Remembering sportswriter Jonathan Tjarks
Sports Spectrum Podcast
Sports Spectrum
4.9 • 685 Ratings
🗓️ 12 September 2022
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jonathan Tjarks passed away from cancer at the age of 34 on September 10, 2022. He leaves behind his wife Melissa and son Jackson. Tjarks was a staff writer with The Ringer, where he covered the NBA and other sports.
Today, we bring back the powerful words of Jonathan Tjarks from his conversation with us on Sports Spectrum in October 2021 to talk about how his faith in Christ helped him during his battle with cancer.
Donations to his family can be made through their GoFundMe account here.
You can read Jonathan's piece "The Long Night of the Soul" here.
You can read Jonathan's piece "Does My Son Know You?" here.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey guys, this is Jason. Welcome to the Sports Spectrum podcast. This is a, this is a different kind of, I guess, podcast that you might listen to because this wasn't in the plans to release this podcast. But unfortunately, I just, I felt it was important to release an older interview that we did. It's from a year ago with a guy |
| 0:21.8 | named Jonathan Charks, a sports writer who worked with the ringer. He mostly covered the NBA and was |
| 0:27.4 | just so well respected in the industry of sports and media. He's just one of the best dudes that |
| 0:34.7 | you'll ever come across. And all you got to do is Google his name or search his name on Twitter and you'll see |
| 0:40.4 | all the people that had nothing but great things to say about Jonathan. |
| 0:44.0 | Unfortunately, he passed away on Saturday night, September 10th, at the age of 34, super young. |
| 0:50.9 | He was diagnosed with this very rare form of cancer, sarcoma back in April of |
| 0:56.5 | 2021 and at 33 years old was forced to face mortality and death and where he was going to spend |
| 1:07.3 | eternity. And you know, Jonathan is is husband to Melissa, dad to Jackson, |
| 1:14.3 | and wrote this amazing piece on the ringer, which Jonathan worked for. Bill Simmons was his |
| 1:21.5 | boss. You might know Bill Simmons, a longtime ESPN guy who started and is the founder of the ringer, |
| 1:27.1 | super successful and Jonathan |
| 1:29.6 | wrote this piece called the long night of the soul and in that piece it really was a |
| 1:35.9 | about his diagnosis the role his faith played and how he was forced to face his own mortality |
| 1:43.9 | and it was in that piece when I read that that I thought if he'd be willing I'd and how he was forced to face his own mortality. |
| 1:49.0 | And it was in that piece when I read that that I thought, if he'd be willing, I would love to have Jonathan come on sports spectrum to dive deeper into that faith aspect. |
| 1:54.7 | A lot of shows don't want to talk about that, and I get it. |
| 1:58.0 | But I wanted to ask Jonathan about his faith in Jesus, his testimony, and then getting |
| 2:02.9 | that diagnosis and how his faith has been tested and how he's still leaning on God and trusting |
| 2:09.6 | in God ultimately through this. Unfortunately, he did pass away a couple days ago, and I wrestled |
| 2:15.4 | with even thinking about bringing this interview back. |
| 2:19.1 | But I listened to this interview two times over the past couple days. And I thought, |
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