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The Press Box

The Mental Health Break Show. Plus, Ben Macintyre on Spies.

The Press Box

The Ringer

Sports

4.43.2K Ratings

🗓️ 26 October 2020

⏱️ 85 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker take a mental break and try to ax any mention of the pandemic, election, or Trump. They rank pun column names (3:00); throw it back to 1996 to discuss early internet journalism (8:30); test Chris Almeida with a new game, Generational Media Literacy (30:30); and then former producer Jim Cunningham joins to say a few words (44:00). Then author Ben Macintyre stops by to discuss his new book, 'Agent Sonya.'(52:00) Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0

David!

0:02.0

A boss Bill Simmons had an idea for us in the middle of the election season.

0:07.0

What if we did a mental health break show?

0:11.0

We didn't mention the names, Donald Trump, Joe Biden, the coronavirus, one time, one time.

0:20.0

What I want to know is, do you think you and I can pull this off?

0:25.0

Dang, I don't know if I can take a mental break, but I think that we can certainly record this show, I'm not sure if it'll work.

0:33.0

Yeah, I guess it's less mental health break than just sort of forced forgetting of all the weirdnesses that is in front of us, right?

0:41.0

Yeah, there probably should have been like some illicit substances involved, but yeah, but we'll do our best.

0:48.0

It's not too late.

0:49.0

Today, strain pun column names, audio from the birth of internet journalism, plus Agent Sonia author Ben McIntyre on spies, all that much more on the press box, a part of the Ringer podcast network.

1:11.0

Hello, media consumers, Brian Curtis and David Shoemaker here.

1:16.0

Our first segment is a tad awkward, David, because we intended to build the segment around New Yorker writer Jeffrey Tuban, whom you might have read about last couple of days.

1:30.0

Three weeks ago, we had Jeffrey Tuban on the press box via Zoom call, and it was fine, I stress.

1:38.0

But what interested us about that interview was this part of Tuban's journalistic past, raised in New York, you go to Harvard and write for the Crimson, where you're the sports editor.

1:49.0

Is it true that you wrote a column under the name inner tuban? Is that correct?

1:54.0

Totally true.

1:55.0

Totally true.

1:56.0

And I love, I love being a sports writer.

1:59.0

I still like to write about sports.

2:01.0

I write for golf digest, one sport usually once a year.

2:05.0

Inner tuban, which made us think, David, that there's this whole genre of strained pun column names, which often seem to occur at college newspapers.

2:17.0

And we thought, what if with the help of our readers, we put together a list of the best strained pun column names of all time?

...

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