America's Wild, Weird World Baseball Classic
Hang Up and Listen
Joel Meyer
4.6 • 986 Ratings
🗓️ 16 March 2026
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Hosts Alex Kirshner, Lindsay Gibbs, and Ben Lindbergh discuss the thrilling World Baseball Classic semifinal between Team USA and the Dominican Republic, as well as the missed calls, Navy SEAL visits, and other strange drama surrounding the tournament. Then the panel previews NCAA March Madness tournament before closing with a look at the expanding connections between Jeffrey Epstein and figures across the sports world.
In this week’s bonus episode for Slate Plus members, the hosts chat about Bam Adebayo’s historic 83-point run against the Washington Wizards last week.
WBC: (4:52): The called strike heard round the world
March Madness (23:01): Chalk talk.
Epstein and Sports (42:01): The revolting revelations about Steve Tisch
(Note: time codes are only accurate for Slate Plus members, who listen ad-free.)
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You can email us at hangup@slate.com.
Podcast production and editing by Kevin Bendis, with production assistance from Patrick Fort.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It is Monday, March 16th, 2006. |
| 0:09.0 | Welcome back to Hang Up and Listen, the sports podcast here at Slate. |
| 0:13.0 | Back with you again this week. |
| 0:15.0 | I am Alex Kirshner. |
| 0:16.0 | I'm a contributing writer for Slate, and I co-host the National College Football Show, |
| 0:20.0 | Split Zone Duo. |
| 0:21.7 | We have a fun show for you this week. We're going to talk about a deeply enjoyable |
| 0:25.5 | world baseball classic, highlighted by a kind of weird but probably, ultimately, very successful |
| 0:31.8 | the United States team that will see how the final goes. The NCAA tournaments are coming |
| 0:36.2 | this week. We'll talk about the brackets that |
| 0:38.0 | came out on Sunday night, and we'll tell you exactly who is going to win, both the men's and |
| 0:42.2 | women's basketball tournaments. Maybe. Also, the Jeffrey Epstein scandal will probably never die, |
| 0:47.7 | but it's become something new lately, in addition to everything else, and that is a sports |
| 0:52.6 | story. We'll talk about it later in the show. |
| 0:54.9 | As usual, joining me this week is Lindsay Gibbs, the women's sports-related CBS Sports, |
| 1:00.0 | co-host of the Burn It All Down podcast, and publisher of Powerplays, a newsletter covering |
| 1:04.7 | the key stories of the hour in women's sports. |
| 1:07.2 | Lindsay, how are you? |
| 1:08.4 | I'm on, what, is this is about hour 90 of CBA watch for the WMBA. |
| 1:16.1 | I'm about 13 hours, 14 hours post-selection Sunday. |
| 1:20.5 | So I'm doing great. |
| 1:22.3 | But yeah, no WMBA CBA still. |
... |
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