Welcome back to “I’m Curious!”

I have to start with an apology to newer subscribers.

Many of you may have come for coverage of the NWSL and the Spirit and women’s sports.

In the absence of NWSL games to cover, we’re going to try something a little different. There will still be plenty of sports in here, but there will be a lot more highlighting of some of the work I have done lately in my day job at MS NOW. 

I apologize to you since I may not have shared that the only mandate of this newsletter is that I write about whatever the heck I want. Literally anything that makes me curious enough about it to write some words about it.

Obviously, we’ll get back to NWSL coverage when the league returns in a few weeks, and I am doing some work toward plenty more additional storytelling later on in the year.

I’m also hoping to do some additional reporting for some other, non-NWSL stories into the mix over the course of the summer. I’m excited to share those with you if and when they come together.

But for now, plenty of fun still awaits.

As always, feel free to either read through or flip around as you see fit!

Here’s the Table of Contents.

Table of Contents

• Welcome back to “I’m Curious!”

  • The Most Curious Thing This Week: World Cup

  • My Reporting

    • The Boos Heard Round the World: NBA Finals

    • "Team Kean": NJ Congressman Goes Missing

    • The Clock Ticks at "60 Minutes"

  • Other Sports Takes: The Knicks, Grief, and Coming Home

  • Something Good I Ate: French Fixins at Josephine

And here’s Peach!

The Most Curious Thing This Week

is the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the 23^rd edition of the quadrennial men’s international soccer tournament.

After years of buzz and plenty of controversy over everything from immigration policies to ticket prices to… whatever the heck that FIFA Peace Prize was… the actual matches have started. 

As this heads out for publication, we have just two matches in the books and dozens upon dozens more to come, but there’s still space to reflect on what is, for better or worse, an extraordinary moment for sports in the U.S.

In a bit of a crossover between this and my day job, I wrote about it for MS NOW, as part of their Project 47 newsletter.

The take I offered there was that the World Cup is supposed to be, and still can be, a fun celebration that brings the world together.

But at every point, the president of the United States, Donald Trump, turned it into a fiasco, inserting himself as the star of the show and letting FIFA’s worst instincts run wild.

Our World Cup is missing fans from countries facing travel bans. Players have been hassled on their way into the country and several folks who should be there, including multiple team staffers and Africa’s top referee, Somalia’s Omar Artan, were turned away.

@tsn

FIFA President Gianni Infantino says people shoukd “chill” about referee Omar Abdulkadir Artan, who was denied entry to the USA. Artan wou... See more

A president who was committed to making this a success would also leverage his friendship with FIFA’s president Gianni Infantino to allow things like tailgating at all venues, or fans to bring their own water bottles. Maybe he would work to lower ticket prices.

He has done none of that, and instead local leaders, like New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, stepped up into the void. Mamdani reached a deal to allow New Yorkers access to thousands of tickets at $50 a pop, while even the cheapest resale tickets are well into three and sometimes even four figures.

Here’s how I put it for them: 

“American soccer fans have suffered many indignities over the years: waking up before dawn to watch games overseas, enduring the men’s national team’s failures and listening to Alexi Lalas on television broadcasts. 

But this year’s FIFA World Cup was supposed to make up for all that. 

More than 1 billion people watch the World Cup final, making it the biggest event in sports. It is a global celebration. And in 2026, that celebration was finally supposed to be coming to our backyard.

Then President Donald Trump got involved. 

Through a mix of manufactured crises and an apparent desire to make every major event revolve around him, Trump managed to turn the World Cup into a fiasco.”

You can read the full piece here.

My Reporting

The Boos Heard Round the World

We had quite a bit of fun making Monday night’s edition of The Rachel Maddow Show.

As the show came together, I was on NBA Finals monitor duty. If there were reactions to the president’s attendance at Game 3 of the finals between the New York Knicks and San Antonio Spurs at Madison Square Garden, my task was to pass that along.

I was able to help track down some reaction from the streets outside as the presidential motorcade passed along 8^th Avenue, but sprung into action during the pregame rendition of the national anthem.

You probably have seen it by now, but both the ABC telecast and the scoreboard at MSG showed the president in the middle of the anthem.

The crowd cheered through most of the anthem, but upon seeing the president, the MSG faithful flipped from cheers to thunderous boos, quickly returning to cheering when the scoreboard switched to a shot of Knicks star Jalen Brunson.

Our editors and producers quickly turned around the clip.

And Rachel, for her part, seemed to have quite a bit of fun with the reactions to the president’s visit a few minutes later on air.

Take a look:

“Team Kean”

There was one other story that I was also happy to play a role in. For months, many members of our team working on both The Rachel Maddow Show and The Briefing with Jen Psaki have been fascinated by the largely unexplained disappearance of Rep. Tom Kean Jr. (R-New Jersey.)

Kean, a 57-year-old relative moderate, is in his second term as a House member representing a very competitive district in Northern New Jersey. Last week, he won an uncontested primary and will face off against Democrat Rebecca Bennett this fall in one of the nation’s most closely-watched House races. 

Except… the guy’s gone missing.

He has not been seen in public after taking a House vote in early March. Members of his team and other House Republicans have shared that Kean has a medical issue and earlier this month, Kean himself put out a statement that he will be back in the coming weeks and explain his absence.

Everybody, regardless of party or political persuasion, hopes he will be better soon.

In the meantime, however, the congressman has been posting a lot on Facebook. And the posts have referred to a lot of activity by “Team Kean.”

Most of the posts feature very similar selfies of the same Kean staffer, posing to share that the congressman had a table at events throughout the district.

To a passing reader, they may see the post and think that Tom Kean was out there working for them, despite his absence. But a closer read would tell you that it was instead Team Kean.

We ended up pulling a few Facebook comments that summarized the situation well, including a favorite: “there is no Tom in team.”

The Clock Ticks on “60 Minutes”

Over on The Briefing, we had a really interesting conversation with Scott Macfarlane last week.

Macfarlane is now an independent journalist, hosting his own show affiliated with the liberal MeidasTouch network.

But until earlier this year, he worked as a correspondent for CBS News, following his emergence as a star investigative reporter at NBC 4 here in Washington for his work covering the aftermath of the January 6 insurrection. 

Macfarlane spent a few months at the new CBS News, since the network’s parent company Paramount was sold to Oracle chairman Larry Ellison and his son David and since they installed conservative contrarian pundit Bari Weiss as the editor-in-chief of the news division.

In March, he announced his voluntary departure from the network. Others were less lucky.

In recent weeks, multiple correspondents at CBS’s legendary news show 60 Minutes left or were fired, most recently the show’s longtime correspondent, former CBS Evening News anchor Scott Pelley.

Pelley’s firing in particular has sparked a firestorm of criticism of the project that the new leadership at CBS has undertaken.

Macfarlane warned that while the show’s reputation may be at risk of being damaged, even the altered version of the show will probably still reach a lot of people.

“If they are changing how ’60 Minutes’ approaches its job or delivers its product, this is a little different. Because… in this case, people will still sample it at first. They’ll still consume it,” Macfarlane said.

“’60 Minutes’ is still going to be on, Jen. After the greatest television program ratings deliverer of all—the NFL. It'll still be Patrick Mahomes and ‘60 Minutes.’ It'll still be Josh Allen and ‘60 Minutes,’ which means people are going to, if nothing else, stumble upon the new show.”

Macfarlane was also incredibly reverent about Pelley’s work for the show and the network.

“He was the north star for all of us,” Macfarlane said, suggesting he was on the network’s Mount Rushmore, likely along with news legends like Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow.

“Nobody wins. Nobody benefits if 60 minutes gets damaged. Not the news industry, not politicians, not our better angels as we seek truth in America, because it was the one place, the one place that could cut through the noise and cut through the clutter.”

You can watch more of the interview here, via Macfarlane’s MeidasTouch colleague Acyn Torabi.

Other Sports Takes and Things of Note: “I’ll Take Any Sign I Could Get”

Ok, let’s talk hoops! It has been an emotional roller coaster watching the New York Knicks make their magical playoff run.

They rattled off a streak of 13 consecutive wins to get them to the NBA Finals and an early lead in the series. One presidential loss aside, the Knicks bounced back Wednesday night with the biggest comeback in NBA Finals history, erasing a 29-point Spurs lead to win by one and take a 3-1 series lead.

I have been in one of the weirdest positions watching this. Years ago, I swore off the Knicks. Like the relative or friend of a perpetual screw-up, I decided that, at some point, there was nothing left for me to do. They had to fix themselves, put in the work, and show they were worth loving.

I have found joy the last few years cheering on the Orlando Magic, my wife’s hometown team, as they have risen out of the cellar to be a solid playoff team. But I knew that eventually, the Knicks would call me home.

They wouldn’t necessarily fix everything, and they haven’t. James Dolan still throws hissy fits at the city about watch parties outside the arena. He still invites Trump to games to curse the team. He still has a massive, petty surveillance state to monitor his enemies. He still has not apologized to Charles Oakley for having security guards brutally drag him out of the arena nearly a decade ago.

But the team is good. Consistently good. And so, so lovable.

Heck, after wins they have been known to sing “Unwritten” by Natasha Bedingfield so loudly that it disrupts other team’s press conferences.

@whistle

The Knicks locker room was LIT after their blowout win over Denver 😂 (Via: ryandnvr/IG) #newyorkknicks #Jalenbrunson #nba #Knicks #nuggets

As a Georgetown alum, I have had a begrudging but well-earned and deep respect for the Villanova alums on the team: Jalen Brunson, Josh Hart, and Mikal Bridges. I watched all of them play in college and they have a tremendous team ethos they have carried into the pros. They play smart and don’t play dirty. 

Brunson has embodied the infinite hustle that made so many Knicks fans fall in love with John Starks more than a quarter-century ago.

Their teammate, Karl-Anthony Towns, has won me over with his expressions of a healthy masculinity. He lives very flamboyantly, in a way that reflects his split African-American and Dominican heritage. The man dubbed the “Big Bodega” is unafraid of sometimes sounding feminine or being emotionally vulnerable in public. He has gotten a lot of crap for it, as haters online have tried to code his behavior as everything from “soft” to “zesty” to “gay,” as if those are insults.

He weaves his emotion into the game and plays with so much resting on his heart.

There are whole compilations of him yelling “oh my God” or “how??” as he gets fouled or tussles with players in the low post. And he yells so loudly that the courtside mics catch it clearly almost every time.

@belligozhoop

OH MY GAWWD 😩 #nba #fyp #basketball #viral

Towns lost eight family members, including his mom, to COVID-19. After Game 2, still coming off the heat of the moment of a defensive stop that prevented Spurs center Victor Wembanyama from hitting a buzzer-beating three-pointer, Towns was still able to reach a deep, thoughtful reflection in an answer in his postgame interview.

“As you go through life, if you lose a parent, to everyone listening, you just look for signs. And I’ll take any sign I could get. And I prayed to her strong before that possession. A great player got a great shot. It just didn’t go in and, I mean, it’s great defense, shoutout to [Mitchell Robinson], shoutout to our team, but you know, I take it as a sign that my mom was there with me. So I appreciate her so much,” Towns said.

Towns’s expressions of grief have been so powerful that at least one New York City funeral home, Sparrow in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, has hosted watch parties for Knicks games as a way of helping people navigate grief. 

The Knicks have not won a title in 53 years. They even offered a powerful reminder of that in their post of the watch party they held for Game 4, which said “the loudest fans in the room weren’t visible.”

Even here on earth, the Knicks have some major emotional pull. On Wednesday night, I found myself crying after witnessing such an insane, seemingly otherworldly moment.

I thought about how the Knicks were such an essential fabric in my life, especially as a little kid.

I would be brought in on my mom’s lap to watch the Knicks square off with Michael Jordan and the Bulls at the Garden.

I played the CD the Knicks put out with their TV theme, their starting lineup intros and of course, their iconic 90s anthem, “Go New York Go,” until the CD was so scratched it couldn’t play anymore.

I found more joy in the tour I took of Madison Square Garden as a 5-year-old than just about anything else in my early childhood. 

I have kept the jersey assigned to me at the Knicks-sponsored summer basketball camp I went to now for over two decades. Because on the last day, John Starks showed up, and I met him and got him to sign the jersey for me. It still hangs on the door to the closet of my childhood bedroom in my parents’ house.

After over a half-century of pain, of so many “so close’s,” of so many lottery picks, of so many busts and bad contracts and failures, the hope is no longer being returned to us as heartbreak. There is joy, and a sign that the title that so many people have waited their entire lives for, that so many others died without seeing, is coming.

Seeing all of that, it’s impossible for me not to see it as a sign that my beloved screw-up has cleaned up their act, and as a loud and clear call for me to come home.

Something Good I Ate

For a fun Sunday out, my wife and I decided to return to the restaurant where we held our wedding party last fall: Josephine, a French bistro in Alexandria. 

Instead of ordering any entrées, we realized we just wanted some of our favorite appetizers and small plates.

So that ended up being the move!

We got an array of items that filled up our small bar table. Both of us got their amazingly rich and fairly sweet French onion soup, then split an order of escargot. Abby had the shrimp cocktail to herself, while I had most of the cheese plate, including three delicious options: the soft-hard sheep and goat milk Tomme Chevre et Brebis, the firm cow’s milk Mimolette, and the creamy cow’s milk Saint Angel Triple Cream.

I loved all three, but particularly loved the Tomme Chevre et Brebis, on the left of the shot below.

There’s a few good reasons why we picked it as a wedding dinner location, but the food is probably the biggest one.

Just a note: Any opinions I express here are solely mine, and do not reflect the views of my employer, my coworkers, or anybody else affiliated with me. The newsletter is not monetized in any way and everything in here is written and reported with my own resources on my own time outside of my working hours unless specifically noted otherwise. “I’m Curious” is just for me, the author, and for you, the reader. Thank you for reading. I’m glad you’re here.