The Press Box - Trump’s Iran Rollout, Game 7’s Injury TV, and Andrew Schulz vs. The New York Times

Episode Date: June 23, 2025

Hello, media consumers! Joel (in for David) and Bryan put a wrap on ESPN's presentation of the NBA Finals (0:41), before discussing the Trump administration's press tour after carrying out air strikes on Iranian nuclear sites (18:00), some puzzling New York City mayoral primary coverage, Andrew Schulz's thought-provoking conversation with the NYT about interviewing newsmakers, and Chip Caray's unfortunate slip of the tongue during an MLB broadcast (34:01). Finally, they close the show with the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, more submissions of bizarre press box behavior, and Joel Anderson Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline (1:03:18). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and Joel AndersonProducer: Kyle Crichton Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Folks, it's Jay Kyle Mann from The Ringer, and as always, basketball is so freaking, freaking good. It's so good, in fact, that the Ringer's NBA draft show is finally back just in time for a ramp up to June. We've got you covered every week as we take an in-depth look at who's got next for the NBA's future. We'll talk the rising and falling stocks of the best and the brightest prospects in the 2025 NBA draft class. From Cooper Flag to Dylan Harper, the BJ Edgecom, and more. tap in with me on the Ringer NBA Draft Show every Wednesday and make sure that you follow, subscribe, and hit us with those five-star ratings.

Joel? Yes. I'm going to have to get used to that. How did it work? Did I do it? Did it make, did it feel, did you miss Dave when I did that? Or did it feel like, you know, like I fit in and I'm doing what I need to be doing here? I miss David's two syllables.

It's different. It's different. David is on a side. So, Joel, you get to talk to me about game seven of the NBA finals. SGA, Tyrese Halliburton. We had a classic last night to talk about, oh, wait a second. 455 left in the first quarter. ESPN's cameras find Tyrese Halliburton pounding on the floor.

And the first thought that went through your mind was, I mean, Kevin Durant. I mean, because basically it's exactly the same injury. you know, the calf strain to the Achilles pipeline. And that's what I immediately thought of, although it seemed a lot more dire than the Kevin Durant thing, right? Because I don't know. I mean, everybody kind of knew Kevin Durant was hurt coming in,

and he wasn't perfect. You know, he was still a little hobble. This just, even though we knew Tyrese Halliburton was hurt coming into the game, it just felt like it came from nowhere. And he looks so good at the beginning of the game, too. Oh, yeah. He looked good in the previous game. It was maybe his best game of the finals.

So the players start surrounding Tyrese Halliburton on the floor. Yeah. We get that image you talk about from ESPN, of him pounding on the floor. And then ESPN did something interesting, which is also something that every network sports division does when there is a serious injury. They went to commercial.

So here we are. The biggest sports story imaginable, was on television. All of us in the audience are completely whipsawed. And then we find ourselves watching ads for Fantastic Four, Popeye's chicken wraps. Good chicken wraps sounds like really cool. Kia K4 and K5 sedan.

Experian, Modelo, that Rayband meta ad with a banana, and a Hulu original movie about Amanda Knox. Yeah. What do you make of the quick cut to commercial in an instance like that? Well, I mean, you probably know this better than me, but I assume they're doing this to give themselves a chance to sort of catch their breath and get information, you know, get Lisa Salter's who whatever sideline reporter in position to get down there and figure out like how bad is the injury before they're going to, you know, before they talk about it. And I understand that impulse, but I understand it more if it's actually a grotesque injury. Like, do you remember the Kevin Ware kid that played for Louisville and he fractured his leg and people were like crying? You know, something like that.

Like, I understand it more when it's something that seems to be, you know, not to maybe say a matter of life and death, but like a really serious injury. There's a level of scariness to it. Yeah. Like, this is like, I mean, it's bad and it's dramatic and it's really, you know, really, really sad. I don't know that I kind of just want to say. sit in the moment a little bit, even if they've got to be quiet. Even if they have to be quiet and let the camera linger a little bit, because I still need a moment to digest. What do you think? Well, when I've asked producers about this, they are just about 100% in favor of cutting

to commercial. Really? Because they say the camera would feel a little bit exploitative, a little bit like it's leering in an injury. I can see that. I also think you talk about silence. They don't totally know what to do in an instance. like that. They don't totally know what to say. Right. And as you and I've talked about many times, television is about feelings. Right. It's about images. And so I think there's this idea that, look, if we're just sitting there, you know, with the cameras, even if, even if we're not replaying that thing over and over again, we're looking at the faces of people in the crowd, we're looking at the faces of the teammates. Maybe we're looking at Tyrese Halliburton's dad in the

crowd. We saw that shot later on from ESPN. Yeah. It's just going to feel wrong. It's going to feel weird to the audience at home. And my argument to the same undigned producers always been like, but wait a second, you have the biggest sports story in the world exclusively on your air right now. Right. And when we got that incredibly wrenching image

of Halliburton being carried back to the locker room with the towel over his head, ESPN showed that on tape. Right. They did not have that live. Like now, you know, reporters in the arena were tweeting out that video before ESPN the rights holder.

was putting it on the air. Man. You know, Brian, you've really whipsawed me here because at first I was like, you know what? Those producers are making a really good point. I really see where they're coming from. But when you put it that way, I'm like, you know what? Yeah, man. I mean, why would you allow anybody else to scoop you on those images?

That's part of it to me. And it's, but it's one of those things. Again, you and I come at this room with journalist brain with sports writer brain. And I think people in TV who are, by the way, very, very good at sussing out information. Huge credit to Lisa Salt is for going into the locker room and learning from Halliburton's dad that it was in fact in Achilles injury so we didn't have to say lower leg injury for the rest of the evening. I was actually kind of shocked she was able to get that bit of information because I think usually in that like you said, it's going to be a lower leg injury

until the next day, until the MRI or whatever comes out. And so that's a really good piece of reporting that we, I feel like we very rarely get. And I think it, I don't know if she has kind of a good relationship with that family or whatever, but it does say something about the kind of sideline reporter you are. If you have the relationship that you can go to somebody and they will feed you that, right, in that moment. Or Tyrese Halliburton's dad is just uniquely available among sports dads. Hang up a sign he's available. He's ready to talk if you stick a mic in his face. We should get him on a podcast. Some other notes for you. Of course, there was a Skip Bayless tweet. Oh, man. About Halliburton's injury. This was before he actually went down. But the idea that

there was this concocted injury that he was milking. You know, right. So I listen to a few podcasts, and I don't want to say, and I don't want to embarrass anybody under these circumstances now, but there were more than a couple of people who talk about NBA basketball that implied that maybe Tyrese wasn't injured at all. And I just don't do, it's like I don't call athletes losers. I just don't, because these guys put so much on the line. And if you say you're hurt, I believe you.

Even when LeBron is limping after being eliminated from the playoffs? I mean, I still think he's hurt. I just want to see how far that extended for you. If you ask me about severity, that's another thing. Like, I think he would have been able to play at the second round. Put it that way. I also love to see some of our sports writer friends coming up with the local angle or the very particular angle.

I saw somebody talking about fantasy implications for next year after Halliburton's injury. I saw somebody talking about the Miami Heat's chances of winning the East next year after Halliburton's entry. I just love it. Again, I'm kind of poking fun, but also like, I understand you have your beat. You have to come up with an angle. But it was very fun to see those develop during the game. Our boss, you know, in his podcast, I mean, if you listen to it after the game, they would

deep into talking about, you know, maybe Lou Dort might get traded. I don't know, you know, but I also think it's because the game was just uniquely for Game 7. The game, the actual action, was sort of uniquely forgettable because of the Paul cast by that Tyrese Heilbert injury. And, you know, look, my favorite team made a trade, a huge trade earlier in that day for one of the best players in NBA history, top 15, top 20 guy. It didn't even really come up. I felt like it was sort of imitimate, like you're talking about all those other local angles or whatever, but I kind of felt like even despite all of that, like there wasn't a lot of attention paid to the Kevin Durant to Rockets trade last night. Which is kind of surprising to me,

because that's the thing that, you know, we've seen so many times in the past just cast a huge shadow over the actual basketball that's on the court. Yeah. And people always blame like the NBA or the Rockets. I'm like, you know, it's kind of us in the media that choose to do this, right? We're not forced to cover this. And then Kevin Durant, by the way, maybe to me that's always like, there's a carve out of, if it's a player that's that big,

of course you're going to cover it. Right. Well, I mean, look, the draft is in three days. I know a lot of people may not realize that. They've looked up and all of a sudden it's upon us. So a lot of these trades are being made now because the draft is right around the corner. But I will say this.

It did occur to me, Brian, it's sort of related to the finals. Like, I watched that game. I've watched this series. and I was like, there's no way old, brittle-ass Kevin Durant is going to be able to hold up. I mean, I was like,

just think about how hard that series was played and the intensity and the energy that was used in every moment. Like, you could not quit until the very end until the game was over. I mean, I'm just, okay, Rockets, whatever you say, man.

I'm sure. We'll see if he makes it to the end of the season. Good luck. I thought ESPN's broadcast was really good last night. And here I'm talking about the actual broadcast of the game. Tim Gorgans last year in the truck he's going to go up to an executive job at ESPN where he's going to oversee basketball.

There were so many great looks throughout the finals from that camera that's mounted behind the backboard. Great one with SGA last night where he gets fouled by Aaron Neesmith when he's going in for a layup. Like that camera just delivered some of the best pictures I've seen of basketball in recent years. I thought Richard Jefferson was good last night. He made the point that Bill made on the pod this morning, which is that the injury really threw off the thunder. Yes. In addition to throwing off the Pacers? Absolutely.

Absolutely. I did think that the Thunder would do a little like discombobulated because all of a sudden the Pacer is a pan that that a different, it's a different style offense when he's not out there. And so, yeah, I'm glad he brought that up. But can I say something? You said how good they were. At what point were they going to bring up that T.J. McConnell was killing them. Like, I mean, he was, I mean, he was third year Brett Favre. That's like just coughing the ball up, getting picked off.

I was like, hey, slow down. Maybe you need to slow down. It's hard to turn around that shit because we've had so much good T.J. McConnell. Yeah. And there's that little flurry at the beginning. And then you've got to turn the barge around and be like, actually, this is not going to be enough. Yeah. Cool it, brother.

Come off the ball. Yeah. A lot of people talking about like, T.J. McConnell, man, it's like, when is he going to get? It's like, okay, there's a reason I think that this guy's coming in for like a great stretch in the third quarter. Absolutely. He is not starting for this team. any team in the NBA. I also thought something ESPN did at the end of the game is really interesting.

Because the Thunderwin the title, Breen has the big call, as you would expect him to, and then ESPN goes, wait a second, the action here is actually in the loser's locker room or in the hallway outside the loser's locker room. Caliburton comes out on crutches to high-five all his teammates. And that's a moment when usually you might have a couple of faces of the losing team and then thematically you are going in this direction. I thought ESPN was so smart to understand. Look, we're going to do the thunder.

We're going to do the trophies. We're going to do all that stuff. But right now, the story, the more compelling visual story is with the Pacers. Well, right, if you were writing that story, like, let's say you were charged with writing the lead from that game. It's hard to not have Tyrese Halliburton in the lead, right? It's not. It would be incredibly hard. That's the lead of the story.

That's the story in a lot of ways. Yeah. I mean, I just, I feel like the Pacers were the story of the night. And that's unfortunate for the Thunder. Maybe the Thunder fans can, you know, assuag themselves by being champions for the first time in their, in their history. But in terms of like, what captivated America last night, it was the Pacers, I think. And how it's remembered, and I hate to go down a talk show Rabbit Hole here, but the way that title, that Game 7 will be remembered in the future, you know, I'm, I say this is a person who was, wearing a Texas jersey in the stands when Colt McCoy got hurt in the first quarter against Alabama.

And you know what? In every Texas message board, that's the lead. But I think in the rest of the universe, it's really not. I mean, that's just, you know, and it doesn't need to be, right? Alabama's like, we won the game. We won the national championship. Right. Okay.

Well, you said, so the NBA released like a nine and a half minute clip of the history of game sevens. It was like this amazing clip. It shows like Badgey Johnson. Bill Russell, Isaiah Thomas, Akeem Elijah won, and it's covering all this stuff. And I'm like, man, I'm sure that they'll be able to, if they, when they add this game to the Game 7 lore,

they'll be able to snip some things from it or whatever. But the game action just was not, you know, I think it took people a long time to sort of recover last night. And so I don't know that I'll ever remember this game seven is the one where the Oklahoma City Thunder won their first championship. So I mean, you know, it may come to that. I'll be like, oh, yeah, they won that. game but I'll be more than likely when I'm remembering this game 10 years from now I'll be like oh man

I'm at the game with Tyrese Hallibrand got hurt in the first five minutes yeah ESPN's pregame show and post game show and halftime show said goodbye last night they literally bid goodbye because they're going to be replaced at least in part by inside the NBA next year but what a way to go out first of all Stephen A. Smith yelling at Kendrick Perkins in the pregame show in a segment that was about whether Chet Holmgren would score 15 points in the game. Just want to underline that, that that was the point of the segment. Who was it that brought up that maybe there's a gambling connection

to why these segments are happening? See, I buy that to a point, like, clearly that is why you're doing stuff about over, unders, who's going to be the second leading score, something they actually did also during this finals. But you still have to be creative. Right. There's an interesting gambling question.

And then there's, well, this is just a thing and that we're going to yell at each other about something that's so meaningless. Yeah, what's the 15 point line in basketball? The other one they had was they were asking for predictions at the end of the pregame show. And all four announcers, including Malik Andrews, picked the Thunder to win the game. And then they started arguing. Look, do we just have one? switch here, like you all are in agreement that the thunder are going to be the NBA champions. Why won't you embrace debate?

I guess I'm just behind the times. I did not realize we had to embrace debate at all moments, even when we agree. I mean, I guess it would be kind of boring. I'm kind of surprised I would be this kind of a person. I would probably pick the patience just to mix it up. You know what I mean? Yeah. I'm surprised like there's more people that just don't do that.

Just to, you know, let's have a little, if we're going to, if we're going to argue, at least let me give you guys a reason to argue. Also at halftime, speaking of embracing debate, everybody was like, now they're going to ask Bob Myers, whose position, at least for me on the whole show, is questionable at best. We're going to ask Bob Myers to reflect on what happened because he remembers KD.

He was affected by KD, emotionally, professionally, in every possible way by that. And then they never did. To the extent that anyone is perfectly qualified, to answer that question, to the extent that you're going to have Bob Myers on a panel of any sort to talk about basketball? I mean, if you don't ask him, that question is kind of like, all right? Well, what is this all for then, right? That's what I'm asking myself, because he was talking to the pregame, like, here's what it feels like to lose a game seven. I'm like,

I don't care that much about how Bob Myers felt after losing a game seven. A Bob Murray's legacy game. Yeah. Steph Curry, Steve Kerr. Sure. Right. Bob Myers' is feelings after that. but then you don't ask him about the one thing that's teed up for you to ask him about. That was very funny. All right. Coming up on the only podcast where the lead is Game 7 in Iran, we're going to talk about Donald Trump's Iran rollout. The New York City mayoral primary is tomorrow.

Andrew Cuomo and Zoran Mobdani. And the local paper doesn't have much to say about it. Plus, how should we think of a baseball announcer's unfortunate slip of the tongue? Andrew Schultz versus the New York Times. on the subject of interviewing and more amazing stories of press box misbehavior. Our solidarity with Stephen A series continues. All that and much more on the uppercase press box, a part of the ringer. Podcast Network.

Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis. Joel Anderson and producer Kyle Crichton here. Joel, we learned Saturday night that the United States had bombed Iran or was it the United States. I noticed that the New Yorker headline said Donald Trump bombs Iran. Well, I mean, he certainly seemed to be the only person to make the decision, right? I mean. But is that different than any other war, really, or any other military action? Well, certainly in recent American history.

For sure. I guess. If you're not going to use the Congress, if Congress is not involved, which increasingly they don't seem to be involved in these decisions. And yeah, I guess it is the president's discretion, right? I'd have to go back and look, but did we say, You know, Barack Obama authorizes strikes in Libya. That's a good question. We got to look that up.

George Bush invades Iraq. A lot of different ones here. Yeah. It was interesting to know how we found out about what came to be called Operation Midnight Hammer. Very subtle. Very subtle. It was on a true social post. It's perhaps worth pausing here to say that Donald Trump announced American military action on a social media service that he owned.

Do you have a true social account? I don't. I'm just a lurker. Do we need, yeah, you're just a lurker. Do we need to, I mean, this is a question for another time, but like, do journalists need to get on truth social? It didn't seem like, I mean, maybe we don't need to that news gets out, but it just seems like if they're going to be making news over there, if the president is decreeing things over there, that certainly makes it an important social media app. what usually happens is I go and get on Donald Trump's feed. And you're right, I'm probably missing out on some of the, you know, other posts,

but Trump's feed is always so all over the place. It was about Thomas Massey yesterday. I mean, there's all kinds of things going on in there that are not just about the subject at hand, shall we say. Right. He ended his post with, Thank you for your attention to this matter, which has become his go-to sign-off and just seem very, very strange. when you're announcing military action. Well, it used to be, I mean, I'm trying to remember who pointed this out,

but he used to say sad with an exclamation point. So maybe this is just replaced sad, because, I mean, it's evident that it's sad that, you know, bombing people and bombing places. Well, you know, theoretically, I don't know if he feels that it's sad. But thank you for your attention to this matter. That's a little bit more professional. That's a very linked in response.

Sounds like you forgot to pay a bill. I think you bring your prompt attention to this matter, Mr. Curtis, or we're going to have to cut off the cable and electricity. He's got some familiarity with not meeting debt obligations, but yes. Trump gave a short speech on Saturday night. It was about four minutes long. He said that the three nuclear sites in Iran that the U.S. bomb, that would be Fordot, Natanz, and Esfahan, were, quote, completely and totally obliterated.

J.D. Vance would say a similar thing on Meet the Press the next day. We destroyed the Iranian nuclear program. Fact check on that, I think, right, proved a little different. Yeah, a little bit of a walkback with administration officials and military officials the next day. But it's also one of those questions that the media really doesn't know the answer to at this point and probably won't know the answer to for quite some time to what extent were they destroyed and or obliterated. it seems like, I mean, again, to the extent that I've read a little bit about this, it seems like pretty much an outright, I don't want to say that it's an outright lie, but maybe they obliterated those particular sites. Did they obliterate their capacity to someday put together a nuclear weapon? That seems pretty clear that those attacks did not do that, right? Well, that's the essential question of these attacks. If he didn't do that, then what was the point of the attacks?

You're not saying we set them back a couple of years to give time for diplomacy to take over or whatever it is. Specifically saying we completely obliterated, totally obliterated those nuclear sites. And as like I said, as J.D. Vance said, destroyed the Iranian nuclear program. Speaking of Vance, he was on Meet the Press Sunday morning to very interesting soundbite, came out of that interview. Here is the trolier of the two. And the second thing is, Kristen, I certainly empathize with Americans

who are exhausted after 25 years of foreign entanglements in the Middle East. I understand the concern, but the difference is that back then we had dumb presidents, and now we have a president who actually knows how to accomplish America's national security objectives.

You know, I'm just, I mean, the degradation of, the quality of political commentary in this country is really interesting. But yeah, to sum it up is dumb. That seems that the tone maybe is a little bit off there right now, right? But yeah, look, I mean, what do we expect? I mean, this is sort of how they roll, right? J.D. Vance is very much a creature of the Internet.

Like, he loves social media. He deals in memes. That's the kind of thing that an internet troll would say. This is the guy who just called Senator Alex Padilla of California, Jose Padilla, earlier in the week. Our pal Derek Thompson called this the quote tweet era of political rhetoric. He should write a whole piece about that for his new substack site because I think he's on to something. And it's not just J.D. Vance either, though I think Trump and his allies are the ones that have taken us the farthest down this path. She and I were talking offline the other day about Gavin Newsom.

Yeah. Gavin Newsom is in dunk mode when it comes to like crime rates in California. Right. Right. He is not talking exactly like this. I don't think he would use the word dumb, which is just a really strange word to use anyway, dumb. But he is definitely speaking in the same general mode. Right. I mean, it's just, I think the thing this is really discouraging is that, you know, typically in the past, even if you didn't agree with the war, you were trying to rally some degree of like American consensus, right?

Like you want people to be like, okay, we're all on the same team or whatever. But I mean, that dumb covers George Bush. You know what I mean? That covers George W. Bush. I mean, so what do you, it's just a, when we get to the idea that this was a Trump bombing of Iran and not an American one,

that's the sort of thing that I'm thinking about. It's like, okay, like this is our project. you all need to come along with it. Yeah. Our habit of saying or reminding you that we are not Joe Biden, that Joe Biden was the quote unquote, the worst president in American history, et cetera, et cetera. This will extend even to military action

when we're justifying and explaining what we're doing. Speaking of which, very first question, Kristen Welker on Meet the Press, was, are we at war with Iran? Here's what Vance said. Mr. Vice President is the United States now at war with Iran. No, Kristen, we're not at war. war with Iran, war with Iran's nuclear program.

Would you make of that slice and dice? I mean, that seems like a distinction without much difference. I don't think Iran, I mean, the better question is, well, what does Iran think? Does Iran think you're at war with a nuclear program, or do they think they're at war with you? And so when you attack somebody, that is probably the fairer. If I hit you, it's like, hey, I didn't like your actions. I'm not really hitting you. But the person that gets hit is like, well, no, actually, now we're in a fight, though, now.

So, yeah, I don't think that's what. He had a lot of time to think of that. You know what I mean? And I guess that's what he came up with. And you heard Vance and Marco Rubio and Pete Higgsith all saying on Sunday. No, no, no, no. This is not a regime change operation. Again, speaking of going back and talking about Republican president's past, we're just worried about Iran's nuclear program.

And then, of course, Donald Trump comes out with a true social post on side. Sunday musing about regime change and maybe not. I mean, it's, it's, the funny thing is, is they, if I were, I mean, I will never work in the Trump administration, but it's just like, fair to say. It's a fair, fair thing to say. But, man, it just must be really frustrating to go out to speak on behalf of Donald Trump, realizing that you, you can never, it's unknowable. I mean, and Trump said it himself last week.

Only I know if I were going to attack Iran. on, right? And so that's what happens when everybody's out on the same page. And I mean, we're not even talking about Tulsi Gabbard, right? Like, she's not on the same page. So the thing is, all these people are going out there allegedly repeating these Trump talking points, but then Trump can just totally, on true social, undo everything that you did, everything you said, and you go out there and you look dumb and you look like a lot of dumb to use the word that J.D. Vance was congratulating the administration for not having any leaks in that interview, which was interesting

because on Friday you and I talked about a Seymour Hirsch piece this is the investigative journalist who told the world about the Miley massacre in Vietnam and torture at Abu Ghreb during the second Iraq war

he reported that the bombing would start this weekend real old guy still got it moment for Sy Hirsch well done there and also on that point there's a big New York Times story today with five bylines

that was kind of their version of the how it happened story. And in that story, the Times reported that the military was nervous that Donald Trump was giving away the plans on true social. And so what they did, according to the Times, is they built their own deception into the attack plan. A second group of B-2 bombers would leave Missouri and head west over the Pacific Ocean in a way that flight trackers would be able to monitor on Saturday.

If you are a voracious reader of newspapers, you will note that the New York Times last week reported on those B-2 bombers flying west instead of east over the Pacific. They also noted in those stories, however, that sometimes the military likes planes to be tracked for specific reasons. In this case, to introduce uncertainty into the official reporting. And I thought that was a really, really interesting point. Yeah, I mean, it's some, I mean, no, nothing at this level is going to totally be, you know, media proof, right? Like, there's, there's too much going on. There's so many media sources out there. But it felt like, at least from the way the public consumed it on Saturday, that for a Trump military operation, it was about as buttoned up as you're going to get, right? Because I, because I still felt like there was a level.

There was an element of surprise on Saturday, not, you know, just kind of like, I course we had wore it around, right? But just like, oh, it happened now. And I felt like that, you know, usually that would have probably been, you know, posted on true social on Friday afternoon or something. Sounds like somebody needs to subscribe to Cy Hershey's Substack account because you would have had the information days ahead. I clearly do.

I'm going to after this. Another really strange element of this was that Donald Trump was making calls to report. on Saturday night, to talk about the bombings. And these are people that identified themselves as having received calls. Jonathan Carl of ABC News, Kristen Welker of NBC, Barack Ravid of Axios, Josh Dawsey of the Wall Street Journal, and then perhaps least surprisingly, Brett Bear and Sean Hannity over on Fox. Brian Stelter writes,

these calls usually initiated by reporters have become one of Trump's favorite ways communicate with the press. He gets his talking points across and the reporters get to relay his real-time reaction to news events. It's certainly not a replacement for pre-planned, taped, transcribed interviews, but Trump hasn't participated in any of those lately. You know, this is an old Trump tactic going way back to the 80s, right? He called reporters up and find things like he really, I mean, to the extent that any of this says genius, he really has a way of cultivating media sources and not necessarily. Not necessarily. necessarily allies, but he's really good at being able to get his talking points across the people.

And you saw this with these particular phone calls, because what were the quotes that came out of it? Trump's saying the mission was a complete and total success, quote unquote, or a tremendous success. So you don't really give up anything. There's no downside to that if that call lasts, I'm guessing, a couple of seconds or a couple of minutes, but you wind up ceding Twitter on Saturday night with your quotes and with your opinion about how everything went. Would you, would you, if Donald Trump called you for one of these calls, would you use his terminology? Would you say tremendous success if you have to relay it to people? So I thought that was fascinating because the test here would be, is there a reporter who is brave enough that when the

president of the United States calls, or by the way, perhaps you call the president of the United States, as the doctor says there, he's apparently answering his cell phone, but gets the president on the horn and then looks at his or her material after the call and says, you know, Ryan, there was really nothing usable in there. Somebody should call and see if he was watching a game last night, what his thoughts are on Tyrese Halliburton since they got his phone number. You watched the ball game last night, game seven? He didn't seem like a basketball fan.

He watched the College World Series early in the day. I think he, but definitely Coastal Carolina versus LSU. He was upset about the manager getting run in the first inning. Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's like, we can't say anything anymore. We're going to take care of this illiberalism. Before we move on here, I got one book recommendation. I was looking through all the book catalogs to do a little bit of a summer

book's preview here on the press box, and I wrote this one down, and in fact, got the galley sent to me. This does not come out until September, but talk about relevant. It's called King of Kings, the Iranian Revolution, a story of hubris, delusion, and catastrophic miscalculation. by Scott Anderson, long time and well-known foreign correspondent. This book comes out in September. Wow.

You know all authors when you spend years and years working on a book, you're always like, wow, will this book have any resonance? Oh, my goodness. When it finally makes it to bookshel. So if you're interested in the United States and Iran and possible slash theoretical regime change, King of Kings by Scott Anderson. Can't wait to read it. Bless my cousin, Scott Anderson, man.

Good for him. I like to see people win. And I think people like anything else are going to want to learn a lot about Iran going for it. And so, yeah, I should maybe they'll send me a gallery or maybe I'll just have to pony up and buy it. We're talking about press box book clubs. Oh, that's right. That's right. It's either Seth Wicker, sham or Scott Anderson.

We have to make choices in this world. Oh, man. I said the only podcast, Game 7 in Iran. We did it. We're also going to be the only podcast that talks about Game 7, Iran, and the New York mayoral primary. I would imagine. I don't know. I mean people covering that.

That's not their top three, I'd imagine. But, yeah, is, you know, Ryan, tomorrow going to be the Democratic mayoral primary in New York City. The general election isn't until November. But have you ever, you lived in New York? Did you ever get a chance to vote in New York? Yeah. Last mayor election I voted for, voted in was 2013 when I voted for Bill de Blasio. You did. Okay. Hey. Whoops. Hey, some people think, I mean, some people think he's the greatest mayor of the New Yorkers ever had.

Well, anyway, that's one take. That's one take. So for non-New Yorkers, an important thing to know is that the incumbent, Eric Adams will not be on the ballot because he's running as an independent. And he announced this shift back in April, if you remember, because that was not long after Trump's Justice Department dropped his federal corruption case. And then he left the Democratic Party. long after. And so in that way, Adams' move out of the Democratic Party and off their ballot was an acknowledgement that the Democratic voters were not going to support him and that this is a tremendously crowded field. There's like 11 candidates. A lot of people to choose from former governor Andrew Cuomo, state legislator Zohran McDonny, city comptroller Brad Lander, city council speaker Adrian Adams, hedge fund billionaire and Teach for America co-founder Whitney Tilson. Did you know that about Whitney Tulson. I heard that on Brian Laris show this morning. And I was like,

wow, he co-founded Teach for America. I did not know that. Yeah, crazy. A lot of other people. Surely as a voter, you could find someone to like among that bunch, right? Well, that brings us to the New York Times' editorial board, which could not. Here's the key excerpt.

Many New Yorkers are understandably disappointed by the field. It lacks any candidate who seems likely to be the city's next great mayor. For that reason we are not endorsing a candidate. Brian, what do you make of this? Not necessarily the substance of the editorial, which we could talk about, but its decisions are basically punt. I think it's ludicrous. I really, really think it's ludicrous. You know, we've seen so many of these happen

out of fear at the presidential level, fear that the newspaper does not have such a central role in people's lives that putting your hand on the scale to whatever extent it even matters anymore. But putting your hand on the scale and saying Trump or Harris will alienate so much of your audience that it's just not worth it. So we're going to run away from doing that. I want to know who is canceling the New York Times if they endorsed Cuomo or Mom Don. What person is doing that? And so I look at this editorial and I'm like, why aren't you picking somebody? Why are you simply saying,

look, this is a terrible field, we got nothing for you. Somebody from that field, unless Eric Adams runs a remarkable campaign, is going to be the next mayor of New York City. Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, like this is part, as you said, of a pattern. Like, I mean, first of all,

remember the split endorsement of Liz Warren and A.B. Klobuchar in 2020, right? And I had forgotten this, but in August they announced that they would stop endorsing political candidates, in New York State and local races, too. So like, assembly stuff. And I'm like, well, so if you want to marginalize your opinion, like, this is the way

to do it, right? Because this is when people are turning to your editorial board the most. Like, you, the people are the most tuned in. You have the access to these local candidates. And if you just kind of decide to not make a decision, what, I mean, what are we doing here then? Like, why would I ever pay attention to anything you say? There's a case you could make that people know.

so much about presidential politics. Yeah. And that the parties are just so divided right now, that in the world, the nation's so divided right now. There's really nothing you could offer that would be that helpful to a reader or a subscriber of the newspaper. But local elections are not like that.

Yes. And I depend on the LA Times because I don't know very much about these local officials. Oh, my God. It's good to be honest here, right? Like, I wish I did. I wish I was a better informed citizen when it came to all these boards and, you know, the sheriff's race and all and stuff. I don't know that much, and I need somebody to help me to understand these races and understand who these people are.

Right. I mean, when I was, I voted in Palo Alto in November because that's where I lived, the Mercury News and all the other media outlets that were around that did L's roundups and interviewed these cannons. That stuff was so essential. I didn't, this person's running for justice of the peace or this person's running for the school board. I needed that. And even at the level of mayor for people there, like I needed them to weigh in on. and stuff, is say what these people believe or what they've done so I can make an intelligent decision. And it's like, I'm sure that even as well read and affluent and educated as the New York

Times' audience is, it still probably has some blind spots when it comes to local politics unless you happen to working it yourself. So yeah, like I was, New York Times, I'm counting on you to say something. Although they did say stuff, right? Like, I mean, it's a very long, it was a very long editorial, right? What did you think of the substance of the editorial itself? I thought it was bad. I didn't think it makes any sense. Yeah. I read that editorial and I'm like, oh, the candidate you want to endorse is Brad Lander. Yeah. But you're not endorsing Brad Lander because you don't think he can win. And that to me is a very, very different discussion than who you should endorse. It's like we're trying to pick somebody, but we're also trying to pick one of the

front runners. You mentioned Liz Warren and Amy Klobuchar in 2020, and that was a weird one because it was both hedged, and it both seemed like candidates that might not win, at least at that point in the race. And it felt like reading this whole Times thing to me, there was this whole, there was this tension where they say, look, it's a Cuomo Mamdani race. We don't like either one of those candidates. We kind of like some of the other people. Lander, we seem to like a lot, but for some reason, we're not pushing the button there. I didn't, I didn't get it at all. could not follow the reason.

I actually thought they were embarrassed to endorse Cuomo. Oh. And that they wanted to endorse Cuomo, but that's kind of embarrassing because it's how, you can call for him to step down as governor, but then can you endorse him to be the next mayor of New York City? Exactly. You could be like, well, you people have decided. He's back on the ballot. And if you want to, like, we think he has the best combination of accomplishment and experience and everything else.

And I mean, to that extent, I've got friends that live in New York who say they're getting, mailers and they're hearing radio ads locally that Cuomo is using. He's using quotes from that editorial to campaign, right? So obviously he thought that they said some things in that in that editorial

that were helpful to him. Well, tell me if I got this right. They said, don't rank Mom Donnie. We cannot recommend that you rank Mom Donny at all. New York has ranked choice voting. We should note. They are very much out on Mom Donnie, yes. But they did not say, they said, we can't bring ourselves to recommend Cuomo,

they didn't exactly say, don't list Cuomo on your ballot at all. Yeah. So it was a slightly different take on two candidates who they were declining to endorse. Absolutely. And I just, you know, without getting too much into the substance of it. I mean, like, they didn't really, I know that you're limited by space and that you can't explain every parenthetical in every sentence. But they talked a lot about disorder in the city of New York over the last decade or so.

And that, you know, for instance, the Bill de Blasio had overlooked disorder in the sense. city. I would love to get a sense for what they mean by disorder. Like, and if, you know, if you work for the editorial board, can you clarify that to me? Like, what do you mean by that? Because I don't, I mean, does that mean that homelessness is increased? Does it mean that crime rates are up? And they are slightly, but they're still close to the historical lows of the last decade or so. So what exactly are you talking about? There seemed to be this kind of fear of, oh, no, New York's going to go back to 70s and 80s, New York. That was outlined. in there. They nodded a few

incidents on the subway, but yeah, I'd like to know a lot more about that. And again, if that is your overriding concern about this mayoral election, they called it smart liberal. We need smart liberalism to protect against whatever it is they're worried about. You should be able to find somebody.

I just don't believe in this field that long in that big that there is nobody that fits that bill. Well, should they just go ahead and stop? I mean, just seems like increasingly that maybe we're not going to have that anymore. So back in 2020, like for instance, McClatchy announced its newspapers, which include our, you know, our favorite, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, Ryan Carroll, Kansas City Star. They don't endorse candidates that it can't interview. In 2020, all the global capital announced its newspapers. We're ending editorial

board endorsements at the presidential gubernatorial and Senate levels. Wall Street Journal doesn't endorse candidates. So, like, I mean, I guess there's an argument, Brian. Maybe they're just maybe newspapers are going to do away with this period because it's more trouble than it's worth. Because if you don't do something, then that's news too. Again, I understand it from the presidential level, or at least there's an argument to be made that people have lots of information about that. But if you're a local newspaper, what is left for you other than covering local news and helping people make sense of local news?

And I just, again, I don't think there are that many subscriptions. If that is totally what your viewpoint is, we don't want to lose any of the tiny handful of subscriptions we still have. I don't believe you're going to lose many over a mayor or old endorsement or a city council endorsement. I just don't think that's going to happen. Last thing here, and I noticed a few news stories about this, and I don't understand why people write about it, but Bill Clinton and Jim Clyburn endorsed Cuomo.

I mean, I don't, can you, I'm trying to understand why those are stories. I don't get, maybe because somebody like me is going to talk about it here and it'll draw to, but I mean, there are names, but what the hell? and released at strategic points by the campaign. Right. To keep the momentum going in the final days of the race. Yeah, the Clyburn one to me was just more interesting of like, where did this come from?

More than this is news. Right. Like, yeah, why did he weigh it on that? And also, why would anybody in New York care about a guy from South Carolina's opinion? That would be the first time that had ever happened. Yeah, that was a weird one. Yeah. Also, this weekend, man, Brian.

I got a question for you, and it's apropos of what we did this weekend. How many so-called podcast bros would you say are in your regular rotation? Very few. Perhaps a little more than Trump's true social feed. Mostly I find myself listening to those pods for this pod. Right. That's about right. And for me, it kind of depends.

I think I've mentioned before that I listened to the Joe Button podcast. Is Joe Budden a podcast bro? I don't know. Is Charlemagne de God a podcast bro? maybe. I mean, he does a podcast with Andrew Shultz, who we're here to talk about. You know, Andrew Shultz, he really became known to me through black culture media like he did to Charlemagne, the Godwin. His other podcast is on the Combat Jack Network and Combat Jack was a legendary hip-hop podcaster. And that podcast is called Flagrant, which he co-hosts with a couple

of other stand-up comedians. And so he's had an incredible year, right? Like on that Flagrant podcast, he had Donald Trump as a guest before the election. He's also had on Bernie Sanders and Pete Buttigieg. So what I was talking about for this weekend, he was the guest on the New York Times' podcast, the interview. And it was Dave Marquesie. He interviewed him twice, which is a really fascinating format of interview, right? We can talk, but I like, I like that, don't you? It's pretty normal for those big, long interviews like that, that you do one thing. If you go back to the old Playboy interviews, which are all collected, you know, it's like, we talked to him four times for the course of a month.

But what's funny is you're adding video here. Yeah. So we're actually a lot more aware of it than we would be in a print interview where everything's seamlessly put together. It was really interesting to see them in the New York Times studios too. I was like, oh, that's a nice studio in there.

Anyway, this interview lasted more than an hour. Our producer, Kyle, recommended we listen to it, and I'm glad we did because it was a really interesting and frustrating conversation. and Kyle said frustrating, and I'm really like, I'm like, that is the perfect word for this. There was a frustrating conversation about the role of podcast bros in our media ecosystem, while they're having a moment, when to take them seriously, so on and so forth. Here's a clip from that.

So I don't know, like, what you think the goal of journalism is specifically. Is it to ask the things you're curious about? Do you have a responsibility for your audience within the New York Times? Do you have a responsibility for the New York Times audience? Do you have responsibility for casual people that sometimes, like how many people are you responsible for? Are you responsible for people in Dubai, China, Japan? They might have certain curiosities that you didn't address. Like, at one point, you're going to let somebody down.

So what I'd like to see more is people asking the questions that they are curious about themselves instead of trying to, pander to what their audience is curious about. This was one of the most fascinating interviews. I have heard about the media in a really, really long time. Because you hear what Schultz is landing on there. Yeah. Which is this divide that's opened up within the larger media world. Where you send a Donald Trump or you send a politician, Pete Buttigieg, you mentioned.

over to a podcast. And the host is saying, I'm not guided by some journalistic rulebook that says, oh, by the way, ask them about four controversies du jour or try to pin them down on this thing that other reporters are trying to pin them down on so that you can quote unquote make news.

Just follow your heart. Follow the thing that you, a person, are curious about. and when you listen to him with Marquesi, it makes a lot of sense, I will say, in a lot of ways. There is something very, very appealing about it, and he understands as a successful podcaster himself why that's so appealing. Well, I was going to say, you know, I did not want to agree with him coming into this, but yeah, man, that was actually, I think, a really smart point. And, I mean, to an extent, we all kind of do that, right?

Like when we're, we're, I think when we're putting together podcasts, we're putting it together for who we think our audience is. Like, we're not always doing our individual interests because otherwise I'd be sitting up here talking about, you know, the, Noss released some new music. You know what I mean? So we don't do that. What's your favorite song, Brian? I'm just joking. But, but, you know what I'm saying? So I was like, oh, you know what?

Like, he's kind of identified something in media that we're loath to admit, which is that something. Sometimes, like, the way we choose questions or the way that we conduct an interview, there's a lot more discretion in it than we would lead people to believe. Like, it's not always mission-minded stuff, right? And when it is mission-minded, it's alienating. Yeah. I mean, I thought of this when I was watching this podcast. Remember the Bill Whitaker interview with Kamala Harrison, Tim Walls, the one that's now subject of a $20 billion Donald Trump lawsuit? Mm-hmm.

When Whitaker was talking to Tim Walts in an interview, he starts asking him about some misstatements or misrepresentations, if you will, that Walls had made about his time in China, which essentially amounted to do Wall saying he was there during or around the Tiananmen Square Massacre. In fact, he was not there at that time. He was there later in 1989. I remember watching that at the time been like, number one, this is a very, very fair question for a journalist to ask. Number two, I don't think Bill Whitaker cares about this. I don't think 60 Minutes cares about this. I don't think they care about the answers at all. I think they are just doing this because they want to ask a quote-unquote tough question to Tim Walls. And that's the one thing that comes to mind. And that guides a lot of journalistic interviews.

Right. Like this idea that you, again, are trying to make news, you're trying to get a sound bite out that's going to surf newspapers and social media after the thing is over. rather than just asking questions that you actually want to know the answer to, that you are curious about the answer to. And what Schultz is saying in this interview is like, when people hear you talk like that, when I say you, I mean journalists, they're like, that doesn't sound like me. That doesn't sound like the way humans talk. You're asking questions that nobody else would ask,

in a way nobody else would ask him. And there is something alienating about that that then drives, people from the mainstream media to podcasts like this. Well, I think that's also the difference between being a guy who is a comedian and a personality themselves. When Andrew Schultz turns on his mic, he knows people are coming to hear him talk about anything, right? Like, they just, like, whatever he's decided to riff on that day, whatever's in the news, they want his take on it. And whatever, you can reasonably infer that they think whatever he thinks is interesting is going to be interesting to them. Mainstream media doesn't necessarily have.

have that guarantee. Like when we cut on our mics or whatever or sometimes, I'm like, I don't know, like, you know, if a person is listening to this podcast for me or because this is part of their habit, or if you work at CBS News or if you work at, you know, ABC, whatever. Like, if you're a journalist that works there, sometimes you're like, I don't know if they're really interested in my personal thoughts on IVF, which is one of the questions that Andrew Schultz got. He said he wanted three things to Trump he wanted to ask him about. And this is like, I mean, I would think, oh, that's boring, but protecting IVF, quote, empathy for illegals and ending foreign wars, which I mean, you know, maybe we need to go consult that interview he had with Trump to see how all those things

went. It is interesting. And that's the second part of what I would say about this is that if all interviews were like this, it wouldn't work. Yeah. Couldn't do it. The media world would just fall apart. Yeah. And what you're doing, I think when you have this, is you're offering, yes, like an incredibly appealing interview that's going to land with a lot of listeners, way better and way differently than a mainstream media interview with land. But you're also offering the escape route, the fire escape for politicians who are like, oh, I don't want to answer those questions. So Donald Trump can go with Andrew Schultz and be like, I will protect IVF, I swear to you, but then doesn't get asked other questions about,

well, how about some other things about how you treat women or how you, you know, how about some other issues? And he could be lying or he could be not, and maybe there won't be follow-up about, but what about this, but what about you doing this? Right. There's not just that accountability structure to it. So it doesn't work if it's all podcast interviews.

It really doesn't. Trump is going on in the hopes that he's going to come off as more likable and more relatable because he's riffing with a couple of comedians. And I don't know if you've seen clips from that interview. I looked it up a little bit yesterday and today. Yeah, and I was like, Andrew Soltz was giddy, man. Like, he was very excited to have Donald Trump sitting right next to him.

Like, you could tell. And it was in a way. It's a big get. It's a huge get. I don't know if it made his career, but it's a huge thing. Like, that's one of the reasons people are interested in him and want to talk to him. But it's also like, hey, man, you're really excited, you know? And like, not many of us could do an interview like that.

Maybe I did that with Nick Wright, okay? But other than that, you know, slightly more forgivable. Slightly more forgivable. But what did you think of his phrase? Because he talked about this, always treat me as a comedian. You know, and I'm just kind of like, that's a couple of. It reminds me of John Stewart saying, I'm just a comedian. Yeah.

And I think when people say that, they actually don't think of themselves that way. Mm-hmm. Well, I mean, so, yeah, we're supposed to laugh at everything you say, right? It's just to get out of jail free card. I mean, that's all it is because it's like, well, I don't take me seriously. I'm just a comedian. It's like, well, you've now worked yourself into a place where you're more important than that. It's a credit to you that you're more important than that.

So what's, you know, I'm sorry, what's the, at that point, I think that to me it just feels like a cop out. I did think there was another really interesting question. We're talking about labeling people where Schultz said, am I not a journalist to a Marquesi question? Yeah. And I'm one of the people who's like, let's not police. who's not a journalist and who is a journalist because something like Andrew Shultz to me can be a journalist under the right circumstance. Right. It might be it for 15 seconds and then say, hey, I'm taking my cap off, my, my fedora off, and going back to being

funny and interesting. But there's no reason that somebody like that can't be situationally a journalist than anybody can't be. It almost like the title itself doesn't matter. Can you perform journalism? Anybody can perform journalism. That's what citizen journalism is all about, right? bring news to people, like, you know, trying to inform people, get news that other people don't necessarily have. Lots of people can do that. Does it matter if you're a journalist if you do it? Sometimes it does, but often it really doesn't. And so, yeah, like, I mean, if he wants to have that debate, cool, I don't think he does because he says, again, I'm a comedian. So judge me on a comedian, but sometimes a comedian can do some journalism. And by the way, he does journalism in

this interview on David Marquez. I just, I would encourage everybody to watch this. and specifically to watch it, because the body language in here is fascinating. He challenges very good naturedly, I think, a lot of the questions. And Marquesi will say, but you asked Bernie Sanders X, and he'll say, what exactly did I ask Bernie Sanders? And Marquesi won't have it at hand. He's like, wait, so you're asking me,

you're trying to pin me down, but you don't have exactly what I asked him. Like, you're asking me to talk in generalities. And again, a little bit defensive at times, but just about the art of interviewing and about the things we should ask and how we should ask them, I learned a ton from this interview, or at least I thought deeply about different things after I watched this thing.

It was very contentious, but I thought in a good way, right? In the best way. Yeah, he made David answer questions. I don't like doing that when people, when I get into an interview and people start asking me questions in that way. But sometimes, hey, pal. Yeah, like you try to put, but, I mean, sometimes it can elicit really interesting conversation.

I think that, that happened here, even if you don't end up at the same. place that Andrew Shultz is. I feel bad from Arcazi, too, because you're sitting here next to a professional comedian and podcaster. And all of us would just be so much more mealy mouth and stammering. It's, I mean, those dudes, man, like they, I mean, they cut, I mean, they got rough elbows, dude. And they're just good talkers. Like, they're better talkers that we are. We would, we would be comedians if we could be comedians. Hosting a media podcast instead. Speaking of which, I got one more topic for you before we get to the over. Twitter joke here.

Okay. And we got some structure to this Monday podcast. It's a little bit different than the Thursday podcast. You used to see more stopdowns in this podcast. We got to get to this segment here.

Okay. Chip Carey. Oh. This was a rough moment. He was calling a Cardinals Reds game. And he was doing a read, Joel, for disability pride night. And within that read,

he decided to say, or he tried to say, the word flag. and awful announcing those eagle-eyed observers over there noted that not only did he mess up the word flag, and I'm going to leave it to your imagination to guess what he actually said, but what followed the read was 30 seconds of absolutely horrifically uncomfortable silence. So you did see the clip then, of course. I did see the clip. And it was, I mean, when they said 30 seconds of silence, you really don't have any idea how long 30 seconds is until you just sit with it after that. No, and you could just feel without knowing the Chip Carey sitting up there going, oh, my God.

Just clutching his chest. I'd be out of his, oh, you know, this is very much, oh, my God, what happened here? Would just escape my lips. What have I done? Yeah. I think about incidents like these, and we get them from time to time in two ways. One is that we should extend a kind of grace to people when something comes out. out of their mouth that does not seem to reflect an actual opinion in their lives.

So this is not talking about Tom Brennaman here, who's captured accidentally on audio expressing his off-camera thoughts. This is a word that comes out of somebody's mouth. That was very different. Yeah, that was very different. There should be in all of us some kind of grace to say, okay, you know, you said that. And in fact, there's a lot of grace here. Front Office Sports is Michael McCormick.

McCarthy reports that Kerry will not be disciplined for this instance. Here's my other thought whenever I hear something like this. Saying the right thing instead of saying the wrong thing is your job as an announcement. True. That's a great point. You're not supposed to make those mistakes. That's for amateurs, right? Whenever I do my close reading of announcers on Twitter or otherwise, I'll, you know, hear something from time to time.

from that part of the business, you know, asking why I'm doing it or telling me, you know, come on or whatever. And I'm always like, what else is there to judge announcers by than what they say? Man. And in this case, Chip Carey's reading something. And again, like, announcers are not building high-speed rail. They are not producing a sumptuous reboot of the talent as Mr. Ripley.

They're saying things on television. They want to be congratulating when they say good things on television. And when they mess up, to me there is also, you know, it's very, very within our rights to stand up and say, that was terrible. Like, you can't do that. Right. The thing is, is that within, like, maybe we need to have like a scale because, like, I don't know how many other mistakes he's making over the course of a nine inning game. I mean, that is a lot of words. Can you imagine how many words an announcer has to say in an average season, let alone one nine inning game?

and if you make that kind of a flub you're right we have to judge the amount of things that they say but also they're using an incredible amount of volume like there's so much so many words of flying out of their mouths over the course of the day and maybe if he's making like five of those mistakes a night or two or three a night right and then of course nothing like this

you know like you know screwing up a player's name messing up a stat you know not getting a call exactly right you're not talking about mistakes on this on this level on this level. I guess the thing is also whatever this kind of stuff happens and it is bad and I feel you know, feel bad whatever in a manner of speaking. Who's actually mad at this? Probably nobody. Yeah. Probably nobody. Yeah. I don't think anybody is bad at this. I mean, you know, and this happened with Glenn Kiper, the A's announcer back in 2023, lost his job. It was a slip. I mean, it was just one of those or he said it was a slip. The A's said that there was an

investigation and that because after the investigation and they parted ways with him. I mean, I just, it's very hard for me to get it. Like I said, those are the two values I go back to whenever I'm trying to put to get piece together my thoughts about this. Yeah.

Do you ever remember? So I've never thought about this. And this is what I'm talking about people don't get mad. So this is, I mean, this is really sad because it happened in the wake of Kobe's death in 2020. There was an MSNBC reporter. called the Los Angeles Lakers, the Los Angeles racial slurs.

Oh, no. Yeah. And I could always, I just say it. I save this off, you know, at home in the prophecy of all the home when I just want to have a laugh. And I never find. I remember that one. Yeah, you got to look it up, man. Allison Morris was the MSNBC reporter.

I think she's since moved on. People actually dig it mad and want her fired for saying that. But I'm just always just think of that. And I was just like, who, what a rough day of work she had. Some mistakes you just can't afford to make, you know. All right, Joel, it is time for the overword 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 us your nominees at the Pressbox pod on Twitter or on Blue Sky, where they are always, always gratefully received. I'm sure, Joel, you saw the news of the death of Fred Smith, the founding.

and chairman of FedEx. An overwork Twitter joke to write, his body will lie in state at the Memphis airport for three days, then be delivered to its final resting place via Columbia, Missouri, Trent, New Jersey, Springfield, Mass, Charleston, South Carolina, Bakersfield, California, Trenton again for some reason, and he will register as out for delivery indefinitely.

That's a great tweet. Memphis had a rough couple days, huh? I mean, where they lost Desmond Bain? I mean, Stephen Aves just crapped on him in public and now Fred Smith. Now this. Now this. Bad news and threes.

Thanks to listener Scott Klein. If you're not worried about porch pirates in this case, congrats. You made the overword Twitter joke of the week. All right. In the notebook dump, Joel, we got some more entries in our solidarity with Stephen A contest. All right. Let's go. Remember Stephen A was caught playing solitaire.

And we asked, send us the strangest behavior that you have witnessed or, in fact, participated in a press box. This comes to us from listener Ben Patterson. It's a little bit more of a mishap than bad behavior. He says, in solidarity with Stephen A, here is my personal story for my time in the press box. It was one of those gritty February matchups, number 24 Bucknell versus Northern Iowa, part of ESPN's old bracket buster series. I was on the college radio broadcast team, proudly calling the game live from a cramped courtside table in the cavernous U.N.I. dome with nothing but a stat sheet, a headset, and way too much caffeine.

Everything was going smoothly until halftime. Just as we came back from break, I felt that unmistakable drip. And sure enough, I had a full-blown nosebleed right there on the air. I tried to power through, but eventually had to hand the mic off mid-possession and hustle out of the press row like I'd taken an elbow to the face. The rest of my crew and my one classmate held it down like a pro, and I came back with tissue stuffed up my nose and my pride only slightly bruised. To this day, it's the only time I've had to leave a broadcast bleeding, but hey, college radio is nothing, if not real life training

under pressure. Hey, man, you didn't do anything wrong. You didn't do anything wrong. One question I do have, what year was it that Bucknell got to be number 24 in the poll? Bucknell? They've had some years, right? Oh, have they? I did not know. Send your notes to Joel Anderson if you want to stick up with Bucknell. Bucknell, I was not familiar with your game. This is our friend Michael Moynihan in Ireland, always a treasured listener. Talks about an incident in 2010, he was writing a gamer, Cork Waterford in Simple Stadium, went to the toilet, and the door jammed when he was in the press box toilet.

Oh, man. He says there was no gift. I rang out to the other hacks in the press box, none able to help. A groundsman was called, and in fairness, he came back and broke the door down to release me after about half an hour's detention. Went back to my laptop, embarrassed silence from other scribes, which I did nothing to relieve. Twelve years later at another game, one of them invoked the statute of limitations. It's been a long time, Mike, he said. Time to stop mentioning the toilet and simple.

Can you think of a worse place to be? Well, I mean, there's a lot of them. But half hour in a men's bathroom at a sports stadium. And particularly the press box bathroom, which I find to be absolutely disgusting. I mean, man, they probably don't serve hot dogs and stuff like that at Simple Stadium. We can get some more clarity from Michael about that. Do you got any opinions on Cork or Waterford, too, that you'd like to throw out there, like your take-on-bug now? No, well, I mean, just, I'm sure there was a very thrilling game.

match perhaps match yeah right that's you can tell i was a big fan uh stewart randall in australia since this he says i've got two for you one we had a color tv commentator on the australian a league who will go quiet around 35 minutes each first half turns out he was leaving the boot to go to the press room and get the pies as soon as they were delivered would return five minutes later with his bemused caller that's his play-by-play man wondering what the hell was going on anybody can understand if you've ever been in a news in a press box when they handed out chick fillet at half time if you don't get in line you're not going to get that chick filet sandwich that that's where i feel our relation took a huge step forward when i handed you a chick fillet at half time of college fall national

championship game this year it was like he had brought me like gold to blooms i was like what thank you man uh number two here from stuart randle a high profile sydney tabloid sports writer was sent over to Perth, that's across the country for those non-Australians, to cover a major UFC card. Instead of being engrossed in the match, this notable scribe spent the full six hours front row next to the cage with a horse race streaming and gambling site on his laptop making multiple bets. The next day, his 600 words were in print form from a fight he never watched. Love the show. You know, Brian, we could probably figure out who that person is if we put a little reporting to it.

I want to leave that Sydney Tabloids sports writer alone. He seems to have a fun job, I will say that. And this one is from Ben Solac, a young NFL writer I've had my eye on. He sends his solidarity with Stephen A. He says an unnamed nationally recognized college football journalist was seen by a bright-eyed, wispy-chin bin Solac playing Pokemon Go in the press box of the infamous Tyler Trent game, unranked Purdue beating Unbeat in Ohio State

well into the third and fourth quarter when it was clear the upset was on. The playing didn't infringe upon actual game action too much, but I remember being astounded that a person of this level of national renown was openly playing Pokemon Go multiple years after its heyday had passed among their peers.

To be fair, I knew very little of press box behaviors back then and would be less surprise now. takes all kinds, doesn't it? Pokemon Go, really? I mean, it seems like Ben is really upset about the Pokemon Go part of it. This is what people got mad at Stephen A about it. It wasn't just that he was doing something. It was solitary in particular.

What game are you allowed to play? I mean, do they have, I would love to play like a little handheld version of Oregon Trail. If they had something like that, I probably would get lost in that. Is that still available on phones? Probably is. I'm sure. All right. now, Joel, you know every Monday podcast ends with a particular challenge.

Oh, man. It's something we call David Chewaker, in this case, Joel Anderson guesses, the strained pun headline. I thought we agreed we don't make fun of people on this show. This is revenge for asking me about all my favorite songs. Which you dip back into today. I'll have listeners know. I didn't make you answer that.

Today's headline comes to us from listener, LAB21. It's from the New Yorker story by a writer I always look out for Joel J. Casby and Kang. Okay. Have you seen this story today? I've heard about it, not read it, though. So you haven't said, oh, don't you? You're typing. Stop typing.

Oh, I'm sorry. This is research doesn't help you with this. Oh, I'm not writing. I'm just trying to, so I can diagram what you say so I can think about, you know, if it's going to line up, okay? Just type me out of notes, huh? Yeah, just type it out some notes, I promise. Any New Yorker story that has the name Jesus shovelsworth in the first paragraph,

you and I are probably going to be into. Oh, I'm on that. But Jay is writing about youth sports. And in particular, his subjects here are in the picture. Marcus Spears Jr. left with his father, former NFL lineman. And his mother, Aisha Spears, played in the WNBA. So I want you to think about youth sports, particularly when your mom and or dad has played ball as well.

what was the New Yorkers strained upon headline oh my God this is going to be horrible double trouble is some double is double

it coming up here it's a son in this case so it is in the product yeah he is Marcus Spears's

and Aisha Spears's thank you air where are we going with that A, oh air parent that's good but in this case, basketball, so we're going air. I shot a three from the corner, but I didn't hit anything. It's air.

Air ball? See, this is a tough feature to your, Joel. Yeah, man, okay. Okay, see, yeah. David is, I'm sure he took, what, AP courses in school? In headline writing? Yeah, I was sure. He is Joel Anderson.

I'm Brian Curtis. Plankton by Kyle Crichton. Guess what? We got press box on Thursday at Joel Anderson. who's quickly wondering why he signed up for this is going to be back. I get back in my comfort zone on Thursday. We will have, of course, more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, Joel.

I see you.