November 10
You know how it goes. Six weeks pass in the blink of an eye, and despite your best efforts (or perhaps because you've somewhat foolheartedly enrolled in an algebra class at the local college) nary a podcast blog post has been published. I can't claim to have been consumed by any one specific thing, but I suppose even the piedest of pipers needs an unexcused absence. This issue is a bit Ringer/Bill Simmons heavy, which was not intentional but as not a problem as far as I'm concerned. And I didn't even mention that I just started in on binging the excellent Harry Potter Binge Mode pod! Anyway, there is other stuff too, and I did my best to cull from the 151 episodes I consumed in the past month-plus.
SOMETHING NEW
SOMETHING NEW
The Ringer’s new Spotify-exclusive podcast The Hottest Take is a distillation of the 4-hour interview riff show merged with talking heads from sports media. I am as susceptible as anyone to the charms of imbibing and analyzing sports storylines, but I don’t think we as a culture really need any more such fodder in the podcasting world. Some, like Bill Simmons, the man behind The Hottest Take and the Ringer podcast/blog sports/entertainment outlet, have mastered this form of feeling loosely structured and casual. But the ease of access afforded to starting a podcast like this (it’s just talking for a couple hours, right?) is directly disproportionate to the skill requisite for success. The great thing about this show is that it compresses all of the pontificating into a single morsel of layered takes and counter takes. If you didn’t know any better, it almost sounds like the people recording were behind the mic for a solid hour before laying a piece of hectic tape at the feet of a crazed producer for editing. It isn’t, though, and that’s because of the meta satire going on in that 10-minutes-or-less timeframe.
To break it down, let’s dissect the notion of a so-called “take.” Is a take an opinion? Sure. But more than that it is given in response to a timely problem or situation. This is not novel, and indeed something that has likely existed as long after the second human graced the planet. (I entertained the idea of a singular being having a take, but realized that in a world of one the take is simply the perception of reality). I’m usually hesitant to offer my take on anything apart from podcasts, yet I certainly have done so unsolicited on countless occasions. A standard take is proffered with considerably earnest intent. A “hot take” - what I imagine to be a direct descendent of the phrase ‘hot off the presses’ - is a newer kind of reaction to information known more for its instantaneous delivery than for being a well-grounded argument. A hot take is the child of a 24-hour news cycle, thriving in the insta-publish world of social media where a response can be widely disseminated mere seconds after the original information enters one’s brain. The intent of a hot take is to present an alternate school of thought, one that might seem entirely original but that can be buoyed to a fringe faction of ready-to-die-here zealots.
Does the delivery speed of a hot take birth it’s controversy, or is it the lack of broader editorial oversight? Posts that become memes can be calculated and exactingly crafted to garnish a mass response, but the most organic posts bloom without mastermind intent (and, sometimes, even devoid of any sort of end goal in mind). The fallout from NBA general manager Daryl Morey’s tweet is a perfect encapsulation of the hot take culture we find ourselves in today. The original tweet was pretty tame by internet standards, and were I to have sent out the same message it would have likely had the same middling-to-none response as the rest of my repertoire. Combined with his stature in a major American sports league and the fact that his very own Houston Rockets were days away from playing a game in China, however, the innocuous words grew legs. That tweet, standing alone, bland as it may be, could be considered a take. But in order to be a hot take, there is that essential response from the cantankerous masses, pitchforks out and tar a-brewing. It’s on a far larger scale, but the Chinese government has come out strongly with a taste for blood...or at least a series of actions that looks like an attempt to cancel the NBA in China.
And here’s where Bill Simmons and the pod supposedly being reviewed here come back into the mix. Simmons is a writer-turned-podcast-host, who peddles celebrity interviews revolving around sports and culture on The Bill Simmons Podcast for The Ringer, a blog and podcast network he founded in 2016. In 2015 Simmons got into some hot water for criticizing the NFL’s handling of Ray Rice’s domestic violence which led to his eventual dismissal from his employer ESPN. Simmons’ flagship show on The Ringer is an antidote to the ratings-driven talking heads on local sports radio stations around the US. His offering of opinions exceed boilerplate prognostication but that are nonetheless grounded in a particularly deep body of experience (and just a pinch of Boston homerism). It isn’t journalism, exactly, but Simmons largely avoids trafficking in blustery BS meant to bait his antagonists into hate listening. There is a distinction between the longform (more or less evergreen) interviews with guests and the jocular banter with regular contributors that are more of the moment. The latter sensibility is what comes to fruition on The Hottest Take.
Bill Simmons sets up the premise at the top of each episode: “We thought it would be fun to take the hottest takes we’ve ever considered and argue about them like we really do believe them. But do we? That’s for you to decide. Welcome to The Hottest Take.'' Then, some Ringer staffer comes in and introduces the take. When Bill runs point, things tend to veer wildly off course before they get anywhere, which elicits stronger reactions from his co-commentators looking for a way to rein in their boss. Regardless of the host, episodes rarely feel contrived and it is a little inspiring to hear zany arguments floated with such consistent conviction. Maybe my favorite part of the whole thing is the role of the intro and outro music queues as characters; the intro often highlights the insanity/inanity of the take, while the outro can serve as a cheeky button to award the last word to someone who may or may not have just made a ridiculous and illogical closing argument.
The conceit is that the takes might not be sincere…which is often the case with an average take found in the wild. It’s kind of brilliant and highlights the terrifying notion that commentary creates more meaning than the source material. Honestly 75%+ of my experience with sports comes from podcasts, meaning that I get a whole lot more out of the daily goings-on in the NBA than may actually exist. The natural corollary is to politics, where talking heads shape the electorate’s understanding of current events, and this is obviously much more troubling than me deciding if the Orlando Magic belong in the Eastern Conference playoff conversation...at the beginning of the season. Likewise, the stakes are pretty low if I subconsciously internalize Juliet Litman’s vitriolic takedown of Halloween (unlikely) or buy into Sean Fennessey’s controversial assertion that pizza is always good (100%).
Takes often get derailed, and episodes end without a clear consensus. That may bother some listeners, but I think that’s kind of the point and that the obfuscation underlines the silliness of going to the mat on such broadly pedestrian concerns. Will we ever know if the take is genuine? I hope not. That sense of determining flippancy from sincerity is what keeps the content interesting. Maybe the big questions aren’t answered (and sometimes they are barely asked), but The Hottest Take is a highly entertaining show that subtly critiques our reactionary culture...all in the span of less than 10 minutes.
To break it down, let’s dissect the notion of a so-called “take.” Is a take an opinion? Sure. But more than that it is given in response to a timely problem or situation. This is not novel, and indeed something that has likely existed as long after the second human graced the planet. (I entertained the idea of a singular being having a take, but realized that in a world of one the take is simply the perception of reality). I’m usually hesitant to offer my take on anything apart from podcasts, yet I certainly have done so unsolicited on countless occasions. A standard take is proffered with considerably earnest intent. A “hot take” - what I imagine to be a direct descendent of the phrase ‘hot off the presses’ - is a newer kind of reaction to information known more for its instantaneous delivery than for being a well-grounded argument. A hot take is the child of a 24-hour news cycle, thriving in the insta-publish world of social media where a response can be widely disseminated mere seconds after the original information enters one’s brain. The intent of a hot take is to present an alternate school of thought, one that might seem entirely original but that can be buoyed to a fringe faction of ready-to-die-here zealots.
Does the delivery speed of a hot take birth it’s controversy, or is it the lack of broader editorial oversight? Posts that become memes can be calculated and exactingly crafted to garnish a mass response, but the most organic posts bloom without mastermind intent (and, sometimes, even devoid of any sort of end goal in mind). The fallout from NBA general manager Daryl Morey’s tweet is a perfect encapsulation of the hot take culture we find ourselves in today. The original tweet was pretty tame by internet standards, and were I to have sent out the same message it would have likely had the same middling-to-none response as the rest of my repertoire. Combined with his stature in a major American sports league and the fact that his very own Houston Rockets were days away from playing a game in China, however, the innocuous words grew legs. That tweet, standing alone, bland as it may be, could be considered a take. But in order to be a hot take, there is that essential response from the cantankerous masses, pitchforks out and tar a-brewing. It’s on a far larger scale, but the Chinese government has come out strongly with a taste for blood...or at least a series of actions that looks like an attempt to cancel the NBA in China.
And here’s where Bill Simmons and the pod supposedly being reviewed here come back into the mix. Simmons is a writer-turned-podcast-host, who peddles celebrity interviews revolving around sports and culture on The Bill Simmons Podcast for The Ringer, a blog and podcast network he founded in 2016. In 2015 Simmons got into some hot water for criticizing the NFL’s handling of Ray Rice’s domestic violence which led to his eventual dismissal from his employer ESPN. Simmons’ flagship show on The Ringer is an antidote to the ratings-driven talking heads on local sports radio stations around the US. His offering of opinions exceed boilerplate prognostication but that are nonetheless grounded in a particularly deep body of experience (and just a pinch of Boston homerism). It isn’t journalism, exactly, but Simmons largely avoids trafficking in blustery BS meant to bait his antagonists into hate listening. There is a distinction between the longform (more or less evergreen) interviews with guests and the jocular banter with regular contributors that are more of the moment. The latter sensibility is what comes to fruition on The Hottest Take.
Bill Simmons sets up the premise at the top of each episode: “We thought it would be fun to take the hottest takes we’ve ever considered and argue about them like we really do believe them. But do we? That’s for you to decide. Welcome to The Hottest Take.'' Then, some Ringer staffer comes in and introduces the take. When Bill runs point, things tend to veer wildly off course before they get anywhere, which elicits stronger reactions from his co-commentators looking for a way to rein in their boss. Regardless of the host, episodes rarely feel contrived and it is a little inspiring to hear zany arguments floated with such consistent conviction. Maybe my favorite part of the whole thing is the role of the intro and outro music queues as characters; the intro often highlights the insanity/inanity of the take, while the outro can serve as a cheeky button to award the last word to someone who may or may not have just made a ridiculous and illogical closing argument.
The conceit is that the takes might not be sincere…which is often the case with an average take found in the wild. It’s kind of brilliant and highlights the terrifying notion that commentary creates more meaning than the source material. Honestly 75%+ of my experience with sports comes from podcasts, meaning that I get a whole lot more out of the daily goings-on in the NBA than may actually exist. The natural corollary is to politics, where talking heads shape the electorate’s understanding of current events, and this is obviously much more troubling than me deciding if the Orlando Magic belong in the Eastern Conference playoff conversation...at the beginning of the season. Likewise, the stakes are pretty low if I subconsciously internalize Juliet Litman’s vitriolic takedown of Halloween (unlikely) or buy into Sean Fennessey’s controversial assertion that pizza is always good (100%).
Takes often get derailed, and episodes end without a clear consensus. That may bother some listeners, but I think that’s kind of the point and that the obfuscation underlines the silliness of going to the mat on such broadly pedestrian concerns. Will we ever know if the take is genuine? I hope not. That sense of determining flippancy from sincerity is what keeps the content interesting. Maybe the big questions aren’t answered (and sometimes they are barely asked), but The Hottest Take is a highly entertaining show that subtly critiques our reactionary culture...all in the span of less than 10 minutes.
From: The Ringer (exclusively available on Spotify, but you don't need to have a paid subscription)
Recommended for: 21st century bear baiters and their fans
Drop Schedule: Weekdaily, Monday-Thursday
Average episode length: 8 minutes
Rating: Gotta Have It
THE LIST
The Book of Basketball is Bill Simmons' comprehensive history and future speculation of the sport of kings. It was released at the end of my die-hard days of Phoenix Suns fandom (the only team whose victories and defeats have elicited tears) and I traded my love of the NBA for the world of theatre and indie music and a shot at making non-sports-aligned friends in college. I've always intended to read it, especially as my dormant sports affinity has reawakened in my second Midwest stint. Simmons has made mention of how improbable it would be for him to write a sequel, but then the week of Halloween he announced that there would be a podcast iteration of an update...and thus Book of Basketball 2.0 was born. It is a collection of formats - audio essays, interviews with players and coaches, and most intriguingly for this blog, imprints from Ringer podcasts like The Rewatchables. The release of the first five chapters this past week hijacked my typical approach of attempting to burn through older episodes in the queue, and I anticipate the same thing happening throughout the duration of the project. The intervening time since the book's release may as well be my wandering in the desert years of paying attention to sports, making this the perfect salve to catch me up on all that I've missed. If you aren't a basketball or sports fan, I'll concede that you may find this less than revelatory. But for me it continues to do on a macro level what the Ringer NBA pod has done in the micro for years - endear the evolution and lore of the game and it's players.
TAR is one of the shows I most gleefully anticipate hitting my feed. Each episode is a well-crafted essay set against a trustworthy structure combining beautiful prose with the promise of a quantitative metric for every subject. It is literary and smart and to be honest a little cold. As you might guess from the show title, this iteration is markedly more optimistic while remaining every bit as witty and wonderful.
Can you believe there was a time when Bart Simpson's problem with authority was the most morally abhorrent thing in the US pop culture? This is a great take on the infamous provocateur of short-eating and his reflection of a society that really didn't feel ready for him.
You have probably heard of Lil Nas X and you have almost certainly listened to his song ‘Old Town Road’ - maybe even by accident. My high school aged cousin referenced the song in April, but I somehow managed not to hear it until late in the summer. Catchy, and a little weird that it features Billy Ray Cyrus? Then I took in this amazing dissection from Wesley Morris and Jenna Wortham and my life was forever changed.
This is a great on-the-ground explainer about the protests in Hong Kong and a bit of background of the history that got us to this point. The image of a border generation that has a taste of democracy while simultaneously being assured it won't last is as poetic as it is tragic.
Sometimes the choices in life can’t be undone. Sometimes you overstate the symbolic meaning of a thing without examining the deeper meaning. This story is full of heartache and family drama and just a little bit more Jonathan Goldstein than I can stand - but even so his cutesy asides didn’t derail the episode’s impact.
Truly fascinating part of history that I neither lived through nor heard about from older friends and relatives. Which, despite having the feel of a feisty 60 Minutes segment, makes me feel like Mobituaries is actually geared toward a younger audience.
HONORABLE MENTION
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