American Hockey Story
Hang Up and Listen
Joel Meyer
4.6 • 986 Ratings
🗓️ 23 February 2026
⏱️ 62 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Hosts Alex Kirshner, Lindsay Gibbs, and Ben Lindbergh relive the dual wins for Team USA's women's and men’s hockey teams and examine how MAGA has co-opted the victory. Then, they’re joined by journalist Chris Dalby, author of the Sports and Crime newsletter, goes deep on why Trump seems to love pardoning athletes. Next, the hosts get into the alarming expansion of sports betting via prediction markets. And finally, Ben brings us an Afterball on the demise of the European Super League.
On the bonus episode, available exclusively for Slate Plus members, the hosts share their highs and lows of watching the Winter Olympics.
Olympics Hockey: (--): Team USA brings home gold.
Trump Pardons (--): Chris Dalby breaks down what’s really going on.
Prediction Markets (--): Who will reign in this new way of betting?
European Super League (--): Ben eulogizes the failed league.
Episode Notes:
- Alex in Slate on America’s reckless, brilliant strategy to beat Canada.
- This New York Times breakdown of the move that beat Chloe Kim in the halfpipe
- Chris Dalby on Donald Trump’s love of pardoning athletes.
(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, February 23rd, 2006. Welcome back to Hang Up and Listen, the sports podcast here at Slate. Back with you again this week. I'm Alex Kersner. I'm a contributing writer at Slate, and I co-host the National College Football Podcast, Split Zone Duo. What a show we've got for you this week. It's one of my |
| 0:21.3 | favorites in a while, I think. We're going to start with Olympic hockey, now owned by the United |
| 0:25.8 | States of America, winners of two gold medals since we last recorded. We will discuss a brewing |
| 0:30.9 | turf war between predictions markets and traditional sports books. And in between, we'll interview |
| 0:35.8 | Chris Dalby of the Sports and Crime newsletter |
| 0:38.1 | about his research into a favorite pastime of Donald Trump's, issuing presidential |
| 0:42.8 | pardons to sports figures. As usual, joining me this week is Lindsay Gibbs, Women's Sports |
| 0:48.3 | Lead at CBS Sports, host of Burn It All Down, and publisher of Power Plays, a newsletter covering |
| 0:53.5 | the key stories of the moment in women's sports. Lindsay, how are you? I've got the post-Olympic blues, Alex. I'm not going to lie. It is always hard for me when they end. But the good news is I do a lot of women's basketball work. And by the time we talk to you all next week, it will be March already. So there's plenty |
| 1:11.9 | to keep me busy. I need my hornets to pick it up, you know, help me through the doldrums. We're all buzzing around the hive. We got a buzz, you know. It's tough. As usual as well, we've got Ben Lindberg with us. Ben is a senior editor for The Ringer, and he co-hosts effectively wild a baseball podcast. Ben, |
| 1:29.2 | how are you? I am Snowed in here in New York, and the blizzard makes a good backdrop for |
| 1:35.0 | discussing the Winter Olympics, though. It doesn't really remind me of spring training, |
| 1:38.9 | which is happening right now in Florida, in Arizona. But before we talk Olympics, can I ask you to anyone want to buy a |
| 1:46.1 | Super Bowl champion with me, want to go in with me on purchasing the Seahawks because |
| 1:51.0 | 100% of the Seattle Seahawks are for sale by Paul Allen's estate. We just talked about the |
| 1:57.3 | Seahawks winning the Super Bowl. This is the first time in the Super Bowl era |
| 2:01.1 | that the majority share of a team that played in the game hit the market right afterwards. |
| 2:07.0 | Some people projecting that they could go for a record total of 10 plus billion bucks. |
| 2:12.1 | So it's probably out of our price range. But what do you guys think the championship premium is? What do you think a team commands |
| 2:19.5 | in this somewhat unique situation of hitting the market immediately after winning the big game? |
| 2:25.8 | You know, I tend to think that you can't go high enough for what the Seattle Seahawks will fetch. |
| 2:30.3 | But I'd be willing to offer $30,000, $40,000 if they wanted to, I think I could pull that together with some people. I got to stop my avocado toast for a little bit first, and I'll get back to you, okay? Yeah. You know, I'll stop my coffee runs and put away my avocados as a true millennial, and we'll see what I can scrounge up. It's probably an extra billion or so. I mean, |
... |
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