The Press Box - The People Who Shaped the Media in 2025

Episode Date: December 22, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Today’s episode is a special year-end edition of The Press Box where Bryan is joined not only by David but by Joel as well! Bryan, David, and Joel come together to discuss the 12 people who shaped the media in 2025, in no particular order. The show starts out with Joel and David meeting each other for the first time, followed immediately by a dive into the first person on their list (02:47). The guys execute a three-man weave, discussing and sharing their thoughts on the 12 people they think shaped the media in 2025, including Donald Trump, Pablo Torre, and Bari Weiss. The show ends with Bryan, David, and Joel giving some 2026 predictions (1:41:58). All that and more, here on The Press Box. No. 1 - (02:47) No. 2 - (11:02) No. 3 - (18:10) No. 4 - (24:58) No. 5 - (38:22) No. 6 - (52:57) No. 7 - (1:03:21) No. 8 - (1:11:49) No. 9 - (1:23:05) No. 10 - (1:27:26) No. 11 - (1:33:53) No. 12 - (1:36:00) Hosts: Bryan Curtis, David Shoemaker, and Joel Anderson Producer: Bruce Baldwin Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David? Yes. And Joel? Yes. For the first time ever, we have a Brian, David, and Joel edition of the press box. Man. It's a lot. Yeah.

It took us too long, man. And we're talking over each other already. Here we go. Yeah, I know. We got to, it's a three-man weave. We got to figure it out, you know, somebody's got to run on the wing. You know. I learned seconds before we went on the air that you guys have never met until just now.

No. No, it's so weird. How many times have I met somebody like a work, a work colleague or just someone who I'm professionally aware of in my life and I have to pretend that I'm very aware of them and I'm a big fan of them? In this case, it's actually true. Joel, great to meet you in real life, man. Yeah, likewise. Likewise, man. I'm a big, big fan. And when I came out to L.A. that time, I was hoping you'd be there. And then you weren't there. And so I was, I wasn't, I'm not going to say that. I'm not going to lie to themselves disappointed. But I was like, you know, I would have like, I would have liked that would have been nice. Yeah, but we'll get a chance to make it happen eventually, right?

Yeah, we will. Yeah, we will. The vibe here is really like my bachelor party where I was introducing the friends I made in high school to the friends I made as an adult. Yeah. Oh, man. That is literally what this is right here. Well, do you think, let me add. So do you, do you, do you disagree with, do you not like doing that?

Because when I got married, I had, you know, my friends from all the places I'd lived in high school and everything. And it was kind of nice to see them all get together and mix together, right? Yeah, it is. I mean, it feels like you have to define some jokes. You know, hopefully Joel will be asking David about his favorite rap songs and albums. I promise not. I won't do it that. I promise.

I won't do. I won't make it awkward like that. David will be telling Joel all about tellos novellas, but we'll get it going here. Three-man weed. Because folks, we have a year-end episode of the press box. 12 people that shaped the media in 2025. Donald Trump, Pablo Torre, Barry Weiss, and nine more. All that and much more on the press box.

A part of the Ringer podcast network. Hello, media consumers. Brian Curtis. It's Joel Anderson. David Shoemaker all together. I put these 12, my friends, in no. particular order. Okay.

Though I think number one is number one, did anybody shape the media more in 2025 than Donald Trump? Mm-hmm. Let me rattle off some examples here. Donald Trump, if I may speak for all of media kind, insulted us, see quiet piggy. Donald Trump tried to force us to use his preferred language, see the Gulf of America.

Donald Trump made it harder for us to do our jobs at the White House and the Pentagon He replaced us with supplicant non-reportors He threatened or sued our employers From the New York Times to the BBC He nominated an FCC chairman Who turned the screws on our employers as well And later he defended Susie Wiles' comments

Divinity Fair Anything I'm missing about Donald Trump In the median 25? During the first Trump term He just repeatedly called for a violence violence against journalists, which it's, it's hard to imagine that he somehow become more effective at attacking the journalism industrial complex. But he's really pulled it off. It's impressive work. Yeah, well, you know, because, like, he used to have it as rallies, like basically the reporters in a pit, right?

Right in the middle of the ad. And he's like, look at those guys over there. And he, you know, try to stoke the anger of the crowd against those folks. It's kind of funny that he just hasn't turned up the heat on that. I wonder, maybe he's just so busy doing everything else that. that doesn't take a lot of precedence. Because I am surprised he hasn't done more of the, you know, calling for violence against journalists.

Although I guess when, you know, when he was asked about Khashoggi, he did equivocate on whether or not it was bad that he was killed or not. Well, I mean, I don't mean to attribute some 40 chess where chess is not even being played. But I do think it's significant that the replacement of journalists with sort of, you know, supplicants, as Brian pointed out, But I think that there's probably a somewhat savvy calculus in there that most media consumers are not savvy enough to themselves to really tell the difference.

So if you want to have a bet, if you want to have state run media, you can't just be like damning the media in general all the time, right? You just got to call out specific ones and saying you're a very bad reporter who no one likes. And then, you know, you just sort of remake the media in whatever shape you want it to be. it's fascinating in a terrible grim way and I've got two questions for you guys going forward do we think this had a discernible effect on the reporting done so far on the second trump administration huh you know and it's tough to compare trump one with trump two but i definitely feel like in trump one there was a lot there was much more of an impetus to break news that investigated where his money was coming from,

whether or not he paid taxes. It just felt like there was more that. I feel like this time there's more palace intrigue coverage as opposed to like the hard hitting investigative stuff. But there's probably reasons for that, which is that the media has continued to hemorrhage jobs since that first administration. So there's just not as much of it.

There's just not as much money or bandwidth for it resources. So yeah, I think I think that. But maybe maybe I'm under estimate. estimating the scale of the journalism coming out now against him. It's a weird week to say that because you just got that monster story in the New York Times about Trump and Epstein. So, like, I would say that maybe some of that is attributable to the fact that just so much has been written about Donald Trump and the prehistory of Donald Trump. That's what's left is what's happening right before us. That's a fair point.

Yeah. Did it really take a lot of palace intrigue in Trump one, too? I think that's true. And I think a lot of it was just kind of like standing and pointing in Trump one, you know? I mean, just saying, like, I can't believe this is happening. I think there's more of a resignation that things are going to be weird and potentially cataclysmic in Trump, too. I, by the way, Peter Baker had a good piece today in the New York Times. It's sort of going into the Trump White House sort of riffing off of the Vanity Fair piece a little bit.

I think that there has, I mean, listen, I don't think that any of Trump's specific moves to common, or the media have really hurt the coverage of him. But I, but, but, but, and I do think that there's a little bit, there's certainly less gawking than there was in Trump one. I think that's probably deliberate. But yeah, I mean, I still think that they're running up against the same, the media in general runs up against the same problem it always has, which is Trump floods the zone every day and you have to decide what to cover. That is the biggest problem. And something they did during the campaign, we later learned on purpose, right? Like that if you just have so much bait in the water that nobody can really focus on anything.

I mean, that was, you know, that's, that's a strategy. And I don't know that we've ever figured out a way around that. You know, Joel and I were talking about a little bit about that last Thursday, just about, you know, just stories get the attention they deserve. Like Susie Wiles calling him vice president of the United States a conspiracy theorist. Everybody just kind of nods. And we move on. And it's like, I think they do get.

a lot of attention. I think they get similar attention in the New York Times and other places. There's just something else to write about the next day. Just think about this week. I mean, there's that, the Rob Reiner stuff. There's the threatening war with Venezuela.

There was the speech. I just all of these, this all happened in the past week, man. You know? And yeah, there's, it's hard to get your arms around all of that. I mean, if you just cover the daily incremental stuff, the stuff that happens on a day-to-day basis, that would overwhelm us anyway. And so then there's,

if there's a bigger investigation going on or even a medium-sized investigation, it's tough to get to that. But yeah, I mean, you know, pro-public. Wait, hold on, Brian. Propublica. Propublica. Propublica. Sound like you're describing the nether regions of someone there. Okay, all right. Well, you used to say it pro-pubica. But anyway. I did. Me? Yeah, so I mean, they're still going strong. You know, but I was also thinking, I mean, again, there's still great journalism going over at the Washington Post,

but a lot of the people that were holding him accountable, so to speak, like the when democracy dies in darkness era, like there's also some of those people. Like, L.A. Times isn't the same newspaper that it was, you know, eight years ago, right? The Washington Post isn't the same paper it was. Like, they still got the guts of that stuff, but it's just not the same.

They've all kind of linked up at the Atlantic and the New York Times, right? That's what I was going to say. They all work at the Atlantic now. Yeah, right. Yeah. Here's another grim thought. What Donald Trump has done to the media this year, can it get worse in 2026? Inevitably, yes.

It's hard for me to really wrap my mind around the question or the answer, but, I mean, the answer, but it always seems to be yes. Just trying to think how, and maybe that's a dangerous thought. I mean, he could sue more media outlets, though we, as we're going to get to here with Jimmy Kimmel in a minute, I think we might have reached the limits of that, or at least of media outlets completely folding in the face of Trumpian lawsuits. I don't know. Well, he could, I mean, he could definitely do that. He could go back and do, like, I mean, this was this week too, right? I mean, it basically implied that Mark Kelly should face trial and potentially the death penalty. He could, I mean, if he's willing to do it to a senator, there's nothing. thing stopping him from doing it against an investigative reporter, right?

So he could he could do that and it's not like he seems like he's increasingly, you know, like cautious or anything. Like it seems like every, with every week he loses a little bit more control in that regard. So I mean, I think that's one of the things that's still on the table. Yeah. All right. Number two on our list. The man who will be running against Donald Trump for president in 2028, Stephen A. Smith.

Pause for laughter. I can't believe all the Stephen A stuff happened in 2025. I'm going to be honest. I thought that was 2024, but we've lost all sense of time now. 2025 was indeed the year that Stephen A teased a run for the presidency and people took it seriously. It was the year he had that viral courtside confrontation with LeBron and a Knicks-Lakers game, apparently over his comments about brawny.

It was the year that Stephen A signed a new contract to the ESPN, five years, a hundred million plus. Yeah. Contract that took him off of the NBA pregame, but keeps him on first take and allows him in his spare time. And Stephen A seems to make better use of his time than just about anybody to talk more politics. What do we think about Stephen A in 2025? I was going to say that the new contract was this year.

And I mean, it's ever since the previous contract, we've just seen ESPN, you know, try to make their money back by using him, like, shoehorning him into everything they possibly. can, right? I mean, there's more outside of Mike Greenberg. I mean, there's more Stephen A. Smith on TV than maybe even more than Mike Greenberg than anything else. And I think maybe the most kind of impressive part of the whole thing is he found time to run for president despite doing like, despite being on TV or radio like 26 hours a day. There's just been a whole lot of Stephen A. Smith. And I can't, I think maybe the most, maybe actually I'll take it back, the most impressive thing

about it is the presidential run doesn't seem to, and I use of that very loosely, obviously, doesn't seem to have had the broadly negative effect that I probably would have predicted that it would have on his public image if you had told me all of this going into the year. So yeah, I guess good job, Stephen A. Smith. So you guys don't think he's taking a little bit of a reputational hit this year a little bit? I mean, a little bit, sure, but not like, I mean, this seems like the perfect formula for everybody just being like, all right, I'm completely over this guy. I don't think he's taking a reputational hit at all.

If anything, I think he's become a bigger player in world events. Yeah. Because I think the presidency thing, he's just popular enough and politics are just weird enough to take it seriously. And even if he doesn't run, which he almost certainly is not going to run. He is effectively positioned himself right in the middle of the paint. And if you're going to run for president, if you're Josh Shapiro, if you're West Moore, if you're Pete Buttigieg, you're going to have to talk to Stephen A. I mean, he is going to, he is going to talk to you and weigh in on you.

We, remember we had Zah Rahim here, you know, one of Mom Dani's strategies. I mean, he was so important that they found it necessary to call in to his show, right? That, um, that they felt like, oh, we've got, we've got to get in front of Stephen and she said, I mean, this is a person who's worked for Obama and Hillary Clinton. And she said she met Stephen A. Smith and was like, ooh, like, I'm in the presence of a real celebrity. Yeah. Yeah, which is just sort of crazy to think about.

But yeah, also, I mean, I know this is kind of one of his eight jobs. He did lose Molly and Shannon this year. That was the show from which all this starts. That was all this year. He lost those guys this year. That's the time of the people that show has lost. Like Max, Skip, Molly, Shannon, we could go on and on. And it just kind of keeps rolling along because there's one star of that show.

It is. I mean, I will say this to Joel. I mean, I think to your point about, like, did he take a reputational hit? I think the LeBron stuff did make people really, really queasy, even fans of his. And perhaps even people inside ESPN because it just seems so personal. Mm-hmm. And Stephen A has become a person over the last 10 or 15 years where I think a lot of his takes, people just kind of nod along at it before. They tend stuff about the whole Stephen A first take experience in another.

era. Now that's just kind of priced in, but when it was like, here's somebody, you're on the court having this thing and then going back and forth with him and LeBron was on McAfee show and that did it, you know, started another round of it. I think, I think people it's like the criticizing athlete part is not a big deal, but somehow there's a, there's a line.

And I don't know if it's like that he actually was all that personal about Bronny because if you listen to his comments, he really wasn't. He basically was just giving him roster advice about brawny, but phrasing it as a father. You know, he was giving advice about Brian that every basketball Podcaster would have given him. But just something about them going face to face. I think people don't like that.

That just seems like too much. There's a little bit of, and Bruce, you can go ahead and ring the bell. There's a little bit of pro wrestling to the whole thing where it's like, so we're willing to suspend our disbelief that your takes are what you really believe, that this is, that these are real arguments going on on TV. But then as soon as it kind of crosses a line into reality, people it just gets uncomfortable you know it's just like it like people are if someone's actually mad we can't really have stepheny's back right to be this is so he's

he sort of did cross an implicit line there i don't know how much that hurts him i think that maybe more does it hurt him just kind of in the milieu of sports like you know or the athlete or you know or the athletes opinions change by that but um but i think overall i think he's uh i mean i agree with you brian that it's a fake presidential run but i guess it's a pretty savvy decision. I'm pretty, he's using savvy too much. It is a,

his eyes are wide open to the fact that like, we live in a world now. We're like, you know, a Howard Stern style run for office can actually be taken seriously. You know, can actually get a sort of, well,

can actually garner a sort of serious attention from other media in a way that it wouldn't at the time. And also, you know, I just hate me. It has to be said that like Donald Trump wasn't really seriously running for president the first time either, you know,

and then now and look where we are. So, I mean, it's, It's a, it's a, it's a dangerous game, you know. Yeah, I mean, famously, one of my former coworkers at Buzzfeed, McKay Coppins, wrote a piece when I was there that was like, he, Donald Trump ain't running for president. Apparently, I mean, I think Trump has cited that, that article itself is one of the reasons

he became determined to go ahead and do it. Right. The one thing I also would say, too, about Stephen A. Smith is that, and I can't remember if the Braun confrontation sparked this, but I feel like the times that I, you know, most see the engagement with Stephen A. Smith content is media beef, right? Because he, like, every time, like, I see that, you know, the straight shooter thing, he's, like addressing the camera and talking about somebody he used to work with. Jason Whitlock, Joy Reed, Carrie champion, Jamel Hill, Michelle Beal, Max Cullerman, Marcellus Wiley, Dan Lebertart, Bill Simmons. Maybe I don't know if it was

beef, but he called out our boy. So, yeah, it's, it's just been, I don't, I remember when I worked at ESPN, like you were really discouraged from fighting with people publicly. But I guess Stephen A is bigger than, bigger than that now. Number three on our list, Jimmy Kimmel. Remember the whole Jimmy Kimmel thing? Well, that was in September, guys. September 17th through 22nd when he was suspended after a clumsily worded line in his monologue about Charlie Kirk. It was two months to the day, I'm pretty sure.

that after CBS got rid of Stephen Colbert. Yes. So again, part of this Trumpian threat to the media. During that episode, we learned the term job boning. It was added to all of our media vocabularies. We also had FCC Chairman Brendan Carr

with his famous, we can do this the easy way or the hard way line. What do we take away from the Jimmy Kimmel episode? I'm glad you mentioned Colbert, because I do think that the one thing they have in common And I mean this not as the slight that it's going to sound like is how much kind of late night TV has recessed as a part of our culture. And both of those topics have sort of recessed in memory almost immediately after they happened, I think. I mean, maybe that's just from where I'm sitting.

And yeah, I mean, but I do think that the Jimmy Kimmel incident was meaningful. as you alluded to earlier, because it does seem like there isn't either an end of the reach of Trump's bully pulpit power or a willingness of the, you know, of the media companies or the giant conglomerations that own them to stand up to him. And I do think that part of it has to do with the payoffs and the lawsuits and stuff like that. And the realization that like it's not going to end, right? The $16 million is not going to buy us a smooth ride for this term. know, and it's, it's just, he's just cashing the checks and, and, you know, finding a new thing to be agreed about. But in terms of Kemmel, it was, I'd say all in all, a pretty rational decision by the network to take him off the air just long enough to, well, to take him off the air just long enough to show contrition and bring him back, but maybe more importantly, take him off the air just long enough for it to be a huge deal when he returned. Oh, to pop that rating you're saying?

I mean, it was an epic rating, you know, for him. And I think that that was, that's, I think, going to be the big takeaway here. I know I'm going to annoy people by saying using this term. But I kind of, yeah, to your point, Dave, I thought we crossed the Rubicon. You know what I mean? He just felt like, oh, wow, he's really going to seize power in this way. He's really going to, he's really going to have the power to remove his perceived political opponents off television, like banishing, like, which is the sort of thing you see. and other nations, right, that have less democratic protections, shall we say.

And so the fact that that didn't happen, that it seemed like it was overblown a little bit, I kind of feel like if we were talking a little bit offline before, like, what is the positive story this year at media? Well, maybe this is one of them that you can win if you don't accept a loss, right? That if you say, you know what, I hear what you're saying, but no, I'm going to. going to be back on TV tomorrow, right? You don't have to concede. If you concede, you're definitely going to lose.

But if you decide to stand up a little bit, that you might be able to stand in your square. There's two actors in that decision. Disney, which put him back on the air, and Jimmy Kimmel, who easily could have used this as an occasion to be like, good night, everybody. I'm going to go host my own podcast where I can say whatever I want about Donald Trump, where I don't have to have the machinery of late night, which is David says, is deteriorating in front of our eyes.

And I can do my own thing. But actually, I'm coming back. Yeah. And I'm going to sign another contract. And I'm going to come back until May 2027 and make jokes about Donald Trump on TV every night. Campbell's got the best bargaining position, certainly more than any, like, you know, file and rank media member, you know, any like regular journalist because he has a few money to do it. It's not just like he's got the platform and the celebrity. It's not even just that he goes start a podcast.

And so I think it, I think for for Kemmel. I think it's pretty clear that like this is going to be his last meaningful job. And Disney knows it, you know, and he's just going to walk away. Like if you give him a hard time, he'll just say goodbye. It might be now and it might be in seven years, you know, but he's going to be comfortable. And he's certainly comfortable financially. And yeah, I mean, I just think that he's, you know, he has a maybe surprising amount of power in the media, certainly more so than Colbert or Jimmy Fallon, just in terms of his culture.

currency in terms of his ability to be earnest during a monologue and have that sort of catchwind on social media and stuff like that. And certainly in his ability to get under President Trump's skin. Now, I'm not going to underrate Stephen Colbert's ability to do that. Certainly Trump danced on his grave quite a bit. But it does seem like Jimmy Kimmel has just has the ability to sort of go viral in a way that his comparison. editors don't. By the way, people sometimes forget, I realize this is a podcast cliche that I'm not doing, but people underrate this fact. Donald Trump has called for Jimmy Fallon to be fired as well. How pissed off would you be here Jimmy Kimmel? Like, I'm a liberal stalwart.

You call for him to be fired too? Yeah. He's Mr. Nothing. He's doing the same monologue joke three nights in a row. Yeah. About Mom Donnie. He's nothing. Have a little taste. Yeah, Dave's talking about that medium, like, you know, decaying in front of our eyes. The only way in which I engaged with Jimmy Fallon content is when somebody's sinking or like the roots are involved. But I never, like, I don't, I've never seen a clip. Somebody passed around a Jimmy Fallon clip and been like, man, you got to see this joke. This thing that. This joke he told it was amazing.

Yeah, the story. Like, I've never seen it. Maybe it's out there. It is. It's not. Trust me. It's, it's not. This was a huge deal when it happened.

And again, nothing testifies to how fast the news moves and how much it just piles up. It's like, because it was a moment. Joel's right when it seemed like, oh, my God, a Rubicon has been crossed. Things are happening. This is the way people reacted to the Rob Reiner tweet this week was, you know, I don't know if it's a perfect analogy, but people were freaked out on both sides of the, on both sides of the aisle when the Jimmy Kimmel thing happened. So anyway, that was September.

number four on our list not exactly a person more of an entity to borrow a term from the recent Mission Impossible movies artificial intelligence it's here folks it helps journalists if I may cite its positive qualities first with our research

sure I think we've all been aided by AI in one way or another all three of us wait really y'all use AI do you go to do you go to ask you know, chat GPT and punch something into the... I don't do that, but I do Google

searches and, you know, sometimes you get the little AI summary at the top and that's not always right. I don't use that as a fact, but man, that's a great starting point to answer my questions. And by the way, that Google search is the kind of that little AI summary is the kind of thing that's screwing up journalism. Right. Because how many times

do you actually look at that and then click through to the link that it's citing as a source? You stop right. A lot of people stop right. there. They said, I looked it up on Google and it was that, you know? What happens when people stop clicking on links to our stories and our websites? We're screwed.

We're even more screwed than we already are screwed now. What percentage of searches do you get to like the third page of a Google search? Almost never. Yeah. Unless you're very well, it's usually when I'm looking for something for this show that I like, I know this story is out there and I can't

put it. I can't find it. Right. Like what are my my search terms must be wrong, how far do I have to dig? But when it's just a casual thing, when it's a personal search, almost never. I will say this. I struggle to find the journalistic corollary, so please jump in. But as the father of two kids, there's been a lot of consternation, obviously, and very, very justified about kids not writing anymore, right?

I mean, I have one son who's going off to college next year, and no one in his class can write. They just, they use chat GPT to write all their essays and they're really. savvy ones. How you savvy again? And they're really, and they're really, the ones who, they're really adept ones, like, rewrite it almost entirely, right? But it helps, but they use it for structure. They use it for flow. They use it for transitions. And if you're, yeah, it's a great first draft tool. But the thing that no one ever talks about is that it's incredibly helpful, or maybe detrimental, I don't know, I want to frame it for doing just like complicated math and science problems. Like, you can just like take a picture of your trigonometry question and it will spell out

the entire answer and how it got to, I mean, how it solved it. Oh, I would have cheated my way through high school. Oh, my God. Oh, it's super helpful. Listen, yeah. Oh, my God. It's been super helpful as a dad who is, who is the chief math tutor in the house and, and for whom math knowledge ended in 10th grade, you know, like I'm just sort of having to learn all this stuff on the fly. And it's only very recently that I've just, that I discovered that tool because I was taught by my high schooler that it exists. But I'm sure there's some

journalistic corollary to that. I mean, I think in general, when it comes to new technology, the things that we're afraid of aren't the real things that are going to matter. And part of the great AI, I mean, if you want to frame it in terms of media, part of the great AI rollout over

the year of 2025 is the constant drum beating of like AI is not exactly what you think it is. There is a thing this week. I don't even remember where I heard it, where someone It's just like, everyone's so worried about AI, but every time Netflix recommends a show to you, that's AI. You know, and it's just the, the constant redefinition of AI is a little journalistic subculture unto itself. I was on the Washington Post homepage today and more on the post of just a second.

But they have a heading right up there next to like politics and opinions called Ask the Post AI. but please use our AI, not someone else's AI. See, but why would we assume that the Post has proprietary AI that would be meaningfully better than anyone else? Oh, I've got some evidence here, David. I plugged in, when did Stephen A sign his new contract? Because that was a fact I needed for this podcast. And the Post, or the Post say I answered, the provided articles do not contain information about Stephen A. Smith signing a new contract. Then I went to Google and found out that the Washington Post had been the...

Strauss wrote an article about Stephen A's new contract in March. So it's just like, but even on its best, it's just a search tool that talks back, right? I mean, it's a search tool that frames the answer in the form of a sentence. That does not know the contents of the last nine months of the Washington Post. Man, I mean, that's just, I mean, the thing is, I wonder, again, I mean, because we're hearing a lot about the alleged bubble. Like there's been more reporting to see about the alleged bubble of AI, right? because they can't basically allow for it to fail and if it does fail our economy is in real shit but i i i when you talk about like that washington post a i i wonder how many people are

actually using that though you do you guys remember the q cat when they when they when they did the q cat okay what is the q cat oh my god okay so it was this definitely it was this uh invention in the early 2000 so the the it was the fall of 2020 2000 and rachel and the rachel Radio Shacket team with the some company, and the team with the Dallas Morning News and Bello, the company that owned them, were going to do this thing where they had, you know, the QR codes and the QCat would, you would scan it on your TV, right? Or you'd scan it in the newspaper. And then on your computer, it would give you the, you know, the information you needed, right? So it might go to the Wikipedia page and turn up a Google search page, right? And I just remember thinking as they were doing this, I was like, nobody's using that shit, man. Nobody's going to be using it. in the QCAT. Because they came to TCU when I was the editor of the paper. They asked us to be one of the first college newspapers to, you know, test out the QCat. And when they left, I was like, that's dumb. So I'm going to be sitting watching the news and I'm going to scan this barcode on TV. And I was like, that's never going to work. And then it never worked. It never took off. And it's

been, you know, regarded as one of like the biggest boondoggles in tech history. And I just kind of wonder if this is sort of similar because I'm like, who's going to the Washington Post and punching in what Brian just did? No. Somebody's doing that. Only Brian would do that. And only is a bit, really. I mean, that's a bit. Yeah. It's a bit. It was a bit. Yeah. I would even think to do that. I didn't, I didn't even know that was aware of that. Yeah, I think that this is one of those cases, too, where I'm just a little confounded by the scale.

I mean, maybe I'm the one that's mistaken. When I think of these, like, the great advancements in AI, I'm thinking of giant corporations. Like, well, the public facing ones like open AI, but I'm assuming there's even bigger ones that are much more significant that are happening behind. the scenes that I'm not aware of. And I'm just kind of working under the assumption that there are several giant companies like search engines back in the day that are just sort of taking up most of the volume and it will be distilled down to one or two or three in the end. I don't really think of like in 2000, I mean, sorry, in like 1998, would you have used like the Washington Post proprietary search function?

Like no, because you would have known that would have been a hamster wheel. You know, like it's just there's, it's, that's not what they do. You know, and so that, but I do think that there's an element to which AI is both, and this is probably one of the most intriguing things from a media perspective, it's both sort of decried, hated by the, by many of the average consumers and institutions at that point. But also it's treated as this like shiny new car that every corporation wants to have. Like there's so many, you know, all the job search websites are like, you know, now powered by AI. You hear in all the ads or whatever, all that, like, everything is power. by AI as this great selling point, even when, I mean, logic would dictate that it's probably not changed a whole lot from before the commercials were saying that out loud. You know, it's just,

it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a PR tool. It is. And they love the shiny new objects. And the post, by the way, doesn't just have an AI tab. They have an AI generated news podcast where you can pick your favorite subjects. And as Max Taney and Semaphore's written, this included errors that have ranged from relatively minor pronunciation gaffes to significant. changes to story content like misattributing or inventing quotes and inserting commentary, such as interpreting a source's quote as the paper's position on an issue. But this is what I'm talking about. I'm like, who is the audience for that?

Like, if you actually care about the news and you read about it, like, you're going to curate something that actually is informative. Like, if you're the kind of person that cares about the world and wants to learn about it, you're going to go to a real podcast. You're going to go to the Reuters one or you're going to read. to the daily or the the the the the slate podcast right but this what they're talking about like only a dummy like what do you again unless you're listening to it as a bit nobody's listening to that right i would love to see the the the listenership and you know if watch the post if you want to send us the

audience numbers for that AI generated podcast that'd be fantastic but i'll tell you what it is it's your newspaper and you're panicked that this is coming to this is come to steal your lunch money or AI has come to steal your lunch money yeah and i do and then there is and that to me that panic this this is not the solution to the panic but that panic is real it should be real to all sure i mean and listen as the podcast world grows it i mean i think the part of that has to be the sort of podcast equivalent of those like seo links you know like the news stories that just have the right title and come up first in search even if they're not meaningful that were just sort of the the the you know frightening thing in media several years ago um if you can have the most

if you're going to have the, I mean, listen, I've definitely started listening to any number of podcasts over the past 10 years that may not have been AI strictly speaking, but you get about 10 minutes in, you're like, am I listening to a human being talking right now? Like, this is not, this is just like a weird monologue and it's not interesting at all. It's like not what I'm looking for. If you can get 10 minutes out of every people, every person, if you can get people to absentmindly hit subscribe before they realize what's going on, maybe there's money in that. I don't know. I bet that's happening on YouTube. And, you know, because sometimes, you know, when I unfortunately have to let my son have, you know, screen time, he likes watching, you know, random videos of people crushing things. And then, you know, a couple of minutes later, there's a very strange person talking and your weird music going on. I'm like, oh, this is like, AI generated content. Yep. Like, please give me your phone. Give me, give me my phone back.

So, yeah. Can we tell Joel the story, David, of what happened in math class in high school when we were. seniors since you mentioned being a math tutor calculus what did i quit or which one are we well do we both quit yeah so we were we were in calculus jill because we got put on it david and i were not destined to be in forward texas by the way we're still we're still working our way into the pascal hall of fame or walk of fame whatever it's called so wall of fame there you go so hopefully this will be part of the part of the application i don't know how you got out of it david so i jol i gotten just, I mean, barely passing grades. And in one case, the teacher showed me the grade book

and wrote gift next to the grade. It was really bad. This is the first semester. Wow. So in the second semester of senior year, I went to essentially an al-a-cart class called the history of math that was sitting in the room of an academic advisor reading books about math because it was thought that Brian could not do a math problem correctly thought that Brian could not do a math problem. But Brian could read a book about a mathematician and summarize it. That's the, man, I wish they had had that at my school because, I mean, I almost didn't graduate because of math. It was crazy.

I will say as if, again, as a dad slash math tutor, there does come a point sophomore year even at this point because I say they've even rolled it back a little bit earlier where you're just like, why in the hell is this being taught to a general public? Like, it doesn't make any sense at all. Can't AI replace that? Come on. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. It's like, you know, like the kids are just like, I'm never going to use this in real life. And you're like, you're absolutely right, man. I mean, they were so dead on. Everybody who said that was right. Yeah. Journalism is sacred, but who the hell cares about math? Let's replace that with a robot. Let's go. Yeah. Let's go. Let's go. Yeah, it was true. I had a very similar situation to Brian in high school. And I think it turned out like the junior year was, was it algebra two trig or whatever. It was one of those where the classes half one thing and half the other. And I was good at the first half. And when we were.

we got to the second half, I was so bad that literally the teacher told me after the fact that she thought she was messing up, right? Because like suddenly I went from, I went from setting the curve to just bombing. And she was like, so she kept giving us retests until like I would, I would do okay. But that got me through that year. And then senior year, I just didn't understand a single freaking thing. And went to an independent study probability statistics class was sitting there in the same room as Brian in a different in a different period. But it did feel like we were breaking the system a little bit. Like there was a whole lot of pushback for at least for me doing this.

Because we were and we were diverted, you know, from, from that. But it was, yeah, me too. It was fun though. We got out of it. Number five on our list, guys, Pablo Torre. Yes. Ooh. Has any single content creator had a bigger year than Pablo Torre?

no he's sort of the independent study history of math of the podcast world no and it's so and there's a little bit of an insidiousness to it right don't you feel like you thought you were the only one who was listening to who went back and listened to every episode of pablo tori finds out you know in your free time over the past you know in like a two-month span and then you realize that everybody else had done it too um that's funny you know i think about our boss Bill Simmons who I think who who had Pablo on his show after a little bit of back and forth off you know when they weren't face to face and I think that Bill's take was actually like if not correct it was just in completely in line with the public perception or completely in line with

the shift that everybody goes through with or has gone through with Pablo in this year where like you only know him from social clips or not know you know who Pablo Tori is obviously he was a massive ESPN figure but you're only really aware of the podcast or social media clips and then at some point you become aware that it's a much deeper, much bigger, much, you know, more, like, frightening and wonderful thing and addictive thing. And once you realize that, you're just like, oh, well, now the social clips make sense. But they don't reflect, as opposed to just about like every other podcast in the world. They just don't reflect what he's doing in its real depth at all. I would say Pablo the social clip and Pablo the character on Twitter.

Yes. which is a related but slightly different thing because that exists in concert with the podcast with the reporting on the podcast and also is a little different than the figure on the podcast who's trying to find things out right the guy's like mark Cuban we're ready for you to come back on my show sir I got some more questions for you like that's interesting he was I heard him doing an interview or read him doing an interview an awful announcement the other day and he was saying you know reporters now have to be a billboard for their own work.

You have to go out. Everything gets forgotten. Everything gets lost. The three of us certainly know what that's like. And so you almost have to be out there not only just advertising the work, tweeting the work, but also being a character on Twitter to get people to pay attention to it. I mean, I definitely think that's true

because we're on camera right now. We're on a podcast, so we're not pointing fingers in this regard. Yeah, it's really, I mean, it is really hard to get attention for your work unless you're out there somehow, right? Like, I didn't, I don't know about you all when I got into journalism. I guess I thought like celebrity like Mike Lupica or somebody like that, that I would write what I had to write. And then you would see me again until it was in a newspaper or on sports reporters. Like, that's what I wanted. But I didn't realize you're going to have to be on camera

all the damn time. And I was going to get clothes and get haircuts and have a background and stuff like that. So Pablo is right in that regard, at least. It's funny that we spent, I mean, what year would have been two years ago on this very show where we would have a whole segment dedicated to pivoting to video and the sort of the devil that whole thing and and an kind of laughable enterprise

that was and now it's just sort of like a horror movie like you look around you're just like oh fuck we pivoted to video. Yeah. We did. First thing I'll say about Pablo and then we could say a whole bunch of things here. One is I do give him a ton of credit for not just doing another chat show

because Pablo, the chat show also would have worked. That would have been a really good podcast and a really big podcast. Well, I mean, he works for Levitard, right? Who just took a radio show and converted to podcast form. I mean, like it would have been not only

like it would have worked, but it would have been expected of him. Yes. I mean, there's a chat show element, certainly, to his pod, but just Pablo just like chewing over the news of the day like every other podcast in the world, that would have been a hit too. So I give him credit for saying, I want this to have a repertorial

aspect to it. I want I want to be adding things. I want to be putting new facts into the world when, you know, he didn't have to do that, right? I think he would have, I think he would have been doing just fine if he'd not done that, maybe not as fine as he's doing now. So that's one part of it. The other part of is, you know, funny. And again, that same awful announcing interview. I saw I'm comparing what he's doing to like the tradition of Sports Illustrated ESP in the magazine where he used to work. And I see that blink. But I almost think, the better analog is that what he's reinventing is not magazine journalism but the television news magazine he's figuring out a way to bring that into podcast land rather than the written

story am i off there no you know what because as you were saying that earlier uh i was thinking oh is he brian gumpel you know is he bryan go you remember yeah when he'd be a show yeah and because he needs glasses to remove thoughtful really to be Brian Gumble though. Can we get Pablo some glasses? We should get him some glasses. He'll probably need them soon enough. I don't know how old he is, but he'll need them.

He has them not now. But, you know, yeah, because I was thinking about, there's a couple things there. One is that it was a very smart thing to do, too, just because there's so many talkers out there. Like, how do you stand out if you're making a new podcast, right? Like, it is a very difficult thing. Most people, that's why when they leave a company,

they want to take their podcast with them, don't want to have to start over it in this environment. So if you can do what he's doing and stand out in some way, that's a really smart strategic thing. But the other piece of that, though, that I think, because I have a lot of respect for Pablo, man. Like, he's really good. Like, obviously he's done really well. But the thing that I would say is that investigative journalism cost. And if you find somebody willing to pay for it, great. That the reason you don't, people because I see people say this over and over again. There's no more investigative journalism.

People aren't doing, you know, they don't do real reporting like Pablo. And I'm like, Pablo is great. Pablo also had found a benefactor, somebody that is willing to front him the money to do this sort of work. Because it's not cheap. Like people have to be willing to pay for it. And either it's going to be the subscribers or it's going to be a big company that is willing to pay for that work. That's true. And that'll continue to be a story.

The flip side of that, I think, the pro, the very. very pro Pablo side of that is he could have, like Brian said, he could just be doing a one-on-one interview show with one employee and I'm sure Meadowlark would have cut in the exact same check. He could have been pocketing the difference. But as this thing rolls on, you're right. I mean, someone's paying the staff, right? Someone has to pay the staff. And it's really hard to do as a startup. You always got to find somebody with the money. It is true. I mean, I like the Bryant-Gumble parallel, because there was always a thing on the, you know, real sports and other shows like it where when you would see the rundown,

there would usually be one like meaty story that was, that was relevant. And then the other two things would just be kind of like, oh, that's interesting they're doing that or like whatever. And which is basically the same thing as Pablo, except instead of being just sort of like bemused, you're just sort of like lightly outraged.

Like instead of it, instead of the reporter like following a fancy, it's more just like Pablo Tori is deeply disturbed, but I'm still going to pay attention. I think part of that is also part of the public presentation of yourself. Like you like the the the PR work that he does online is I think in a large part just like framing himself is this as this not just a dog good reporter but also sort of like I have a screw loose a little bit and that's what makes him really we're all doing that by the way aren't we aren't we all like I'm a quirky person here are my quirks for you to inspect and enjoy absolutely true. I mean that's part of podcast land. Yeah.

And also to your point. Dave, too. I mean, I think, you know, Brian Gumble didn't call the show Brian Gumble in real sports, right? And Brian Gumble, like, it was fairly clear when Brian Gumble was on camera, he'd be like, all right, we're going to, you know, Frank DeFord or whoever else would happen to be on his staff. Pablo, like, this is a Pablo Torre vehicle, which is smart for both him and the company, because that's the people that, that's the person that people want to see on camera. But like, there's a big team. there too. You know what I mean? And it'd be like if we just started letting more people be on camera in the background, they'd see how many people go into putting a podcast together. And it's just a little bit different over there. And that's not, that's, that's not a criticism because obviously it's working. Frank is Frank DeFord by the way, number one of just like, I wish podcasts had existed back then to see what his podcast would have been. He did have a good run on NPR, but yes, the Frank DeFord podcast. Oh, totally for a guy. Yeah. That's right. I would just

to see like a 36 year old Frank DeFord with a microphone in front of his face every week just following whatever his mind went. Looking DeB in there, man. That has to be a Frank DeFord documentary, man. I would love somebody to do something on that. Oh my God, the scarfs and the ties

and pockets squares and everything else. It is, you know, I do, I, I, Joel, I hear, I totally hear what you're saying. That's why I say that I think the analog is, it's like a television news magazine. Because the magic trick of television, you know, Mike Wallace, he is one of our best investigative reporters.

That may be true, but Mike Wallace's producers and all the people helping him are also, like, great at their jobs, right? And they're delivering the trick to us. And again, I think if we had, next time we have Pablo on here, I bet he'll want to tell us all about all the people that work for, work with him and work for him to do that. I don't think he's like hiding that or anything. But that's why I just find the writing, you know, when it's like, you know, if I wanted to do, I just don't think like, that's why I think magazine writing is maybe an imperfect analogy when talking about. this. I'll say this. Like the writing and reaction to Pablo and we can get into the recent Nick Wright thing to me has all been just to me like not interesting at all. Like on the one hand, it's either he is Woodward plus Bernstein plus Lawrence Wright plus Maggie Haberman in one.

And then the other hand is people are like, you're full of shit dude. You don't know anything. You know, I'm like, okay, well, neither of those takes were particularly like informative to me about what he's doing, what he's changing, what stories he's broken this year, how he's broken them the way, the incremental way some of them have played out over multiple podcasts. I'm just like, I don't know, can he, when do you

explain to me what the Nick Wright thing was about at the end of the day? Um, you know, I think that I mean, there's there's some personal stuff probably behind that, I would say. Um, but also, jealousy in out of the world. Yeah, there's a part. Yeah. I mean, I think that like, you know, I don't, I don't think that they're like, you know, personally or professionally

friends. So I definitely think that that there's that. But I do think that there's like professional jealousy that is out there against Pablo, right? Where they're like, man, who is this guy? You know, you didn't even, this isn't breaking story. You don't break a story in that way. Or the, you know, the Jordan Hudson story. That's not investigated. Jordan. Don't let that. O'Fuille. It's Jordan Hudson. Wait, take, you know what? Tate Frazier does this on the tailgate and not it is i've internalized it jordan hudson i'm sorry yeah he's north carolina too so he should know so now i think i think it's a joke but it's got in my head yeah i'm sure it's jordan i'm sure it was a joke tate has tate's voice

has too much command he could say anything wrong and i would believe that's the way it's it's supposed to be said it it it burled its way in my head like that was the real way you're supposed to say it um but then you know the others the the the whether it's the reporting on the um the the the trans act anti trans activism in sports or the Cowboys fan and the Last Meal, that sort of stuff. Like all that stuff is fantastic, but, you know, a lot of people will look at some of those other stories and they say, that's not investigative journalism. That is just you, you know, indulging your curiosity in a way that they would not quite

say rises to the level of investigative journalism. But then there's also people that, yeah, like, I mean, some of that is jealousy and some of that is legit criticism. And it just kind of, you have to think about who's criticizing him and why when you hear that right now you can say that for me too so yeah more nuanced kind of understanding of the shows like i watched the very first jordan hudson one he did and it was a little i didn't the reporting was not something i took issue with it was just the whole tone of it felt a little joky to me and a little like purposefully wacky but then i was rewatching his first aspiration kawai show this morning

totally different five and and and having you know the guys around and playing off them and having them asking questions like it really worked in a different way also on that aspect story. I know we're all, all of our brains are so rotted that we just care about the NBA salary cap more than anything else. But the funniest part of that story is the way that aspiration and crack the liberal, environmental, do good, pay people to feel like you're doing good code. And that that somehow vacuumed up, Kauai and the clippers and the NBA salary cap. Like, I'm watching it. I was like, actually the first part of this is as interesting as anything else that, uh, that he uncovered. with that way. It just bears stating that like the aspiration story would have been enough to like solidify the credentials of any

news outlet in like the 1980s if they had broken that in print. Right? That could have made a career. If Pablo had just done that this year. Right. What if he'd just done that? I think he might still be on this list. Yeah.

Yeah. So the Woodward and Bernstein stuff is sure it's overblown because that's the point. I mean, you're, you're meaning it to be overblown if you evoked those names. But like, yeah, I mean, but there is a, there is a, that makes sense. I mean, it's a single story that like, you know, will make it that will, that will, that could have made a whole career. Absolutely. It was great. Can I, I, I just need to make the disclaimer is that I, you know, I did work on that show last year, right? I always feel like I need to say that. Okay. Yeah, here we go. Full disclosure.

Full disclosure. Full disclosure that I did show with Pablo last year. And again, I, Pablo is a great guy, great job. But that team over there, man, I mean, it was something to work with them in this year. Oh, man, y'all get down. This is good. It's fun to work with y'all. Glad you said the phrase full disclosure because number six on our list is Olivia Nutsi. Go do it. Say it. Say no, don't say Olivia Nutsi. Say the. Olivia Nutsi plus Ryan Liza? Plus the, I want you to say it. RFK Jr. No, man, the name of the book, the way you say it. We want to hear it. American Kanto. There you go.

Is that the gold dust breath in before you said it? That's an incredible. Yes, it was. I was waiting for you to pick up on that, David. It took like three or four podcasts. Oh my gosh. I totally missed it.

I'm more awake today. What a freaking story this was. Can I just say one thing up top before we get into it? There was a lot of like, I said, I spent a whole monologue on this show talking about like,

why is Vanity Fair so dumb that they didn't see this whole, this whole thing coming and blah, blah, blah. I don't know. Brian, did you want to wind this up and, like, give an intro before I'm on a monologue. No, no intro for this. I will say that I'm not saying that Olivia Nudsi's like separation from Vanity Fair had anything to do with the piece that Vanity Fair just dropped this week that had, I mean, and frankly, I think it's like if it's, there's no, there is certainly not a straight A to B line between those two things. But it did cross my mind when I was reading this Vanity Fair piece and read and see. all the pushback area,

getting from the White House and thinking about how much just like, uh, respectability, esteem in the moment is so important for a really huge national news organization. And I guess the next time in Olivia Nutsi,

the new T style story comes up, it would behoove me to say, there is just way more going on behind the scenes than I could ever wrap my head around. Like, I don't know what they're publishing in two weeks. That could, that this could have a, that this could have a major effect.

on to keep her employed, you know? And so I just wanted to get that out of the way. No. Did surprise you, David, that American Canto only sold 1,165 copies in its first week? No. It surprises me. It terrifies me that that has become a story. Because for the long, because this is the cheat, this was the cheat code in the journalism

world for a long time. You write a good piece. You have a good story. You have a good agent. maybe more importantly you have a little bit of platform there's some publisher that will pay you to write a book and then when it inevitably sells 614 copies or whatever number you just said we just all go about our lives and pretend it never happened um uh we should stop pointing it out so that everybody here and all the journalists listening this will continue to get book deals i mean even if we're not the olivia nukes of the world but um but yeah no i mean i think this is exactly exactly within that the journalism the journalism the journalism the journalism or more, I mean, listen, I don't want to sound, I don't want to sound like a part of the, the chattering class out there,

but this is what people are probably talking about when they're like, where they talk about sort of clistered media world in New York City or whatever. It's just like, yeah, I can't say how many book projects I was a part of during my time there where people are like, this is going to change the world.

I'm just like, this was a New York Times Magazine article that no one is going to care about in a week. You know, it's like, it's just a, it's a very small view of what works and what you see what really works in selling books is like you know the you know 180 pages of Sudoku you know we're over here arguing about like the like the moral the morals of whatever it is of the publishing empire people don't care about inside journalism books the vast majority of people who would be buying a book don't don't know

know who all of you know what he is and still don't and the idea that even i mean even the books that even even engaged on it on the scale of like people who that we know who love books people who are part of this world do you know anyone that bought this book like when a book comes like when a new i mean i can't even think of a comparison but if pablo tory put out a book the odds are that like one of the three of us maybe two of the three of us would have paid our own money for it because it's just like of course I want to contribute to the cause and also I want it as soon as possible and not wait for

the press copy to get to me or like not wait to borrow it or whatever like no one bought American Canto man well hold on Dave man hold on seriously so if I'm I'm most want to hear your thoughts on this because you know so much about this

obviously uh if I came to you three months ago and I said hey man I I'm clairvoyant. I'm going to tell you something. They're not going to, that Olivia Nutsi's book,

not going to even sell 1,200 copies and hard copies. You would have said what? Oh, I mean, I think the number itself is pretty low. I mean, I think that, I think that's surprising. I think that there's probably some sort of forensic analysis that should be done on, maybe the problem was it was too big of a story for the people who, for its intended audience before the book came out,

which is to say, I think, I don't think anybody, there was no RFK left for, to be revealed by the book. It was already all out there in the public domain, right? And there wasn't, I mean, I think that a lot of the just take on the book,

a lot of the reviews of the book were kind of, I mean, one RFK no sold it. And two, I think a lot of the reviews said that like, there wasn't a lot of like juicy bits there. It was more of just this sort of like writing exercise. So a lot of that was just sort of blunted. I don't know, you're right. I mean, it is a shockingly low number, but I don't think it's like, I just don't think the book,

I don't think the book, the PR campaign, the whatever else knew what it was. I mean, if this is just like the new Joan Didion, that's how it should have been promoted. But then you can't, then you lose all the gusto from, you know, the current event stuff. If it had been more salacious, it probably would have done better. I really do like what David said, too, about the scoreboard watching that journal journalists do like that's the work that's so dumb you know with the with the selling of the books and this it's one of the reasons like i wanted to read this book and it's a entirety so that everything i say on here be like you know what i read the whole book i didn't like it i like you want to know with an

open mind i liked a lot of her magazine pieces i just didn't like this book it wasn't any good and that's at the end of the day what's important right like that's you know all the other you know at least about the book itself i know there's a whole backstory here but i i think we do that as journalists all the time and we know that's all silliness you know we know a lot of that's chance we know a lot of its randomness not saying a lot of people wouldn't have wanted the attention that olivia got before this book came out because certainly every writer would want not negative attention then just i was going to say what what amount of phase of attention are we talking about say you know they'd want to be on the adam friedland podcast let's say that but i but i but i think to me what matters at the end of day

for me at least is not that the book didn't sell so the book wasn't very good man that's funny yeah i mean i again i'd never before this or before that assertion, I never thought that was much correlation between the quality of the book and the cells. Right? Like, you know what I mean? I don't think there is. Okay. I mean, David's right that it got

that when they're terrible reviews that say this doesn't tell me anything about the relation with RFK, I'm sure that hurt it. Right. Well, yeah, you know what? And you know, now that you're mentioning this, this maybe should be the best evidence that they actually didn't have physical sex then because if you had, If you had that and you could have put it in the book in a way and you already are sort of, you know, lacking in shame or dignity in this regard.

Like you to talk to talk about this, you kind of have to be willing to push past that, right? I'm not saying that as a value judgment. Then you probably would just want to, if you had nasty stuff to talk or to sell, you would kind of, you would think you would want to put it in there. Nasty stuff. No, or you, I mean, listen, or she can very like, I mean, very logically say. make the case to herself. Like I'm getting paid a bunch of money to write this book. I'll just have fun.

I'll write the book that I want to write. And, you know, if down the road I want to write another, you know, TikTok of a presidential campaign, like no one's going to hold this sales track against me. It's a totally different book. I mean, but I do think it's logical, right? Like, did you mention Mitch album earlier when we were talking about sports reporters and stuff?

Or did his name come up? He's one of the very few journalists who's pivoted to non-journalism, you know, pivoted outside of his genre and become very, very, very, very. very successful, but like, who's up, I mean, if, if, I'm trying to think of just like a, like an obvious bestseller, if like Andrew Ross Sorkin got like, you know, fired from whatever his job is for insider trading and then wrote a memoir about getting fired, like nobody would care. We're all going to line up to buy his next book, right? But like, no, like, it's just, the, the personal stuff just, unless it's a story on its own, just doesn't have, that just doesn't

have an audience. It has a Twitter audience. You know, it has it has an inside journalism audience. It doesn't have a sales audience. Again, I just wonder if we're saying that now, because I'm guessing. Yeah. Right. When they made this pitch in there in the office and they're like, all right, man, so we've got RFK Jr. He's going to be a Trump administration. There's a lot of Trump here. You've got some background Trump stuff. That's great too. Like, that's going to be another thing to distinguish us this book. And you ruined your life in a really public way and everybody knows about it. I know that they just thought they had a heater. You know what I mean? They were like, oh, we've got some shit with this.

I would have thought. And it just, but then again, to your point, David, I don't have a single group chat that doesn't have any journalists that asks me about this. They don't give it. My mom who's on MSNBC all day. She does not give a shit about Olivia Nucy. I think there's an interesting question, and maybe it's an incredibly small one about whether or not she would have, she would still be employed by Vanity Fair at the book never come out.

Or, I mean, I guess you could say, would she ever been hired by Vanity Fair without the, you know, maybe that was a selling point. I have this giant book coming out. But, but yeah, I mean, you got to hope that doesn't go down as like the worst decisions he's ever made. But who knows, who knows, maybe it was. Let's go to number seven on our list. It's Pat McAfee. I put him on here because back on February 26th of the NFL Combine, he made his comments about Mary Kate Cornett, weirdly with Adam Schaefter sitting next to him.

he made his comments and cited his sources as everybody on the internet that of course was turned out to not be true those comments but what came next was really fascinating to me five months of silence from not only mccafee outside of a straight comment but ESPN itself nearly five months of silence maccadie eventually apologized on july 23rd saying the story wasn't true saying he'd met with Cornett's family and doing the whole girl dad thing. And to me, this was such, you know, there's a whole, we've had, all three of us separately have had McAfee discussions on this podcast and thought about him in various ways. But like, this was so telling about ESPN

to me that you would have something like that on your air and nobody would say anything. Nobody would get in front of it. And I know McAfee tried to do the whole, I want to meet with them first and all this stuff. I know that there was some, you know, there is some like, you know, legal issues in the background there when you make those kind of comments about somebody who's not a public figure. I still can't believe that nobody at ESPN was like, let us get out a statement. Let's get on television and say, sorry, we were wrong.

Mm-hmm. And correct the thing that was on our air. Again, I just, that still blows my mind that that happened in 2025. They have no embugsman. So there's that. They haven't had that for a long time. So that's one way that you sort of assure quality control, right? Also, they know that nobody.

I mean, that shouldn't say that nobody because obviously attorneys are watching. But they also know that not very many people are going to hold them or him in particular to account, right? That like Pat McAfee's already shown that he's sort of beyond that and that he doesn't need them. So they can't really hold them accountable for it. And also, and I'm not. I don't want to cast any aspersions on McAfee viewers, but if they hear that joke or they hear that line, it doesn't impress me as an audience that is going to take tremendous offense to it,

unless they were told in the moment that this is a potentially, you know, a lot defamatory or something. It's interesting. I had a smart industry person asked me a question this summer. They said if Pat McAfee quits ESPN, let's say on January 1, that all those grievances he cited over the years. he said, okay, that's it. I'm walking away.

I'm going back and doing my own podcast. I'm going to be in my own boss. Will the Pat McAvey experience have been worth it for ESPN? If he leaves all of ESPN television, he's just doing his own thing. Off game day, off daily programming, off everything.

Will it have been worth it these couple of years to have him on those various shows? Yeah. Yeah, I think so. Right? I mean, I think that he's, um,

I mean, there's been a lot of discussion about how this sort of, he's the sort of distillation of the new ESPN, right? It's like we're going to take this like self-made mega super duper star, drop him in as a fully formed figure. Don't make him play second or third fiddle when he gets there and pay him a whole lot of money just to like be a character on all of our, on all these different platforms, which is saying nothing of the fact that Pat McAvey show itself is just like,

Brian, you talk about innings eating a whole lot. I mean, that is just the all-time innings eater. Isn't it funny how eating innings has become one of the greatest qualities you can have as a journalist or something like a journalist in 2025? Yes, and listen. I'm obviously as a wrestling fan, I really enjoy Pat McAfee's work in all different genres and everything else. And I watch the Pat McAfee show. I use to watch very loosely, but I watch the Pat McAfee show in the background somewhat regularly. you know, not every day at all, but like it is a, it's sort of a maddening show to try to watch,

like to try to pay attention to. It is just background viewing. You know, like, that's exactly what it's made for. And, and so yeah, I mean, it's, it takes up, it's, it's, it's, I think that ESPN probably had a lot of internal question about whether or not a show like that could succeed in the modern era or if we just need to keep doing, you know, 30 minute just like kinetic, crazy talk, you know, game shows basically all over, you know, all up and down the schedule. I think that that's been a probably informative conversation or, you know, realization for them. But I think that to answer your question around about, wait, if Pat McAfee left at the end of this contract, they would just hire the next Pat McAfee and let them do exactly the same thing. And I don't think

that that would say any, I think that would only kind of say positive things about Pat McAfee's effect on ESPN from a, from a corporate financial. an intial standpoint. I think that they've learned that a figure like this can work. And this is what they're what they're aiming for. Can we pause right that right there? Because that's a David just sort of led to a fascinating question. Who is the next Pat McAfee? Like who we won't know? Pat McAfee, I was saying this the other day like Pat McAfee, uh, before you like literally, I mean like within the not too distant past like I met because he and Bill were talking about doing something together and we were at, we both at a WWV event and I came up

to use the bathroom. He was standing in the pop. corn line and I was like, hey, Pat, it's meet David. I know that we've both been, you know, talking. And this is like the least famous person. Like he was, he was just a guy who was, I think recently he had just left Barstool. And it was just, he's like a very regular guy. And then within a matter of a couple years, he's like the biggest name on ESPN. You know, I mean, it's just, it's, I don't think we know who the Pat Mac, the next Pat McAfee is until, you know, we see the viral video of them handing, handing duffel bags full of cash to their co-workers.

You know, he just sort of happens overnight. Yeah, right. Either that person is, you know, on the way right there in high school right now or something and whatever. Or they're a sports Twitch streamer that we don't know, you know, we don't quite know their name. They probably have like 15 million followers or something like that. We don't know who they are and they're going to do it. And I was actually just thinking, I was like, you know, Pat McAfee is just really, of course it's worth it because it's just the latest and a long tradition of that kind of content. Like you know what it reminds me of when I watch it

And this wasn't a show that I watched But sometimes you could just have it on The best damn sports show on television It was just like a bunch of guys up there talking You know And I'm not really there Because I don't really care about anything they say Specifically about any one game

But it's just like oh yes Like I'm sitting in a bar And those people are over there talking And I think that's like That kind of content is always going to be in style Right and it's just whoever chooses to move in that way whether it's bar stool you know dayport whatever like they're going to figure it out there'll be another pat maccalfee there's another pat there's a pat maccophie going right now we just don't know

who it is how many cast members from the best damn sports show can you name man let's do it was was john cruck on there uh one of them yes he was the m lb expert okay okay okay all right uh playmaker Michael Irvin. Michael Irvin was on there. Okay. Tom Arnold. Yes, that's what I was trying to remember if that was actually Tom Arnold. That's real. Who is the host was Chris Rose. Chris Rose. That's right. Who else can you get me? Basketball player. How many people is that? How many people are there? Because we got four already. Oh, well, well, there were some in and out. But I'm thinking of primary cast members. There's a former Pist. John Sally was on there. John Sally was on the show. Oh, that's right. He was like the main, he was like the face of the show, wasn't he? I totally forgot. Sally was supposed to be a big star, man. Rodney Pete was on the show. I don't know in memory of that. Okay.

Man. Carissa Thompson, 2006 to 2009. Really? I didn't know the show was on that late in the 2000s either. 2006. I felt like it was kind of gone by then, but maybe not. Number eight on our list is the woman who is trying to bring the best damn sports show to CBS News. It's very wise.

Just kidding. She's trying to bring stuff that might even be less popular. actually we're going to do Barry Weiss and David Ellison I think is one entry on this list because Barry Weiss the other in chief of CBS News because David Ellison Wanted her to be and because he wanted to buy the free press She just had her Erica Kirktown Hall Did either you guys watch any of that?

I mean only clips only highlights Joel had a tweet that turned out to be exactly right Which is she should have had somebody else from CBS News do it Like somebody that would have been more practiced in asking questions and putting together an interview. That would be my, if I had two critiques, it was like,

somebody else from CBS should have done it, and it should have been like a produced 60 minutes piece rather than a town hall. Well, I do think that there's something just in the history of journalism, at least in the modern era that I've been awake for, that, that,

like, being the person in charge of the newsroom is a thing that really only matters to, like, eight people in the world. You know, it's just like, did, like, did a single,

did a single mainstream viewer care more about meet the press because Chuck Todd was like the politics director of NBC News or whatever like no it's just you're either good at the job

or being on TV or you're not but that said I mean I guess I can see the case I'm going to be generous here I guess I can see the case for trying to make this a real medium moment and so much as like did anybody really care

about the CBS News takeover and, you know, this sort of like new voice that it's leading it. I mean, I think the error probably has more to do with the sort of insular world that Erica Kirk occupies and that Bari Weiss occupies. It's not that, maybe not that dissimilar from the Olivia Nutsi story that like you can make a whole lot of noise on Twitter and really not be meaningful at all in reality. But yeah, I mean. I just don't know if a town hall is the way to do.

I mean, that just, she's going to do a whole... No, I said this when we talked about it. Then I said this when we talk about it on Monday. Like, this is the, this is everybody that's ever had a show that's just like, I'm going to, like, I'm going to do this in a way that people are going to really care about. I'm going to go back to basics and people are really going to care about this and the things that I care about people care about. And it's not true. Like, no, like, why? Like, what, there's no version of this that people are interested in.

And the titles of these town halls, by the way, David, are, is literally things that matter. Yeah. I mean, man, I just, yeah, because that is the idea of every person that comes in someplace new. There's like, we're going to get famous people in front of the camera and we're going to ask them questions. And it doesn't matter the format, but that's what we're going to do to bump things up. And I don't know how many times that has to fail for people who understand that like, that's like, that worked maybe in 1973. Yep. Yeah, when celebrities weren't always in front of your face trying to talk to you.

But that's not like, we don't need to go. to CBS to see Erica Kirk talk about anything. She's taught. Great point. She's done nothing but talk, right? I think that that town hall, and my disclaimer here is that I don't have beef with Barri Weiss, but the most viral tweet I've ever had was about Barrie Weiss, right? So I have to, you know, come clean about that.

And my wife used to work with her at the New York Times. But she wants to be a star, not just like a journalism star. right like you know like you said who cares who the EIC the editor-in-chief of MS now is right of their newsroom right and no disrespect of that person that is an important job but like that gets you so many places and you think that'd be sufficient like she's cool with billionaires who are willing to give her money and to pull shit like this off but like that's different from being good on camera and if like this is all she's got is her plan to you know rejuvenate CBS news it makes a lot of sense because she doesn't know what the hell's she's doing. I almost don't see this as a 1973 TV mentality. I see this as a 20, 25 podcast mentality. Because you see all these, there's a lot of podcasts in the world. They're like, you know what we're going to do? We're going to have huge guests. And it's not going to be an interview. It's going to be a conversation. It's going to be a conversation. I'm like, okay, so you don't have any ideas. In other words, you got nothing. There's nothing. Well, it's that. And like, it's like, it's like, it borrows from like,

a political strategist, right? Because we're going to bring real people in there. They're going to ask you real questions about the things that are affecting them. Yes, exactly. I'm going to ask all the tough, the questions that we're going to talk across the divide here. It did, that did kind of resemble a campaign event in a way, the way people were asking questions and coming to the podium. So I think there's two questions. Well, I think this is also, I mean, let me, we, we can move on, but I mean, you know, we, we put Weiss and Ellison together for a reason. And I mean, part of this is an Ellison miscalculation, too. Because even if you think Barry Weiss is like this singular genius that needs to have this, I mean, that deserves this role, you must understand that like the degree to which the free press has occupied your brain over the past two or three years does not reflect any sort of broader reality, right? I mean, the free prices are like a very specific, very narrow readership in the grand scheme of things. It had plenty of readers or whatever, but nothing compared to CBS news. I mean, it was sort of like to make a totally different media comparison. It was sort of like when Ben Silverman, who like produced the U.S. version of the office just got put in charge of all of NBC TV. You know what?

It was just like this one small thing that everybody here really loves has worked so well that we're just going to promote the dude who is like nominally responsible for it. And it's just it's a totally different scale. Nobody thought to ask like how what is the maximum number? number of people that Ben Silverman has ever employed. You know, nobody thought to ask some, like, really very basic questions. And the podcast thing is telling, too, that Brian said, is just like, dude, what's your, like, like, I'll just say Pablo again because we already talking about. I'm like, that's a, it's a very successful podcast.

It's a podcast we have a lot of respect for. Should we put him in charge of, of, of Disney? Because, like, you know, he has a good, he's had a good run on sports. You know, like, it's, it's crazy. Right. Oh, it's absurd. But, you know, and maybe this is me being naive and you all can say that. It costs Ellison nothing but money.

Like, if CBS goes away, fine. The job here is reportedly or, you know, theoretically, was for them to take down this potential thorn in the side for Trump. Like to punish CBS for doing things that he didn't like and have it in the hands of an ally. Well, that has happened. And who gives a shit? Like, I'm sure that Ellis would like to make some money off this. thing, but if it goes away, it goes away. And the only people that are going to get hurt

to all the people that had these great jobs and worked at this August institution. Another way you can put it is, is Ellison wants to buy Warner Bros. Discovery. Yeah. Right. Once allies in the White House and the administration do it. So, hey, what can I tell you? Look what I did. You know, I put a friendlier or at least less antagonistic person and the charge of CBS News. So now that's why I can run CNN. Right. That's the thing. Now, whether he's successful with that or not, we will see. The thing, I'm meant to drop you a note about this, but the sort of interesting, like the trailing news story about the Time Warner Discovery, you know, Ellison story is that there are just, you know, various talking heads online saying, well, if that doesn't work, then he should just try to merge with NBC or buy, I mean, it's just this sort of NBC universal. There's this huge amount of money that it would take and it's unclear what he has.

But then there we have this incredibly complex and interesting story about whether you can own. to news networks and then could he could he conceivably buy the tv affiliates of tomore discovery and also merge with NBC so like MS now well i guess that's that's what's the company called i was gonna say revenant there you go but but you have like CNN and and and and uh you know NBC news and uh CBS news all under the same potential ownership and there's only some like very you know threadbare FCC rules that are whole that are prohibiting that sort of thing you know, and in the Trump era, who knows what any of that's worth. So that'll be something, I guess, to watch in the next year. I think the other thing that's interesting about Barry is, we tend to talk about this through an ideological lens, is how is she going to change CBS News?

The other question asks is how is she going to save CBS News? Because CBS has the problem that every other network news division has, which is this is all ending. This is all changing. And there has to be a bridge into the future that, you know, have to figure out what we're going to do. Like if you, if you were to tinker with 60 minutes or tinker with the CBS evening news and put Tony

de Copel in the chair instead of John Dickerson and Maurice Du Bois, that's fine, whatever. But like the problem is not the anchor. The problem is what's going to happen to the evening news in 60 minutes. That's the, that's the issue. And the question to ask about her,

I think more to me that's even more interesting than the ideological part is, is she the person who knows how to fix that? Well, man. you know what it you know this is going to sound outrageous and um whatever it's like climate change you know like it would be really helpful right now like is the earth hurdles towards extinction you know in early like you know just a spate of natural disasters like it would be great if they had somebody in position right now and all the governments were aligned and we were going to fight that right but that doesn't appear to be what's going to happen well if your network is facing an existential crisis

And you really need some. This is a really pivotal time. Like, it'd be great to have somebody that was knowledgeable of the industry that, you know, knew the movers and shakers and the people respected in that position. It would be great if CBS had that right now. And, you know, no offense or offense, whatever. That's not who is in charge of CBS.

And so it's like, well, all right. Like, if you work at CBS and you're kind of thinking, what is it going to look like in 10 years? It would be cool if we had somebody that knew what they were doing in charge. Indeed. You really frame that in a sort of wonderful dystopian way. Like what is what is Saturday the late show getting canceled or the late show now being hosted by, you know, Sean Hannity? Like what is like what is a more catastrophic story?

Right. I don't really want to think about the answer. No. I mean, and I saw like she hired Matt Gutman from ABC News. You guys know, I'm a good journalist recognizinger. I, you know, think of myself as that. I don't know who that is. You know, like that's just like hiring correspondents from other news networks.

Okay, what are they going to do? They're going to fix the problem. They hired Steve Billichick, man. You know what I mean? Like, I mean, this is your homeboys and your sons and your family. Like, come on in. They're giving us the money. I'll give it to you, you know.

So anyway. Number nine on our list, Zeran Mamdani. All right. We don't need to relive the whole very exciting momdani for mayor campaign and my momdani for a Democratic nominee campaign. But I guess what interests me, me is his use of the media, not just podcast, but social media and how what that's going to look like when he is running the city. Do we have any guesses about how he takes something that

worked in a campaign and translates it into governing? Joe, you want to go? Yeah, all right. Yeah, I mean, I think that, I mean, I think it's going to be, have to involve a lot more than social media. Like I think that he probably will be as good at messaging as anybody we've seen in that role in particular, right? And it's weird because New York is, it's like no matter who you are by the end of it, people end up seeing to hate you, right? They just kind of want you to go. So he's already sort of been behind the eight ball in that way. And you can, and you can sort of see the whispers of that where people are, you know, oh, the Trump thing. Like there's a division over that or he took a picture with Fran Drescher the other day

and people started talking about, oh, you know, all the money that she's, you know, given to, you know, or gotten from APEC or whatever. Like she's been supportive of Zionist causes or whatever. And so people are trying to undermine him in that way. And that's kind of like what happened with AOC too, right? That's sort of the arc of like, all right, there's this big, you know, social political phenomenon.

And then they settle in. And like the machinery of politics takes over. And it's like you're only going to be as popular as you were the day before you took office. And so I'm sure that he's going to use social media and he's going to be using about as effectively as anybody else. But also he's just going to run up against real life. I think so. I think I've never said this to Joel before. I think that's right.

I do think that there is a sort of anti-Trumpness to him in terms of his relationship with the media that I think the media was kind of very. decided to have a candidate that would go viral so easily that, you know, that the people were endlessly sort of interested in the content. I think the content will get, I think that he'll still be leaning into that and it'll still be very, very good at getting his, you know, his propositions, a lot of attention and stuff like that. But like still said, I mean, there's going to be the diminishing returns on that. It's he's not a shiny new thing anymore. So how much that'll get covered in a sort of national way. I'm not sure. I do think that there will be, I mean, not to get too Stephen A. Smithy about it. I think it would probably behoove him as a, as just strictly as the mayor of New York

City to tease a run for national office so that he'll keep getting national attention for everything that he wants, you know, even if he has absolutely no intention of doing it. And it will be interesting to see how that sort of gambit would play out. But I do think there will be continued national attention paid to his relationship both literal and, you know, figurative with President Trump in terms of, I mean, it's really interesting that he was able to win Trump over, you know, in reality, but also just like, can this sort of candidate work, I think. I think that there's a lot of people in journalism who probably, you know, voted for Mondani. And, and, you know, I think there's a lot of people in the world who conceivably would too.

But I think that there's probably even more people who are institutionalists who are more inclined to see him as an un-American radical, even inside the world of journalism, than, you know, some sort of like liberal savior. And that is sort of the most, that is the darkest timeline, but just sort of the inevitable timeline of political coverage of just like having just, you know, just the eternal damnation of anybody left of, you know, Chris Matthews is well you know that'll continue to be part of the conversation his success I think will will you know is a huge data point in that all right let's do number 10

Washington Post publisher and CEO Will Lewis we could have easily paired him with Jeff Bezos here some more events of 2025 the changeover that's the word to the Washington Post opinion section that happened in February

the resignation of David Shipley, who was running that place. Adam O'Neill became editor of Washington Post opinions in June. Note the time lag there because everything that happens at the Washington Posts happens incredibly slowly. Even teaching the AI tool that Stephen A. Smith signed a new contract, and your reporter has actually written about that. The summer political also reported that more than 100 journalists had left the post since last November, 100.

again, that is just a mind-boggling number. That is a whole newsroom. That's like three, that's like four local newspapers. It's like several Atlantics. Well, maybe not several Atlantics, but you know what I mean. The other thing about the Post we should say is the reporters, if not management, the reporters have rallied and recently landed a bunch of scoops, particularly when it comes to national security.

So what do we make of the Washington Post in 2025? I mean, the newsroom rallying is not terribly surprising to me. I mean, this is the Washington Post. This isn't just like, you know, a small newspaper where firing half the newsroom would just demolish it. But I think it is notable, right, that everybody didn't just roll over. And there's so many talented people that work there, I think, you know, I get, I have confidence in. them. But it's, I don't know. I mean, I think we could, we could line up the post in CBS News, sort of side by side. And there's certainly like a retrospective in a year or two or 10 to

look back on and say, like, it's kind of crazy how how susceptible to take over to, to, to deconstruction all of our journalistic institutions are. I don't think any of us would be surprised, are surprised to hear that, but it's, it's, it's sad, right? And it does make you sort of nervous in some broader sense. And we reviewed the paper, the new office spinoff or whatever. But I just told me, Brian and I were just, I think our experience, it was just so melancholy. Like, it was a, it's a funny show. But it, like, it's the thing that it captured from the original office to me more than anything else was the melancholy of just the, of just dated, of daily existence.

And there's just so much of that in modern media, even in the gigantic newsrooms. they're really infrastructure, they're really just like institutional ones. Anyway, I'll end on that set note. Yeah, well, no, I mean, I think, you know, so I have a married couple that's friends of ours. One work to, it works at NPR and other works at the Washington Post. They've lived here forever. And I remember thinking when we first moved out here, I was like, oh, they'll be here forever. Those are about as stable of jobs as you can have in media, you know, if you work at one of those two places.

and by the end of the year, I'm like, oh, man, this Spotify thing seems like it might be my workout longer a term than that, right? I mean, nobody knows, but to your point about the instability in media, Dave, I think that's definitely a big point. But yeah, go with somebody like that second. No, I mean, I was just going to say when you think about the rallying of the Washington Post or the reporters, I want to make sure that we're very clear here. You know, the Washington Post was mismanaged this year like nobody's business. mismanaged terribly this year. But when you think of what their reporters have been able to do, one, that's just a great reflection on them,

and they should be congratulated for that. The second is, I think, and I think if I'm remembering all the Washington Post segments we did correctly, we said this at one point that we would bet on the paper for these reasons. There is a bottomless supply of people out there who were editor of their high school newspaper, editor of their college newspaper. They had the good internships in college, not just the good internship before they're senior,

but the good internships all the way. Those are the people that want to go become political reporters. That is a big, big category of people still, even in journalism's diminished state. And those people, again, if you do the dumbest things imaginable and the Washington Post did many of them in 2025 and drive off your best reporters,

you will still have this huge reservoir of people that are like, oh, I'll put my hand up. I can cover the White House. I've been waiting for this opportunity. I can come in and kill this. And again, I'm not recommending that. I'm not saying you should do that. But I think that's one thing we've learned with Washington publications over the years. There's a lot of these people that want to step in and be great and can be great. It's interesting you say that because I don't know, man. I wonder if that makes us sound old because I was thinking. I was like of all the colleges I have to talk to, you know, throughout a semester. And like, do those people really want to work as like journal, you know, like D.C. Capitol Hill

reporters or do they want to do TikTok breakdowns about politics? You know what I mean? I, I assume that there's still like enough that that's one of the places where it's most competitive. But I do kind of wonder how many people go into college and go to journalism school and say, I really want to work at the Washington Post and do this sort of thing. But, but we'll see. I did want to. say one quick thing before I got a though. It's not a surprise that the Washington Post is still doing great work because that's the deep state of newspapers, man. They've got so many people there and that are going to be there. And those people are going to be there.

There's probably a fight for the soul of the news of the newsroom going on in that we don't know anything about. Right. But those new folks are coming in and there's people who are like, oh, this is my Washington Post. I refuse to concede it to these newcomers who don't give a shit about this place. I bet there's that kind of a division going on. on. And if there is, please let us know, like, reach out to me. Yes. Right. Yeah, right. We will let it. Please come on and talk about it in some detail. It would be great. But yeah, so like, it's not a surprise. And yeah, I think it'll go for as long as it can. And then there'll be an inflection point, but not now, not yet.

Number 11 on our list, Shannon Sharp. Remember Shannon Sharp? Yeah. Is there more to the Shannon Sharps? Wait, what is Shannon Sharps' 2025 been? Did he, did he, did he? Oh, did he? Let me. Let me. Did his media empire begin this year? No, right? No, but it felt like it was rising this year. Yeah, no, I'm just making sure, because this year has been such a blur, like when it begins. They're right.

He's on first take. There was a sense that he was going to then go get a huge media deal for his- Like a $20 million deal. Right. Yeah, whatever it was. He is accused of rape by a former girlfriend in a lawsuit filed in April in Nevada. He stepped away from ESPN. The suit was settled in July, the same month.

athletic reporter that he was out at ESPN. So now he's doing his media projects. We recently saw him, according to awful announcing, getting emotional when comparing his predicament to Sharon Moore's. So Shannon Sharp, now what? I mean, presumably he's making pretty good money doing what he's doing. Like he does have a hardcore audience that watches and consumes his content. I mean, I see it, you know, when I'm on Twitter,

I see it constantly all the time people are sharing it or, you know, whatever the bot farm things, whatever, centel, sharp centel or whatever. People are, you know, those kind of fans are recycling that content. But yeah, I mean, I hope he's okay, you know, scaling back his ambitions that like, right, the life, the media career that he thought that he was going to have. He's not going to have. Like, he's not, that money's not going to come back around again. That's over. Remember when his lawyer was Lanny Davis during this whole thing?

Right. And I was like, wait, that Lanny Davis? Yeah, man. The Lanny Davis. You know you're in trouble when Lanny Davis is involved. You know, you know some shit is going to run your life. Lanny Davis is his lawyer. Yeah.

Yeah. Finally, guys, I made Charles Barkley the face of number 12, but really it's the new world of NBA rights, which we've now been able to sample for a month and a half. We've got the NBA on NBC back. We've got the NBA on Amazon. Dirk Novitsky's a talking head. And we've got ESPN, which now includes inside the NBA,

which is still in its original form, more or less. I was watching ESPN last night, late last night, I think, and there is an Inside the NBA commercial on, and I've been watching the show and stuff, but I thought weirdly the commercial captured the vibe of the show exactly right, maybe even better than T&T. I mean, T&T, the presentation was

maybe a little bit too clubhousey, a little bit too wheels off, a little bit too DIY, you know, and this just felt like an appropriate, like they got the show. And again, this is just the commercial, this is the ad department or whatever. You know,

None of us thought that the show is going to exist in anything remotely similar to its original form on ESPN and it has. I think that that in and of itself is just a victory. You know? ESPN deserves credit for that. They really do. And I think ESPN, I think they know what to do with stars. Like they know how to treat stars in a way,

sometimes to their detriment. What you saw with McAfee? That's what I was going to say is I think there's a Macafee parallel, a McAfee corollary here. You have an established product and you're going to, And you're going to, you know, just figure out a way to monetize it as opposed to figuring out a way to, to shoehorn it into your universe. Yeah. It's like they were like this with Buck and Akeman, you know?

They didn't go to Trey. And it's like, Troy, could you be a little nicer to the refs? You know, like, no, no, they were like, no, we got you. We were paying the huge money. You do what you do. And it has really worked out in this case. And I just think the whole NBA thing just needed a reset. They needed new blood, new voices to come in and try to figure this thing out.

The reviews have been really good so far, like everywhere. Like it's one of the few times that you've heard this much positive chatter about the NBA and its coverage in a long time, which is interesting. And I wonder, and I don't think that these things are necessarily related, but this feels like, and I understand he's in the league on playing every night of again. It feels like the first post-Lebron year, right? Where I just don't, the league

doesn't seem to revolve around him in quite the same way. There's sort of an acknowledgement that, you know, he's on his way. I thought you're speaking metaphorically. You mean literally, yeah, yeah, yes, yeah, that does feel like that. It feels like that. And stuff is greatly reduced. Like, he's still a very good basketball player, but the Warriors,

they have a losing record. They're not at the center of things anymore. And in spite of that, or maybe because of that, it feels like the coverage has been like, all right. Well, let's be more joyful about the game. Like, let's entertain in a different way. And I feel like, yeah, maybe it was good. Maybe this is good for the NBA to move in this direction right now in particular. I think another way of looking at what the exact thing you just said is there's a lot of different NBA media partners. There's a lot of competing partners, I mean, competing platforms within places like ESPN that are trying to figure out ways to identify themselves. And I think, you know, it's, you know, that there's a lot of different people looking for the stories that are going to work, your stories that people are going to be interested in, and it's not always the easy answer.

It's not always talk about New York and L.A., like whatever, like the old canards of sports journalism. And I think the byproduct is it's in a lot of ways exposing a national audience to the sort of fandom that used to be specific to, like, you know, the ringer office after hours, you know? I mean, it's this sort of like basketball nerddom has, is being given a chance to flourish. And I think it's been a really successful project so far.

Basketball nerddom is distinct from basketball transactions culture. Not unrelated, not unrelated, but distinct, sure. Yeah, because I think if you look like what NBC's done with the studio and their whole game product, the biggest note they said was, we do not want a pregame show where people are talking about, here's a thing that might happen in nine months involving a different, team. We need to talk about the game we are showing tonight. We need to get you pumped up for NBA basketball. The mission here is to say, well, it's not going to be like, what's next for Janus? You know, every, every single night, like ESPN got to that rut. We need to do this thing

where we say, hey, we need to make Monday night basketball exciting. If tonight it's Blazers versus Bucks, we need to get you, to help you understand why that's a fun game to watch. And that, and that's like ESPN just got so far away from that. It just all became national stories, transactions, the same superstars being talked about, no matter who was on the game that night. You remember some of those horrible postseason ones where Stephen A was going on about like the Knicks.

You know, like the Knicks aren't playing, sir, tonight. So we're not going to talk about the Knicks right now. And that's, that is, I think, the note they've taken. And that's the biggest thing. And they took the note, by the way, because they spent so much money for the NBA rights. Yeah.

And nobody watching on Monday, you're screwed. Right. I mean, they had to get this right in some ways, right? Because, I mean, yeah, another, another uninspired set of years of that type of coverage. I mean, it wouldn't be fatal to the NBA. But with the leaving of this old guard of basketball, this generation that really carried it, like it could have been really bad. But, yeah, necessity is the mother of invention, you know.

I think it's funny. I was thinking about like 2026 and stuff we're going to be. talking about. I think people seeing Mike Torrico do a Western Conference Finals. They see him do Sunday night football. He's going to call the Super Bowl this year and then he's going to call the Western Conference Finals. I think

people are going to be like, oh, I always love it to watch announcer conversation shift because I always feel they're about you know, a year to two or three years behind, but they're going to be like, holy shit Mike Torrico is good at broadcasting. Yeah. Oh my goodness. He's one of these people who's had the hands laid

on him and it's like, oh yeah, he can just do that at another level. Yeah, totally true. Yeah, for sure. And people, you know, you almost have to put like things together like, oh, it's the Super Bowl, it's a Winter Olympics and now this. And that'll all happen in the first six months of 2026. You guys have any more predictions for me?

Olivia Nutzh is going to write for the free press. That's my other 2026 prediction. Oh, that's a good one. You're on the record about that. That's a good one. I want to repeat. There'll be another Barry Weiss Town Hall. Yeah. What was the over? We already have the list, by the way.

Oh, really? Oh, how many? J.D. Vance, Sam Altman, Westmore. A debate, also a debate involving Ross Douthin and Stephen Pinker. Wait, who's Stephen Pinker? He's like a, I don't mean to. He's a, somebody who actually sells books. What is he?

Yeah, Stephen, isn't he like a brain guy? What's it? What's the word I'm looking for? He's a brain guy. Well, I was going to say, like, he's not, I mean, this is going to be really crude. I felt like his name is associated with phrenology to be for some reason. I don't understand. I don't believe you would describe it exactly that way, Joel.

Yeah. I think I did a Stephen Pinker book cover at some point in my life. Really? Yeah. Back in my old design career. I think. Am I crazy? Yeah, maybe so.

Can I say how fun this was, guys? Yeah, man. Can we do this before December? Like, I love having all my friends here in the same place. This is awesome. Yeah, man. I think it's a great idea. All right, so we're going to do this more often.

Every pod will now be double the length. Yes. Sorry, Bruce. You know what we should do? We should all go to Fort Worth. That's the place that's special to all three of us. Yes. There you go.

We should do a lot, well, not a live show. We're going great outdoor subs. We're going to be there on today for a live show. I want to get my number nine. That's right. You know that place, David? Which one? Great Outdoor Subs is over there by the museum district.

Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I know. I know, yes, absolutely. That was Joel's go-to at T-C. Oh, my God. I hit me, every time I'm in Fort Worth, I go by great outdoors and get me a number nine. My mom just said that my sister and her husband are moving to Fort Worth. So we can, well, I'll make sure that they get a place with a, with a, you know, cabana house that can be a recording studio. If you're a member of Pressbox Prime, you'll be hearing Fort Worth talk for the next two hours. For the rest of you.

I'm Brian Curtis. He's David Schuemaker. He's Joel Anderson. Production Magic. Bruce Baldwin, thanks for hanging with us in 2025. We hope you hang with us next year when the media news will all be positive and good. It's going to be amazing. Can't wait to see you guys next year. I like my buddy. Bye.