Sports is a positive because it refracts all these other larger things that we have to work out for ourselves. We can learn some lessons there and carry them forward into the rest of our lives. It seems like so much of what makes something a good sport and teaches these lessons is really present at even the lowest, most casual levels of the sport. In fact, in some ways, it's actually harder to find them when it gets to be professional big money sports.
When it comes to sports, it might seem like there are two kinds of people. Those who are religious about their love for the game and those who only see Super Bowl Sunday as a vessel for an epic halftime concert – if they think about it at all. Jody Avirgan argues this is a false binary. In Good Sport, his new show from the TED Audio Collective, Jody makes the case that sports are as good a lens as any to understand the world – regardless of whether you are an athlete, a fan or a begrudging bystander. In this episode, Jody shares the lessons he’s learned from playing and reporting on sports at the highest levels, and makes a compelling case that sports can help us uncover the amazing emotions that make us better humans. You can listen to Good Sport wherever you are listening to this. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts