The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hi, I'm Stefan Fatsis and this is Slate's sports podcast, hang up and listen for the week of May 14th, 2018.

On this week's show, I'll be joined by a special guest to talk about the NBA playoffs.

Then the always great Roger Bennett of Men and Blazers will be here to discuss the once great English striker

Wayne Rooney, who might be coming to America to play in Major League Soccer.

And finally, Nate DeMaio, the creator of the podcast, The Memory Palace, and the aforementioned

special guest, and I will have a conversation about tug of war because it's high time we conversed

about tug of war on this program.

Josh Levine is the author of the 2002 Washington City paper story, Plumbing the Depths.

The EPA finds too much lead in D.C. tap water.

He is away again this week.

But you know who is in a way? The special

guest. It's our old friend Mike Pesca. He's the host of Slate's Daily Podcast, The Gist, and now

he has edited a book. It's called Upon Further Review, The Greatest What Ifs in Sports History.

There are 31 of them. I wrote one. Josh wrote one. And you

might now be realizing that Nate DeMaio wrote one, too. What if the Olympics hadn't dropped

tug of war? Mike, congrats on the book. Tell everyone why they should buy it. Well, first of all,

when you said there are 31 of them, I want to be clear that that's not the print run. Although maybe if you thought it was, you'd want to get into it. Well, first of all, when you said there are 31 of them, I want to be clear that that's not

the print run, although maybe if you thought it was, you'd want to get in there quick. So one

reason to buy it is that there are plenty of copies for everyone. Another reason to buy it is not

only is this 31 people with 31 interesting ideas. It's really 32 or 33 because I wrote the intro and the intro to a chapter, and Malcolm Gladwell wrote the forward. It's just bonus content. Bonus. Before ball, if you will. That's the foreword. I tried to pitch my publisher on it. Can we call it the before ball? He was like, no, you're insane. That will affect book prices and will only do a print run of 29 29, if that's the case. Why, everyone should buy it, it's a contemplation. It's beyond the actual stories themselves. It's a contemplation, a meta-contemplation, if you will, as to the nature of sports and rooting and rewing. And I think it's a great gift for Father's Day, of course. And Mother's Day, too. We've just missed Mother's Day. But, you know, I think in New Zealand, it's a boss, right? Mike, well-time. I mean, what I like about the book, and then we'll talk about basketball. Tell me what you like about the book is that there's a range. There's a range of ideas and a range of approaches to this open-ended question of what if. Josh and I both wrote fiction.

Other people took it very seriously. Well, you wrote memoir. Okay, foam memoir, so that becomes fiction. But if it were real, it would be total memoir. I mean, you wrote it in that style. I think that was the only one that was really so personal, although since it didn't happen, it was entirely impersonal.

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