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Hang Up and Listen - The You Get a Trophy Just for Listening Bonus Segment

Slate Culture Feed

Slate Podcasts

Music, Tv & Film, Arts

4.2 • 2K Ratings

🗓️ 3 September 2015

⏱️ 13 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This podcast extra is free to all readers to preview our membership program, Slate Plus. Visit slate.com/hangupplus to learn more.In their Aug. 17 Slate Plus bonus segment, Hang Up and Listen’s Josh Levin, Stefan Fatsis, and Mike Pesca discuss participation trophies, a supposed scourge that even NPR-listening softies point to as a sure sign of American decline. Josh, Stefan, and Mike were reacting to recent anti–participation trophy comments made by Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison.To access each week’s Hang Up and Listen bonus segment, visit slate.com/hangupplus and try Slate Plus free for two weeks.


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Transcript

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0:00.0

This podcast Extra is part of your Slate Plus membership.

0:04.0

Now it is time for our exclusive bonus segment for Slate Plus members.

0:07.9

Over the weekend, Muscley Pittsburgh Steeler James Harrison posted on Instagram that his two sons, quote, received true trophies for nothing, a participation trophies, exclamation point.

0:19.2

He continued, well, I am very proud of my boys for everything they do.

0:22.6

This is the exact same syntax as nobody deserves to get their jaw broken, but, well, I am very proud of my boys for everything they do.

0:31.6

And it will encourage them until the day I die.

0:33.7

These trophies will be given back until they earn a real trophy, all caps.

0:37.9

And went on like that for a while and ended with the hashtag Harrison Family Values.

0:43.7

Jesus Christ.

0:48.4

So, oh, dear.

0:51.0

Nothing really agitates people more than the participation trophy discussion.

0:58.0

NPR listeners, we feel like we understand the psychology of people who write in to NPR

1:04.6

to vent their frustrations about, say, Kim Kardashian being on wait wait, don't tell me.

1:09.6

NPR did this write up last year about the debate over participation trophies.

1:14.8

And the people who wrote in, NPR readers basically sounded like James Harrison.

1:21.3

Just like this, we are all troglodytes when it comes to this subject, that the participation trophy is ruining

1:28.7

America.

1:31.0

Wussification, pusification, all of the usifications.

1:34.2

All the ossifications.

1:35.8

So, Stefan, I imagine that it's one of America's leading wusses, you will tell us that

1:42.8

participation trophies are not something that we should be all fired up about.

1:46.3

I will because children who are five and six and seven are not motivated by receiving a participation trophy at the end of recreation soccer season or lacrosse season or basketball season.

...

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