The Press Box - Tucker Carlson Vs. Ted Cruz, the Finals Goes 7, and the Media A-Team

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

Hello, media consumers! On this Friday edition of the show, Bryan helps Joel wrestle with a question: "Should I subscribe to The Washington Post if it is my local paper?" (1:41). They then tackle some headlines, including the ambiguity of the USA's involvement with the Israel–Iran War and Tucker Carlson's instantly viral interview with Ted Cruz (17:18). Later, they discuss NBA Finals Game 6 coverage, Stephen A. Smith grabbing headlines again—this time by calling out the city of Memphis—how streaming affects sports fandom, and more (38:22). Finally, they close the show by selecting the Solidarity With Stephen A. contest winners, then talk weekend recommendations (1:06:22). 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. 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. Media consumers, welcome to press box.

You've got Brian Curtis. You got Joel Anderson. You've got producer Kyle Crichton coming up on a loaded podcast. The media tries to figure out if Donald Trump is going to attack Iran and watches that amazing Ted Cruz Tucker Carlson interview. We talk about a tied NBA finals and Stephen A's showdown with the city. of Memphis. Plus, our streamers hurting sports fandom, what tear are you on, Mr. Reporter? Our solidarity with Stephen A. contest winners and weekend blurbs about a long-form God and the true

inventor of basketball. But first, let me take you to a place where they didn't need Tucker to teach them how to do interviews. Let me take you to J-school. You know, Brian, just wait until we bring on Cameron as our adjunct here at J schools and things are really going to take off teaching kids how to interview here. Finally asking the real questions that people want to know. The real questions. You're really getting down to the nitty gritty of it. It's Harlem time now, as he says.

Anyway, Brian, I'm actually coming to you with a personal dilemma and I wonder if you or our listeners or our friends in the business can help me with this, okay? We're here for you. first, Brian, do you subscribe to your local newspaper? I do. I take the L.A. Times on weekends, and I take the New York Times seven days a week. Ooh. Okay, so you get a print New York Times in your front yard.

Yes, and a print L.A. Times on the weekends. I love that. Okay. Look, I love that. I mean, that is, that's old school like me because I'm a huge print edition advocate. And I think buying and reading a newspaper is important for all sorts of reasons. Some of my favorite memories from childhood are reading the newspaper or my parents reading the newspaper in our living room, the old, and that's defunct, the Houston Post.

But we used to read that. That was our paper of choice until it went out of business. And then we were Chronicle folks. And so I'd pour over the comic section. My dad would take the sports section. When he was done with it, he'd give it to me. But I'd probably shop said this before. I learned Santa wasn't real by reading the newspaper.

Wait, what? Yeah, when I was eight years old. It was like an article inside. I don't know why I was looking inside the front section, but it was one of those articles that was like, how long should you let your child believe in Santa Claus? And I was like eight years old. And I took it to my dad.

I was like, is this real? So that's how I learned a couple days before Christmas. But anyway, and I can remember even almost every time that my name appeared in the pages of the local paper, like even the old Fort Bend Sun that we would get, like the little, you know, the little local community paper they throw out there. So I dreamed of working in the media someday, not because of ESPN or local sports talk radio, but because of newspapers. And now I desperately want to get back in the habit of reading a newspaper, like holding it in my hands as an example to my kids to show them they don't always have to read off of screens. Right. And that shouldn't be a problem because I've subscribed to the print edition.

of the newspaper pretty much everywhere I've ever lived, from Houston to San Jose. Like the San Jose Mercury News was our local newspaper in the Bay. And so maybe the only time I didn't bother was when I was in New York because I was broke and lived in a building where it was inconvenient to get the paper. And of course, like, I worked at a media organization. I already had access to the Times, right? But, Brian, nowadays my local newspaper is the Washington Post. Okay.

And I've always wanted to subscribe to the post, man. Like, once a point of time, I even explored having the print version delivered to me in Houston. Okay. I mean, it was something crazy. I don't even know if it was possible, but, like, I looked into it and it would have been, you know, cost prohibitive, even if I'd been able to pull it off. So anyway, I couldn't help but think about all of this while you were having this conversation with David on Monday about the remaking of the, quote, unapologetically patriotic post-opinion section under new editor,

Adam O'Neill. As you all mentioned in a post on X last week, O'Neill said the new opinions page is going to, quote, be stalwart advocates of free markets and personal liberties and that its, quote, philosophy will be rooted in fundamental optimism about the future of this country. That's when you said you were off the train at that point. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah. That's when Mr. O'Neill and I had our first disagreement. Yeah.

See, and look, all well and good for them. I don't, particularly for me, I don't know if I want any writer in any outlet to guarantee that I'm going to come away feeling optimistic about the future, right? Like, I mean, what if I'm somebody destined to die? What if it's someone destined to die in a thousand-year climate change-driven storm? Like, I want people to be honest about that. What if I'm likely to be afflicted by a disease previously? eradicated by vaccines. Maybe I lost my job in the federal government because I didn't meet some

ideological test. I want people to grapple with that stuff, even if they ultimately support it. I don't want what's effectively blind optimism and patriotism. And some of my very favorite writers aren't so optimistic about our nature's future. Some of them even work in the post opinion section currently. And here's the other thing, though, Brian. I try not to judge the whole of a media outlet by its opinion section, right? Like, that's not fair to the great reporters and editors over there at the post, right? And I'm not even going to try to bother name checking them because if we forget somebody, then somebody being, hey, why don't you include money on that or whatever?

They would never do that, but you know what I mean. And there's a lot of them, and I want them to continue to thrive at the post. And has your decision to subscribe to a newspaper ever hinged on the opinion section? I don't think so, because how many people would subscribe to the Wall Street Journal if approving their opinion section was the litmus test. Exactly, right? Like, it's just, it's a throw in. Like, you want it to be good.

You're going to read it, but it's not ultimately determinative, right? But what if your objection is not with the opinion section, but with the owner of the newspaper? That is a great point. And you say that even so I'm in the middle of mulling all this over, Brian. Did you see the city papers report on the post-ladest changes yesterday? I did not. Okay. Good.

I was going to share this with you, but I wanted to surprise you on air. Okay, good. Starting today, Monday, the Post merged its Metro Sports and Style Sections into one for the print edition. So that means most days, the total number of sections will be reduced to three or four sections. And on Tuesdays and Saturdays, the Post will only print two sections, including the new combined Metro's sports style section. Okay. All right?

As a reader of newspapers in the old days, I'm just crying right now. This hurts, right? I love having a bunch of different sections and just spreading them out, right? And so ultimately what it means is that I, a DMV resident, interested in DMV news, will no longer be able to read a dedicated standalone metro section anymore. And in fact, Metro won't even get its own front page anymore. more. It's just going to be placed between other sections every day going forward. Not to mention a standalone sports section. I mean, this has got to be the first time in

modern Washington Post history that it has never been a standalone any day of the week. Yeah. I think I can fact check myself with that one. That seems about right. Any day of the week, because that's what you're saying. There's not a standalone sports section Sunday through Monday at all or Monday through Sunday at all. Yeah, it's going to like they may be, They may be on the front of whatever this news section is occasionally, but it will not have a moment. Yeah, right? And so, of course, the post says this consolidation doesn't mean they're going to be fewer stories. Executive editor Matt Murray said that it's just a, quote,

reordering of our sections to improve our efficiency in a way that serves journalism and bolsters the strength of our print paper. Okay, sure. I get it. And look, I get it. Fewer people than ever that are reading the print product. It's really only a matter of time before almost every newspaper in the country does something similar to this, right? I guess it is. And it's actually already happened.

You will find this if you join the print anti-revolution with me by subscribing to the post. You will find that print newspapers are very, very expensive. Yep. And they are put together with less care than they've ever been put together. Like I'll get one in the front of the Times, art section, they love to do this, it will just be like a whole, a whole page illustration. And I'll be like, this is pretty, but you know what? I bought the newspaper because I want to read the articles in the newspaper. I want to read the articles. Yeah. And it says, I'm not going to frame

this. And LA Times does it too all the time. And I'm just like, I guess I understand that you're trying to show what you can do with print and with art and make it into a just happy visual experience, but these are, the thing I came for is, is information. That's what I want. Absolutely. Absolutely. I want to hold open the newspaper and see words in there, you know, maybe even some agate. Now, maybe not agate. Well, if we could get to agate, that'd be happy. Yeah, but, but I do think there's an interesting question about your, your big decision here. Okay. Which is how much do we punish newspapers for their owners? That, okay. Man, look, so you, You get the Nell and head.

Like, the Post is owned by the second wealthiest man in the world, by the way. Like, he owns a $500 million super yacht. He's renting out a whole entire Italian island for his wedding later this month. And I love that he's number two to Elon Musk, too. It's like, name two people we've had more conversations about over the last two years. Oh, my God. I mean, it really says a lot about where we are. So, like, so, I mean, he's got the money.

And I don't like the direction that he's taking the newspaper in, right? So look, we can wrap this up here, but like, I don't agree with the reshaping of the opinion section. I don't agree with the direction of leadership. I don't agree with the elimination of a dedicated metro section, even though I sort of understand it. I do like and respect many of the reporters and editors there who still produce an awful lot of great work. I want to see the post thrive. I want people to help me make a decision about what to do about this. So my recommendation to you is you should subscribe to the,

the post. Really? Okay. I didn't think you were going to end up there. No, no. I do think I will end up there because you and I could easily, without even trying, we won't do the roll call, but without trying, come up with 20 writers whose efforts, whose work we want to support at the Washington Post. Right. Easily. What I object to here is that whenever one of these things happens, whenever there's a Bezos degree that you and I disagree with, we always get this on Twitter. Hey, don't cancel your subscription. Yeah. Because that will just make things worse.

I acknowledge that to be true and would encourage you to subscribe to the post for those reasons. But I always say, well, then what's a reader supposed to do? Right. You're just supposed to subscribe to it forever, no matter what the Jeff Bezos figure or the hedge fund or whomever owns the paper does. You have absolutely no recourse in this transaction. How are they supposed to know that we're dissatisfied with the direction of the paper

if we don't say, all right, whenever you fix that shit, I'll get back on board, right? Yeah, it's just pay us forever because there are things here that you like and people here that you admire. And again, if forced to make that terrible choice, I will fork over the money, support people. I want journalism jobs. It's insane, I think, to do anything else. But I just want to note how just terrible that decision is. Right. And in post, by the way, given the quality of that newspaper, I think it's probably a less terrible decision than it would be at your average Alden capital newspaper. Right.

You happen to live somewhere else. Imagine making that choice. Oh, my God. Where the paper's worse. The owner is probably worse. Even again, everything you take, everything that Jeff Bezos has done to the post, I think is probably worse than you're probably better than your average Alden own newspaper. Yeah.

So like, what's, yeah, but it's just, it's just a crappy decision. It doesn't, yeah, it doesn't feel good, but I want to have a print product. I mean, this is really, this is my local newspaper that I've got to make a decision about. So, you know, I'm going to take Brian's advice under advisement. But if you all have any, if any of our listeners would like to contribute to this conversation or to reach out to me, please do. Because I'm, you know, I want to make a decision on this pretty quick. I mean, you know, I gave my kid the comic section the other day and he kind of put it to the side. But like, you know, it's a good way to learn to read too.

So I just want to get that back into our house as well. There are a lot of wonderfully nostalgic moments you can have here at their kids watching sports, watching Star Wars, watching Indiana Jones, and my son's 12. So we've gone through all of those. There's nothing better, Joel, than on a weekday morning, having said child, son or daughter, look at the front page of the newspaper and say, hey, mom, dad, did you see the latest with blank? Yep. Absolutely.

It happens every day at our house. And I absolutely love it. Brian. That's great. It's real. It's real. And again, it doesn't require like, oh, you know, saying, oh, my child is gifted beyond. You're imagining my child is special.

No, we get the newspaper. And so my child's looking at that instead of looking at the screen. And that's, I mean, that might be the most compelling argument of all. There's another little piece of this before I close out here. It's part of that city paper report, Brian. The post paid average daily circulation, I almost want you to guess because you will be shocked if you've not kept up with circulation numbers in recent years. In print?

In print. So they have a couple million-ish subscribers. Definitely less than a million. Is it less than half a million? Oh, wow. Are you really? Or actually, wait, wait, wait, wait, did I see this? I feel like I saw this figure.

It's, okay, I'm going to, you want to just go ahead and tell you? Yeah, please. It's down to 97,000. With roughly 160,000 on Sundays. Whoa. Yeah, so that's a fraction of the 250,000 average daily circulation five years ago. It's still, by the way, as recently as last year, was the fourth largest newspaper in the country. Okay.

And I knew that newspapers had been hemorrhaging subscribers over the past couple decades, but I had not realized it was that bad. And the largest year-on-year change came at the LA Times, believe it or not. So thanks to you, which saw it's as a lot. average daily print circulation drop from 106,000 to 79,000. Okay. That is, I'm laughing, but that's the laughter of torture and hell. I'm going to just end of note, and it's sort of a nod to my friend Megan Greenwell's new book,

Bad Company about how private equity is ruining everything. Of the 10 papers with the greatest circulation decline, seven are owned by Alden, Global Capital, after the LA Times, you got Alden-owned San Diego Union Tribune, which is down to 30,000, the Hartford Current, which is down to 19,000, South Florida Sun Sentinel, 15,000, Denver Post, 30,000, Chicago Tribune 60,000. These are major metro areas that are putting up numbers that were like Shreveport Times numbers 20 years ago. It's absolutely unbelievable. Yeah, really sad.

So anyway, I mean, we close in all this. out, I feel so bad I might just have to go ahead and not only get a subscription, but get a gift subscription for somebody now. Our Joel, our number one headline this week is the obvious one. Iran, Israel, and the United States. Here's where we are Friday morning as we record this. We are waiting, as the world is, to see if the United States, which is to say Donald Trump is going to join Israel's airstrikes against Iran, perhaps against Iran's Fordow uranium

enrichment facility. Lots of great explainers in the afford. mentioned newspapers about that facility, about why destroying it would require both U.S. bombs and U.S. B2 bombers as well. Recommend you feast on those explainers as you try to understand this very, very complicated and obviously very serious issue. What's really struck me has been the clue reading that the press has engaged in over the last week to figure out what Donald Trump is going to do.

Yeah. Well, that's tough because it doesn't seem like he quite knows what he's going to do. Well, and when we hit those moments where we don't know the answer to a question, that's in a way the most fascinating moment in our media world. Because we know so much and we feel like we know everything. Yeah. But this single thing, this incredibly important decision is unknowable. Right. So what do we do?

We do our best as media members to try to figure it out. Read the tea leaves. And here's some of the tea leaf reading that's been going on. The sidelining of Tulsi Gabbard, who's been publicly skeptical about Iran's nuclear ambitions, is that a sign of what Donald Trump is eventually going to do? It's been a lot of close reading of Donald Trump's true social feat. I mean, that is pretty much the only unfiltered Trump that you're going to get, right? Like, that's raw, I mean, that's raw, uncut Trump right there, right? Yes.

But what that means is it's not just about Iran. It's about that weird tweet, truth, social, whatever. What is it, truth? That's the term we go. It's a truth, but like an individual unit of true social is a truth, right? Right. That one yesterday that appeared to be a sub-tweet about Juneteenth. Yeah.

And about how people should really be working. We didn't want these vacations. Okay, that was interesting. But a couple this week, there was one that just in all caps said unconditional surrender, exclamation point. Yeah. Another one that read, we know exactly where the so-called Supreme Leader is hiding. He's talking about Kameney. He is an easy target, but is safe there.

We are not going to take him out, perin, kill, exclamation point, quote, for in, at least not for now. But we don't want missile shot at civilians or American soldiers. Our patience is wearing thin. Thank you for your attention to this matter. Who is he talking to? Who do you think when he says thank you for your attention to this matter? He closes out a lot of truths like that these days. And I don't know where that came from. It kind of replaced sad as the reflective Donald Trump tick. I can't believe this is, I mean, kill in parentheses with an exclamation point.

Just in case we missed the subtlety of his remarks there. Yeah. We had Trump leaving the G-Case in Canada early. That could, with him, you never know, but yeah. By the way, as a lover of datelines, I paused over the dateline for the G7. It was in Canaanascus, Alberta.

Canaanascus. You learned how to pronounce that, didn't you? I watched some CBC before we come on here today. I'm pretty sure I'm saying that correctly. Canaanascus, that is west of Calgary. That is a dateline I have never seen before in my life. Love it. More tea leaf reading, Joel.

Seymour Hirsch, him. He reappeared this week to say that the bombing of the Iranian nuclear facility, Fordow that I mentioned, would begin this weekend. Did you know that Sy Hirsch had a substack account? If I had to guess, I probably would have gone there, but I did not know that. Who doesn't? It's like, does Sy Hirsch have a podcast? Right.

They have a YouTube channel? Probably, I guess. Sure. And then in terms of hard information, there was a big Wall Street Journal report on Wednesday from Alexander Ward, Laura Sealingman, and Michael R. Gordon that began like this. President Trump told senior aides late Tuesday that he approved of attack plans for Iran, but was holding off on giving the final orders to see if Tehran would abandon its nuclear program, three people familiar with the deliberation set.

So, still leaving room for negotiations there. which is kind of where we were, but that did add incrementally to our understanding of what Donald Trump's thinking about. Negotiations also with Trump, I mean, we also, I'm trying to be as fair about this as I can, but we know that negotiations with Trump ultimately don't amount to much either, because you can reach one agreement with him at 3 o'clock, and by 7 o'clock he's watched Fox News and is upset about something else, and he's pivoting. So or has talked to somebody else who's completely changed his mind. Laura Luma has just snuck up, you know, to the office or something.

And he's got, he's heard something different now. There was some Lumer Teeley for reading this week, too. Believe me. I believe it. I believe it. On Thursday, we got something of a timeline for Donald Trump's decision from Carolyn Levitt. Here's what she said in the White House briefing room.

I have a message directly from the president. And I quote, based on the fact that there's a substantial chance of negotiations that may or may not take place with Iran in the near future. I will make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks. That's a quote directly from the president for all of you today. Of course, everybody pounced on two weeks because that is Donald Trump's favorite unit of time. I mean, that's a tariff timeline. That's a, you know, it can ice guide, whatever, what he's going to do with Harvard.

it usually comes down to a week or two weeks. Russia, yeah. What does that actually mean? Anything can happen in his own head or in front of him that can change his mind over those two weeks, right? Sean McCreech had a very funny piece in New York Times about Donald Trump in two weeks. He wrote, two weeks for Mr. Trump can mean something or nothing at all. It is both a yes and a no. It is delaying while at the same time scheduling.

It is not an objective unit of time. it is a subjective unit of time. It is completely divorced from any sense of chronology. It simply means later, but later can also mean never sometimes. We need, you know, I once saw our ringer colleague Van say this on CNN, and I think he said it to whatever the Republican was on the panel.

He was like, we need somebody to interpret him for us. So we, when he, usually when the president says something, you have to kind of take it seriously, right? Like, that has been the experience in my lifetime that when they say something, it's like, okay, like it's been well thought out. This is very serious. And even if we don't agree with it, like, it, you know, that is, it's going to have some impact.

I don't know how we're ever supposed to know what he means, what we're going to do, you know. And that must, that's a very difficult way to be talking about war, the economy. Like, it just doesn't seem tenable. Absolutely. And when it's a situation like this or an issue like this, you just realize or you're reminded of how crazy it is. Yeah. To do that kind of tea leaf free.

But what else is there to do? I mean, that's like what, what's the other thing? It's one thing when it's like this, when it's about, you know, should Pete Rose make the Hall of Fame or not, should Pete Rose be un-baned, uncancled from baseball? Then you get to something like this. Like, oh my gosh, we're actually interpreting Trump exactly the same way. Absolutely. I mean, I just wanted, like, who do you think is going to have it? Maggie Haberman, Michael Wolf, like, who's going to be able to divine the truth?

Michael Wolf, Michael Wolf off the top rope, John Swan. I mean, you and I could come up with a guest. That's probably an interesting betting pool that one could come up. Who will get Donald Trump's final decision on Iran? Right. I would love to hear it. You know, speaking of that, Brian, Iran, do you know how I spent some of my Juneteenth? Oh, no. I watched the entirety of Tucker Carlson's almost two-hour interview with Senator Ted Cruz. The entirety.

The entirety. I experienced it as a podcast because I was listening to it with a baby on me while a baby napped on me. So I had to listen to it and not watch it. What an experience. Yeah. So I kind of was working, so if that makes Trump feel any better, I didn't technically take it off. I was doing some work. So Cruz went on with Carlson to make the case for regime change in Iran is.

Of course, U.S. supports Israel's war on Iran. Carlson, no longer on Fox, but apparently remains a very influential voice on the right. He's been very outspoken about Trump's support for Israel's attacks on Iran. He's like, we did not need to be doing this. We need to focus on domestic matters. So, as you might imagine, Tucker Carlson's YouTube channel, not ordinarily appointment viewing for me, but I saw so many compelling clips on social media that I felt it necessary to dive in. So here's the clip that really drew me in. How many people living around, by the way? I don't know the population.

At all? No, I don't know the population. You don't know the population in the country you seek to topple? How many people living around? 92 million. Okay. Yeah. How could you not know that?

I don't sit around memorizing population tables. Well, it's kind of relevant because you're calling for the overthrow of the government. What did you, I mean, front, did you? Do you think that's a fair question? Yes. Okay. I think it's a fair question. You know what I was reminded of?

What's up? Do you remember when a fresh-faced politician named George W. Bush was running for president? And in 1999, he went to New Hampshire and a TV anchor there asked him to name the leaders. They asked him to name various foreign leaders. It was like Taiwan and Chechnya. And I think Bush went one for five, which was about Pete Incavilla's batting average for the old rangers. Oh, that's Jewish W. Bush Joe. I love that. And it was interesting because at the time, people said, hey, you know, that's a gotcha question. What's important is what he feels about

foreign policy, what he thinks about foreign policy, not his ability to spit out the names of foreign leaders. But you could argue. In fact, you probably should argue that after 9-11 and when the Iraq war, the idea of war with Iraq comes along, it becomes very important. Absolutely. That George W. Bush is the kind of guy that would say, I don't need to know the names of foreign leaders or details about these countries because other people in my administration will. Yeah. And guess what those other people wanted to do right around 2003? Absolutely.

it reminded me to speak of another embarrassing moment involving Texans. You remember when they asked Rick Perry during a debate, like which third agency he would eliminate if he were to become president? Did he end with oops? Yeah. I said oops like that for like the next four years. It was so funny. But so I do think it's a fair question.

And actually, it was Jamel Bowie who said something along these lines is that maybe a journalist should do more of that to people. Like, you know, to the extent that they get an audience with people of that much influence and power, that maybe making sure that you understand the basics of things isn't necessarily an unfair way to go about this stuff. It reminded me of the fact that interviewing in this country, interviewing of politicians and public figures is just pretty crappy overall. I remember going to the UK, like, I don't know, 20 years ago and just randomly flipping on

the TV. Tony Blair just come back from a diplomatic visit somewhere. And the kind of questions he was getting from the BBC interviewer were like Tucker Carlson questions, not as ideologically driven, but absolutely fundamental questions of why are we doing this or that as a nation. And that to me, you know, whether you agree with, you know, can you name the population of Iran or not, like, that is the kind of thing that we should be doing and the politicians should be submitting to. I'm, I think I'm one of these people who think, I don't think this is the media's fault. Like, I think politicians and the United States have very, very little appetite for that kind of interview. Well, I was going to say, like, you know, it really questions, like, if you have

the feet of murder press, what good is it if you're not really getting anything meaningful, or you're like putting them in a position to where they have to do this? But I was actually thinking about this because I was, like, I mean, Tucker Carlson's no longer on Fox News. He's sort of, you know, been run out of this thing. What do you think? it says about this that Ted Cruz had to go run to Tucker Carlson because it makes me think I was like maybe Chuck or Carlson is a lot more powerful than I thought like I knew that he was but I thought you know getting knocked off of Fox News sort of knocked him down a peg but apparently like they felt the need to go ahead make the case in front of him Tucker's place in the Magaverse even after

becoming a guy on X rather than a guy with a prime time audience on television his relationship with Ted Cruz, which they nodded to at the beginning of this interview. They are friends or longtime, you know, compadres of the right. But dude, I think what it ultimately comes down to is Ted Cruz thinks he's the kind of guy who can go on a podcast and win. Right. So how did you think they came off? Because I was seeing, I mean, it's no secret that Cruz is like to a lot of people.

one of the more unlikable people holding public office today. Like even like that's something I think that is a very, very safe assumption. Yeah, even people on the right. Fact check true. You get zero Pinocchio's for saying Ted Cruz is unlike. Thank you.

Yeah, okay, I'm glad I can get set. So yes. So I actually was like, man, given the circumstance, it's not like I thought Tucker Carlson. It's funny that you said that they're friends because there was no, you obviously had a sort of,

of intimacy that they were comfortable talking about things and being sort of aggressive. Because I don't think you can be, you would typically be aggressive with the interviewer or interviewee if there's not some sort of a prior relationship, right? But it just completely. It was like we were in a bar with them and they were having this conversation on camera. I felt like it was about as honest a conversation about foreign policy on the right as you're going to get nothing. We were in a Buffalo Wild Wings with Ted Cruz and Tucker Carlson.

Yeah, yeah. Having a conversation about isolationism and foreign policy. Yeah. Well, I mean, and the unfettered honesty about American intervention abroad, like they just casually, I mean, Tucker Carlson says, oh, yeah, we've been trying to kill Nicholas Maduro. Like as the government. Like, I was like, oh, we're just saying that? And Cruz was trying to back off. And he's like, no, no, no, that's true.

I know that. This is Tucker speaking. Yeah, yeah. Or the true aims of U.S. intervention abroad because Ted Cruz said something along the lines of like, I'm not about morality. I'm about U.S. interests. And I don't think that's the kind of thing that any politician would typically say on a stump or in front of people, right? Like that, that was just raw, like, honesty about, oh, no, this is all about protecting our particular interest, our particular interest. And I just, I don't know. Like, I've never heard anybody talk

like that before in front of people. I think on the left this week, there's been some gawking because, of course, liberals are excited for the Magaverse to tear themselves apart. Of course. And I saw Dave Weigel, our pal, making fun of the phrase Maga Civil War, which is just one of those things. It's always trotted out, whatever, there's a disagreement. And if Donald Trump does decide to join, to directly join, you know, the war against Iran, will there really be a civil war? Won't Donald Trump enjoy, you know, overwhelming support on the right, even if it goes against a few

Tucker Carlson's here and there. But I think the interesting thing is they're like, of course there should be a robust debate before anything like this happens on any side of the aisle with anybody, with any journalist that you would put in the Tucker Carlson seat. Of course there should be. Of course, conversations like this should happen and hopefully would happen. I sort of doubt they will, again, just given the way the media is, you know, the way politicians want to talk to the media or would submit to talking to the media in this country.

But yes, absolutely, this is what we need more of. Do you think Cruz would go on with George Stephanopoulos and do that? I just started like, is there anybody else that could have gotten that kind of, I mean, a conversation that lasts that long, that got that in-depth, that got that personal at times. He might. I mean, this is the thing is we do have this generation of politicians that think they're good at podcasts. Be Buddha Judge, Gavin Newsom, Ted Cruz, Rokana, we could just do the whole list right now. Right. Might be a shorter list than people we admire at the Washington Post, but we could probably

put that list together. And Bernie Sanders is probably another one to put on that list, right? He's a guy who's like, I will do a podcast. But thank goodness that that group exists because let's do this, right? Let's have more of that, not less of that. Absolutely. And even if you would ask different questions in Tucker Carlson or have different beliefs coming into the interview, more like that to me is certainly better.

And by the way, there were so many little just gems of this. they were talking about quoting the book of Genesis. Oh, my God. And Tucker was going after Cruz because he didn't know that the quote came from the book of Genesis. Yeah. Very, I mean, Tucker is a pedant? Is that the word? Pendant, yeah.

Yeah, I just like, okay, you know. Like, I mean, yeah, he was really needling Cruz on that. I was actually sort of impressed in a way that Cruz was able to maintain his composure as well as he did. Because I thought that Tucker was really taking shots at him. And not only his credibility, but also, you know, Tucker pretended to be offended by being called an isolationist as well. So, yeah, that was fun. Also, you got to say that this moment, too, the Cruz moment where he was talking about his father said, my father was imprisoned and tortured in Cuba. Yes.

And then he said, I hate communists. And then he had to clarify that it was Batista, the dictator that the communist deposed. That was the one who tortured his father. So there's a lot of sentences there. They don't necessarily all sort of lead, you know, logically to the other one. But that was just an unbelievable moment. I mean, if I mean, like capitalists have never been accused of torturing people before, right? One last thing, though, the way they talk about cities, because Cruz called D.C. a pit during this thing.

And they talk about L.A., Chicago, San Francisco as just these, you know, wasteland. basically. And it kind of reminds me of when Trump called, you know, a lot of places, shithole countries. And I'm just really interested in like how people are going to hold the media holds or doesn't hold people accountable for talking about cities in that way, because that is not allowed. We're not allowed to talk about rural America like this to fly over country like that. And I'm just really always interested. They just get the way, you know, these big, diverse places that have plenty of conservatives, right? Plenty of Republicans. They don't want Republican people that live in D.C. And they're just able to call it a pit.

like nobody ever holds them accountable for talking about these places in that way. This is really, just something I've noted that really annoys me. Trump's normalized a lot of that. Yeah. And whenever you see these very carefully selected clips from Ted, from, excuse me, Tucker Carlson that he put online before the whole interview was out, by the way, which earned him a whole strange new respect for Tucker Carlson. Yeah.

New cycle on Twitter. Remember that. Remember that there are other parts of Tucker Carlson that are just, again, very present that interview. He's not hiding them at all. They just don't happen to be in the clip that everyone is cheering on and say, look at that. Finally, somebody's getting some answers. Watch the whole thing, please.

Let's talk about the NBA finals, which are tied 3-3. Oh, man. After the Pacers blew out the Thunder last night, game seven set for Sunday, it was another great T.J. McConnell game. And my man, Jay Kang, I just, whenever there's an NBA game,

going on. It's like with you with college football. My dial is said to Jay Kang tweets. He tweeted this last night. TJ is going to single-handedly bring back every sports writer euphemism for white. Gritty, cerebral, gamer, lunch pail. We're returning to the X-Time era. Let's go, baby.

The funny thing about TJ McConnell is that it's almost kind of true to. You know, because normally, you know, you do that with guys. You know, I've just, you know, we could just say, oh, Steve Largent. You know, it's really, is a technical route runner or something like that. Or Larry Bird. Yeah, Larry Bird. Never mind how tall Larry Bird is and athletic bird. Yeah, Jim Rat, you know, not very athletic.

But, you know, T.J. McCelley, he really, he really is kind of a gritty. But he's just very, but I think the thing that's underrated about him, the people are talking to him. He's very quick. He's like got a lot of movement jitterbug to him. And I don't think people talk about that as a form of athleticism. But I think, yeah, Jay is right. It's like, okay. We're really building up to, you know, this guy's up, you know, still in the ball and the back court,

doing that kind of stuff and really energizing guys. Me and that stuff. I was like, okay, we get it. I know what you're trying to say here. Here's how Tyrese Halliburton put the McConnell experience during the postgame interview. Describe the impact that T.J. McConnell had on this game. He's unbelievable, man. He's unbelievable. I don't even have the words.

He's a great white hope. You know, that's what we call him. Is that a sliding door's metaphor? Great White Hope? I guess so. Have you seen that movie? I have never seen that if it's entirely. I feel like I've seen clips from it

when there's like a James Earl Jones retrospective or maybe when he died there was some clips from that but yes I've never seen the Great White Hope Also I thought that was Cooper Flagg but whatever There could be more than one I guess you're right, yeah we'll see

My other personal highlight of the game was the James Johnson cameo Oh man So James Johnson he's only played One other time in this finals And that was game two which was a thunder blowout he comes in for two minutes he's got on the white t-shirt

under his jersey which is so rec league so me like struggling on the freshman basketball team in high school I mean it was just was unbelievable he throws up one shot and they clearly had like you know sort of called a play for him to get to shoot it was not even

close yeah and then he gets thrown out of the game I mean and we get this amazing ESP at walk-off. James Johnson, who we just waxed poetic about this impact that has been ejected from the game. Go ahead and make your mark, though, on the finals. Go ahead.

I mean, typically the only reason that James Johnson is in the game is because of send a message to the other team. You know what I mean? Like, you know, you know, James Johnson usually is not in the game for basketball reasons. Like, it usually just kind of happens. But I was actually, it was through a social media account that is interviewing the wives and girlfriends of basketball players that I came to realize that James Johnson was still in the league. I was like, oh, wow. I thought I would have assumed that James Johnson would have retired by now.

But good for him. He's in that state where you've kind of retired, but you're also sitting at the end of the bench. The Udonis Haslam portion of his career. Yes, there you go. Absolutely. A couple quick TV notes for you. NBA Twitter and media Twitter got a big W. Oh, yeah.

Because in, or excuse me, ESPN showed the pregame introductions, the player introductions before games five and six. Did you want the pacer? It was the thunder. I felt like they intentionally tried to throw off their introductions, though. They were going out of order and kind of going faster than the public address announcer. Because they didn't like do the whole buildup to Shea or whatever. Like they just kind of all ran.

out there. Yes. And there's always the guy that's like, I'm not going to wait for my name to be announced. I'm going to go ahead and run out early and I'm dabbing everybody up by the time they actually say my name. It was just a circle of them like getting hype and dapping up each other and doing that dances. Like, yeah, we didn't get the fit. But either way, I appreciated it. Now, should we thank Logan for that? Is this a Logan Murdoch inspired change? Logan was aggregated from coast to coast. So yes, he might have been. I'm also, by the way, reminded, I am very much for the pregame introductions for all the reasons we stated. I'm like, it's nice to be reminded that Aaron Eismith went to Vanderbilt. I'm not sure I could have pulled out that fact before watching two games with the pregame

intro. Yeah, I would not have remembered that either. I'm also reminded of how bad the quality of arena announcing is across sports. Really? I remember as a child, like, you would go from same to same, I especially remember this locally in Dallas, Fort Worth. And you would just like have a guy. and it could be just like for the mavericks it was this guy named kevin mccarthy who was kind of a you know like popular but very downbeat talk radio host and then at some point right around the early 2000s it just got replaced by here we go everybody sounded exactly the same i remember who that is i'm not going to say his name i'm not going to say his name because i don't want to call about but i know who you're talking about me anyway

But they all sound like that. Yeah. We had one, an India and one and OKC, they both, they both said it exactly alike. I mean, the thing is, is that, you know, the Chicago Bulls really set the standard for it. You know? Sure. And that's the thing. And the Chicago Bulls in the 90s.

And it's kind of how everybody wants to be, wanted to be like Michael Buffer. Michael Buffer, you know what I mean? Like, you know, everybody, the buildup and but it's like, after a while, it's so derivative that, like, it doesn't really match. and nobody develops their own style. And so I wonder if like these are the sons and daughters of the Chicago Bull announcer of the 90s. The other thing that really tickled me during the game was Doris Burke said, hey, you want to try to get the lead down to about 10 at halftime?

This is when the Pacers were leading by 20 plus in the second quarter. I'm like, I have been here. I'm listening to an announcer say that for my entire life. I saw you tweet that. And it annoys you, doesn't it? Kind of, but it's just funny to me more. And Joel, it's not just basketball. They also say that in football.

It's the same number of points. You just get this down about 10 by halftime. Like, did we decide that that is the goal when we are getting absolutely crushed? Did you not ever feel that way playing at Pascal or whatever? You were down, you know, losing to somebody and being like, yeah, you know, you'd be like, oh, man, if we can just get this down to 30 before a half time. When I was in the white t-shirt as the 11th guy on the freshman team, Yeah, I was thinking, man, if we just get this down to down.

Actually, I was saying, if we could get this up to about 40, maybe they'll put me in the game like James Johnson. For people that don't know, Pascal, not a great athletic program. No, and I did not help it distinguish itself in any way. We've got to talk briefly here about Stephen A. Smith because he had quite a week. Mm-hmm. He always started. He always has a week. He always has a week. He had a week with Tyrese Halliburton, and now he had a week with John Moran, and I guess the entire city of Memphis.

Mm-hmm. This whole thing starts when the Grizzlies trade Desmond Bain. And Stephen A had the Morris Twins on first take, which is just still funny to me that that happens during basketball season. The Kairon said, should Grizzlies move on from John Moran? Because, of course, we cannot talk about NBA finals or only the NBA files. We must talk about a transaction involving the Grizzlies that might or might not happen. And here's where Stephen A went with that. Listen, I know y'all got to go.

You're going to tell folks why. nobody wants to be in Memphis or you want me to do it? No, but a player like me, I just don't think that the league, like, for guys like me, I love to be in Memphis. I embrace it, but you got to identify those guys, right? And it's not that simple, especially a younger guy to identify that wants to be in Memphis. I want to hear you say, why they don't, why you think?

The people, the people in Memphis is a great sports town, great fans, great people. But there's an element there where cats like Jimmy Butler and others don't feel it's the safest environment. I'm talking to the local authorities in Memphis. You've got to clean some of that stuff up because it's dissuasive to NBA players. They have talked about it.

I know they've told me. I would love to know who told Stephen A. I don't really want to mess with Memphis. But, you know, so there is something to this because, I mean, you know, there's a lot of cities in the NBA that NBA players don't necessarily want to go. go to first for all sorts of reasons, right? But there's only, there's 30, there's 30 teams. So you've got to kind of go where you go. But like, I mean, do you think a lot of NBA players

are excited about playing in Indianapolis or Milwaukee? Oklahoma City? Yeah. I mean, New Orleans. Yeah. I mean, definitely Salt Lake City. I mean, Boston has had a reputation as a place that kid, you know, the players don't necessarily want to go. So it, I mean, I've That's, I mean, we talked about this a little bit earlier with the Tucker Carlson and Taye Cruz saying, I mean, that's a cheap shot. And, you know, but I'm not surprised that Stephen Ace, you know, this is his very conservative opinion about, you know, disorder in cities kind of came out through, I think. Well, and just putting it into like first take terms, I'm calling out the local authorities in Memphis. Yeah. I mean, because it's dissuading NBA players from going there. I mean, if you were. really worried about this. Wouldn't she be worried about bigger things than whether an NBA

player is going to sign with the Grizzlies or not? Like, if you were actually voted this issue, but the idea is we must call everybody out, including civic officials. Do you think that Memphis is unaware that they may have some public safety concerns, by the way? They needed Stephen A. Smith to tell them one first take, like, women, we better get serious about dealing with crime around here. Until they saw that Chiron, try the Grizzlies move on from John Moran. Man, we lost Desmond Bain, we better get these, we better, we better clean this shit up so that we can replace John Morant when it's his time to go on, you know? So Moran, for his part, sounded like he was auditioning for the press box saying, wait,

why are you focusing on the Grizzlies instead of the NBA finals? Fair point. Desmond Bain, TCU's very own, also got in there and defended Memphis a little bit. I like Desmond's and, Desmond's and people from TCU. But as soon as Moran said that, you could see Stephen A, be like, aha. Yep, here we go. Now, see, I have, he responded. So now I have a one-on-one opportunity.

Yeah. To call him out, to go to sort of square off where we are roughly equal figures. And I often think with Stephen A, people lose a lot of the subtlety with him because, oh, he's just arguing. He's just yelling. And they were like, I'm like, there are a lot of people who would love to do that for the amount of money that Stephen A makes. He has talents or he has ways of doing this that you don't totally understand. but what they probably get right about Stephen A is that when he sees an opportunity

like that, he is absolutely all in on. Right? It's me and that guy. He's in the NBA. I'm on ESPN. Here we go. And this will be my next however many days of content.

Oh, yeah. He's got that ISO. He's calling for the ball. He sees somebody out there. He's like, oh, me versus KD, me versus Braun, me versus whoever. Me versus Tyree's Halliburton, who did that really even, I mean, it took sort of a leap for Stephen A to inject himself in there.

But yeah, I mean, of course he wants the opportunity to go one on one with one of the NBA's foremost knuckleheads, right? Yes, yes. He does. And he thinks he can win that argument. And he's probably right. I mean, it's funny because, you know, there's been so much Stephen A. angst during the finals. And I'm one of those people who thinks, like, I think he can do his thing on first take.

and still be on the pregame show. Like, I think ESPN can walk and chew gum at the same time. Right. The thing is, the pregame show is kind of devoted to the aesthetic, more or less, a first take. That's actually the problem. Like, if we compare it to Pat McAfee, Pat McAfee is Pat McAfee on his television show. But then he gets to Game Day. And Game Day is such an institution that while he is still recognizable himself, he has to fit in

on that show. He has to have a lane. He has to have a corner. He is sublimating himself to the hole. ESPN's NBA stuff is just so negligible, is so just wayward that it's just like, hey, Stephen A, do whatever, and that will become the show.

Yeah, he's in, I mean, he's sort of the person for whom they built that franchise around almost. And so I would imagine. Not sort of. I mean, they didn't build it around Bob Myers. Yeah, he gets to, I mean, I would have, you have Bob Myers.

It's so funny. I feel like, yeah, he probably picks who he wants. He gets to, you know, make a lot of the decisions. You know, the thing that I would ask, and I'd be really interested in it, this is not necessarily criticism or whatever. Does that make people want to watch the show more? Like, I don't. The halftime show and the pregame show? The half and the pregame show.

Like, if you replace Stephen A with somebody else, like, do you think they would actually hemorrhage ratings? Because I just, I don't know, man. Like, that's just not my bag. And I totally understand Stephen A's talents. I think he's really good at this job. But, like, I just, sometimes I just don't want to hear all that, man. If you remember the previous version of the show when it was like Jalen Rose and Woge, that was not a good television show at all.

Like, whatever we want to say about Stephen A, having Stephen A drive the train was infinitely an improvement over that. While not good, it was much better than the previous version of it. that. But then, of course, it's going to get replaced or at least part of the time by inside the NBA next year. So, you know, there's your answer. Like, can you replace him? Yes, with those, with the people, the cast of inside the NBA, which he may be a part of it's from time to time. And by the way, I don't necessarily think that won't be entertaining. That would be quite fun. It can be entertained, but I just, you know, I felt like with Stephen A. Smith, kind of to your

point about him calling out John Morant as part of a, you know, a bigger pattern of doing this with other players. I've kind of seen these, I've seen these episodes. I feel like we're repeats. You know what I mean? Like, we got anything else?

We got a change up here. You know, you're going to develop a back-to-the-basket game. What else is, what else do we got? Totally. A couple more things I'd love to talk about, Joel.

One is a piece that got a huge reception on Twitter this last week. It ran in the New York Times in the opinion section. And it was about streaming or largely about streaming, and how that could be leading to the fracturing of sports fandom. It was written by June Lee.

Like I said, this is one of those popular pieces because there's not a constituency for people who say, hey, I love that the Notre Dame Toledo game is a Peacoc exclusive. Other than the people who work for Peacock, no one wants that necessarily. Right. But I read this piece and all the examples it has about streaming in particular, and the new streaming age that we live in, being the thing or one of the things, it's kind of, you know, hurting sports fandom or changing sports fandom from the way we used to know it. I found all those examples to be very, very unconvinced in this piece.

Oh, say more. Why so? Well, I'll give you an example. Okay. Junly writes this, take the NBA playoffs. Wanted to watch the Denver Nuggets, you needed to shell out at least $8.99 a month for NBA TV, unless you happen to live in Denver, in which case you had to spend an additional $20 a month for a regional basketball streaming subscription. So he's hitting on an annoying thing here about the age we live in, which is when things are blacked out in your market, and I totally understand that. But let's go back 20 years, 2005.

I look this up. Denver Nuggets played five playoff games that year. they were on ESPN, TNT, and NBA TV. What would you have had to do to watch those games in 2005? Oh, man. I mean, I mean, you had to pay for all of those services, right? You'd have to get a cable or satellite subscription. Yeah, right. How much would that have cost in 2005, you think?

Oh, shit, man. I mean, you're talking about a $200 a month cable bill at least, right? Yeah, let's even say 75. Let's say you get a basic cable. I don't know where NBA TV was. on that tier in 2005, but let's say like $75 a month. Yeah. $100 a month, $50, but whatever, pick any price you want.

Was that cable bill or satellite bill easily stoppable after one month? No. So if you just wanted to watch your nuggets in the playoffs, could you just turn that off easily after a one month of cable or satellite? You were watching some of the studio show that may have had fishing on it on a Saturday morning or something like that. So it's actually much more expensive than watching the nuggets in the playoffs this year, even if you are unfortunate enough under only these circumstances, I stress, to live in the city of Denver, right? Like, 30 bucks a month in 2025 money.

It is way less than it would have cost in 2005 months. Right. Of course. I was going to say, do you know how I watched the Houston Rockets playoff run in 1994 and 95? How's that? It was HSE. God. Home sports entertainment.

Home sports entertainment. We didn't have cable. So I had to listen to the radio to watch some of those games. You know what I mean? And so, like, I just, I think the thing is, is just sort of this assumption that we have the right to watch every game on TV. And it's just like that's how life has ever been. It's not been like that for everybody.

I completely agree. Like, I think part of this is the world is annoying right now. And I know it's like Yankee fans who are, like, like we want to watch every Yankee game, you are chasing that team around. I mean, they are everywhere. Right. There has never been, like, they might be on Pluto and Tube and every possible streaming service as a Yankee game. And I like totally understand that's annoying. If you're like, I just want to pay and I want to watch the Yankees and I don't want to do eight things. I totally understand that's annoying. But you just said it so well. The other part of this is that in the universe

we live in, we have this idea that we should be able to watch every space. sporting event in America for a reasonable price. And that has never been the case in the history of television or the history of anything. Dude, I didn't get to watch Houston Oilers home games really until I was like 10 or 11 years old because they never sold out the Astrodome. So they would be blacked out locally. They'd be blacked out locally. That was my favorite team. Like if let's assume that my grandfather was a sports fan. I don't know. I didn't really know him that well. He was an older gentleman. This would be the greatest era of sports viewing in his life. Like if he had lived long enough to see this, he'd like,

oh, I can watch Notre Dame versus Toledo. I can watch, you know, whatever this bowl game, I can watch this home game. Like, I mean, it would just, and for a fairly reasonable fee, you know, if you really want, if you're that dedicated as a fan, it doesn't seem like that big of a deal. Now, that's the thing. I mean, I was like, I had the same experience when I was a kid, like Texas Rangers. We didn't have cable when I was young. And so I would be like, how am I going to watch this? Well, the answer was there were a handful of games that were on over-the-air television, and that's all I got to watch.

Yeah, man. Most of the games were on cable. I was looking this up in the 90s because I remember my freshman year at the University of Texas. Texas played New Mexico State. Your ultimate crappy home game non-conference. Guess what, Joel? That game was on pay-per-view. Wow.

Really. So not only did you need. cable, you probably had to make a call or, God forbid, go to the cable company to order that and pay way more in even non-inflation adjusted dollars than you would pay for a one month of peacock right now. And I was looking at the schedules from that year because I was just kind of interested in it, looking for all kinds of cities. Do you know how many games were on pay-per-view, college football games between ranked teams, between conference games that you just could not get in the 90s? Oh, I could only imagine. Well, really.

I mean, just tell me, I'm just like, I can only, I mean, I, I, it was, I remember even like when the University of Houston played Miami in the first Thursday night game. Like, cable was not even, it had not even made the penetration into all of the markets that it would make later in that decade. We had to go to a hotel and go get and watch, and watch that game on a TV at a hotel, man. So, you know, again, I'm sympathetic to the idea that it is annoying. but the American sports fan, man, we are really, we've really been spoiled. Like, you know, we've been really blessed to be able to watch as many games as we have of our teams. And like, when you take some of it away, are you complicated? People get pissed, man.

And I kind of get it, but I'm like, bro, like, we're living in the best era to be a sports fan ever. I think your grandfather would be correct. Like, this is the golden age of watching sports. And again, it feels weird to say that because you will get a place. laws if you say like, damn it, this thing is on streaming and I can't watch this or whatever. And people have made, there's been so many of these think pieces about this that have just been like, let me tell you something. If you're, you know, do you know how much you'd have to pay to watch Titans games if you live

in L.A.? And I'm like, I'm sorry, was there an expectation that you'd watch every Titans game that's never been true in history of anything? And now you can watch them on your phone. You can like, I just don't again. And June Lee, by the way, total fairness here. It's got lots of other points in this article about. private equity, owning sports teams and stuff like that. The price of tickets, which I think is a big thing and it's become very, very different since

when you and I were kids, like the price to just walk into a stadium, even with a crappy team, has changed in a lot of ways, in a lot of cases dramatically. I just find the streaming again, I just find these examples. There's no, there are very few apples to apples examples when it comes to frustrations and grives with the streaming year. Right. I can watch Canadian Football League games, man. And sometimes I do, you know.

And that's not an expectation I would have had when I was 12 years old. To pivot for a moment, do you know what we love to talk about in this business but rarely get a chance to? What's that? How much our colleagues in the newsroom are making? What do you mean? You mean rarely on the podcast because we talk about that all the time. Yeah, but, you know, people kind of have guesses. You know, like, what is that guy making?

What is that lady making? So anyway, yesterday, Brian and I almost brought. our thumbs trying to text this post from the intelligence at the New York Magazine to each other. The headline, are you a $300,000 writer? Inside the Atlantic's extremely expensive hiring spree. And I'll just read a portion of the piece that was written by Charlotte Klein here. Every Tuesday afternoon, many of the Atlantic's newest, biggest stars gather for a meeting of what is called the 18. The Google Calendar invite goes out to 18 staffers, more than half of whom joined the magazine, in the past six months, and almost all of whom have been poached from the Washington Post,

including Ashley Parker, Isaac Stanley, yada, yada, yada, yeah. More veteran Atlantic heavyweights like Mark Leibovic, Tim Alberta, McKay Coppins, and Elena Plot are also invited, as are the top brass, including editor-in-chief, Jeffrey Goldberg, and his deputy, Adrian LaFrance. Imagine how I'd felt to be on the staff at the Atlantic yesterday and learned that you were on the B-team, which is the thing that happened. Like, I, you know, You can't confirm. You can exclusively report. I can confirm that some people were surprised to find out they want to be team.

It's so fascinating, Joel, because every publication in America has an A team. And again, Charlotte Klein did a really fantastic job I thought with this piece. Talks about that the A here stands for accountability. But I was reading this, this is one of those things besides the salaries of the Atlantic. One of the interesting things about this was just talking about how organizations work. And I would say it's not just in the media. Every person sitting in an office listening to this podcast is like, oh, they've spent some time thinking, am I in my office as A team or am I office as B team? Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely. If I in that meeting that was called, did I get an invite to that? And did the person sitting next to me get an invite to that? I have already proposed. I don't know if I should talk about this in public. We should figure out the A team for every major publication in this country. Wouldn't that be fun? Just figuring out, like, who do you think is on that A-Team?

Who's getting invited to, you know, the con room, you know, the executive suite upstairs, right? If Graydon Carter can come back and consult on that, because that's a spyworthy idea. Are you on the A-Team? I mean, look, man, and it is. It really is a thing that happens everywhere, and you wonder about, hey, do I get the same sort of treatment? Do they think of me as somebody that is essential to this organization? And how do they do that through money and through opportunity and access? And it's just like, it's clear right here.

I mean, they laid it out for us at the Atlantic, how it happens. And again, it's not, I mean, we know that this happens. It's not a bad or a good thing. But it's just a thing that happens when you work at any place, right? And we work at any place. Absolutely. You know, the media TV term we hear a lot is Bigfoot. You know, they're a media big foot.

this is sort of a big feat. This is sort of a collection of big foots. The thing is, I don't want to make it seem bad for people to make $300,000 a year in journalism. There's no shaming of that. I would love that. I mean, I don't know. Maybe Brian makes $300,000 a year. No, I don't.

Okay. Okay. But I would love that. And I don't want people to look askance at that because I do think that there are journalists and writers that produce work that, you know, theoretically demand that, but, you know, when you put it this way, it makes it just look, I don't know, just, it just make it seem sort of goofy. Well, it's the term, too, like the A team, you know, even it's like, could we have just come up with another word instead of accountability?

Do we have called us something else just to take away that little resonance of A versus B versus C? Yeah, man. Yeah. I mean, again, yeah, if you're not on that B team, too, I mean, they really should be like, all right, well, like, who's like, all right. Do I need to freshen up my LinkedIn? Speaking of the A team,

I would like to give you our solidarity with Stephen A contest winners. Okay. Last week, Stephen A. Smith was shown in a picture playing solitaire during the NBA finals. Maybe during a commercial, maybe during gameplay, it wasn't totally clear about that. And I came out and I defended Stephen A, Joel, because I said, if you only knew what people were doing in a press box. Yeah. And then I-

What did your buddy, Jason Whitlock say about that? He sort of disagreed with me, with my take. I hadn't gotten that quote tweet in a while or maybe ever. Not sure. That was an experience. But I invited listeners who are reporters or media people and say, what are the things that you've seen in a press box? Well, the weirdest things, or perhaps what's a behavior that you have participated in yourself?

here are some of the great ones we got. Has seen writers booking flights on Expedia or orbits? That's from Josh Peterson. And that's, you know, like sports writers are itinerate workers, right? Like you're going around the country. So often it's like the result of this game is determining where I'm going next or I'm thinking about where I'm going. Absolutely.

You might have to get out of town earlier than you needed weather is coming or something like that and you might need to adjust on the fly. So that's reasonable. How about reading novels in the press box? I would be curious about how that person's mind worked. Let me tell you, this is Colton Houston, a listener from Birmingham who sends this. The late, great Tuscaloosa News columnist Cecil Hurt. Oh, Cecil Hurt.

He says, Cisa was famous for being a voracious reader who would bring books to games. After my stint working for Alabama's men's basketball team, I watched a number of their games from the media section, and on multiple occasions I witnessed Cecil reading a book, almost always a tattered paperback from his seat. The one I recall specifically was a William Faulkner novel, and yes, his reading habits would sometimes bleed into game action. Somehow that didn't stop him from having the most clever

and prolific Twitter feed of all the Alabama writers, nor did it stop him from writing the most insightful and well-crafted columns I have ever read, RIPCs. I aspire to have that sort of a mind. I don't know about you. A couple more for you. Tyler Molito, who's a TV reporter down in Lexington, Kentucky. So this actually happened when I was covering a press conference with Kentucky governor, Andy Bashir, following the deadly tornado in May in Southern Kentucky.

During the press conference, I look over at a reporter who works at one of the competing stations to mine in Lexington, and they were on Facebook Marketplace. What they were buying, I have no clue, because shortly thereafter, they opened it up to questions. Even during the tornado press conference, you just check it at a little. it out. I'm going to I'm going to wait until we get to the end of this before I save my piece because I actually have

a big complaint about this but go ahead. I have a one from a play by play announcer. David Corzhenyowski play by play announcers I mentioned on the last pod. They text during the game. I don't know if everybody knows this. Didn't he admit to doing that? Didn't he did doing that?

He can text people during the game and then in the commercial they're on the they're on with text messages. They're just like all of us. They're on their phones. David writes this. I'm a 27-year-old play-by-play broadcaster in the Northeast, and I have a plethora of stories, thank you for the only of journalism word there, about phone use during a show. I'm guilty of using my phone while calling a game usually to text. What has happened no less than five times, though, is I forget to set my fantasy football lineups until minutes before 1 p.m. on a fall Sunday when I'm usually calling some mid-major soccer or field hockey game. What proceeds are some of the most

nerve-racking heart racing sequences where my eyes dart from the game at hand to my fantasy roster to the latest injury reports and back incredibly stressful. I even called a player cup once because the wires in my brain were so crossed. David continues, one of my broadcast partners, a former coach, seems much less stressed using his phone. I couldn't help but glance at his casual text exchange with who I assume was his wife or X something. I'm embarrassed to admit I was both captivated and too nosy, seeing a full range of texts from swear-laden fighting

to suggestive messages all in the middle of a call, that is a game call. A couple more for you, Jill. Sean Crest works for the North State Journal down in North Carolina has a self-domination. He was covering the ACC basketball tournament

at Barclays, Brooklyn. And he says, and North Carolina distiller asked me to, invited me to a whiskey tasting they were hosting that same week. I explained that I was out of town and I couldn't make it. Their response was to send me airplane bottles of the various whiskeys we'd be sampling,

a cut glass tumbler, and a zoom link, so I could dial in while they talked about the barrels they used, aging times, etc. None of the local teams were playing at the time of the tasting, so I left my courtside seat and went back to the media room. The people sitting at my table trying to work were only mildly interested at first until I opened the first bottle and the smell hit them. and then they said, oh, you were serious when you told us what you were doing, and a crowd quickly formed around me. Below are links to the two sports stories I filed, as well as the screenshot of the third story I submitted that day. And yes, Sean Crest filed two gamers and a story about a whiskey tasting from the media room.

And this is the last one from David Coran. Says the list of things I've seen in a press box, and I'm not too embarrassed to admit I dropped the work I was doing to immediately start reminiscing. I recall at the 2024 Copa America stage game last year, a Chilean journalist screamed out at the top of his lungs at an Argentinian

player. I'm not going to say what he was saying, but let's just say it was a pretty strong message. Oh my God. Yeah. After an hour of shouting Tamer insults, this was enough to get him a talking to from a press officer, but not enough to get him kicked out of the press box. That was a punishment only dealt

out to a Chilean radio journalist from a non-rights holder outlet who was caught doing live hits. David continues at the Australian up, but about 10 years ago, one of my AP colleagues told me how earlier that summer a journalist had been watching porn on his laptop in the press box. I thought that was more common than it is. We've all dealt with that at some point. Never seen a first hand, but definitely heard stories of it. Gotcha. Okay. And then David says that lastly, a journalist I was sitting behind in the press box at Manchester United's Old Trafford during a European night was looking up some strange dog pictures.

Someone behind him took a picture of it and posted on social media, leading to a mini Stephen A-esque viral moment. In the end, it turned out the journalist was trying to find an odd-looking dog he could use as a strained visual allegory for his gamer. It's safe to say that, like you, Brian, when I saw the Stephen A image, I smiled knowingly and without judgment. That makes a lot of sense. I'll talk, yeah, man, see, this is what I was going to say.

because it annoys me. Don't be nosy, man. What are y'all doing? Do you ever have that fear that somebody is looking at your laptop or something when you're working? All the time. And by the way, they are because I'm kind of, you know, doing a glance every once in a while. I mean, I'm trying, I'm actively trying not to look at people's computers. But you do it.

Everybody does. These are your competitors in the press spots. Of course you're looking at their laptop. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I feel like I'm going to, I'm going to go ahead and virtue signal here. said, I don't do it that often.

Is that maybe out on this podcast? I don't know if it is. But also, a friend of our friend of the show, Bumani Jones, was talking about this. Screen protectors. Aren't you surprised that more, especially prominent people don't have more screen protectors of their phone? Because that just seems like the kind of thing that you would absolutely need to have if you're going to be out in public in front of people, you know?

Especially if you're Stephen A. It's like, you know, how many people do, in that, how many people does that stadium hold? They all want to find you doing something funny on your phone. Man, don't look at a person in there. But don't, don't be nosy like that, man. Don't be that kind of a person. Stop it. If you have any entries for our solidarity with Stephen A.

Contest, please tell me, we will have more of these on Monday. There's a whole bunch of great ones. Trust me. All right, Joel, weekend blurbs. All right. This is where you and I recommend something with no log rolling. No. No praising, friends or colleagues or anything like that.

I would like you to direct you to a death earlier this week. William Longavisha died at age 70 of prostate cancer. If you don't know the byline William Longavisha, he wrote for the Atlantic and later Vanity Fair, and he was one of the long-form gods of the 90s and 2000s. You could construct a tear with him and Sebastian Younger and John Crackauer and Lawrence Wright of people that would get these big, difficult stories and come back and wrestle them into print.

Everybody there wrote about 9-11 or its aftermath in one way or the other. Reading a Longavisha story was not an experience like reading a Michael Lewis story. You know, reading Michael Lewis was like drinking a very well-mixed cocktail with an umbrella stuck into it. Longavisha's prose was spare. and his stories were very, very long. PC wrote about the cleanup of the World Trade Center. After 9-11, ran in the Atlantic in three parts at a total of 60,000 words.

Good Lord. Mangavisha was a pilot, and I learned this from the Obitz. He actually supported himself early in his career while he was trying to make it in journalism by flying. He'd been a pilot almost his entire life. So instead of being a waiter, instead of working in a bookstore like Shoemaker, he was flying planes.

And as a result, he often wrote about air, air disasters. The crash of Egypt Air 990, ValueJet 592, if you remember that flight that crashed in Florida and killed the running back Rodney Culver. Both those stories were in the Atlantic. The sinking of a ferry boat in the Baltic Sea, a very famous piece about shipbreakers, these people in India that their job was to break up discarded ships. And he went out there and went out with them and talked to them and learned about what they do. The whole idea of Langevisha and his particular approach to journalism sent me back to one of my favorite. books, which I will recommend here. It's called the New New Journalism. And it features

interviews with authors, a bunch of the ones I just mentioned, Michael Lewis, John Crackauer, and Longavisha. And he had a couple of quotes I want to read to you, Joel, really quickly. Oh, please. First of all, it's always bad when you think, like, man, I'm really, really envious of the way this person writes. And then you read an interview with them and you're like, oh, my God, I'm also really envious to the way this person talks. I mean, that's just an incredibly humbling moment. Oh, of course, yeah. I mean, he was a pilot.

I mean, that is the sort of like resume that I don't know. I just, I can only imagine the adventures. I can just, I'm building a portrait of this person in my head. So I'm already mad at, envious and mad at myself. All right, a couple quick quotes from Longavisha. How do you conceive your role as a writer? He says, I am my reader's eyes and ears. And if I have one job, it's to tell my cherished readers to look beyond the facade.

to have the courage to embrace the ugly and the real, and to avoid romanticizing the world. I am their agent on the ground. I put myself into complex, three-dimensional situations, call it reality, in which everything is connected to everything else. There's no inherent narrative, it's just a blob, and writing is the process of choosing the path through that confusion. It is in some ways an arrogant act, of course,

because I am saying to the reader, I'll figure out what's significant and what's not, and I'll build a path through it, so you don't have to suffer through the same confusion that I did. So that's his approach. I know I would have just come up with something exactly like that if you'd ask me, like Brian, what's your approach to journalist? Avoid romanticizing the world.

It doesn't sound like he'd be fit in at the Washington Post opinion section. That sounds optimistic. He was asking about his reporting process, and he said, I spent a lot of time walking around when I arrive at a place I'm reporting on. I sometimes spend days and days just looking around. I try not to jump to conclusions. I'm aware of my limitations. That's the rubbing my eyes stage, the I can't see, I can't see.

I talk to a lot of people. I ask questions and listen, and I get around as much as possible on foot. I walk very fast. I walk through the bad as well as the good parts of town. I walk with such purpose that natives often ask me for directions. And then I gradually begin to see. I begin to eliminate one element at a time. I began to be able to distinguish the important from the fluff.

I begin to understand the motivations of the people I'm talking to, and after a while I'm ready to start thinking about a narrative path. Finally, this one, when he asks about the prospects of literary journalism, something you and I talk about a lot. He says they are excellent, unlimited. The other great fallacy of our time is the short attention span nonsense. The notion that the American public has such a short attention span that it can only handle nugget-sized pieces of writing,

is systematically disproved again and again by good writing. It's just an excuse that people come up with to justify their inability to produce or publish good writing. He goes on, he says, so it amounts to this. Don't insult or condescend to the readers. Don't waste their time. Engage the readers, and readers will come along. All of the magazine and book publishers

who publish this kind of work are desperate for good work. These are beasts that have to be fed, but they are hungry for good stuff, and they are usually fed poorly. There's a feeling on the outside that this world of writing and publishing is some kind of closed club. That, again, is nonsense.

There are no real barriers to access. in this field, no secret passwords for getting in. All that matters is the really hard stuff, which is the quality of the work. Interesting. He was only, he was, this book came out 20 years ago. He's like 50 years old. And he's like our age. Yeah.

Like I said, just ask me some of those questions. I'm sure I'll have something equally articulate to tell you about right. We should do that. When it's your turn for 25 for 25 on Brian, we'll make sure you ask you that. Happy trails, William Longavision. So I don't know Dan Barry personally. I don't think. I don't think I've ever met him either, feature writer at New York Times.

And this is just sort of interesting to me, a cute little feature, the kind of thing that, you know, that we always are sort of craving for. Like, where's the story going to take me? Because it's about basically, are we sure that James Naismith invented basketball? And have you been to the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame? I've never been to that one, but the other two. Okay. Yeah. So I've been to Springfield, Massachusetts, and been to the Basketball Hall of Fame.

It had a subway in there. And I don't mean like the train, like the sandwich place. But like pretty much everyone else, I've never questioned the origin story of the game, which is that Naismith was a YMCA instructor and was assigned to come up with an indoor activity and set up two peach baskets and boom, basketball in December of 1981. And that he wrote a set of 13 rules that he typed up, tacked them to a bulletin board. Barry's story in the time in the times questions the veracity of that story, which I did not know was up for dispute. I did not know that there's this under, you know, this fight going on in the background.

And it focuses on this math wizard in the upstate town, upstate New York town of Herkimer. And they've got compelling evidence that the game was actually invented there by a Herkimer teenager who came up with the idea first about a year earlier while tossing head. of cabbage into a basket, man. Cabbage? Cabbage and peaches, man. I mean, again, we were talking about the golden age of being a sports TV fan. I mean, just imagine if you had to play basketball with a head of cabbage. But anyway, it's just the story is great. I encourage people to read it.

And it's just a sort of thing that a well-resourced newspaper can afford to do. Because that's not going to appear, and that story is not going to appear in how many places, like about 99% of them, right? Nobody has the time to go follow their curiosity up to Hercum and New York to do this sort of thing. So it was just really nice to get lost in something different, and especially as like we're done to NBA finals and we're sort of at the zenith of what basketball is. And to think about like the origin story of it and to question it, which is something I'd never thought to do. It was really cute. So anyway, I recommend that story.

And again, I don't know Dan Barry, not a friend. So that we're in keeping with the theme, that's what I got going for us. if we were still playing basketball with cabbages, do you think Stephen A would call out the cabbage? What are we wilted? That's not a good, that's a wilted cabbage. Not even, yeah. That is the press box.

He's Joel Anderson. I'm Brian Curtis. But thanks of magic by Kyle Crichton. Monday, Joel, you're back. I am. That's our first Monday. Because shoemaker's on assignment, which is to say he's on vacation.

Oh, good for him. You and I got to talk about the New York mayoral race, which is Tuesday. that non-endorsement endorsement that was in the New York Times, plus more lukewarm takes about the media. Cannot wait to see you there, Joe? Likewise, buddy.