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Freakonomics Radio

349. How Sports Became Us

Freakonomics Radio

Freakonomics Radio + Stitcher

Documentary, Society & Culture

4.632K Ratings

🗓️ 13 September 2018

⏱️ 52 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Dollar-wise, the sports industry is surprisingly small, about the same size as the cardboard-box industry. So why does it make so much noise? Because it reflects — and often amplifies — just about every political, economic, and social issue of the day. Introducing a new series, “The Hidden Side of Sports.”

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

The fact of the matter is, superstars do win championships.

0:07.0

Football is for the man.

0:08.5

I hit her as hard as I could.

0:10.0

San Francisco 49ers quarterback Nelt during the National Anthem.

0:13.0

Sports has a social impact that is way, way bigger than its economic impact.

0:20.0

Introducing a special series.

0:22.0

This was the moment I realized that baseball is a business.

0:26.0

I have an eight-year-old son. There's no way I'd let him play tackle football.

0:29.0

From Freakonomics Radio, my body took over, my mind shut off.

0:32.0

Things hang in the balance. Outcomes are unclear.

0:35.0

You cannot be afraid to fail.

0:37.0

That could be the reason you're telling your second grade daughter that she's moving next week.

0:40.0

The hidden side of sports.

0:42.0

I had never been in an environment that was so emotionally charged.

0:48.0

Like grown men were hugging and kissing each other.

0:52.0

Here's your host, Steven Dubner.

1:01.0

On a damp, windy day in May 1954, a handful of runners were getting loose at the Ifley Road Track in Oxford, England.

1:10.0

One of them was named Roger Bannister.

1:12.0

Roger Bannister limbers up for a planned attack on that four-minute mile, never before achieved by man.

1:17.0

This isn't like the tracks we're used to thinking of now. This was Cinders.

1:20.0

That's David Epstein, a science journalist and author of the sports gene.

1:25.0

And it was sort of a small, unimportant track meet, but it was known that Bannister would be making this attempt.

...

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