The Press Box - The Travis Kelce-Taylor Swift Show, Jimmy Pitaro’s ESPN, and the Worst Question Asked at the White House

Episode Date: August 14, 2025

Hello media consumers! It’s a Monday show on a Thursday! Bryan fills David in on his Connecticut hotdog tour earlier this week (0:16), before discussing Taylor Swift’s appearance on Travis and Jason Kelce’s ‘New Heights’ podcast, and a few thoughts on Monday’s Jimmy Pitaro interview (11:23). Then they run through the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, two new entries of Worst Question Ever Asked at the White House, rumors of Howard Stern and SirusXM parting ways, Oklahoma selling ‘postgame media access’ to fans, and loads more (38:20)! Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Producer: Kyle Crichton  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, Danny Hyfitz here from the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. We're coming to you multiple times per week to tell you who to draft, who not to draft. Honestly, that's kind of most of it. The Ringer Fantasy Football Show, YouTube, Spotify, wherever get your podcast, the Ringer Fantasy Football Show. David? Yes. Last week I had two days all to myself in Connecticut. And you'll never...

You'll never guess what I did with my time. Connecticut. Connecticut. No, I have no idea what you did with your time. You go condo shopping and Danbury? Like, what do you do there? No, David, I went on a hot dog tour. What? Yes, sir.

Are you aware of how big hot dogs are in Connecticut? I am ashamed to say no. I am not aware. I only recently learned that what the taco truck is to Los Angeles, the hot dog stand is to Connecticut. What? Is it? This is real.

Does it, I have so many questions, but I guess this is the obvious one. Is the, is the, are the hot dogs made fresh? Or is it just about? Fresh.

Well, I mean, like, are they, is it just like Oscar Meyer hot dogs at each stand, but with different toppings and stuff? Or is it, or is there something about the meat itself that makes a hot dog cart stand out?

There's some, local brands for sure. And I think probably the Jews here, no pun intended, comes from the fact that it's East Coast, hot dogs are big anyway. Yeah. But Connecticut, there's a lot of driving.

This is not the Jersey turnpike. Oh my God. My only choice is this restop named after Howard Stern that has a Dunkin' Donuts. There's just a lot of space to go around. And so there are a lot of hot dog stands. Yeah.

And you and I have the same taste in food. So as I'm going around, as I'm looking things up, if I see the word gourmet in the title of any of these, I'm out. I'm looking for hot dogs, not looking for pulled pork on the hot dog or macaroni and cheese or anything like that. We just want a nice old-fashioned hot dog stand so that I could bring you this crucial information. my first stop david was it a place called kurt's muckies which was on a highway exit near the berg of torington connecticut i'm looking at it right now it's got the closes soon warning on uh on google maps because it shuts its doors at 3 p.m when i was taking a picture of the menu for journalistic purposes the woman at the card said we're on facebook now turns out there's not a lot of infrastructure you need to make a good hot

No. You just need that little cart, a few toppings, the dogs in the water. Oh, it's an actual cart. Like you would see in Central Park, like a hot dog cart. That kind of cart. There were a few picnic tables so that people could eat the hot dog, but I noticed a number of people were taking the hot dogs back to their cars and just sitting in the front seat and eating the hot dog.

Okay, that's great. It reminded me of what I thought, like Times Square, theaters were like in the 80s, you know, everybody's sitting alone with their weaners, as it were. Oh, that's terrible. So just the hot talk, so I'm guessing the cart comes to the tables. It's not the tables. The tables don't come to the cart. Oh, no, you go to the cart, David. You walk to the cart. No, I'm saying, I'm saying the tables are must be their public benches. The guy doesn't bring folding chairs or anything. He goes to finds a place where you could sit down. That is my understanding. We can check the Facebook page for more information. Okay.

My second stop, you would have loved, a place called Augie. and raise in East Hartford, Connecticut. Uh-huh. This was a hot dog stand. I mean, a guy had a silver spatoon-looking thing full of chili that he's stirring as he's getting the hot dogs ready. And it was here I learned that Connecticut hot dogs

and perhaps hot dogs in other places, but I'm discovering all this in Connecticut, have a superpower, which is that they often use a bun called the New England roll. Oh, yeah. This is what you get a lobster roll on. Yep.

It looks like a slice of white bread on the side. Yes, and it's like cut right down the middle, yeah. So what you can do with this is you can put this on the griddle on the flat top and get a nice toast on your hot dog bun. Yeah. And in Augian Rays, there was a cheese dog option, and they put the cheese in this. And so by the time you get it, it's like a hot dog has been lowered into a grilled cheese sandwich. Oh.

It was so good. Also, Augie and Reyes identified itself as a milk bar, which I've always thought of in a David Chang context. This is definitely not a David Chang kind of joint. Is a milk bar like a milkshake bar? Like an old soda fountain kind of place? Is that the idea? So they had milkshakes, and I think that's probably where it comes from.

But that was a milk bar in this case. I'm looking to get this one too. There's pastrami on the menu, but only as part of the breakfast egg egg and cheese combo. I'm trying to see if there's a Oh, there we go. If I can get pastrami on a hot dog, I might be,

I might be seduced. Now, David, that was my second stop. How many hot dogs do you think I can comfortably eat? In the course of what, a day or a sitting? Yeah, this is like one and a half days. I mean, if it was a couple of, contest, Brian. I would, I would shock the listener by making up a number. But I'd say like if you're just trying to keep yourself fed, I don't know. Six. That's about it. I mean, we have an empirical test of this formula every July 4th on ESPN. But about five or six hot dogs, your boy was getting a little bit tired of hot dogs. Yeah. But I pressed on, David, to Capitol lunch. A place in New Britain, Connecticut. it.

Mm-hmm. And what I loved about Capital Lunch was there were two choices on the menu. You could get the hot dog as they make it, which came with mustard onions and sauce, quote, unquote, which is kind of like a chili. Or he could get it plain. Again, there were no exotic hot dog combinations there. And also, as I'm reading about Capital Lunch online, I'm seeing lots of references to the natural casing of the hot dog, which provides a snap. That's one of those words In all my many many decades of eating hot dogs

I never thought of before Yeah It's like when barbecue became a gourmet item And people are like You know that had a really good bark on it I'm like oh you mean the black part Is that what we're calling that now People at Capital Lunch by the way

ordering four to six hot dogs for themselves Yeah It's kind of a delicious See I'm looking at the pictures now they seem to kind of come in two packs. So that's, wow, this is incredible. This looks like one of those places that, like, in an old crime novel, the ex-con would, like, get out of jail, walk up to the front of the place

and pull the help wanted sign out of the menu and hand it to the guy standing behind the bar to assure his, to ensconce's employment or whatever. It is exactly that kind of place. All of these places could have figured in a Connecticut noir novel of some sort, especially this last place, David, which was my favorite stop on my Connecticut hot dog tour, Carol's Lunchbox in beautiful Farmington, Connecticut. This was located in a little building next to a public golf course with a bunch of par threes. And I arrived at Carol's Lunchbox around 10.20 a.m. on a Sunday.

and the place is full of golfers in baseball caps and wearing shorts and they're coming in for their Mickelope Ultras or their vodka and watermelon lemonade as they get off the course. And I'm the guy who goes up to the front. I'm like, hey, is it too early for hot dogs? To which Mike, who is the nephew of the eponymous Carol, told me, well, it is kind of early, but I'm happy to make you some. and he made me too with melted cheese and grilled onions.

And they were so good, David. And I'm sitting there among these golfers. One of whom actually used the phrase, I had a case of the shanks today. It's not a phrase that's ever escaped my lips or yours. And I'm eating these delicious hot dogs. And I was so happy at 10.35 on a Sunday morning. Oh, my God.

And I bet your wife is happy. She didn't have to go along for any of this trip, huh? Well, that's the thing. I asked her about this later, and I sent her some pictures, which I'm going to post on the blues guy here later today. So check that out. But I sent her a picture of him. She's like, that looks delicious.

But if I were on the tour with you, I just want one bite. Yeah. I would not want a total of six to eight hot dogs. I would want one total hot dog. That's what the real foodie connoisseur would do, one bite of each thing, and then you've got to put it down, right? Because there's more. You swish water in your mouth afterwards?

Exactly. You swish root beer in your mouth and spit it onto the ground. I believe birch beer is a Connecticut thing. You're familiar with birch beer in your neck of the woods? We have birch beer in New Hampshire when we go up there. It's a, yeah, yeah. So I grew up in-tasting root beer. Is that how you described it? I grew up in North Carolina with cheer wine, which I is very sweet, but I do think is superior, sorry, to birch beer. So I'm a little bit conflicted. But yeah, it is. It's just sort of a weird cherry kind of, sort of day-old root beer flavor. Anyway, everyone out there, please share your hot dog experiences with us in Connecticut or otherwise. We will not be including them on a future episode of the podcast.

But coming up on today's press box, David, Travis Kelsey recorded a podcast with his girlfriend. What do we make of Kelsey the media figure? We'll have some sound and postgame comments from my interview with ESPN chairman Jimmy Petaro. Does it matter if Howard Stern got canceled? the worst question, make that questions, ever asked at the White House and the most sumptuous platter of only in journalism words we've ever seen.

All that and much more on the press box. A part of the rigor! Podcast Network. Hello, media consumers. Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and producer Kyle Kreiton here. David, somebody forgot to tell the media to take August off. Because we've had no natural vacation at all.

No. this summer. And there was a news event of sorts that happened behind some sure microphones yesterday. Taylor Swift went on the New Heights podcast with Travis and Jason Kelsey. I watched almost all of this. I smiled when I saw the way the New Heights podcast titled this for YouTube, Taylor Swift on reclaiming her master's rapping the era's tour and the life of a showgirl

turns out that when you get Taylor Swift on your podcast you write the exact same kind of title that we would write on the press box. Is Taylor Swift the biggest podcast guest full stop? Yeah, I think so. I think anybody else I'm trying to, I mean like, you know, the president has certainly done a lot more podcasts appearances and Taylor Swift has.

She's a bigger get than Trump. She's got to be the biggest get in just about any media and I hesitate to think anybody who, of anybody who would be as big as star, I can't think anybody would be as big a star and is sort of as much of an enigma in so many, not an enigma,

but I feel like you're really interested in her answers of very dumb questions, you know? So like, yeah, she's got to be the biggest. So Beyonce gets thrown out there as a Taylor Comp in a lot of ways. A Beyonce podcast. But you know what? I really would not be interested in hearing a superficial Beyonce.

Like, I would have to be assured that it was a great Beyonce interview. I think that, like, just the existence of a Taylor Swift interview was somehow a bigger deal. So the way this happened was that Travis Kelsey and Taylor Swift were sitting together, usually holding hands or at least arms interlocking. And Jason Kelsey was at his home. And Jason Kelsey kind of became the interviewer. the interlocutor

like Travis was just kind of sitting there nervously laughing and cooing at his girlfriend I have a few cuts for you having listened to almost this entire podcast Oh, you did it for journalism I did it for journalism Okay I told you like when we do this show

I find up myself listening to all kinds of podcasts that I've mostly just heard of Yeah Here is Taylor Swift talking about re-recording Her album Red So many more verses in that song then ended up being on the album that I had put out when I originally put out red. I made the the glorious, fortuitous mistake of saying that to my fans in an interview. You know what

those words mean. You're so handsome. So this was really the way this whole interview went. Travis Kelsey playing the meathead who didn't recognize fancy words. And then Taylor Swift, turning to him be like, actually you do recognize those words, you're doing a bit, and you're so handsome. And by the way, I don't know if you dipped into Twitter at all yesterday, but the whirlpool of takes about this interview, I mean, you could find whatever you wanted in here. I saw people being like, this is what a supportive male partner looks like. Congratulations, Travis Kelsey.

Thank you so much for watching this podcast and coming up with that. That's amazing. Because you are doing the hard work of having a take. Taylor Swift, I don't know if you know this, David, has gotten really into baking sourdough. Oh, good for her. And she's got some sourdough-based puns as well. I do the whole, I got bread bags and I got labels. And so it's, you can, you can really go for it with the puns.

You go, are you ready for it? Are you ready, right? Um, uh, flower song is the slamming screen door. That's horrible. Um, um, um, uh, it's a loaf story. Baby just say yeast. Just say yeast. That really reminded me of a David Shoemaker guess is a strange pun headline moment there.

Hmm. I would have had to lead you to that one, wouldn't I? Yeah. The whole interview was sort of fascinating. I think it's fair to say that you and I are not Taylor Kremlinologist. No. Nora Preciati has never asked for our analysis about a new Taylor album or interview. Yet.

But just kind of watching this celebrity couple manifest in front of our eyes, hearing Swift use podcast-ready phrases like, I've got some thoughts. Yeah. Which is like number two in podcast world, only behind a lot to unpack here. Mm-hmm. I also got to thinking about Travis Kelsey, the media figure. Yeah. Because there's a big GQ profile of him by Sean Manning, who is also Simon and Schuster's publisher. What do we make of Travis Kelsey here near the end of his football career with the famous girlfriend, with a huge podcast he was doing with his brother long before.

He got together with Taylor Swift. Mm-hmm. what do we think of him? Yeah. It's interesting. It's like, I was going to say he fills an interesting role in our sort of sports media landscape. But I almost meant that, I mean, I meant that in a sort of vague way, but it's actually, I could say it really specifically. It's almost like this role existed and he ventured to fill it.

or maybe conversely that he sort of existed and people sort of created the job description for him sort of separate from whether or not the job was too big or too broad or to to

just a little bit inapt for him. I find him like actually very endearing and very easy to watch. and I generally like brother energy, you know, when the two of them are together. It's always something not having a brother and something I always sort of appreciate and imagine

is to be a wonderful thing. Got deep there. But I don't know. I feel like my biggest, my biggest halting, my biggest misgiving about Jason Kelsey is sort of like what I feel like, the degree to which I feel like has been forced upon me. This is Jason or Travis? I mean, sorry, Travis. And is the degree of which he's been forced upon me? And I know some of that's just made up in my head and some of that's due to just like the segments we've done on this show.

But I also just feel like it's mostly about the expectations of this semi-notable football player who's on a notable team who is dating Taylor Swift. Right? It's like it's like you would expect Taylor, I should stop talking. You would expect Taylor Swift to be the one dating the best quarterback in the world. The Josh Allen type. yeah or Patrick Mahomes to keep it on the chiefs right sorry I know that he's married or whatever and the fact that she's dating like you know a dude who catches passes from Patrick Mahomes just sort of messes up the whole algorithm it's like we're bored treating Travis Kelsey like he's Patrick Mahomes just because of who he's dating and because of his like proximity to Patrick Mahomes sort of I don't know it's it seems like it's just a little bit of easily slightly miscast or at least miss miss miss uh uh spotlighted or to whatever degree. But that's kind of what's fun about it.

Yeah. That it's him. I think we're eveninging out into a good, into a very livable place. Yes, into a very workable situation where it's like now we kind of know who he is. We know what to expect. And like, you know, it's on us to get the expectations right. Yeah. He does a whole bit in this GQ profile about, you know, I'm conscious of the way I'm being seen as a party guy and a goofball and a,

meathead athlete, but he doesn't seem too bothered by it. Yeah. He seems comfortable in his own skin. Yeah. And I agree with you. I find him to be very winning. I'm not a Chiefs fan at one single bit. I am not somebody who follows celebrity relationships,

but every time I see him, I kind of smile because he makes me happy. I've also been thinking about this lately. Like, when you and I were growing up, 80s, 90s and before our time, too, 70s, 60s, Football players became actors pretty regularly. Yeah. You had, you know, your Bubba Smith turning up in a police academy movie and your Fred Dreyers and those kind of people. And I think that was Alex Karras. Alex Karris is a great one.

Dick Butchus. Dick Butchus. They're just a random sitcom. You're just like, oh, Zeta, R-A-P. Bob Euker on Mr. Belvedere. Yeah. That would happen a lot. I think it's mostly because those guys were really underpaid.

you had to go look for work afterwards. Yeah. If you make $40 million in your playing career, you're probably like, I don't need to be the third lead in a sitcom right now. Yeah, I don't even know what the, with the,

you know, Players Association State was back then, but I'm sure they're, sure the SAG health insurance was probably a draw to some of them too, you know? I mean, there's a lot of benefits to being a named actor.

I mean, Jim Bouton's in the long goodbye. Yeah. Like, What? That happened? So if Travis Kelsey brings back the football field baseball diamond pipeline to the movies and television, I'm happy about that. Yeah. David, on Sunday, I was sitting in that Connecticut hotel room. I was digesting that hot dog and I was getting ready to interview ESPN chairman Jimmy Bittaro. I've heard of him. You've heard of him. We mentioned him a couple of times in this podcast. on Monday morning I went to his office on the campus there at Bristol I was just me I just had my little double mic set up that I'm

placing on the table in his office and desperately trying to make sure I've hit the record button we've all been there yeah before we start talking Jimmy Batara one time was described to me like this they said his predecessor John Skipper would have a meeting at ESPN and the meeting would start late there would be these unbelievable digressions to the early novels of Don Winslow and Faulkner and other literary heavyweights. And then you would leave the meeting late. You'd feel so good.

You'd feel so mentally and culturally and rich, but you would have no idea what John Skipper wanted from you. Whereas a Jimmy Petaro meeting starts on time. It ends on time. You know exactly what he wants. So I go in there and say, hey, hey, dude, great. All right, here we go. Play.

It is time to ask the questions and give the answer. I'm going to play a few cuts for you here. We can talk about him. One idea I wanted to run by the chairman of ESPN is, is ESPN still developing talent in-house? Since you came to ESPN in 2018, you've hired some of the best or most sought-after announcers out there. Joe and Troy to call Monday Night Football.

Now the inside the NBA gang to host some of your pregame stuff. Pat McAfee. Do you ever worry you're shopping for announcers at the top of the market rather than developing your own talent in-house? Look, we're doing both. Yes, all of those folks that you just mentioned are very important to ESPN today and to our future. But we are at the same time continuing to develop talent. By the way, if you look across the industry, so many of the folks that are covering various sports came from ESPN.

We have a very, very deep bench. We take a lot of pride in how deep a bench we have at ESPN. And if you look across our studio programming, we have a ton of people that are up and coming that we're incredibly excited about. And so it is no less a priority today than it ever has been in terms of developing talent.

What do you make of that? ESPN developing talent now versus, as the old days. Well, I mean, it's demonstrably not the same as it was in the old days. In the oldest of old days, they had no choice but to sort of develop their own talent. Sure, they got, you know, reasonably identifiable names, but I think you'd be stretched to call even most of those people notable in any sort of real way. They had to make their own stars on SportsCenter and elsewhere to create their own sort of

appointment viewing. And now, like you said, they're hiring everybody at the top of the game. I'm sure that they are, you know, making an effort to whatever degree, to produce in-house, to produce talent in-house and to give some opportunities. But, you know, those opportunities, at least from where I'm sitting, are more tangential or at least much less visible than, you know, they might have been in years past. What did you think? I think that's 100% correct.

And when I asked him in a follow-up, you know, tell me some of the people you're developing here. Here's some of the names he came up with. Mina Kimes. Mina Kimes is great. She joined ESPN in 2014, four years before Jimmy got there. And she came through the magazine, which no longer exists. He mentioned Malika Andrews. Also does a fantastic job.

She got there in 2018, the same year Bataro joined the company. Malika Andrews hosted the pregame NBA show with how many different. did that thing go through since she stepped in for Rachel Nichols way back when. And then ESPN went out and hired inside the NBA and got that show from turn. Laura Rutledge does a fantastic job on NFL Live. ESPN had chances to put her on the Sunday pregame show and the Monday night pregame show. Those roles went to Greenie and SVP respectively. Yeah.

And so when you look at the big games, Those big, all bold cap, you know, bold face television shows. They are people that have either been at ESPN for an eternity or people that ESPN went out of house to get. And I was thinking about this, like just to draw a name out of a hat, Colin Coward. Colin Coward came to ESPN in 2003 from Portland. He was the sports radio guy in Portland.

And I remember they brought him in. I remember listening to the radio and being like, Who is this person? And is his name really Colin Coward? Yeah. Or cowherd. And he becomes this huge star. And I'm like, would that happen at ESPN in 2025?

Is there a pipeline to go get the best guy in Portland? Yeah. And turn that person into a star? Doesn't feel like it to me. And my related question was, are you worried that you're not producing as many shows in house, and you're actually just going and buying television shows. So not just the top talent. Yeah.

But you're buying inside the NBA, McAfee's show, you're outsourcing podcasts to Omaha to a large extent. To me, again, I look at his regime. Credit to them, they've solved a lot of problems. Yeah. His, Jimmy Petaro's favorite baseball team is the Yankees. They've solved problems in New York Yankee kind of ways by like, let's go get the best free agent right now.

But I do worry about the development. Here's idea number two. As you know, from that NFL deal they just concluded, the NFL now has a 10% equity stake in ESPN. NFL is their part owner in that sense?

And I asked him, how do you want to cover the NFL? Is there a media outlet out there that covers its owners that you want to emulate? That's a tough one. the only the only place that comes to mind would be the Washington Post

in terms of how they have still relatively new ownership and how they've covered ownership yeah but but like I said Brian I am I'm very confident

that Burke Magnus and his team are going to stay the course here and continue to cover the league, the way they always happen. So that's out there now, David. Cover the NFL like the Washington Post covers Jeff Bezos.

Yeah. And his various empires. Thought that was interesting. It'll be really, and we've talked about it before, it's going to be a very interesting process. I don't doubt that there will be a lot of call in-house, and maybe, I mean, from the Pataro's office itself, to be deliberate about covering the NFL,

to make sure that there is the, that people see ESPN covering the NFL in a critical way, not necessarily negative, but in a critical way to, to, you know, make good on this sort of promise. I think, you know,

where the rubber hits the road is really the, the real difficult problems, right? To what degree to use spotlight the sort of, you know, moral and cultural and, and even legalistic, you know, stories that will inevitably just take over a media cycle or two in the next several years. I mean, that's the real question.

I thought about that when I saw Don Van Nata tweeting about this John Gruden lawsuit. Uh-huh. That's now going to go ahead and there's all this potential discovery out there of NFL emails. Stuff that could actually make you like the NFL a little bit less. or put bad things into the universe about the NFL. I mean, what's so funny about ESPN recently is if we watch any of their shows or listen to any of their podcast, the schematic breakdowns, the statistical breakdowns about pro football are light years past what they used to be. They are journalistically more sound, I think you can say, and I think that's a great credit to that organization.

The thing is, is if you do a film breakdown saying, hey, Dak Prescott, has trouble throwing these kind of passes, that doesn't depress anybody's interest in the NFL. Yeah. That just makes them want to watch more NFL. Yeah. And consume more of your analysis about the NFL. So it's really the tiny, tiny percentage. And I also think it's way more likely.

I saw Roger Goodell actually called into an ESPN All Hands meeting this week to reassure everybody that he was not going to be interfering with their journalism. That's front office sports reported. that. I don't know that we needed that particular reassurance. That's how it made me feel worse. I'm not sure that Roger Goodell having the Zoom password to this all hands meeting is any way reassuring that he will not be an overbearing part owner of the company. What are you doing here, Mr. Commissioner? But I honestly think it's not probably going to come from Roger Goodell making an angry phone call or an NFL owner making an angry phone call. It's going to come from there being fewer people at ESPN to write that uncomfortable story and fewer high-profile places in the ESPN universe to run that uncomfortable story.

That's where the suppression of those kind of stories is going to happen. In fact, it's already happened. Let's be honest. You look, the website is way different than it used to be. The opportunities to publish those kind of words in an ESPN universe are way fewer than used to be. Well, and even the writers who were capable of doing that are incentivized to do other things with their time and energy. I mean, and that's not like, I'm not trying to be like conspiratorial about that. It's just like, you know, there's a lot of other ways to get your bosses to slap you on the back, especially in a multimedia empire like ESPN, you know. And that's not what I thought you were going to say. I didn't think you were going to say that who's going to write it. I thought you were going to say it's the actually it's not about Roger Goodell or one of the owners. throwing a fit. I think it's more about the maybe even subconscious

negligence of the people who are running ESPN.com, right? It's just like, do I really want to deal with that right now? Do I really want to have to go to Jimmy's office to have a conversation before we pursue this? So I really want to deal with the blowback from the NFL. And if the answer is marginal, you just don't do the piece. Like, that's,

it's going to take a lot of institutional bravery and just kind of the constitution to make that stuff happen on a daily basis because the big stories don't come out of nowhere. The big stories start as small stories. You're so right. And those are the kind of things that just waft through a news organization. You don't even have to say it. There's no proclamation that's made.

Nobody says don't do this. But everybody just starts to orient themselves in a different direction. Now, I was thinking of you during this interview, and I had to throw in at least one question about professional wrestling. Nick Con like Roger Goodell likes to sell things a la carte and WWUE still has a big library of events going back to the 80s and I think beyond at Peacock. Is that something you'd be interested in bidding on in the future? Yeah, we're always interested in content of that quality. I will tell you that we will have the archival rights for the events that we are airing.

But yes, in terms of their library, we certainly would be interested in when, if and when those rights are available. Does that surprise you that ESPN could get into the WWE library business? Yeah, we talked about this a little bit off the air. But yeah, I mean, I think that the, I think it was sort of a natural assumption. And these deals are, you know, are going to be done separately, like you said. And that's probably a very canny move by Nick Kahn. But the fact that it was not part of the first deal, you know, but the paperviews, or the PLEs, sorry, the big events

and the library were both at Peacock together and that they were not sold at the same time led, I think, a lot of people to believe that they would not continue to be linked. And also separately, you know, you look at a company like ESPN, it's like in the live event business, the live event business, right? We show football games, we show baseball games,

we show live wrestling, whereas a company like Netflix, who's also in bed with WWE, is more of a library business. they they that's that's where you go to watch you know five seasons of your favorite new show or whatever um but i don't know that it's crazy for ESPN to be to want that it's like you know as a wrestling fan i mean you hear wrestling fans say the thing they miss the most when they when every time wb switches streaming partner is the old wb network where everything they owned for decades almost was available at the click of a button there's a lot of i think for sports fans in particular

There's a lot of, you know, nostalgia for various times in history. And it wouldn't be a crazy move at all. I would think for ESPN to not only have WWE, but just to see what the price tag is on NBA archives, on NFL archives, on anybody that they're promoting new sports. And or, yeah, just covering. I mean, let become the, become the archive, you know, become the place to watch great old sporting events. It could be, I mean, that could be big business for them. I think they're going to think more like a library going forward. I think when you look at the programming decisions and you see like,

why weren't they interested in Around the Horn, which still did a pretty good number on weekdays? Well, it's because, you know, around the horn is a show that starts and ends 30 minutes later and is about the topical news of the day. What if we poured our money and energies into getting a bunch of old documentaries from NFL network? They could be part of the ESPN app. once that gets through the Trump administration's regulators. What if we have a football life and you can just watch any documentary you want at all times?

We could play with old games, like you said. We could have the WWE library. I think they think more like an app now. And that's part of the change at ESPN. Now, everybody's doing that. But as you say, ESPN's a little different just because they're going to have a lot of live sporting events, no matter what form you watch ESPN it. The game starts at noon.

But I think they want library stuff. I think they understand that going forward that is as valuable or more valuable to them. Well, it's certainly more valuable if you can fund it, right? I mean, just like Netflix use their crazy market valuation. Maybe not crazy, but their astronomical market valuation for years and years to fund the production of a billion new TV shows and movies that, like, create the library for them, right? They got to float out there. They're bought, you know, and you'll never run out of things to watch.

It's more of a long-term play that, you know, not everybody is sure that ESPN has the pocketbook for. But if you can do it and if you can make that case, then absolutely yes. Like I think it's really, really smart. And you can, you know, when you talk about the prevalent, what you want is to be as an app, ESPN plus app, whatever, is to be necessary, is to be like, ingrained in people's lives. And if you know that you have a better, you know, success rate, if you want to see like whatever game seven of the 1970, whatever NBA playoffs, like whatever it is,

if you have a better success rate going to the ESPN app, then you do going to YouTube, then you're going to go there, right? I mean, that's the sort of thing that makes you kind of intrinsic to people's lives in a very kind of subtle way. All right, David, coming up in 30 seconds. Who's guilty of asking, the worst question ever asked at the White House.

But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time. Send your nominees to at the Pressbox pod where they are always, always gratefully received. I don't know if you notice this earlier in the month, but Donald Trump went for a walk, David, on the roof of the White House.

Oh, yeah. when he was asked what he was doing up there by the press, he said, just taking a little walk. It was an overwork Twitter joke to write, Didler on the roof. Didler on the roof. Thanks to Charlie Ban, if you made me look up the exact definition of the word didler, congrats, you made the overword Twitter joke of the week.

All right, in the notebook dump, David. Once again, everybody's favorite press box bit, the worst question ever asked at the White House. Now, I know a number of people out there are wondering, wait a second. Is this really the worst question ever asked at the White House? Don't worry, Kyle is currently reading the papers of Herbert Hoover's press secretary, Theodore Jocelyn, to make sure that these are, in fact, the worst questions ever asked to the White House.

And today, David, I got two nominees for you. First comes from Benny Johnson. Yeah, him. He was in the new media seat. He was talking about that story where Edward Corristine, the doge guy known as Big Balls, was assaulted near DuPont Circle in Washington, D.C. That was a prelude to Donald Trump federalizing the DC police force. Here's the question from Benny Johnson. Given the heroic actions of a member of this administration, just a few blocks from this building, will the president consider giving the presidential medal of freedom to Big Balls?

I haven't spoken to him about that, but perhaps it's something he would consider. I'll ask him and get back to you, Benny. I thought that was a bit when I first heard it, but then I watched the video and Benny Johnson was just asking a question about big balls. Wow, congratulations to Benny Johnson. This is a really tough competition. It really is. And our second nominee proves that, David.

Brian Glenn, the chief White House correspondent of Real America's voice, the boyfriend of Marjorie Taylor Green, a multi-time winner of this feature. He's back on the beat once more. I've got an entertainment-based question for you. A few weeks ago, Stephen Coke. Kyle, can we just stop it right there? I've got an entertainment-based question for you.

Do you feel like you're in a car that's fish-tailing? Right off the bat. Anyway, Kyle, back that up. Let's start over here. Stephen Colbert announced that he was leaving his show. Howard Stern announced that he had been in Sirius XM Radio or parting ways. Do you think the hate Trump business model that's been in the entertainment business is going out of business because it's not popular with the American people? So sorry, Benny Johnson.

You did not ask the worst question ever asked at the White House. Benny Johnson's question at least had a possible answer. Brian Glens did not. Is that a good segue for us to talk about Howard Stern? That's perfect. Let's do it. Because I think everybody's seen this headline that appeared in the British tabloid, The Sun. Howard Stern's show, quote, to be canceled, end quote, after nearly 20 years on serious XM as a $100 million contract is up later this year. The pun attached to that was, bye, bye, buoy.

Howard Stern's Contracted Serious is indeed up at the end of this year. Howard is 71 years old. Oh, my God. This has never been confirmed or to the extent that I've read denied by anybody, but it's put a lot of other stories into the ether, like one from the New York Post, which read some of the show's writers have been keeping their best jokes for themselves to use after the show's eventual demise. I'm just like, I'm not going to waste a joke on the last days of the Howard Stern show.

What? Alert listener Andy Cliver points out that Howard has been going off the air in an on-air drama at the end of every contract of his career. Yeah. He's Charles Barkley on steroids. Thank you. So part of it might be showmanship, drumming up business. We've seen media people do that all the time. And that, I feel, is something Howard Stern's been doing since you and I were in.

in high school? Sure. Before that, maybe. Mm-hmm. And in fact, they're running a promo right now, according to the Hollywood reporter on Syria, saying, all will be answered. Howard Stern will speak on Tuesday, September 2nd.

Okay. It's hard to believe he's just completely done. Yeah. Though he is one of those guys who feels like he could be completely done at a very odd and random time. Mm-hmm. It also feels like there's just so much. Yeah, when he leaves, it's going to be,

seemingly out of nowhere. It also feels like if Sirius is done with him at whatever huge amount of money he makes, isn't there like 19 other places that would take him right now? Sure. So many podcasting outlets and HBO Max. He's been an open, for a while

was sort of the voice against the podcasting industry, but I think that would be a pretty comfortable fit for him at this point. Yeah. All radio guys hate podcasts. That's just. Yeah, no, no, I know. It's just the way that it goes.

It's like newspapers and bloggers back in the day. Yes, exactly. But that, I mean, but yeah, there's other places for him to go. I do think that this is, I mean, this feels, and since the beginning, has always just felt like the same fight he has every time, where he's just trying to drum up, you know, trying to nudge the offer ahead a little higher a little bit or just trying to stir up drama because it's historically been really good for his listenership.

And announcing that your parting ways is, you know, It's like the Charles Berkeley thing. It's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's a it's just another step in that drama. Um, but who knows? I mean, maybe, maybe he does. Maybe he will leave. He's 71. I mean, geez, Louise.

It's, it's, it's, I find it hard to imagine that he'll, that he would walk away. If there was any appearance that he was doing it. He was, he was defeated, you know. Yes. He does not seem like that guy. He seems like he wants to have the Johnny Carson. I leave when I want to leave exit. Yeah, I mean, maybe the real move is to sign a five-year deal and leave after a year two or three, you know, just leave halfway through just so it's always on your terms.

But yeah, it's, it is really interesting. I mean, watching the right-wing media just sort of, they're like circling Howard Stern, like sharks except like they don't realize that it's a mannequin that's a circling. on the beach or whatever. It's like he's, it's the weird like, like weird Dana-Plateau stories circulating as if like no one's ever heard these before. Like it's some expose,

you know, I mean, it just is all over social media that's just orchestrated attack. And I don't know. It just, it just, it just all seems so weird. I mean, it's just such a bizarre, he's such a bizarre figure for everybody to be going after. I guess it's just because

I mean, I think it really specifically has to do with all those clips that have come out of like, it's not Howard Stern presently talking trash about Trump. It's the old Trump appearances on the Howard Stern show that I think of kind of angered the right to such degree. And him having Biden on when Biden was still running for reelection, him having Kamala on. I mean, there's just a lot of, I think people are trying to fit him into the Colbert box to. Ah, see, Colbert. he got canceled. He was too woke.

Yeah, you go woke, you go broke, that old thing, yeah. I was thinking about Howard and podcast because we could call him the father of the modern podcast in like 20 different ways. Oh, yeah. But I think the thing that he figured out, the insight that would spawn just about everything that came after him was that the show ultimately was about itself. Yes. And if you think of Barstool, if you think of The Ringer,

if you think of Dan Lebitard, if you think of just we could put anything in there, it turns out the show can be about itself and listeners may end up liking that material better than anything else you have. They want the, you know,

beleaguered embattled producer character to be put on air and be, you know, reamed out for missing something up. They want like more introspection about the hosts themselves. Like he figured that out. And that turns out to be like the easiest stuff to do if you have talent. You have to have talent because if you don't,

nobody cares about you. But if you do have talent, you can just, that that is just a thing that's a content machine that never runs out of gas. Totally true. It's totally true. You have to work anybody. You're not going to listen to it. everybody once a week, heaven forbid, two, three, four times a week and without them feeling

like real people, real friends in your life, you know, and that's, that, there is a lot of that in there. Yeah. A couple more quick things for you. Trey Wallace tweeted this. You can imagine, David, that lots of athletic departments are trying to figure out how to make money from fans. So what they'll do for a college football game is they'll sell you the opportunity to high five the players as they're coming out of the tunnel or take your pictures at the 50 yard line.

Well, Trey Wallace found this one from the University of Oklahoma. Post-game media access. Ooh. Get exclusive post-game media access for you and one guest and see where real-time reactions unfold. Here, OU, coaches, and players address reporters moments after the final whistle. Watch the story takes shape through the questions, the insights in the atmosphere that set the headlines.

must be 18 or older. That's a new one for me. Selling the experience of the post-game press conference. What is it? Like you watch on like Google glasses or something? Like how does that work? I think you're in there. Oh, you get to go in.

Oh, I thought it was like a make, okay, that makes sense, I guess, sure. I mean, this isn't quite selling you the opportunity to raise your hand and say, how big was that touchdown? You could. But it's pretty close. Mm-hmm.

Only in journalism, David. These are words you read in news articles all the time but never hear in human speech. I had to bring this to your attention because Arsenal points over on blue sky, an alert listener, found a sentence in last week's New York Times Sunday book review that must be safer. Okay. This is a review of Michael Clune's novel Pan. I'm just going to read this sentence. Do the tally in your head of only in journalism words you hear. quoting, this is the rhythm of Michael Cloone's first novel, Pan, a steady oscillation

between deliciously observed, ferociously strange fragments of consciousness, and the social kabuki of the tragicomic teenage Bill Dung's Roman. The social kabuki of the tragic comic teenage Bill Dung's Roman. I just lost it thinking of you saying kabuki and Dusty Rhodes voice. Kabuki. Kabuki. Wow. What is the book about?

I have absolutely no idea. Yeah. The social kabuki of the tragic comic Teenage Buildings, Romano. The social kabuki of the tragic comic should do the whole show in Dusty Rhodes' voice. Oh, yeah. The great American novel. of a genre that's a tad fresher than kabuki theater. It's time for David Shoeemaker.

Guess is the strain pun headline. Yeah. Last Monday's headline about Australia's toilet paper situation was state of ply. Today's headline comes from alert listener, R. Mama on Blue Sky. It's from Vulture. Have you seen the new naked gun movie yet? I've not. Pretty funny.

I hear, I know. You know what I have. a guardian of the old ones. I was pleasantly surprised. I'm sure, however, David, you saw the sidebar that Liam Neeson and Pam Anderson might be dating. Oh, yeah. I want you to think of Pam Anderson's signature television show. From the 90s, as you ponder, what was Vulture's strained pun headline?

Baywatch. So what can we do with that? They, Liam, Bay. Mm-hmm. We're circling it here. What can I think of it? What if we play around with homophones here a little bit? It's not Baywatch, but it's...

Yeah, no, I'm thinking. What if we spell the first word a tad differently? Bay. B... What? I have no idea. We've stumped David here. It is Baywatch, B-A-E-Watch. Oh, God.

Okay. Bay watch. I kind of just like, there was, you know, there was a lot of like Babe Watch headlines during the Baywatch peak and I didn't, I just kind of immediately eliminated

that whole thought process. I guess the jokes on me. Jokes on you, Mr. Shoemaker. He is David Shoemaker. I'm Brian Curtis. Produce the Magic by Kyle Crichton. Next week on the David Shoemaker, Brian Curtis show. David's going to be back on Monday.

we've got a quick turnaround here buddy yeah hope we've got some media takes joel's going to be here on thursday in his usual slot we're going to do a special episode of the podcast about the dallas cowboys david because as you might have seen there's a huge Dallas cowboys netflix doc i've heard all about it yeah coming out next tuesday we're going to do a special thing on the special show that is on the media machine that is the dallas cowboys in the meantime david you and I will be thinking of more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. See you later, Brian.