The Press Box - Trump’s Iran Threats, Vanity Fair’s Chloe Fineman Cleanup, and Bryan’s Spring Break Adventures

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

Today on The Press Box, Bryan and David start by catching up about Bryan’s spring break trip. Then they talk about Trump’s Iran tweets (15:28), Bill Raftery’s obscure reference during the national championship (19:07), and much more. Later on, they talk about what to do with ESPN Radio (50:17) and discuss what makes a great used bookstore (57:25). Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week, and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline! Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David ShoemakerProducers: Bruce Baldwin and Isaiah Blakely Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

David? Yeah. I just got back from a nine-day spring break road trip with a family. An all-inclusive, well, what was it? Was it like a, was it, the way that you pitch that, sounds like a prize on an old episode of Wheel of Fortune or something. Was it like a, was it a, was it a, the sort of vacation that you could only get from an 80s game show? You say all-inclusive.

It's more of a continental breakfast at the Fresno Holiday Inn Express. It's not bad. Let me tell you something. There was a pancake machine that said Holiday Inn. Mm-hmm. I saw it the first day, and I was like, here it is. This is what my kids will remember from Spring Break. Wait, the machine said Holiday Inn or the pancakes themselves say Holiday Inn when pressed?

Nothing says Holiday Inn. It's just a pancake machine in a Holiday Inn. And you press a button and two perfect little pancakes come out. I was like, someday my kids will be talking about this pancake machine. Yes, absolutely. If not, mom and dad and the whole crazy road trip. Mm-hmm. Two Clark Griswold moments early in the trip for me.

Mm-hmm. You and I like to talk about how the newspaper is now written for us. Well, road trips are now designed for middle-aged dads like ourselves. I woke up that first morning in Fresno. Mm-hmm. Been a long drive the day before. And I got two Aleve and I put them into my mouth like I had two dice and I was rolling him in a game of craps.

And I washed him down with hot coffee. Uh-huh. No water. Just the Aleve hot coffee right in the morning. Best way to start the day. Breakfast to Champions there. Moment number one. Moment number two is I was getting something from the car and I passed another guy coming

coming out of the hotel parking lot. He was returning to the hotel. I was going to the car. It's maybe 10 years older than us. Waring a hoodie and had the hands buried deep in the hoodie pockets. Yeah. And was walking as slow as humanly possible back into the hotel. I was like, there's a gentleman, a father or a partner who's just taking a little

moment for himself. That's like that Jerry Seinfeld bit, right? Do you remember that where he's like, he talks about the whole like the whole routine of getting ready to go on vacation? And it's just like elaborate, you know, packing the suitcases and loading the car and getting the kids in there and buckling them up and helping your wife in and shutting the door. And he's like, and then you walk around to your, to the driver's side door. He's like, and that walk right there, that's the vacation for the man. It truly is. And let me tell you, I wasn't exactly, you know, sprinting.

back from the magenta minivan that we took on this vacation, which belongs to my mother-in-law. This is a great minivan, by the way, because you've got three rows. So each child has a distinct row in the back, which cuts down on fights. There's also a DVD player. We're not really that kind of family

who's just popping in movies to get through the trip. But let me tell you, there are some drives where it's like, all right, Harry Potter 4. Oh, yeah. We got some ground to cover. Dude, we have a collection of, my seven-year-old has a collection of DVDs, just for the odd instance where we get in those situations. It's like, only a DVD will do. Well, guess what? Christine and I, when we do a road trip, like to do a kind of literary road trip.

That sounds a little pointy-headed, but... Definitely not what your kids are going to be remembering 20 years from now. Well, you say that. I'm joking. You say that, but I think it's nice to point out some landmarks. For instance, we were driving through Northern California. That's where we went on the trip. And we went through Calaveras County.

Oh, yeah. There was a wonderful mural of old Mark Twain. The famed Jump and Frog. Yeah. Fame Jump and Frog. Staple of fourth grade English classes everywhere. We went to Monterey. And I got to read a little John Steinbeck.

Wait, did Calaveras County Californian predate Mark Twain? Yeah. He went to Calvarez County and he heard the story of the celebrated Jump and Frog. I wonder if it's one of it if you if I had to bet I would say it's one of those places with a fake name like then they named it after the story that they created calaveras county to capitalize on the on the popularity of mark twain what's the what's the place that was named after a game show oh truth or consequences new mexico oh yeah yeah home of home of a cactus jack to your c or c as they say in new mexico also read some john steinbeck this is the other great part of a literary is it gives you something to read at night when you're not doing the dad walk back to the car. Have you read John Steinbeck since we read The Grapes of Wrath in Mr. Reed's sophomore English class? I read some in college or in grad school, but I don't even remember.

It's been that long, so basically the same. We were staying on Canary Row in Monterey. And I got to read Canary Row. and my thing, as you know, is I get up way earlier than the rest of the family. I try mostly unsuccessfully to slip out without closing that hotel room, which closes like a bank vault in every hotel now.

And then I would find a coffee shop on Canary Row and I sit there reading the book and all the locations are marked. Oh my gosh. The real life people that he wrote about and turned into characters in this book. That was really cool. We visited Jack London's Ranch and Gravesite

in Northern California. Wow. literary road trip this is the best part and the part that we'll speak directly to you because it spoke directly to me we went to santa rosa california one of our our dear friends megan lives up there so we went we're traveling with another family the home of one charles shultz oh my god the creator of course if you if you don't know of peanuts yeah and charlie brown and snoopy and woodstock yeah i think think more more popularly known as the gang from the charlie brown christmas movie or what is it

yeah it's a great pumpkin charlie brown it's a it's a great what's a turkey is there a thanksgiving one it's definitely an easter beagle charlie brown mixed in there i should have brought those dvdies i i i you and i obsessed with the funnies generally we got to do a funny you know issue pot at some point and charles shultz specifically because he was the god of the funnies when we were kids so many questions, yeah. Yeah, he was like the godfather of the funny pages. And everybody has their, I mean, when we were kids, there weren't, as popular as the funnies were,

there weren't a lot of them that were just like, a lot of cartoon characters that were like, they're everywhere you looked, right? It was, it was Garfield and Snoopy. They might have been like, I'm sure there were other ones too, but in terms of like, Calvin and Hobbs, stickers on cars. Well, that was later.

But when we were really, when it was new to us, like Snoopy and, and Charlie Brown were the, like, some of the only things with, like, crossover cultural relevance, right? The only time, the only characters you would ever see on a shirt would be Snoopy or Mickey Mouse, you know, like, and that's not from the funny pages. But so wait, I have so many questions. Is Charles Schultz's house a destination? Well, he has a museum in Santa Rosa. Charles Schultz has left this earth in 2000, for those who don't know. But he has a big museum. And when did Peanuts leave, uh, leave, uh, leave, syndication by the way.

Yeah. Fianuts is still running as far as I can tell what I, pick up a physical newspaper. But he had this museum built and it's unbelievable. I mean, it's like every question that you and I would have wanted to have answered was answered on the wall. It was like,

I walk in and I look to my right and it's like, you know, why did Charles Schultz create a character that was Snoopy's brother and named him Spike? And plant him in the beautiful burg of Needles, California. That was actually answered. Charles Schultz had a dog when he was.

was a kid named Spike. That was his first dog who had a lot of Snoopy's characteristics. I mean, thing after thing, Charles Schultz's office is recreated in this museum. It was absolutely fantastic. They had a full-scale office recreation. Well, they had the actual stuff from his office and they had just assembled it as he had it assembled. Wow. In this museum.

That's intense. Intense. Really, really cool. But there was even a cooler point. Okay. Because right next to the Charles Schultz Museum was the church. Charles Schultz ice rink. What?

Which he had built in 1969, if you can go to those opening scenes of the Charlie Brown Christmas special. Oh, yeah. He was from St. Paul, Minnesota originally. So he had an ice rink built in Northern California. And you can go skate on Snoopy's home ice, as it's called. Oh, my God. And David, there's a.

cafe right off the rank. You can buy some warm hot chocolate and it's got like Snoopy stained glass windows. An important question here. Do you know how to ice skate? Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. I mean, I ice skated, I didn't do, I was, I could never roller skate, but I got ice skate just a little bit growing up. And as an adult, I think I've done it once or twice. There's usually when we go ice skating, though, I, I tap out.

You know, it's important to me that my kids learn. how to ice skate and ski and do all the stuff that I didn't do as a kid, but like, I'm not good enough to be their teacher, really. Yeah, so I'll just watch from the sidelines. Sort of the right answer. That was my answer as well. Because I was like, I didn't do this as a kid. I've done this in a while, but it's like riding a bike, right?

No, it's not. No. It's really hard to stay upright. And I had at least one of the nice docents of Snoopy's home ice come up to me. Sir, are you okay after I took a little bad fall? Oh, my God. That's the thing. Ice skating and skiing similar, but ice skating just takes absolute like lack of fear. You know, it's like it's possible to do it.

But it's like a perpetual motion machine. It's like the way to go forward is to not, is to be, you know, in constant motion. Not worry about the next step. Don't worry about what the repercussions. And, and yeah, if you have any hesitation, you'll be, or if you're just not good at it, you'll be flat on your ass. Absolutely. And I'm baby-juraffing my way around the ice while these little kids are practicing sal cows and triple toe loops. And there's a hockey dad putting his son through the drills at one end. And I'm just like, all right, lean forward because that way if you fall, you will not hit the back of your head on the ice.

Well, let me tell you something. As soon as we get out there. That is the scariest part. As soon as an adult, you just can't be unafraid, right? Bleeding on the ice is definitely the horror story here. Yeah. I don't have like horror story type, you know, imaginings of what's going to happen to me. But on the, but ice skates,

like the blades ending up in my face or my Achilles tendon, you know, is like a constant part of my thought process as I'm skating. Because it's something that could actually happen. You and I are not up sailing down cliffs in the Amazon, but we might get dragged onto the ice with our kids and we might injure ourselves. Uh-huh. Or they might get injured.

Let me tell you. So we get out on the ice and what do they start playing, that wonderful Vincent Gorman. Raldi music from Charlie Brown. As we're skating around, I'm like, oh, my God, if happiness is a warm puppy, as the great man once said, happiness is also skating at Charles Schultz's ice rink in Santa Rosa, California. Just an unbelievable experience.

That's awesome, man. And then the music changed, and they play Bruno Mars. I was going to ask. We're not just living in the past here. got to keep Charles Schultz's ice rink up to date It's okay, it's okay Charles Schultz would probably be a Snoopy if he were alive today

I'd rather listen to Bruno Mars, that tracks That's crazy I can't even think of the, like is there a How long is the list of comic strip creators for whom you would Not just visit a museum But like visit a museum if it was right in front of you You know like

You don't have to seek it out It just like if you were like oh, hey, the, whatever, the Bill Waterson Museum's next door. Let's go check it out. Okay, that's one. Gary Larson Museum. Two. Yes, absolutely.

Charles Schultz three. Can we get to four? Well, okay, I'll just say you and I, that might be most of the, well, I mean, would you go to the Gary Trudeau Museum? Yeah, sure. That's four. I mean, just like George Harriman is a guy that did a crazy cat. very inspirational, a big inspiration

of Calvin and Hobbs. I'm a big fan of that. I mean, that would be like an art museum. But of ones that, like, people know about, I think those are the big ones. Other ones that would exist, but maybe not be like, top start. Well, if it was right there, would you go to the Jim Davis Museum? I would go to the Jim Davis Museum.

Absolutely. Just like I like to go to Dave and Busters once in a while. I would go to the Jim Davis Museum. Would you go to the Chick-Young Museum, creator of Blondie? Dagwood and Blondie? there was a Hank Ketcham Park in Monterey, too, creator of Dennis the Menace.

Oh, yeah. That's pretty good. Scott Adams' recent RIP? No, I feel like I was visiting that museum on Twitter every day. Yeah, true. No disrespect. I don't know that there's any, I mean, there's other ones that Jim Davis, this is such a bizarre conversation to me having.

How about people who have their names on the museum as opposed to the names of the comic strip? Like, Jim Davis is borderline, right? just because Garfield has so much more like curating, right? I mean, and his name is pretty basic. But you'd go to the Gary Larson Museum, the Bill Widerson Museum. You'd probably go to the, you'd probably go to the Popeye Museum or the Beetle Bailey Museum, not necessarily, right?

If you were there and you could appreciate the kitsch factor, I would go to those museums. Yeah, but there's very, very few. Very, very few. Anyway, when in Santa Rosa, stop by Snoopy's Home Ice, you'll have a fantastic time. I'll do it. Have a hot chocolate on me. All right, coming up on the press box, while I was gone, AI and journalism had a moment.

Should we be terrified or just really terrified? Plus, Donald Trump got the F word into the newspaper. TMZ goes to Washington. What is ESPN radio now? Bill Rafter, he said, what? And the best used bookstores in the world. All that much more in the press box. A part of the ringer, podcast network.

Hello, media consumers. it's Brian Curtis, it's David Shoemaker, it's producers Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin back with you. David, I'm sure you saw President Donald Trump's true social post on Easter morning. Continuing the lineage of

Donald Trump Easter-related postings. We all remember the classic haters and losers one from 2015. We also got video of Trump talking Iran with the Easter bunny standing next to him. Uh-huh. That was pretty amazing. This time

Donald Trump said Tuesday will be power plant day and bridge day all wrapped up in one in Iran open the eff and straight you crazy bastards or you'll be living in hell just watch praise be to Allah. Did you just censor yourself? I did. And you know why? Because I hear once in a while that people

have the pot on in the car with the kids. Okay. And if we're just F bombing our way through. That seems more like a production issue than a town. issue, but go ahead. But speaking of the F-bomb, the New York Times and the Washington Post printed this quote in full.

There was a little bit of murmur on Twitter like, will they actually have the guts to print Donald Trump's profane language, if I may use the only in journalism term. Yeah. They didn't have. The newspapers did not have the same moral standards that Brian Curtis does. They printed

the whole thing. There's a family show here unlike that New York Times, where you hear all those dirty jokes. Yeah, pretty incredible stuff. Can I also say just as a total aside that this was also, the timing of this tweet was also just, it seemed to me there was an overwhelming amount of conspiracy theorizing about Trump's health that he hadn't been,

he wasn't seen in public on Easter. And so everybody assumed he was back at the hospital or whatever it was. Yeah, that was weird. It was just a bizarre tidal wave. and a lot of it from like quarters that normally I respect. I mean, not like this isn't the New York Times, but people I wouldn't expect to get wound up in it. And then it was just like a flash in the pan.

It was over. It was over. I guess he didn't go to Mara Lago that weekend, which I think through everybody. Yeah. Since he's always at Mara Lago. Yeah, he had a, yeah. And he had like three different Easter services on his Sunday schedule,

and he went to none of them or something. That was at least the theory or the part of the conspiracy theory that I was reading. I was like, not too unusual, but go ahead. Join the club, President Trump. Washington Post called this an ex- Trump. He's just like me. He's just like us. I have never, today is the day I became president. Washington Post called that an expletive laden post.

Not really laden. Was it laden? Yeah. Well, laden imply that or mean that there is expletives throughout? Well, my question for you was, what is something laden with other than expletives? Oh, gosh, there is something else. isn't there a colloquialism of I think you could be laden like a donkey

can be laden on a journey Yes, of course, of course. Isn't there something about being laden? Isn't there some laden with guilt or laden with... Ooh, that's good, yeah. I'm laden with guilt. But you're right. I mean, short of that, if expletive didn't exist, the laden would probably not exist anymore either.

Politico called it a profane and jarring post. Yeah. Speaking of euphemisms. last night's NCAA final between Michigan and Yukon. We got one more round with Bill, the old guy still got it, Raftery. He was describing Husky's coach Dan Hurley. And you know Dan Hurley. He's usually yelling at the refs.

He's doing a WWW headbut on the refs. Well, there was kind of a bad call against me. Is that how you have to explain things to me? Do you understand this, David, if I put it in wrestling terms? He sort of cuts a promo in his interview. Definitely cutting a lot of promos. There was a bad call against the Huskies last night, or at least a marginal call. And he was calmly talking to the ref, was Dan Hurley.

Calmly. So, you know, a little bit different. I want you to listen to the historical character that Bill Raftery compared Dan Hurley to. And that is the 17th foul. So that's going to be a one-and-one now for Nomari Burnett. Johnson checks back in for Michigan and McKinney will sit. They're very peaceful in her. Yeah, they're dog Homershull he's not.

I think it's a little bit more Zen. Dog Homersholt, he's not. Now I'm watching the game in my office last night and I'm like, did I just have a neurological event? Or did he just say Dog Homershold? That is the best thing I've ever heard. What is, did he assume, I can't even understand. It's so weird one to know who Dog Homershold is in like a conversational way,

but also to understand something about his character. Yes. And for those who, you know, maybe have other pursuits like college basketball, dog Homersholt was the Swedish economist who was, UN Secretary General from 1953 to 1961. Was he the one? Was he the first one?

Maybe. I don't know. For some of it, it seemed like, anyway. I heard that and I went to Twitter and I was like, I'm ready to tweet about this. And then I had this terrifying moment. Like, did I just hear something

that Bill did not actually say? Yeah. Did he say the name of like a foreign born basketball coach or player? And for some reason, my mind went to the former UN Secretary General. He's the second Secretary General. Second. After Trigievli of Norway.

Okay. Of Norway. Anyway. So I'm sitting there last night and I searched Twitter and there may have been a spelling issue here, but I found a one tweet where somebody mentioned it. And I was like, okay. I'm still not totally sure. So then I sent a text to Ian Eagle who was calling the game with Raft.

I said, did Raft just give us the first dog, Homershould reference in Final Four history? And Eagle replied, in TV sports history. Consider that confirmed. Dog, Homershold.

Oh, now this is going to be like, this is going to be like a Raftery like gimmick from now on. He's got to just come with some historical figure in his back pocket. Someone who color photos do not exist of. Kofi Annan. Yeah.

No, there's a film of Kofi Annan. I'm an only old-fashioned. Oh, okay. So we've got to go a little bit farther back. World leaders from the 50s, that's the category here. Yeah. Do we need to weigh in on the Vanity Fair Chloe Feynman incident? I don't know if we need to.

We certainly can. Vanity Fair had a video in which a bunch of cast members from S&L were playing a funny game show, how well do we know each other? Folks, this is a very old bit. If you've ever listened to sports radio, especially a long-running sports radio show, the hosts have at some point done

but how well do we know each other game? Well, Chloe Feynman, who joined S&L back in 2019, had a story about a job she was fired from. And as soon as this hit the world, you started seeing tweets being like, oh, my God, did you see the reaction? on her castmate's faces. And I wanted to dive in because I was going to,

let me tell you something about podcasting. 99 times out of 100 when you see your favorite podcaster reacting to your other favorite podcaster, it's acting. This is a performance-based medium. They're not really shocked at something their fellow podcaster said. There's a lot of, there's a lot of, you know, there's acting in this, in this genre. It says here I'm supposed to disagree with you. and just start screaming that you're wrong.

You're supposed to look shocked at what I've just revealed. Then I actually watched this, and I think these were genuine reactions. This was the one time out of 100. Anyway, here's Chloe Feynman's story. No, I was fired as a camp counselor. For hitting on the camper. No, I pantsed a boy. Oh, honey, I think you're on a list somewhere.

And he wasn't wearing underpants. Oh! And then a giant school bus drove by, and they were like, you can't. Because he would lift my shirt all the time. Oh, what is happening? It was Berkeley. How old was the child? He was like six.

No, it was a different time. Like, he would be like, hey, could I have a hug? And I'd go to hug him, and then he like lift my shirt, like a dick. And then I was like, I'm gonna get back at you. And so we were on a hike. And I was like, hey, Ollie, go look over there. It's a hawk.

And he looked. And then I yanked his pants down. He wasn't wearing underwear. His little dingling was out. And then these two twins were like, Ollie, I didn't know you didn't wear underwear. And then I was fired. Woo.

Let me tell you a funny story that involves the words little dingling. Maybe I should have self-censored that as well. So everybody on Twitter was like, well, that seems kind of on the line that you were a high school student pulling a six-year-old pants down at camp. Yeah. I don't know if it was a different time. I mean, she got fired, right? I mean, so it's a different. It wasn't that different.

It wasn't that different. Although it does seem way more plausible, like at our childhoods that that would happen than it does now. Yes. I still think with a counselor, it seems somewhat implausible. Like my friends pulled down my pants and I was embarrassed. But if, I mean, you know, you and I are parents like, oh, yeah, high school kid pulled our child's pants down. you're absolutely right but you but I went to the you know I've been to a bunch of these camps oh do you have a story you'd like to tell no I do a story that I've got fired from a Baptist camp

but but no I mean but I'm saying but like the people who are counselors were by and large people who were just like already hanging around you know it's like the kids who were graduating out of the camp and they were just like well what am I going to do next summer like I don't feel like the age distinction was real but it's not like there's just some sort of I would say counselors in my experience were closer to campers and they were like administrators david's vacation bible school confessions will be on the next episode of the press box stay tuned for that there was actually a media story here uh as varieties jordan morrow noted vanity fair cleaned up the video what they bleep it or what was no they just did some some cuts uh they made the kid

17 in the story or something? Yes, it said edited and removed Feynman mentioning that the boy was six and that his little dingling was out. So I watched... So they didn't take it out. They didn't take out the crime, the indiscretion, the whatever. Indiscretion.

But they edited out just like some of the details? Yeah. And I watched the edited version on YouTube. It's pretty funny because it now is kind of like a semi-charming story if you don't know how old everybody was. Yeah. Well, absolutely. It's a different story. That's the thing.

It's a different story. I mean, I find it, but it's hilarious just from like a fact-following point of view. Were people mad that Vanity Fair cleaned up, quote-unquote cleaned up the tape? I think they were... I assume? I think they were a little surprised by it because you've posted the video. Uh-huh. I mean, it's not exactly like taking a line out of a profile at a publicist insistence, because this isn't journalism.

These are just actors talking to each other. I mean, oh, here we got now. There's a real confessions. Have you never taken a thing out of a podcast interview? I feel like podcast interviews are different, are different in some ways, especially when they're, as you've made fun of many times in the past, but the kind of radio rose sort of appearances too when everybody comes with an agenda. You know, it's like it's already transactional from the moment they sit down.

And as crazy as this. is. Sometimes somebody just says something really out of pocket. Not like journalistically interesting, you know, just sometimes they just use some language they wouldn't use or maybe betray someone else's confidence or do something that is, that exists that doesn't matter at all except it will really piss off their employer, you know, like when people will ask to have it taken out. And if it's not meaningful, it's you're already in this like transactional space. You know, that's not, it's not the craziest thing. Also, not for nothing, but I feel like if somebody's like, asking you to take some stuff back and not everything back i mean you probably the

it's probably evidence of a really comfortable probably revealing interview you know it's like you got them to a weird to a place that they were caught they were off guard you will go ahead i'm not i'm not saying there's any moral rectitude here brian i'm just saying like it all right like it's i certainly have had people request things and and and and and and it doesn't seem that bizarre like they're doing you a service what were they up there on stage four. It was a Vanity Fair production. It was a Vanity Fair production. We got all that. I mean, listen, I know she's a celebrity, but like if they had had a,

if that had been Vanity Fair staffers and wanted them had confessed to a crime on stage, they'd probably pull the video down, you know? Here's the thing. We need to do this at some point, just do a whole segment of this is what happens on podcasts. Yeah. Because I don't think people actually know. Like, I don't think people know that podcasts are edited, period. And I'm not just talking about taking out an answer that the interviewee was

uncomfortable with. Oh no, just like properly edited, streamlined and like content edited and everything. Yeah, this is the press box is just a pure fire hose. Like you're getting, you're getting the real stuff. But your favorite podcast has been carefully edited so that everybody sounds funnier. This is our third take of the Chloe Feynman second. We did the first one two days ago. Yeah. We're finally getting it right. We can walk up to this too. There's a, there's new website, LA Material. Have you seen this on your feed? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love it. I love it. looks great. Our pal,

Julia Turner is involved in this. Amy Kaufman had a story in there about celebrity podcasts and was saying many of them are happy to grant an edit if the interviewee is uncomfortable with one of their answers. I have not seen a comment

from Vanity Fair on this, so we will update that as soon as we see it. In Washington news, last night Oliver Darcy over its status reported that Jack Blanchard will no longer be writing

Politico's playbook. At least the main... made playbook. Remember Jack Blanchard was brought over from... NWA TV champion, Jack... No relation to Tully either. See, there's you doing wrestling. Yeah.

Jack Blancher was brought over from the UK to write playbook. And immediately there was a little bit of a... Who's this guy? Now, I felt two ways about this. Some of that is a little bit, you know, like... I'm sorry, can a British person... person from another country not cover American politics. It seems like Jonathan Swan's done pretty well at covering the Trump White House.

There's a long list of people who've done very well. I mean, there's also a long list of like British hucksters that have come over and pretended they were more. I don't know. I don't think that's controversial. That is a legitimate archetype of like the, there's a sort of pro wrestling bit to do it too. Yeah, it just come over and be more posh and knowledgeable than I am in real life. British people can get one over on Americans any day of the week.

That'll be our May issue, a short history of British hucksters who have invaded American journalism. Jack Blanchard, so it was a little bit of that. But then there was an early, you remember playbook where Jack Blancer was talking about, well, who's had a more productive 100 days, first 100 days than Donald Trump? Yeah. And all the people wrote it, it was like, I don't know if you know about FDR and the whole 100 days thing. Yeah. And then in his subsequent playbook, he was quoting Wikipedia about FDR's 100 days. It was like, oh, oh.

Yeah. And I went back and read an interesting piece that Charlotte Klein wrote about Blanchard when he first started. And an anonymous quotie in there made a good point, which is that these newsletters now in Washington have become a game of inches. Like there are so many newsletters. And they are for, you know, increasingly smaller nooks of Washington. This is just Congress. Oh, this is just the House. This is just the Senate.

is just energy futures that you can't be a generalist anymore. You can kind of be a Washington generalist a little bit, but you can't be an amused outsider. Like, it's only for insiders. Listen, this is what I say. This is true by just being a public writer in the internet era, right? I mean, that like suddenly it's like you're not, no one's interested in the weekly columnist at the newspaper anymore.

want the people who are like really into the stats, right? Yep. And you're also preaching to an audience that is much more self-aware of their own expertise, right? I mean, people joke about living in your mom's basement. But like literally if you had no, no obligation in life except to learn about DC politics, you probably know more as much as somebody writing one of these newsletters, you know? So it's, I mean, it's from a generalist point of view. So it's, yeah, it's impossible now.

were you as underwhelmed as I was by TMZ trying to get into the Washington business? I thought it was kind of funny. Lindsay Graham was like when they got into sports. Listen, we all rolled our eyes when TMZ sports became, was a thing. It started being a thing. Now it's sort of subsumed, but they still do a lot of sports coverage, big stuff. And they need somewhere, they need an umbrella to put their, you know, various celebrity crash photos or athlete crash photos or whatever. There's something that just seems sort of perfect about TMZ going to Washington.

You know, it was underwhelming, sure, but like, I think that's sort of par for the course. I think basically, like, all of these, like, every, all of these smaller outlets are people figures that are saying, like, death to traditional media without actually, like, wrestling with the fact that they use traditional media every single day to do their work. It feels like what all of those people want to be is ultimately TMZ Washington. So it's good that TMZ watch it. And not from a cliche like gotcha journalism, like catch on the street point of view, but like just a very kind of reactive light, you know, pseudo investigative sort of point of view. Like this is what they want to look like. I mean, there's some of that in Pablo's podcast, Pablo Tori's podcast.

Yeah, absolutely. It's just a little bit of the energy of TMC. Yeah. And just kind of, we're just sitting around with my friends talking over the stories of the day. There's an investigative part of it. it. There's a doorstepy part of it. I mean, it's, Washington's great for doorstepping people. Yeah. It's not like those, you know, congressmen are all getting in armored cars and,

you know, driving away. You live there. You remember, you're nice to see them. You see people around all the time in Washington. I guess I was underwhelmed by the kind of just reflexive populism of the whole thing of like, oh, there's a partial shutdown and, you know, Senator so-and-so is holding a bubble wand, you know, a Disney world. Like, okay, that's kind of funny. Like, just taking pictures of Congress people in the wild as sort of. Yeah, it's like a running blog, blog bit, right?

It's just like, look what your congressman is doing instead of working. But if you listen to Harvey Levin and he gave an interview to Alex Michelson, who hosts a CNN show out here in Los Angeles, it was all out of, you know, let's vote the clowns out. You know, what are those clowns in Congress doing? I'm like, okay. I do think there's an opportunity for TMZ to find more scandals in Washington.

Sure. I mean, that just feels like his Politico is diving into the weeds of you know, Chuck Schumer walked out of a doorway. There's a lot of meat on that bone. Stuff around. You've seen

Daily Mail kind of play in that sandbox. You know, there's always those rumors that lingered around TMZ that they had some sort of dirt on certain celebrities. They're in their like first big peak. You know, and that's how they got their stories. That's how they got their early,

how they got their coverage. They treated some of them with kid gloves, man. They get down to D.C. and sort of throwing that kind of weight around. We could have, like, President Harvey Levin before too long. Don't laugh. Three different AI stories while I was away. And I am not including the giant Ronan Farrow,

Andrew Moran's piece in the New Yorker that came out yesterday. Item one, guy named Alex Preston, who is a novelist himself, wrote a book review for the New York Times. The book he reviewed is called Watching Over Her, and a reader came forward and said, wait a second, this reads in spots like a review of the same book that ran in The Guardian. This is how Alex Preston explained what happened to Sam Leith on his Pharmacon substack. Alex Preston writes, the short version is that I had written a draft review of the book,

but it was under length, and I was rushing badly and drowning slightly. I made the stupid decision to use an AI tool to help expand and smooth it with instructions about U.S. spelling and house style at the New York Times,

which I always get wrong. Dot, dot, dot. I looked at how it had tidied up the end of the review, but didn't realize that it had also dropped in language from Christabel Kent's Guardian review. I was rushed and stupid, and I'm so sorry.

That is the heart of it. So this was not a case of asking a bot to write a review from scratch, he continues, nor of deliberately lifting from the Guardian, but it was absolutely an improper use of AI and a complete failure of judgment on my part. I had so many reactions to that, because it seems like new technology

and yet the same excuse that we saw in the analog days of plagiarism? The cut and paste. I had a different page open to notes. I mean, I've certainly done that. I got my notes confused with, I mean, that's kind of the old excuse.

I won't, like, not to, not obviously it is a totally different degree, but like I feel like I've done this and I feel like a lot of people must have. When you're sort of working, you have like two different master documents and you cut and paste one onto the other or, or you're just shortening or whatever. And there's just a piece in the middle that you didn't realize it got there. You know, it's like I didn't mean to bring that piece over. And this is just a case where that piece had AI assistance. Yeah, it's the same excuse as before.

And it's sort of interesting. I mean, like he just admits it straight up. Like it doesn't need that many words to be like, yeah, I was, I couldn't get enough words down on paper. So I used, you know, chat GPT to finish it off for me. it does it does really seem like all of the instructions that he gave the bot that was lengthening and smoothing his work seemed to be a pretty complex system of instructions which you know if that time had been given to writing and researching the piece yourself might have might have really come through for you yeah if you're just given yourself the same instructions then you could

have added a couple of sentences and... I mean, how long was this piece? How, yeah, how long is this piece? I mean, you could, you can literally double the length of a short news article just by giving it a 10 minute pass, you know? Like, it's not, it's not that hard. But that said, like, it's an, it's, listen, we're going to get more and more and more of these.

And it's, it's an incredibly like human impulse, you know, like, I'm inadequate. And I'm the, and there's a lot of ways that this would have been dealt with before AI that weren't plagiarism. There were just various other means of delay or obfuscation or whatever else. I'm almost done. It's not like these problems didn't exist, just the solution didn't exist. Yes. You know, and as like I'm working my book right now,

um, there's some, I mean, there's, I can't tell you it, like, it happens with every piece you write, but with a big project, it comes, you know, more frequent, you know, more times, but there's just times where you feel utterly helpless. you know, in the face of completing this thing that you promised to do, you know? And so, like, the deadline hits on the wrong day. It's a, it's a human impulse. I get it. I give Preston credit for explaining exactly what happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly what happened in a totally, like, plausible way. I just think from the very first sentence, he says enough that, like, he can be, like, if we choose not to give him any more work, then that makes total sense, you know?

Totally, totally. And, but it. It's like this is an imprecise world we're all diving into now, which brings us to item number two because there was a Megan McCartle day on Twitter while I was away. Right. Right. Good Megan McArdle Day. Yes. It talked about using AI to do research for her column. And she writes in a subsequent column, if you've used Google, you've allowed a complex algorithm to shape what you know and how you think. That's true. And I have issues with that too, but read on. Sorry.

We're not arguing about whether. machines can ever touch our work, we're arguing about where to draw the line. My line is that I outsource tedious tasks such as, quote, searching the web or, quote, finding data buried in the footnotes or, quote, clicking through janky websites. I use AI judiciously to play roles that other humans have always played for writers, such as sounding board or fact checker, but never involve it in outlining or writing a column or editorial. Yeah.

The thing that I take exception to in that explanation more than anything else is sounding board. I think that's where we get into really weird muddy waters, right? That when you're just like, I'm not saying that I approve or disapprove or say that something's are right or wrong, but I think from a perception standpoint, from a conceptual standpoint, sorry, like we're not prepared to have that conversation. That's a task that I would not, that is a, I wouldn't say a super, well, whatever. It's a task that maybe historically humans have done that does not need to be, we do not need to be outsourcing that to AI yet. Sounding board.

Yeah, what does sounding board mean? You're going to feed them your entire piece and say, give this a rough edit. Let me know if there's any problems, think through this. Like, I get it. But I think you're just on much more firmer ground to make the case if you're saying they're doing my fact checking. They're doing my footnotes. AI is doing my fact checking. AI is doing my footnotes.

AI is doing stuff. But I do take that, but her initial point is really correct, right? And that's where the moral conundrum often hits home. When you're doing a podcast and you are stumbling for towards a name that you don't remember or a date or a incident you don't remember, you are looking at the camera and at the same time typing into your computer to try to get the answer so that it's on your screen before it has to come out of your mouth. You've just used AI to get this, right?

I mean, and that's like, you say, oh, I was under the gun, dude. I do that all the time when writing on, when writing the same sort of thing. Just like, like, what year was, well, let's make it personal. What year was WrestleMania 14, you know, and I'm putting it into Google and but what comes up is an AI answer, right? The AI summary. That's right. You're not clicking through the official WWE page or you might, you might be if you're

really checking it at the last second, right? Yeah. So we're all already using it to some. agree. And I do take it, I do prefer, although McCartle seems a lot more expansive. It's, you know, there's an element to which she, she seems way more permissive than I would be comfortable being. But it's a Megan McArdle who's going to be, you know, the generational, you know, the next great writer, right? It's a person who figures this out the right way, who is open to it because that's going to, it's, there is going to be a back and forth. Maybe not the next great writer, but there will be a

generation of people who are open to it coming next. Yes. And I think that's why I think we've all kind of fallen into this comfort food zone of saying AI slop. Yes. And just saying like everything with AI is this slop that should not be allowed into our world. And I understand when Greg Abbott is, you know, tweeting out a photo of the alleged, you know, airmen who was rescued in Iran and we all look at him like, come on, man, you are running the second biggest state in the country.

And you are like, that is scary and that is slop. So there's no doubt about it. But just coordinating off all of AI as that. I'm like, folks, we're going to be competing with the slop as journalists. So we need to understand it. We need to draw lines. We need to explain it. We need to think about it.

Rather than just doing this easy 100 retweets, ah, look at the slop. I'm better than that because I'm a journalist or I'm an artist. And I do things that are real. I like that. I am also one of you, but understanding this is important because it's here and it's all around us. Yeah, everybody wants to, everybody imagines themselves is like an army of journalistic John Henry's out there, right? It's like we're, we swing enough of these hammers will beat the machine. But no, the machine is definitely, there's never going to be a story, you know, 10 years or 100 years from now. We're like a novelist, a human novelist successfully outwrites the AI, right? They might, they might have,

a better book in the end, but they're not going to do it faster or more profoundly in any way, right? I mean, it's just the AI is a reality and you're not going to be able to beat it in a race and send it packing. Item number three, the Wall Street Journal profiled journalistic superhuman Nick Lichtenberg of Forbes. Since coming to Forbes last summer, Isabel Simonetti reports, Lichtenberg has written 600 plus stories. She continues, while many journalists hit the phone. and cultivate source relationships,

when news breaks, Lichtenberg often uploads press releases or analyst notes into AI tools and prompts them to spit out articles that he can edit and publish quickly. She continues, a story by Lichtenberg sometimes starts with a prompt entered into perplexity or Google's notebook L.M asking it to write something based on a headline he comes up with.

He moves the AI tool's initial drafts into a content management system and edits the stories before publishing them for Fortune's readers. He doesn't have a dedicated patch to cover, but he relies on AI to help craft unique angles on straightforward news that will appeal to young, high-income audiences.

So there you go. By the way, I said, I needed AI there because I said Forbes and I meant Fortune. Fortune. A couple of interesting things about this piece. Of all these 600 articles, somehow we can't cite one that was particularly memorable.

Yeah. Which is, I think, notable of this kind of stuff. Also, there's no sense that Fortune is doing like particularly well. There's a line in here that says AI assisted stories

accounted for nearly 20% of Fortune's web traffic in the second half of 2025. But is that going well? Do people look to winning this race to the, you know, to blog the financial earnings call?

Is that going to do it? Are people going to be like, you know, fortune? That's where I'm going to start spending my time. Yeah, I have no idea. It is very reminiscent of the way newspapers tried to keep up with the Huffington Post 25 years ago. I'm like, we are going to get scale. We will just publish more stories.

Yeah. And that will lead us to the promise land. It seems hard to imagine, unless they're out on the cutting edge of literally every single story. You're right. Subject matter won't translate. And I don't know who's going to stick around on Fortune. I mean, that really is AI slot. This is the definition of the slop you, you discussed earlier.

I just don't know. It's like, I just feel like, I feel like advertisers are, I mean, should be too, too smart to, I mean, to understand, or smart enough to understand what's going on in this day and age, right? You would think. You would think you would want to go to places where people have a relationship with the place and it's not just, oh, man, I just click this link. Yeah. And the idea is I will just click more links because other just stuff will find.

its way to me rather than here's something I actually want to read or listen to. All right, David, coming up in 30 seconds, what should we do about ESPN radio and the best used bookstores in the world? But first, let's do the overworked Twitter joke of the week where we celebrate a gag that was so obvious that all, all of media Twitter made it at exactly the same time, send your nominees to add the press box pod where they are always gratefully received. There were two jokes about this, so we will allow it as an overworked Twitter joke. but if I may return to Bill Raftery one more time.

It was an overworked Twitter joke to write Bill Raftery with the Dag Hammerskould reference, big for anyone using Kalshi from 1983. Thank you very much. If you feel Michigan Coast Dusty May is the Javier Perez de Quayar of college basketball, congrats, you made the overwork Twitter joke of the week. All right, in the notebook dump,

there was a media transaction while we were away. Clinton Yates is out at ESPN Radio. According to Sam Newman, awful announcing, Yates' 10 a.m. to noon show has ended, as has Yates' run at ESPN, where he worked in different capacity since 2016.

You know, it wasn't that long ago, if I may indulge in some media yesteryear looking back, that you could switch over to ESPN radio and find Mike and Mike in the morning. Yeah. Colin Coward, SvP and Rosillo. Sure. lebitard.

Obviously, the world's changed to medicine. ESPN is in the radio business, but they're not in the radio business like they used to be. What would you do with ESPN radio now? How would you treat it if you're ESPN and you're like, okay,

we're trying to get people to the streaming service. We're trying to squeeze as much money out of cable as we once had. Trying to sign a new deal with the NFL, probably most importantly. What do we do with radio? Like, how do we use that if we're still going to be in that world? I mean, dude, they can't, no one can figure out regular television to streaming. I don't

know how you're going to figure out radio to streaming. I mean, it's pretty, it's, it's just such a, it's weird. It's just such a, like, vesticle organ of so much of, of, of media. And part of the reason why sports radio can be so great is because of the relative decline in listeners. right? I mean, you have, they have so much space. I mean, personality driven radio is very traditional in a lot of ways, but it's had so much space, you know, I mean, a show that used to be two hours is probably four hours now, and there's just so much more room to breathe. But what do you do with it? I mean, I don't even know, I got to admit, like, I don't even know what the metrics are. Like, what are we even, what are we looking at? Are we trying to increase listenership? I mean, most of the two network towns,

save for what two are gone, right? I mean, they're two station towns. Like, what are we, are we trying to actively steer people to, to the ESPN over the top platform? Like, what's the goal? I think my goal would be, I'm just trying to find,

I'm trying to create new talent. Uh-huh. I'm trying to give, I'm trying to get people who will turn into something else, right? Like, can you hold down? Well, ESPN's been traditionally very good at that, right? And it's not even just for creating new talent. It's been a, I mean, not a terrible place for sort of backburnering or rehabilitating talent, you know, that they get removed from other shows.

Yeah. Or just like, I think like second acts maybe. Second. Second. We're just giving people reps. You know, I mean, like, what it's just, you know. So what if you're not on, you know, you've lost your weekly spot on, on first take? Well, it's like, okay.

It's just you can lead the whatever, the San Diego radio show for a year. Yeah. And there's some of that. And honestly, those people are probably going to be cycled out of ESPN because it's just smaller. And they can keep fewer people around now. But there's like, look, in the old days, there was the Dan Patrick thing. Like, what else are we going to give Dan Patrick to? I know, we'll give him a radio show.

Yeah. Obviously, that turned out well for him. SVP is another thing. Okay, we know you can do Sports Center. Oh, you're doing this other thing. because you can talk. And then when he gets the midnight show, it's kind of like a radio show in a lot of ways.

Yeah. It's talky. It's not just, I am your, you know, catchphrase dispensing host. It's a little more conversational. It's a little more talky.

Yeah. incorporates that in. I just think, you know, beyond like Rich Eisen, who's now got in the noon slot, I'm like, I want to go find young people.

I want to put them in there. And I'm going to be like, hey, if we're not, if we're, if we're, you know, outsourcing podcast, to Omaha, I want to make sure this is our podcast, right? This is like

your chance to get a ton of hours. Yeah. You can make mistakes. Screw up. It'll be fine. You know, awful announcing, we'll catch it, but, you know, the rest of world might miss it. And as long as we're in this business, it should just be our, like, training ground and we're going to go

find people. I agree. I mean, listen, there's always going to be a lot of people that want to do sports radio. The pool there, or sports TV, so whatever, and it's sort of the same pool, same talent pool, right? Certainly the hiring options are much better than they are for, you know, than they are compared to other industries.

But that said, it's like, is, would ESPN radio, like, who are you, what is your hiring? What is your, who are you hiring? Are you hiring people that like, I guess I'm thinking like, how important is ESPN radio in the age of podcasts? That's the bigger question. Less important. Are you? Much less important.

But are you are you potentially hiring podcasters for these jobs? Are you only hiring like J school graduates? Well, it's a good question. Like in the old days,

it was like, Colin Coward's the biggest deal in Portland. And I remember when he came to ESPN, and I was like, who the hell is this? His name really cowherd? Yeah, and then he was great.

But if local radio is not the pipeline at once was, maybe you are hiring. Maybe you just like, this is an interesting person. we don't totally know what the person's role because frankly we don't know what ESPN is anymore right it's changing before our eyes sure but let's find it let's use it as a laboratory to do it is again you can either go the CBS route and say we're killing radio it's over mm-hmm or you can use it as a way to find your talent and I as you heard me say before I think one thing that Jimmy Pataro ESPN has not been great at is finding that constant pipeline to young talent yeah it should be it partly because it's small smaller partly because the website doesn't exist in the same way anymore, but whenever you're like, where are you finding these young people, you know, that are going to come through if you need

troops, right? Yeah, to answer my own question, I don't think it should be one or the other. I mean, I think you obviously hire whoever you think has the most talent, but certainly if you, I mean, I think it's, I think hiring established podcasters is a good look. You don't have, you don't have to be discovering everybody like a diamond in the rough. And maybe you don't hire the biggest people. But, I mean, there is a lot of marginal money, and not marginal. There's a lot of huge money to be made by platforming people who already have a platform, giving them a bigger audience. I mean, what they did with McAfee, right? Sure.

And seeing who really, because the question is not just who's able to hold down two hours on the radio. Who has the skill of the mind to do this? The question is ultimately, like, like with Cowherd, who connects with a wider audience, right? Who pops? And that's, you've got to kind of cast a broader net, I think, for that. one thing I wanted to do this here on the old press box was make a list of the best used bookstores in the world. Oh, yeah. I was going to do America, but I think we should think internationally.

To Iceland and beyond, David. And of course, before I went on my trip, I asked listeners, I said, you know, got to tell me the good used bookstores up there in northern California. Because I would like to visit them, have a little bit of, dad parking lot time in a more concentrated way. I'm going to say something really problematic here. Please. When I was a camp counselor, I'm just kidding.

But there's a problem with the world. This might show my anti-American bias here. Isn't every used bookstore in England better than any used bookstore in the United States? Well, there you go again. Your Anglophilia creeping through. If you found a hole in the wall used bookstore in Oxford, you can't tell me that would, outside unseen, that that would be a top five used bookstore experience of your life. Okay.

So when I was in London a couple years ago, I actually thought this was true. I was kind of trying to write a piece about it that never actually got written because I was too busy just buying all the books. But there was a little bit of the British Huckster. Working with D.HL. Look at them all home. Yes. There was a little bit of the British Huxter element that you mentioned from Washington

journalism here. You're just so enticed by the man holding the. Conan Doyle volume out to you that you're like, oh, this must be a great store. Anyway, on my trip, this is how we're going to do this. You and I will just visit stores, and if we deem them, one of the best used books in the world, they will make the list. Okay, good. So my friend Kyle Poletta, author most recently of American Oasis, great guy, said,

hey, if you're up in Santa Rosa, you need to visit Treehorn Books. That sounds familiar. Okay. So I made a little time for Treehorn Books. Let me taste some. Here's David how you tell whether a used bookstores is actually one of the best used bookstores in the world. You don't go to the fiction section.

A lot of stories have great fiction sections. Yeah. You certainly do not go to the World War II section. No. Can't tell you how many crappy bookstores I've been in that have the donated library of every greatest generation member. Yes, exactly. Oh, my God, all these World War II books.

You go to a section like Latin. in America. Mm-hmm. And you're like, you tell me what you got here. Yeah. I went there at Treehorn books and there was shelf after shelf of great stuff that I'd never seen before. Mm-hmm.

My goodness was it great. Over at Treehorn for their, almost all of their hardbacks, regardless of, you know, maybe it was an $8 hardback, $6 hardback. They were in Mylar jackets. Oh, wow. Which always makes you feel like you're doing something, buying something a little more important, even if it's just a, no, decent, decent book that doesn't have any value. It's just pure reading pleasure for you. I, listen, as a comic book guy from way back, I understand the

purpose of my lar, but I usually don't grab those books and use bookstores, to be honest, because I want to be able to hold it. I want to be able to thumb through it a little bit, you know, like I, I need that contact for it to really be, is there really have meaning to me. I don't know why. This was the other cool thing about Treehorn, and it goes to what you just said. the first editions, the Antiquarian books. Uh-huh. You know how you go to use bookstore and often they're behind the desk? Oh, yeah.

And you're kind of squinting over the proprietor kind of like, I can't try to see that or it's in a locked case. Yeah. These were just all out on the shelves. So I could pick up and carefully thumb through it and say, oh, you know, it's a $50 book, but maybe I would like to buy that for myself. Yeah, exactly. Treehorn also had great piles of magazines

which your buddy just loves to dig through. I bought a 1988 issue of interview magazine with Lily Tomlin on the cover. Awesome. And it was $7. A program from the 1968 NBA All-Star game for $6.

That's earmark for Bill next time I see him. A book of Jack London's essays on writers and writing, Somerset mom, short stories. And I bought two YOLLEL. Boca Flood gifts for you. Oh, wow. In fact, I completed my David Yola Boko Flood shopping on this trip. This is like my wife always says she's getting the Christmas shopping done early and then just

still does the same amount of Christmas shopping in December, you know, so she has twice as many presents for her kids. I'm expecting to get at least four or five books from you this year. That's my guess. No pressure, though. Well, you got three so far. That is, that is really awesome. It sounds like an absolutely perfect place.

Perfectly organized. Great stock. It smells right. Treehorn books of Santa Rosa, California. You are one of the best used bookstores in the world. You know, this might be obvious, but when you're talking about the sections you go to, when I go to a use bookstore,

a lot of times I'll go to the regional section and sort of immediately. And sometimes those are a given. You know, you're in a vacation town. The regional section will probably be pretty stocked. But there are some lousy used bookstores that don't see the value in collecting their own, like, books about their own region, right? If they're going to be, like, we're just a beach read bookshop, right?

We're just going for the big World War II and fiction, you know, pop fiction as you were talking about. The man, when you go to a bookstore that just has like just a full bay of like books about the state and there are not, and there's a lot of like self-published university pressy, like old, old stuff. Yeah, that's the stuff right there. That's the stuff. And you know, it's like, we're not going to get this anywhere else.

I'm going to find this right here and I'm not going to find this. There might not be like another of this book. You know? It's your one chance to hold a super rare book because it might have been written by the person who donated it. But published privately, as they say. Yeah. All right. It's time for a feature that is published publicly.

It's time for David Shoemaker guesses. The strained pun headline. Yeah. Our last headline about a change in aristocrats rights in the UK was end of an era. End of an era. That's good. Today's headline comes to us from Mark C. Anderson. He was one of the friends of the pod, David, who was directing me to wonderful places on my travels.

He's at its edible Monterey Bay, you know, those wonderful edible magazines you see. I'll tell you all the great restaurants in town, man, he was so helpful. Well, he sent me an article. about which restaurants you can go to in the Monterey area that channel John Steinbeck. So we're talking about dining out and channeling Steinbeck. What was Edible Monterey's strained pun headline?

And is it a Grapes of Wrath thing? I'm gonna go to a different novel. Maybe his other, Charlie? No, not that one. Oh, tortilla, tortilla flats. No. Tortilla flat? No.

There's a lot of food in these. Tartia Flats is a restaurant, right? Yeah, Tartia Flat is the novel, which I started to read, but I'm quite finish. What is other sideback stuff? East of Rast of E, O, East of Eden. Yeast of Eden E-A-T-I-N E-A-T-I-N-A-N-A-A-N

apostrophe? That's really funny. It's actually Eats of Eden. Oh, Eats of Eden. But East of Eaten, what we would also... When we have a Steinbeck-themed sports bar, it's going to be called Eats of Eden.

Wait, east of Eaton. Or just Eats of Eaton? Like, it's both... We pun both of them into eat. That... Big mural, big shoemaker, drawn, mural of John Steinbeck eating a club sandwich that we'll put on the wall right behind the counter. I'm looking. I googled, I googled Treehorn Books. I'm changing the subject, but you said sign.

I couldn't get off it. There's pictures of other used bookstores. You know how a lot of, isn't it weird that a lot of bookstores just have the giant books sign instead of like the name of the store. It's like you can see from the rural route you're on. There's a, you could just see the letters books in the distance. Is there any other industries for which that is like the standard? I can only think of one. I feel they're all old-fashioned, right? Yeah, but still. Like, in the old...

It's like gas? Yes. Do they have signs? They just said gas? It's just all the name brands now. In the old days. The other big one in the old days was pianos. There was a bar that we used to go to called pianos.

But, like, if you keep your eyes open, drive around an old town, you'll see a giant pianos sign. God. Those are the days. You can go in a nice piano. Yeah. Also, some books. All right, he's David Schuemaker. I'm Brian Curtis.

Productions magic by Isaiah Blakely and Bruce Baldwin. It's a three podcast week here at the old press box, David. Oh. Podcast number two, we're recording tomorrow. It is the April issue with one Sean Fennessee. And it can now be revealed that we are going to talk about the 50th anniversary of the movie All the President's Men. Mm-hmm. Fans of that movie or of the press box in general can go to,

our Instagram page at Pressbox Ringer where there will soon be a David Shoemaker cover which David and I are corresponding about don't you love this now that we're just on the we're on deadline all the time now that we've cooked up these monthly issues we have some we have some ideas for this one

I just pelt you with ideas and then you come up with a better idea this is how this works uh you can find that there Joel and I will have a very special guest from the world of sports how's that for a tease sounds super fake on Friday it's a world of sports

on Friday morning it's like when Marv Albert used to do those funny sports highlights with Letterman from football and then chill like a punter mishandling the snap also on Instagram

I will post Matt James did a nice logo for our best used bookstores in the world and I will post not only some pictures of Treehorn but everything I bought there along with the prices Oh, nice.

Because you should know these things. This is what the collectors want. Shoemaker, I'll see you here next Tuesday with more lukewarm takes about the media. See you then, David. Can I just say before I say, see you later, Brian? Oh, sure, please. I can't wait to listen to all those things that you just previewed there. But this is, this is, as we're recording this,

our president just has said a midnight deadline for massive world altering negotiations to take place. Hopefully he's full of shit. But just in general, be safe out there, folks. Thank you very much. See you next week, David. See you later, Brian.