The Sport of Life: Chats w/ Comedians, Filmmakers, Sports Figures, Musicians, & Intellectuals

Joe Maddon, a longtime MLB manager who led the Tampa Bay Rays to their first ever World Series appearance and the Chicago Cubs to their first World Series title in more than 100 years, chats with Trey Elling about THE BOOK OF JOE: TRYING NOT TO SUCK AT BASEBALL AND LIFE. Topics include: The book's goal (2:14) Slogans helping to get a message across (4:08) A football coach who shaped his leadership style (7:24) How he got into coaching baseball (8:53) His favorite championship (10:52) The importance of struggling (12:48) The hardest player he ever had to cut (16:08) Gene Mauch's impact on Joe (17:58) The Cubs' mistreatment of Joe, heading into his final season with the team (19:50) The next ideal managerial situation (21:45) Whether computers should call balls and strikes (24:11)

European history and nuclear arms policy expert Benjamin Abelow chats with Trey Elling about HOW THE WEST BROUGHT WAR TO UKRAINE: UNDERSTANDING HOW U.S. AND NATO POLICIES LED TO CRISIS, WAR, AND THE RISK OF NUCLEAR CATASTROPHE. Topics include: NATO's expansion east over the past 30 years (0:35) Why NATO would've promised not to expand east in the early 1990s (2:46) NATO adding Poland is a member in the late '90s (6:09) George W. Bush withdrawing the US from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in late 2001 (8:48) NATO's failed attempt to add Georgia and Ukraine in 2008 (11:00) The US's role in Ukraine's 2014 coup (17:16) Russia's response to the coup (26:26) US actions in Romania in 2016 (29:50) Trump surprisingly continuing aggressive policies toward Russia (33:53) NATO & US diplomacy with Ukraine intensifying in 2021 (38:20) The immediate future of the current conflict (47:15) The likely culprit(s) of the Nord Stream Pipeline attacks (53:25) Ben's concern about a nuclear weapon being used (1:02:40)

Award-winning television producer and documentary filmmaker Natasha Lance Rogoff chats with Trey Elling about MUPPETS IN MOSCOW: THE UNEXPECTED CRAZY TRUE STORY OF MAKING SESAME STREET IN RUSSIA. Topics include: Why Sesame Street asked her to bring the show to Russia (2:00) Starting with getting past Russia's gatekeepers (8:29) Finally finding Russian financing (14:42) The difficulty of convincing Russians to diversify the show's music (17:07) The Russian production team not understanding America's racism (23:59) Russia's culture and values worth exposing to its children with Sesame Street (30:11) Important details for the Russian Sesame Street neighborhood (39:05) The sadness involved with casting Russian child actors (43:41) Creating the Russia-specific Muppet puppets (47:27) Finally getting to the television premiere in October 1996 (52:26) The lasting legacy of Russian Sesame Street (54:41)

George Mason University Professor of Economics and New York Times bestselling author Bryan Caplan chats with Trey Elling about DON'T BE A FEMINIST: ESSAYS ON GENUINE JUSTICE. Topics include: Feminism (0:22) Orwellian 'othering' (13:49) Public school classes are too touchy-feely (18:41) Happiness (22:39)

Decision-making expert, bestselling author, and former professional poker player Annie Duke chats with Trey Elling about QUIT: THE POWER OF KNOWING WHEN TO WALK AWAY. Topics include: Why we have have a hard time quitting (2:17) Richard Pryor (5:26) Why NYC cabbies in the 1990s were bad quitters (8:17) The difficulty of quitting in the red (13:03) California's high speed train money pit (16:22) Monkeys and pedestals (21:13) Sears not being able to quit itself (24:48) Daniel Kahneman providing a blurb for QUIT (29:29)

Comedian John Crist chats with Trey Elling about DELETE THAT (AND OTHER FAILED ATTEMPTS TO LOOK GOOD ONLINE). Topics include: Writing a memoir at 38 (:31) John's unique childhood (2:20) Failure (6:58) Early affirmations from a comic who had 'made it' (10:47) Louie Anderson's generous offer (13:51) Getting over a fear of discussing his spirituality on stage (17:00) Mocking both sides of a topic (22:22) A Sophie's choice for John (25:51) Those little motivators early in a standup career (29:52)

Renowned child psychologist and author Susan Linn chats with Trey Elling about WHO'S RAISING THE KIDS: BIG TECH, BIG BUSINESS, AND THE LIVES OF KIDS. Topics include: How a commercialized, digitized society affects kids' brain development (3:45) Nurturing 'awe' in children (6:14) Mr. Rogers encouraging silence (14:12) Mattel trying to hook babies with Aristotle (19:03) Screens substituting for real-life interactions (21:38) Amazon's Alexa for kids (24:16) Minecraft (28:49) Brand tribes (33:31) "Reducing friction" when marketing to children (35:15) Digitizing analog toys like Legos (39:01) Pokémon Go, -Smile, and -Sleep (42:09) Screens and advertising in public schools (50:30) Prodigy (54:23) Is there cause for hope? (58:51)

Bestselling author Meg Gardiner chats with Trey Elling about HEAT 2. Gardiner co-authored the book with Michael Mann, which serves as the sequel to Mann's 1995 crime thriller HEAT, starring Al Pacino, Robert Deniro, and Val Kilmer. Topics include: How she and Mann linked up (0:35) Where the book picks up from the film (6:48) Writing dialogue for characters that already exist on the big screen (13:30) The balance of paying tribute to a classic film, while making the current project its own thing (16:06) Turning HEAT 2 into a film or limited tv series (21:03) Running track at Stanford (23:00) Her previous career as an attorney (23:50) Advice for aspiring writers (25:40) Winning Jeopardy! three times in the late 1980s (27:43)

Randall Balmer, an Episcopal priest and John Phillips Chair in Religion at Dartmouth College, chats with Trey Elling about PASSION PLAYS: HOW RELIGION SHAPED SPORTS IN NORTH AMERICA. Topics include: Baseball as counterculture to the Industrial Revolution (2:32) Football benefitting from the US Civil War (17:08) Hockey as a metaphor for Canada (28:24) Basketball's similarities to American urbanization (35:50) Are sports the new opiate of the masses (43:56)

Louise Willder, a copywriter at Penguin Books whose written around 5,000 blurbs over nearly three decades, chats with Trey Elling about BLURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM: AN A-Z OF LITERARY PERSUASION. Topics include: Defining “blurb” (0:29) The profession of “blurbing” (3:09) Adjectives begetting laziness (7:10) Subtitles (10:24) Why some authors despise blurbs (14:10) Do authors ever write their own blurbs? (17:14) Charles Dickens: trailblazing self-promoter (21:00) What makes a book ‘classic’ (27:35) Louise’s blurbing pet peeves (30:34) The greatness of cuss words (32:43) The greatness of…the ellipsis (36:18) Blurbing a book that sucks (39:03) Rules for blurbing self-help books (41:30) Blurbing the Bible (44:09) Blurbs in the US vs the UK (46:46)