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

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)

Jim DiEugenio, a foremost expert on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, chats with Trey Elling about JFK REVISITED: THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS. The book provides annotated transcripts of Oliver Stone's recent two- and four-hour documentaries, co-written by Jim, that present the most recent evidence uncovered by the Assassinations Record Review Board (ARRB). Topics include: The ARRB's importance for this project (2:45) JFK's autopsy confusion (12:57) The mystery of a press conference held by the two Dallas doctors who tried to save JFK on 11/22/63 that has been dashed from history (20:07) The three Texas Book Depository secretaries whose testimony was ignored (30:06) A meeting between JFK, Allen Dulles, and Lyman Lemnitzer that showed Kennedy at odds was with the US military industrial complex (37:11) CIA MK-Ultra psychiatrist Jolly West paying a visit to Jack Ruby in prison, after he killed Oswald (1:09:25) Who was most responsible for killing JFK, and LBJ's complicity in the plan (1:20:44)

Journalist and author Henry Sanderson chats with Trey Elling about VOLT RUSH: THE WINNERS AND LOSERS IN THE RACE TO GO GREEN. Topics include: Why electric vehicles didn't catch on initially in the early 1900s (2:01) How Exxon gets partial credit for discovering the lithium battery (4:37) China as the world's 'battery superpower' (7:54) Lithium's path from ground to battery (11:40) Cobalt's path from ground to battery (18:11) Nickel's path from ground to battery (26:04) The shocking amount of copper needed in electric vehicles (30:21) Deep sea mining as the next 'great' frontier for EV materials (35:03) Possible solutions to a finite amount of inhumanely sourced materials (38:44)

Portland-based writer and author Kristin Ohlson chats with Trey Elling about SWEET IN TOOTH AND CLAW: STORIES OF GENEROSITY AND COOPERATION IN THE NATURAL WORLD. Topics include: Harvesting trees while keeping a forest healthy (1:14) Dead salmon's contribution to the forest network (5:17) Bees sometimes cheating mutualism with pollenating flowers (7:03) Relaxed selection versus natural selection (9:10) How viral infections helped with human evolution (13:57) Humans emit a lot of bacteria and...fungi? (16:15) The spread of germs can be beneficial (17:33) The effect of sugary junk food on the gut microbiome (20:13) How an area in Nevada transformed from desert into wetland (21:52) Regenerative agriculture (28:42) Coral snot and island bid poop as other examples of mutualism (35:31) Whether cities' attempts to build nature into concrete jungles has paid off (40:01)

Spy. Spook. Intelligence officer. However you label him, Douglas London spent 34 years with the CIA, working as a field operative in countries outside of the United States, establishing relationships with foreign nationals who could help the US with highly sensitive information. And he's sharing his story with Trey Elling as told in THE RECRUITER: SPYING AND THE LOST ART OF AMERICAN INTELLIGENCE. The book is part memoir, part how-to-spy guide, and part critique of how and why the CIA lost its way since 9/11 and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

Legendary actor Anthony Michael Hall chats with Trey Elling about his new film THE CLASS. Topics include: THE CLASS as a sort of spiritual sequel to THE BREAKFAST CLUB (0:38) Taking a page from John Hughes with rehearsals (5:00) Playing a school administrator, and remembering Paul Gleeson (8:53) Humanizing the authority figures (13:17) Acting class memories (14:59)

Evan Puschak, the guy responsible for the wildly popular The Nerdwriter channel on YouTube, chats with Trey Elling about ESCAPE INTO MEANING: ESSAYS ON SUPERMAN, PUBLIC BENCHES, AND OTHER OBSESSIONS. Topics include: Coming into his own as a writer (1:46) Lessons learned from Emerson (6:35) Articulating like Jerry Seinfeld (10:03) The brilliance of standup comedy (12:43) Facebook's true customers (15:37) The greatness of public benches (23:38) Why Venice, Italy is Evan's favorite place to sit (28:11) Probing Superman's psyche (30:34) The perfect Superman movie (35:13) Identity with respect to friendship (38:23)