on the podcast, a good old-fashioned NFL segment featuring Greg Olson, the scoop nobody wanted, and the halftime show sponsored by who? Plus is the athletic feeling okay and an Icelandic holiday tradition that this here podcast is going to embrace. All that and much more on the press box.

A part of the ringer. Podcast Network. Hello media consumers, Brian Curtis, David Schumaker, and producer Brian Waters here. David, I started my football Sunday by watching a game that America wanted to see. Cowboys versus Panthers. Oh, yeah. Pause for laughter. Scott Fowler, who is a columnist, the Charlotte Observer.

Are you familiar with Scott Fowler's work? Yeah. From your time in Charlotte? Of course. He tweeted, former Panther Greg Olson. getting to call his first panther home game all year, I bet he is, and seemed quite pumped about it when I bumped into him pregame. God bless Greg Olson. Because if you can be excited on television for calling a Panthers game, not to mention Panthers versus the Dallas Cowboys.

Yeah. I think there was a there was a moment where the Panthers were favored by Vegas in the week before the game. And it was the first thing. I forgot what the stat was, but it was the first time they had been favored. All year. Yeah.

At least going back, I think we might be going back in a number of years. Yeah. So watching Greg Olson, I have not seen him do that many games this year since he's now down on the Fox number two team with Joe Davis.

Yeah. Every time I watch him, I'm reminded how good he has gotten at announcing. Mm-hmm. There was a moment where the Cowboys quarterback Cooper Rush through a really bad pass. And he had the most delicate way of saying Cooper Rush is not very good at football. Yeah.

Which is, I think, a tool that has come out of his tool chest more recently, not just that I can be on the game and be breaking it down and so quickly figuring out what happened on a play. But I can also just tell you in a way that all viewers will understand that this is not one of America's best quarterbacks. Yeah. I like that. I don't even know if we need announcers to crush people anymore. I don't know if that's important when you're watching with Twitter. But it sure is nice when you hear that and you know they have the ability to do it once in a while.

Yep. And the willingness. Completely agree. Yep. This was also funny. A linebacker for the Panthers, Claudeon Chirillis, I believe it was, got hurt. And Greg Olson said, you don't want to speculate. Are there any more doomy words?

that a color analyst You don't want to speculate Then you don't want to speculate Is it ever a minor injury When you don't want to speculate No no Because otherwise you'd be speculating over Positive things

No no you're happy to speculate Over the upside right But this is bad bad You would say he appears to be okay He trots off the field So I watched a little bit of Cowboys Panthers then we got to the Fox halftime show Jimmy Howie, Terry, Michael Kurt

doing highlights, providing analysis. Then you might ask David, who is the Fox halftime show sponsored by? Yeah, I've been wondering. No ahead. Here is the answer. The Verizon Halftime Show is brought to you by Verizon,

the NFL powered by Verizon 5G. So it's been kind of an upset if the Verizon halftime show was brought to you by your North Texas Chevy dealers. True. Verizon halftime show. They also did, they do all the highlights,

and then they have the one game at the end that doesn't get a highlight. Uh-huh. It's just the score panel. Oh, yeah. Which I believe was Jaguar's Jets this Sunday. You know you are truly on the island of sadness

when you don't even get the obligatory single highlight touchdown. Here we go. In other NFL, action. God, what a horrible place to be. The scoop nobody wanted, David. You've no doubt heard the sad news about Randy Moss. Oh, yeah. ESPN commentator, of course, great Vikings and Pats and Raiders wide receiver before that. He was on Sunday countdown a week ago in sunglasses said he was battling something. This Friday, he said that he had a cancerous mass

in his bile duct and underwent the whipple percent. procedure, which I'm only familiar with because my grandfather had that years and years ago. He is obviously the source of a lot of well wishes from the sports commentariat on ESPN, Sunday night football. Those guys were talking about him last night. Well, between him appearing for the last time on Sunday countdown and his announcement, Larry Fitzgerald Sr. had a tweet. This is not Larry Fitzgerald Jr. the former NFL wide receiver. This is the the Larry Fitzgerald Senior, the Minneapolis area sports writer. He tweeted,

just heard that Vikings Hall of Famer Randy Moss has liver cancer. Let's show the power of prayer and pull Moss through this. I love you, Randy. So he'd stepped away. That's one of those interesting parts of journalism, especially with somebody like Randy Moss rather than a politician or something like that. We're like, we will not break this story, even if we knew the answer to this story.

Yeah. we will let Randy Moss tell us what's going on here. Yep. But somehow Larry Fitzgerald Sr. stepped into the breach. Yeah. And tweeted this. Randy Moss's son got on Twitter and called the tweet disgusting. Larry Fitzgerald Jr. got on Twitter and wrote, Dad, I think it's best to respect his privacy on this.

If he feels ready to share more on his health, he will. In the meantime, let's focus on sending positive energy prayers and support rather than speculating. Yeah. So somehow Larry Fitzgerald Senior wind up as the main character on Twitter. That happened. This is a much less significant life event happened. I remember when I wrote my book and I said, I just agreed to my book deal. Nothing was signed.

Obviously, there's still a lot of room for things to go wrong. there was a verbal agreement in place. And I called my parents with great excitement. And then like, then went to the doctor's office and somehow became alerted that a friend of my mothers had announced it on Facebook. And I had to leave the doctor's office to get to call my mom and tell her to ask her friend to take that post down immediately. That is hysterical.

I didn't know that. Cherry Shoemaker broke the news Yeah, she was a source She didn't actually do the news breaking But yeah She was a source Another funny moment from Sunday I went over to Lions Bills

Which was one of the choice games In the afternoon Though it didn't turn out to be a very game Third quarter CBS comes back from break And somebody's wearing a Grinch outfit in the crowd You noticed all the Grinch outfits It's about a weirdly grinchy Christmas this year A lot of people wearing Grinch outfits to like just in like viral videos and stuff.

Do they just become available or what was that? What's the thing? Why is it? And now there's like reaction tweets about like, no, no, the whole point of the Grinch was not about the commercialization of Christmas. This is everybody is wearing the Grinch suit. This is your Jurassic Park argument, right? Yeah.

At some point you're not making an anti-capitalist statement of selling Grinch suit. Yeah. So they show somebody in a Grinch outfit, and Tony Romo, who's on the call for CBS, says, North Carolina, there's your new coach. Joking about Bill Belichick. Oh, that's actually pretty great. And everything that follow would have fantastic because Nance then dives in and is like, we're, of course, just kidding.

Wish all the best to Bill Belichick, just to make sure nobody is offended. is offended that he's being compared to the Grinch. By the way, if there's any coach you should ever be compared to the Grinch who stole Christmas that is Bill Belichick. Oh my gosh. That's a great joke too. It's a great joke.

And then a couple of seconds went by maybe they called a play. And then Romo had to kind of just give a very generalized thing about what a good job Bill Belichick is going to do at North Carolina. Just the back time. It's so great. It was so unbelievable.

I just want to let everybody know that because I made a harmless joke about a man in a grinch suit. Unbelievable stuff. That's a great joke. Let the joke live. I got some only in sports broadcasting for you. Okay. This is a little bit of a new feature here at the press box. Words you never hear in human speech unless the human happens to be calling a game.

I was taking my daughter to ice skating lessons. So I switched from Greg Olson to Babe Lofenberg, the Cowboys Radio Colorman. Yeah. Former Cowboys, great Cowboys quarterback. Great Cowboys backup quarterback, yes. Babe Lofenberg said that whenever a trainer runs out on the field, he must be described as a renowned orthopedic surgeon. That was pretty great.

Also, Romo during Lions Bills said that when a Lions player got hurt, quote, the Lions can ill afford to lose him. Oh, yeah. What a great bit of announcer speak that is. Because I heard that and of course I'm jumping on Twitter and Blue Sky so I can share it with our no doubt enthrall listeners, readers. And I'm like, wait, do you hyphenate ill afford? I have never typed these words out in my life.

Yeah, I don't know. But how many times have you heard announcers say they can ill afford to lose? him which sounds like such formal English. Is that an only in the spoken word journalism category? It's only in sports broadcasting. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think that, yeah, I don't think that gets into the sports page. He'll afford to lose him.

Mike Cousins, you remember I mentioned him last week calling the big 12 championship game on the radio, I've been doing a lot of radio sports lately. Uh huh. And he said that when a player was flagged, he was guilty of the contravention. Yes, yes. Well, apparently word reached my cousins about me mentioning him on the podcast, and he writes in, I appreciate you checking out the Big 12 title game on the radio.

Controvention came from trying to find different ways to describe a penalty. Always have to be careful when a yellow fabric beacon of caution hits the turf. Anyway, excellent work from Mike Cousins. Yeah. Also I heard from one listener that wrote me and said, the whole time you were doing that segment, I thought you were talking about my cousin. and I couldn't figure out what was going on.

I was like, no, no, only one person at the ringer has an official cousin. Yes, there's only one cousin in this family. We would not want to do any any unabated to the quarterback on that. Last one for you here, David, is the athletic okay?

Good question. Sometimes media outlets like people need a little bit of a welfare check. And I have been following the athletic over on Blue Sky, where they skied out a number of their stories. Yeah? And I want you to listen as I read.

Oh, I know where this is going. Go on. And I just, this is going to sound like I'm having some kind of event here on the podcast. No, no, I'm okay. It's the athletic I want to check on. Here we go.

Quoting from the athletic ski. This is one post, I might add, one post. Jimmy Butler trade rumor swirl, but heat history was star, exits signals waiting game colon jimmy butler's future in miami remains uncertain comma but the heat have a history of applying the waiting game where do i click it's so bizarre to find out more

information so that was one here is another athletic skeet and this is again this is one post i'm reading here. Jimmy Butler Cometh, heat seem destined to part, colon, assessing the potential trade market, colon. Jimmy Butler and the heat seem destined to divorce, period. Nothing has approached a serious offer,

but even being willing to listen is a change. Yeah. What is happening here with the athletic? It's weirdly maximalist, right? That must be a computer writing these tweets.

It's not a human. A human would not put the person's full name twice, even if they were willing to go with the controversial multi-colon sentence. Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense. I mean, I never thought of the athletic either in social media or, you know, website form as an experimental novel. What in the world? But something has gone wrong with the machine.

machine. Yeah. It's yes. Well, you know, I don't, we don't like to imagine anybody losing their jobs, but I could definitely imagine someone saying, do we really need to employ someone to write these tweets? The answer, as always in these situations, they seem to be proving that yes, you do actually need to employ people to do these jobs. Is this just like an autopopulate thing just gone terribly, terribly wrong where some semi-sensient being, is harvesting sentences from the article itself or from the subhead of the article? Yeah.

To me, this looks like, although it just see, it's also like borderline, it's like the literacy is off. But it feels like when we publish articles on the ringer, you know, there's a place for the headline for the,

the deck for the, you know, the subhead. Sometimes there's a third piece or reading line. And then there's alternate headline, like head and, debt combos, right? So we can kind of A, B, test stuff, or maybe there's

one version that's for social and there's another version for the pay, or there's one version that goes on the home page, but there's a different one on the story itself, you know, that's the more true to the piece or whatever. And then there's also the A, B, this feels like there's a lot of fields filled out, and

that a computer is just kind of grabbing from the different fields at random, right? Where it's like, in version A, in version A, Jimmy, Butler's name was in the headline. In version B, it was like an artful headline

with Jimmy Butler's name in the sub. And now we're going, and now we're, and these are just a mashup of the two. Yeah. I mean, in its favor, it doesn't seem shameless.

Like the shameless version of this is, could the heat really trade Jimmy Butler? Yeah. Click. I would like to know the answer to that question. Exactly. It's too maximalist. It's not actually following the rules

as we know them of like SEO, just general engagement practice. All right, David, coming up in 30 seconds, an Icelandic Christmas tradition that's coming to the home of the Curtis family. But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all immediate Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the press box pod where they are always, always gratefully received. This one, David, comes from your current home state of New Jersey. Yeah. Your current home state, is that the way to say that?

Current. Yeah, sure. It sounds like an athletic tweet here. Congressman Josh Godheimer, he's running for governor. And he did what New Jersey politicians have been doing for decades and decades. Well, at least doing in some form. He posted what looked to be his Spotify wrapped power rankings, showing that his top five songs were all from Bruce Springsteen.

Yeah. Well, the New Jersey monitor did some sleuthing and found out that that graphic was not exactly an official Spotify graphic. And then Godheimer had to make a statement to New Jersey advanced media and reporter Jeremy Schneider, quote, this would be my Spotify wrapped if I didn't share my account with 12 and 15 year old kids. Oh, that's understandable. Yeah. So it was just like a little bit of a little bit of an alternative. here's what I would

have been listening to. These would have been my top five songs. There's an overwork Twitter joke to write, well, maybe he wasn't born to run. Thank you to Jason Xstein. If you think these aren't Josh Gottheimer's glory days, that he is both dancing in the dark and blinded by the light, congrats.

You made the overword Twitter joke of the week. David, what do you know about Icelandic Christmas? Oh, a lot, actually. I wrote my dissertation. I don't know anything. Well, let me tell you about it here in the notebook dump because my wife, Christine, the other day, read an article about this, discovered this somewhere and started to describe it to me. And she said, this just sounds like you. And indeed it does.

There is a tradition in Iceland called Yola Boko Flood. Believe I am saying that right. I watched at least one YouTube video. How on earth would you be sure? Go on. A bea Boko Flood. It means the Christmas book flood. Oh, okay.

This is not where I thought this was going. This is great. On Christmas Eve, the people of Iceland give each other books. Okay. And then they stay up and they read the books into the night. Well, so it makes this tradition special is that you not just received the book, but you, but you then immediately read the book that you've been gifted?

You, you sit around the crackling fire. And as we used to say in elementary school, you drop everything and read with your loved ones. Wait, this has, okay, but you're not, like, you, presumably you've been gifted multiple books. Well, you're saying you're, you just plow through that 300 page nonfiction. No, no, no, I'm just making sure this isn't just like everybody gets a book. It's not like a, like a, like a secret Santa or whatever, like where you draw a name and there's one book and we each read our one book and we're all done in the morning. Like it's not that. It's just you exchange books in general and then everybody just goes home and reads. Yeah, or you read together as a family. You give them to

your family, let's say, give them to your kids, your significant other and then you sit around and read the books. Sounds great. According to yolabacofloodd.org. There's a website? There's a website. This thing has been written about, you can imagine. But it says the tradition goes back to World War II. Paper was one of the few commodities not rationed during the war, so Icelanders shared their love of books even more as other types of gifts were in short supply. Also interesting, Iceland sends out a catalog to every citizen, apparently, in November, that has a list of all the books published in the country that year.

Okay. So this is almost like a government, you know, engineered thing. Like everybody in Iceland is going to get the book catalogs. Yeah. Book catalogs which don't even come out in America anymore and except on email. So you're aware of some books to buy. You'll have a shopping list. Yeah.

And then everybody buys a book and gives it to loved ones that open it on Christmas Eve. I think it's a fantastic idea. Well, let me tell you something. The Curtis family has decided that this will be our first year. Is this a different day than Christmas? Christmas Eve? Yes, that's the 24th. Oh, I'm sorry.

I didn't hear the day. Okay, so this is the Christmas Eve tradition. It's the Christmas Eve. So it's at night, right? And you have a nice time and you're snuggled under the tree. Maybe the other presents are coming out the next day. Or maybe you just get the book. I don't know.

Need some more investigation. Yeah. But the Curtis family, David, is going to do this. And I encourage the Shoemaker family to follow soon. Oh, no. I'm all about this. This is great. We thought maybe, you know, New Year's Eve, I mean, Christmas Eve, you got some stuff going on, right?

There's dinner, there's church maybe. There's all kinds of stuff. So we're going to do it on Monday, December 23rd. Okay. Which coincidentally is the day you and I are doing our last podcast of 2024. So we get each other books? I would love that, actually. Do you have to get it in the mail in time to get to you? Or can I just wave it around in front? I'm going to, okay, I'm going to try. This is a good one. I think we can. can try, right? Pay for the postage. I'm sure it'll fight its way into a ringer.

Is this new books, use books? Anything's up for grabs? I don't think new, right? Because that's too, well, you could do new. But I think for you and I, it'd be fun to do something old, something, something wonderful. Oh, dude, I found, I was at the, I was going to say as a bit, uh, I did something for the first time in my life that made me realize I'm, I mean, that I'm officially an old man. I bought myself a Christmas present and then tried to engorge, bought myself some books and I was like, someone can give this to me and like to the whole family. Feel free to wrap this and give it to me if you want. The second part is what's key to being an old man.

Yes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we are at just an antique store, a place I've been a million times. One of those places where it's like every, every section is like every corner of a room is a different seller, I guess, but there's only like, there's two different checkout spaces or whatever. You know, so like each room in this gigantic old, it's a former tomato, factory, tomato can factory.

And I've been there a bunch of times, but they don't, they don't have like a book section. It's just like each seller will occasionally have like a bookshelf for sale and there'll be some books on it, right? And so it's not like a really fulfilling used book shopping experience. And a lot of times I just, you know, just sort of whizz right past it

because it's like, okay, there's like it's cool old, if you're in the market for like vintage copies of like Lassie come home or whatever, you know, whatever the cute things on the show for it's great. And I just was like sitting around and one waiting for something. And I looked in one.

I was just like, wait, is that the spy who came in from the cold? And I picked it up. And it was just like, first American edition. And now I'm going through every single thing on the shelf, just yanking. Just like, you know, half the spines you can't read. I'm like opening it up. And they had it all marked really well. And they were all really cheap.

And I was just like, oh, my gosh. And we got to the car. And Tom was like, you seem really excited about those books. And I'm just like, yeah. And you can give them to me if you want me to be excited to get on Christmas. Or even the night before Christmas, so you can stay up reading. Yeah. What's it called?

Got to get. Well, this is good, right? So next Monday, December 23rd, please be back here at the press box. As David and I celebrate Yola Baca Flood. Yola Baca Flood together for the first time in the history of the press box. This is going to be very exciting. I've got some only in journalism words before we go. Yes. There are so many of these I'm having to ration them out podcast by podcast.

Because they are literally pouring in, or not literally, but they are pouring in. This is from Jared Christensen, who found the word sion and the Luigi Mangione stories. Yes, of course. Suspected CEO killer is a sion of wealthy Baltimore family. Yeah. Always a favorite. This is from our friend Coach Crowley over on Blue Sky. only in journalism phrase, every Supreme Court dissent on a landmark case is inevitably either blistering or scathing. Yeah, correct.

Blistering dissent. From Adrian Hahn gives us the word magisterial. Mm-hmm. I remember my first days at the New Republic sitting in those staff meetings being terrified and Leon Weaselty or the literary editor going, we have a magisterial review of a new book. First time I'd ever heard that word in my life.

Paul Krugman, we haven't talked about this, is leaving the New York Times. Yeah. We don't talk about that? We didn't talk about it because I was like, oh my gosh, the end of an era. And then I just realized, oh, wait, he's just leaving the New York Times. He's signing elsewhere. Yeah. He will be at the athletic within days.

But in his final New York Times column, he used the word cackistocracy. Say it again? What this means? Cacistocracy? K-A-K-I-S-Sto-E. No, I don't believe I do. I didn't either. I looked this up.

It means government by the least suitable or competent citizens of a state. Oof. He'd been talking about tech CEOs and tech bros, and I was like, is this something to do with like khaki pants? Yeah. Cackistocracy. That's a new one. Finally, a great email from JM in Texas, who suggests them only in finance journalism that we've been missing. he talks about words that you use when a stock goes up or down.

So when a stock goes up bigly, here are the words, advanced, surged, jumped, sword or rocketed. When the stock goes down bigly, you use slid,

eased, plummeted, or cratered. But he says, I like the ones for the very tiny moves in stock prices that have to be reported. These are edged, ticked, inched, traded, retreated, rallied, or my personal favorite, basically unchanged.

Some good only in finance journalism there for us. All right, it is time for a feature that is also basically unchanged, except when it just gets better and better and better. It's time for David Shoemaker, guess is the strain pun headline. Yeah. Monday's headline about the Warriors deciding to put Dremont on the bench was Green New Deal. Today's headline comes from

Wiser Mike over at Blue Sky. One of the podcast pals who's followed us over there, David. It's from the website Chicago Public Square. I'll read you the subhead here. After 19 years, the Pitchfork Music Festival's calling it quits in Chicago. The Pitchfork Music Festival.

You're punting on the phrase times up times up it is super strained I must warn you tines up whoa excuse me one more time

tines up is that what it's called tines up is correct yeah I didn't even have to give I didn't even have to ask you like imagine parts of a pitchfork tines up weirdly I mean I'm not weirdly I think of that more is associated them with a fork

than I just assume that's what they're called in the pitchfork too you don't think the parts of a pitchfork have been described and named in the same way that the parts of a fork have tines up yeah when the devil is holding is like oh don't that's a separate that's a separate category of word that we should probably tease out at some point in the future of like words that are actually very specific and useful but just they're like so I don't know like literally small that we don't know about them there's like they just don't come up much points of a fork thing on the end of your shoelace. Yeah. Like, well,

just old things that, you know, or grandparents, I'm sure knew a lot about. They have a very specific word. Yeah. To describe them. Yeah,

that's a good list. I don't know what to call that. Well, we'll think about that. Maybe during, uh, December 23rd in our very special celebration of Yola Baca flood, we can,

uh, think some more on that. He is David Chumaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic. by Brian Waters. Come follow us at Twitter. Come follow us at Blue Sky.

We're cross-posting in both places. Coming up Thursday is Joel Anderson. One more pod in 2024 with Joel. Shoemaker and I return Monday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.