Hang Up and Listen - Prediction Season
Slate Culture Feed
Slate Podcasts
4.2 • 2K Ratings
🗓️ 29 December 2025
⏱️ 68 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Hosts Alex Kirshner, Lindsay Gibbs, and Ben Lindbergh look into their crystal balls and tell us what to look out for in the sports world of the future! Will we see more LeBron? More sports betting scandals? A Bill Super Bowl win? A Trump immigration World Cup incident? Only time and the all-knowing Hang Up hosts can tell.
In the second half of our show, we’re sharing Alex’s recent conversation with Mary Harris on What Next.
Predictions (2:54): 2026
What Next (41:50): Mary Harris interviews Alex
(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 Ben Richmond.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It is Monday, December 29th, 2025. |
| 0:11.0 | Happy Almost New Year or New Year 2, depending on when you are listening to the show. |
| 0:15.0 | I'm Alex Kirsner, and this is an episode of Hang Up and Listen, the sports podcast here at Slate. |
| 0:20.0 | I'm a contributing writer for Slate, and I also co-host Splitzone Duo, a National College Football podcast. This week, we've got a very special hang up and listen for you. It's a two-parter. The second part is going to be an episode that we're going to play in just a little bit, which goes off of a recording that is already in the bank that involved me talking about some big stories from this sports year, |
| 0:38.8 | along with the excellent Slate podcast. |
| 0:41.6 | What Next with Mary Harris? |
| 0:43.3 | Look forward to playing that. |
| 0:44.5 | But first, along with my co-hosts, Ben Lindberg and Lindsay Gibbs, |
| 0:48.1 | we are going to make a series of predictions for the sports world in 2006. |
| 0:56.9 | Lindsay, you are the women's sports fleet at CBS Sports and the publisher of Powerplace, a newsletter that covers the biggest stories of the day in women's |
| 1:01.3 | sports. How are you? I'm doing great. This is a stressful time of year, but it's also my |
| 1:06.5 | favorite time of year. It's annoying that those two things go hand in hand, but you know what? I'm reminding |
| 1:12.4 | myself to enjoy it, and I hope you all are too. We made it, friends. We made it. Absolutely. |
| 1:19.0 | We also have Ben Lindberg with us, Ben, senior editor for The Ringer, co-host of Effectively Wild, |
| 1:23.9 | Ben, happy New Year to you. And to you, and all of our listeners and to pull back the curtain a bit. |
| 1:29.7 | We are pre-taping this slightly, which we rarely do here at Hang Up and Listen, but we're enjoying the holiday season. |
| 1:35.7 | The downside is that Lindsay can't give you your weekly Jacksonville Jaguars update. |
| 1:41.5 | So we do not know as we speak. |
| 1:42.6 | Oh, wow. |
| 1:44.1 | Oh, sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry. I misspoke not know as we speak. Carolina and Panthers. Whoa. Oh, sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I misspoke. |
| 1:47.8 | But he's right. All the South Division teams are the same thing. |
| 1:50.7 | Yeah, just lump them together. Yeah. |
... |
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