Jeff Pearlman has been a sportswriter for three decades, and is the best-selling author of ten books on sports, including Showtime: Magic, Kareem, Riley, and the Los Angeles Lakers Dynasty of the 1980s, which was adapted as the HBO series Winning Time. In February 2025 he turned his attentions to the ultimate contact sport: politics.
His new Substack newsletter, The Truth OC, digs deep into Orange County politics, skewering what he refers to as "the crazy people" in many Orange County local governments. If he is unabashedly partisan, he brings the receipts, sharing photos, videos and other documents of officials behaving badly - or at least strangely.
He spoke with us about his decision to cover local politics, how a lifetime of sportswriting prepared him for this beat, and why Democratic messaging "sucks."
:36 Oral History of Speaker Robert Hertzberg
1:45 Problems at the State Bar
3:01 Experts Expound: The best and worst political jobs in California
3:51 Welcome Jeff Pearlman
8:39 The Truth OC
10:57 Style
12:52 Seal of God
13:49 "You bring the receipts"
16:08 Impact in the community
18:04 Enjoying the cruelty
22:13 How did sportswriting prepare you for this?
25:06 "I find him so exasperating"
25:52 Getting in your face
29:02 The N word at a school board meeting
30:55 Don't let things disappear
34:16 Will this affect your sportswriting career?
36:32 What journalists/writers do you follow?
37:37 The new Jon Fleischman
38:33 How long will you do this?
40:33 #WWCA
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