May 12, 2019
SOMETHING NEW
Michael Lewis’s Against the Rules marks the initial offering from newly minted podcast studio Pushkin Industries. The studio is the brainchild of Malcolm Gladwell and Jacob Weisberg, and Against the Rules bears a certain resemblance to Gladwell’s excellent Revisionist History. Yes, both shows are the work of widely acclaimed authors, and both listen as enhanced audiobooks - excellent writing spruced up with interviews. Both shows also start from a series-defining premise, but I’d submit that Against the Rules builds across the season to flesh out a single idea. Namely, that the referees who keep a society accountable are slowly disappearing or losing credibility. With a combination of self-effacing wit, synthesizing personal anecdotes with larger cultural concepts, and generally avoiding a preachy disposition, Lewis opens up an intriguing line of questioning in an entertaining podcast.
Lewis hooks listeners with a variety of inventive intro gambits, starting off the series at the police station with detailed descriptions that capture the disposition of the officers and the production team accompanying him. This is incredibly personal - Lewis is reporting his own identity theft, foreshadowing the role of large companies as rule makers that shape our lived reality (newspapers, loan institutions, banks...all of these places impact the way we perceive and move about in the world). This intro also contains a nod to the police not making the rules but enforcing them, an idea that resurfaces throughout the series. Along with this tale of personal frustration with a stolen identity, Lewis inserts stories from his time working as muscle for an art gallery and his son’s mirroring of NBA-level attitude in a youth rec league. These bits are trivial in the context of the larger themes of each episode, but they can serve as nice tie-ins that convey the widespread effects of the issue at hand.
Inaugural episode “Ref You Suck” takes on the long entrenched societal impulse for finding a common enemy - a disdain for authority in the midst of sporting events. But Lewis noticed that reaction to calls from the biggest stars in the most visible of all pro sports - basketball players in the NBA - have increasingly taken on the role of raging against any call that goes against them. As is the case across other corners of society, this rise in visible outcry seems to counter-intuitively correlate with the level of fairness gracing society. Lewis takes listeners inside the NBA’s replay headquarters, underlining the measures the league is taking to improve calls. Despite this adherence to impartiality, the men and women on the court enforcing the rules are aggressively berated...and few onlookers seem to care.
As the episodes sprung up over the past couple months, I kept wondering if there would be a political angle to all of this. Considering the far-reaching implications of an appointment to any kind of meaningful court, perhaps it would have been novel to highlight humanity’s collective outrage juxtaposed with the utter lack of awareness in arenas that impact our lives. In "The Alex Kogan Experience" listeners are again reminded of that foolish idea that opening access to everyone will result in the greater good winning out. Or, to take a more cynical angle, that our culturally significant institutions have begun shedding degrees of objectivity in response to a perceived lack of interest from the public. This gets to a byproduct of Lewis's questioning: are referees good for a collective, bad for a collective, or simply no longer relevant when so much of technology has a democratic veneer?
At one point during the Kogan episode, Lewis opines that there are refs who we won't miss until it's too late. The job of the ombudsman is disappearing from media giants from across the country, and this episode showcases the shortfalls of letting the public adjudicate after the fact. In this way the ombudsman role is akin to the pre-cogs in Minority Report, sussing out a misstep before it has a chance to occur. When it comes to crime this seems like a police state where autonomy has given in to a kind of automated legality making us less and less able to make any kind of positive choice whatsoever. But an ombudsman is an editor, keeping writers accountable and the reputation of a news outlet intact. Without the intentionality that comes from hiring an independent ethical compass, how is a newspaper different from any other business angling for your attention and money?
That question feels central to this podcast - is the decline in ruling objectively changing the very things that are being judged? If the most talented people in basketball are invariably furious at the keepers of the rules, how do the children watching them react? While episodes highlight the role of arbiters in specific contexts, the series keeps returning to the notion that modern life is sliding toward an open rejection of authority and equality. There are some refs that have retained a level of prestige. As noted with the art authenticators in “Hand of Leonardo,” however, folks in these roles often find themselves in a position to benefit from compromising their impartiality. Even if corruption isn’t the intent, it can be easy for a well-meaning adjudicator to get caught up in the excitement stemming from a potentially biased ruling. Lewis leaves the matter somewhat up for debate, but inherent in that gray area is the crucial thing Against The Rules delivers: priming listeners to notice the changing perception of referees in our society.
Lewis hooks listeners with a variety of inventive intro gambits, starting off the series at the police station with detailed descriptions that capture the disposition of the officers and the production team accompanying him. This is incredibly personal - Lewis is reporting his own identity theft, foreshadowing the role of large companies as rule makers that shape our lived reality (newspapers, loan institutions, banks...all of these places impact the way we perceive and move about in the world). This intro also contains a nod to the police not making the rules but enforcing them, an idea that resurfaces throughout the series. Along with this tale of personal frustration with a stolen identity, Lewis inserts stories from his time working as muscle for an art gallery and his son’s mirroring of NBA-level attitude in a youth rec league. These bits are trivial in the context of the larger themes of each episode, but they can serve as nice tie-ins that convey the widespread effects of the issue at hand.
Inaugural episode “Ref You Suck” takes on the long entrenched societal impulse for finding a common enemy - a disdain for authority in the midst of sporting events. But Lewis noticed that reaction to calls from the biggest stars in the most visible of all pro sports - basketball players in the NBA - have increasingly taken on the role of raging against any call that goes against them. As is the case across other corners of society, this rise in visible outcry seems to counter-intuitively correlate with the level of fairness gracing society. Lewis takes listeners inside the NBA’s replay headquarters, underlining the measures the league is taking to improve calls. Despite this adherence to impartiality, the men and women on the court enforcing the rules are aggressively berated...and few onlookers seem to care.
As the episodes sprung up over the past couple months, I kept wondering if there would be a political angle to all of this. Considering the far-reaching implications of an appointment to any kind of meaningful court, perhaps it would have been novel to highlight humanity’s collective outrage juxtaposed with the utter lack of awareness in arenas that impact our lives. In "The Alex Kogan Experience" listeners are again reminded of that foolish idea that opening access to everyone will result in the greater good winning out. Or, to take a more cynical angle, that our culturally significant institutions have begun shedding degrees of objectivity in response to a perceived lack of interest from the public. This gets to a byproduct of Lewis's questioning: are referees good for a collective, bad for a collective, or simply no longer relevant when so much of technology has a democratic veneer?
At one point during the Kogan episode, Lewis opines that there are refs who we won't miss until it's too late. The job of the ombudsman is disappearing from media giants from across the country, and this episode showcases the shortfalls of letting the public adjudicate after the fact. In this way the ombudsman role is akin to the pre-cogs in Minority Report, sussing out a misstep before it has a chance to occur. When it comes to crime this seems like a police state where autonomy has given in to a kind of automated legality making us less and less able to make any kind of positive choice whatsoever. But an ombudsman is an editor, keeping writers accountable and the reputation of a news outlet intact. Without the intentionality that comes from hiring an independent ethical compass, how is a newspaper different from any other business angling for your attention and money?
That question feels central to this podcast - is the decline in ruling objectively changing the very things that are being judged? If the most talented people in basketball are invariably furious at the keepers of the rules, how do the children watching them react? While episodes highlight the role of arbiters in specific contexts, the series keeps returning to the notion that modern life is sliding toward an open rejection of authority and equality. There are some refs that have retained a level of prestige. As noted with the art authenticators in “Hand of Leonardo,” however, folks in these roles often find themselves in a position to benefit from compromising their impartiality. Even if corruption isn’t the intent, it can be easy for a well-meaning adjudicator to get caught up in the excitement stemming from a potentially biased ruling. Lewis leaves the matter somewhat up for debate, but inherent in that gray area is the crucial thing Against The Rules delivers: priming listeners to notice the changing perception of referees in our society.
From: Pushkin Industries
Recommended for: Anarchists. And the law-abiding.
Drop Schedule: Seasonal:Weekly (All episodes available now)
Average episode length: 45 minutes
Rating: Gotta Have It
THE LIST
This episode of Invisibilia focuses on a journalist’s duty to be objective and the danger of whitewashing an interview subject. It is also more broadly about the concept of empathy in society, and whether it is something for which to strive. I found this deeply compelling, entertaining, and important.
Companies leveraging technology to peddle matchmaking services are apparently pretty old. So old that users once paid a premium for tapes containing potential suitors! Willa Paskin takes listeners down memory lane and/or to an otherworldly land of cheeseballs and hopeless romantics.
Have you ever heard the line “All I really need to know I learned in Kindergarten”? As the son of a kindergarten teacher, I’ve long resonated with the truth of that quip. But after listening to this episode of 99PI my mind is racing with the potential for the world to embrace the mantra.
HONORABLE MENTION
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