863: Championship Window

This American Life

Society & Culture, News, Politics, Arts

4.6 • 88.8K Ratings

🗓️ 29 June 2025

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

People on a mission to achieve their goals before their window of opportunity closes.

Visit thisamericanlife.org/lifepartners to sign up for our premium subscription.

Prologue: Guest host Emmanuel Dzotsi goes to a packed sports bar in Brooklyn for his favorite soccer team’s biggest game in years. (6 minutes)
Act One: Connie Wang tells the story of a championship window she didn't realize she was in — until it was too late. (14 minutes)
Act Two: Seth Lind, our Operations Director, isn’t a crier. But he wants to connect with his emotions, so guest host Emmanuel Dzotsi sets up an unconventional experiment. (14 minutes)
Act Three: Two college baseball teams with horrible losing streaks — a combined 141 games — are scheduled to play each other. One of them must finally win. (14 minutes)

Transcripts are available at thisamericanlife.org

This American Life privacy policy.
Learn more about sponsor message choices.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	A quick warning, there are curse words that are unbeaped in today's episode of the show.
0:05.3	If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, This AmericanLife.org.
0:11.5	From WBEZ Chicago, it's This American Life.
0:15.4	I'm Emmanuel Jochi, sitting in for Ira Glass.
0:19.2	So about two months ago, I left work in the middle of the day
0:23.0	and joined about 100 million people worldwide in a very particular kind of prayer.
0:30.2	Now, I wish I could tell you that I was praying for a fix to any other world's problems.
0:34.7	But I wasn't. Instead, I was standing in a crowded bar in downtown Brooklyn
0:39.9	screaming my lungs off for my favourite British soccer team, Arsenal Football Club.
0:45.3	Oh! No, not Arsenal!
0:48.2	Oh, Arsenal! Arsenal! Arsenal! Arsenal! Arsenal! Arsenal! Arsenal are my hometown London team.
1:01.3	A lot of the fans in the bar are just like me.
1:04.0	There's quite a few Brits.
1:05.6	Lots of black 30-somethings.
1:08.2	Probably because when I was a kid,
1:10.5	I swear Arsenal catfish an entire generation
1:13.7	of us into supporting them. They played some of the best soccer I have ever seen with a team
1:19.4	full of all these Black Legends. They went an entire season without losing a game in the British
1:25.2	Premier League. And then they stopped winning and decided to break my heart every year for the next 20 years.
1:33.4	My brothers and sisters in Christ, I have seen some things.
1:38.3	I've seen us lose by record margins.
1:41.9	I've seen two separate seasons derailed by horrific. Why did you show that in
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in 24 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from This American Life, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of This American Life and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.