May 21, 2018
THE LIST
1. 99% Invisible - "Immobile Homes"
Mobile homes. Most people are aware of these humble dwellings, but it’s doubtless many of us have ever thought much about their metaphorical place in the American landscape. 99PI paints us an aural picture of the importance and subjugation of a structure integral to survival via the threat to a small community in Utah.
2. We Came to Win - "Zaire '74: The Most Misunderstood Team in History"
I try to leave out episodes of the show featured in the lengthier review, but this one is just so good. It’s a reminder that while soccer is the world’s game, not all teams and players are given the same amount of respect - even on the World Cup level of competition.
3. Revisionist History - "Divide and Conquer"
Malcolm Gladwell is back, and he comes out swinging with this lengthy investigation into one of the most potentially relevant punctuation marks in US history. It is every bit as rivetting as it sounds, though I’ll admit I could listen to Gladwell opine about pretty much anything in his tenderly frustrated verve.
HONORABLE MENTION
Planet Money - "The Land Of Duty Free"
Love and Radio - "Counter Melody"
SOMETHING NEW
I’ve got a fraught relationship with soccer. Once prized as a prodigious goalie, my career playing the beautiful game came to a screeching and ambivalent halt after 8th grade. I simply didn’t try out for the team or show any interest in continuing to develop into a top shelf stopper. But many of my friends kept with it, and along with playing they also cultivated a healthy admiration of the (then less visible) professional squads that graced pitches all over the world. This inspired hipster-driven envy years later, as I watched the 2010 and 2014 World Cup with ebulliently uninformed wonder. Flirtations with DC United fandom piqued my interest in the MLS, and while this league continues to gain traction I always felt like it was unseemly to dive in without a larger appreciation of the sport’s towering history. (No disrespect to the MLS whatsoever - the progress it has made as yearly attendance steadily increases is awe-inspiring, I’m just saying I can’t profess my love for Coldplay if I’ve never listened to anything put out by the Beatles). Truthfully, following any sport has been a chore for me ever since departing high school. Despite the availability of streaming resources, the brilliant meditations from countless Hang Up And Listen episodes or NPR segments with Mike Pesca, and the freetime I undeniably possess as an adult without kids...I just haven’t managed to devote a consistent portion of my life to following sports. But I’ve not given up hope, and I think the world might have finally thrown me an entrypoint to a plausible way forward: the new Gimlet podcast We Came To Win.
Listeners will recognize the traditional audio documentary staples - voice overs, interviews, and a central conflict that anchors each episode. But the show straddles a unique space between head-down reportage and creative storytelling, leading the public in awe of a captivating tale while sometimes puzzling over the details. So far in the six episodes that have dropped, episodes have a premier figure, team or match to guide the story arc, and each is compelling in it’s own right. “How the 1990 World Cup Saved English Soccer” starts from the tragic death of fans at a match and details England’s evolving reputation as a squatting ground for hooligans to the home of the Premier League. “Zaire ‘74: The Most Misunderstood Team in History” highlights how sports on a world stage transcend the optics of grown adults kicking a ball, and the relationship between the joy of competition and the corruption of a nation represented at the World Cup. Finally, both “The Rise and Fall of Diego Maradona” and “This Is Hope Solo” delve into the complicated lives of some of the sport’s most illustrious stars.
The show isn’t without flaws, though my main critique would be that the tone is a little overly deferential to the celebratory even as it does underscore some of the World Cup’s uglier aspects. I’m certainly willing to forgive this, acknowledging that refraining from expository jugular cutting is one way to build a bridge between fans that are purely excited about on-the-field action and non-fans that are easier satiated by railing against the injustices wrought by capitalist overlords. Granted, that’s a difficult thing to convey pre-scripted non-fiction audio, where righteous tirades are rained in by editorial oversight. One has to think that Gimlet set out with this broad strokes mentality in mind, spreading the net wide in hopes of capturing a larger following in their initial foray into a dedicated sports show.
There are a couple of genre niches in the sports podcasting scenes, but a large share of shows belong to repackaging call-in-esque sports radio segments. While such shows absolutely serve a purpose and should by no means be erased from the landscape, I crave content that might subvert the preconceptions of the sports averse and bridge a cultural divide. There are some excellent shows that are doing that within the hot-take-talk world (get thee to The Dan LeBatard Show with Stugotz and Men In Blazers), but we need more producers to reach the masses in a way that eclipses the fluff of NBC Olympic profiles. The in-depth audio-documentary angle that ESPN took with 30 for 30 was incredible and it is deservedly poised as the standard bearer of the genre, but it’s scope is to cover what seems to be all of sports throughout the nearly 40 years of the network’s existence. We Came To Win narrows the subject matter considerably while still being broad enough to run for decades. I’m excited to see how the rest of the series plays out, and would love to see other iterations on the theme for similar major sporting events. And heck, maybe in time, some of that ballsy experimental deep diving that we’ve come to expect from other Gimlet properties like Reply All and Heavyweight will land in our cues. The world is ready.
Listeners will recognize the traditional audio documentary staples - voice overs, interviews, and a central conflict that anchors each episode. But the show straddles a unique space between head-down reportage and creative storytelling, leading the public in awe of a captivating tale while sometimes puzzling over the details. So far in the six episodes that have dropped, episodes have a premier figure, team or match to guide the story arc, and each is compelling in it’s own right. “How the 1990 World Cup Saved English Soccer” starts from the tragic death of fans at a match and details England’s evolving reputation as a squatting ground for hooligans to the home of the Premier League. “Zaire ‘74: The Most Misunderstood Team in History” highlights how sports on a world stage transcend the optics of grown adults kicking a ball, and the relationship between the joy of competition and the corruption of a nation represented at the World Cup. Finally, both “The Rise and Fall of Diego Maradona” and “This Is Hope Solo” delve into the complicated lives of some of the sport’s most illustrious stars.
The show isn’t without flaws, though my main critique would be that the tone is a little overly deferential to the celebratory even as it does underscore some of the World Cup’s uglier aspects. I’m certainly willing to forgive this, acknowledging that refraining from expository jugular cutting is one way to build a bridge between fans that are purely excited about on-the-field action and non-fans that are easier satiated by railing against the injustices wrought by capitalist overlords. Granted, that’s a difficult thing to convey pre-scripted non-fiction audio, where righteous tirades are rained in by editorial oversight. One has to think that Gimlet set out with this broad strokes mentality in mind, spreading the net wide in hopes of capturing a larger following in their initial foray into a dedicated sports show.
There are a couple of genre niches in the sports podcasting scenes, but a large share of shows belong to repackaging call-in-esque sports radio segments. While such shows absolutely serve a purpose and should by no means be erased from the landscape, I crave content that might subvert the preconceptions of the sports averse and bridge a cultural divide. There are some excellent shows that are doing that within the hot-take-talk world (get thee to The Dan LeBatard Show with Stugotz and Men In Blazers), but we need more producers to reach the masses in a way that eclipses the fluff of NBC Olympic profiles. The in-depth audio-documentary angle that ESPN took with 30 for 30 was incredible and it is deservedly poised as the standard bearer of the genre, but it’s scope is to cover what seems to be all of sports throughout the nearly 40 years of the network’s existence. We Came To Win narrows the subject matter considerably while still being broad enough to run for decades. I’m excited to see how the rest of the series plays out, and would love to see other iterations on the theme for similar major sporting events. And heck, maybe in time, some of that ballsy experimental deep diving that we’ve come to expect from other Gimlet properties like Reply All and Heavyweight will land in our cues. The world is ready.
From: Gimlet
Recommended for: Soccer fans, aspirational soccer fans, clueless people who need something to rally around leading up to the World Cup.
Drop Schedule: Wednesday, Seasonal:Weekly
Average episode length: 45 minutes
Rating: Gotta Have It
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