The Year Without Caitlin Clark

Hang Up and Listen

Slate Podcasts

News, Sports, Sports News

4.6 • 986 Ratings

🗓️ 22 September 2025

⏱️ 64 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Hosts Alex Kirshner, Ben Lindbergh, and Lindsay Gibbs discuss the WNBA playoffs and the Indiana Fever's surprise success, despite an injured Caitlin Clark. They get into the uptick in long NFL field goals. Then they speak with managing editor of True Blue LA, Eric Stephen, about the career and retirement of Clayton Kershaw. For Afterballs, Ben recaps the final week of the MLB regular season and its nail-biting finishes. On the bonus episode available exclusively for Slate Plus members, the hosts discuss the ongoing gambling scandal in college basketball. WNBA (3:18): Can Indiana continue to rise? NFL field goals (17:32): Why are there so many 60-yarders? Clayton Kershaw (31:26): The Dodgers ace hangs it up. Afterballs (52:16): Will the Mets and Tigers continue to spiral? (Note: time codes are only accurate for Slate Plus members, who listen ad-free.) Get more Hang Up and Listen with Slate Plus! Join for weekly bonus episodes of Hang Up and Listen and ad-free listening on all your favorite Slate podcasts. Subscribe from the Hang Up and Listen show page on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or visit slate.com/hangupplus for access wherever you listen. You can email us at [email protected]. Podcast production and editing by Kevin Bendis, with production assistance from Patrick Fort. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	It is Monday, September 22nd, 2025. Welcome back to hang up and listen, the sports podcast here at Slate. Back with you again, I'm Alex Kirchner. I'm a contributing writer for Slate, and I also co-host the college football podcast Split Zone Duo.
0:26.2	The WMBA playoffs are ongoing and the Indiana Fever are on a nice run, but Caitlin Clark,
0:29.2	out for the year after suffering a litany of injuries, isn't playing.
0:32.7	What do we make of that and of the WMBA's mostly Clarkless year?
0:33.7	We'll talk about it.
0:38.0	NFL kickers have been bawling out for a long time now, but they are reaching new heights of it this season, and there's an interesting potential reason. The footballs. We'll talk about that.
0:43.2	And this is the final week of the regular season career of one of the great pitchers in baseball
0:47.6	history, Clayton Kershaw, will have a longtime Dodgers beatwriter on the program to talk about him.
0:53.4	As usual, with me this week is
0:55.0	Lindsay Gibbs, the women's sports lead at CBS Sports and the publisher of PowerPlays, a newsletter
1:00.7	covering the biggest stories of the moment in women's sports. Lindsay, how are you? I am doing
1:05.3	great. W&BA playoffs are scrambling my brain, but I'm having a blast.
1:12.0	And the Panthers won.
1:13.0	The Panthers won.
1:14.9	A little scrambled brain and a Carolina Panthers win, I could imagine that could all be
1:19.2	pretty disorienting.
1:20.3	Ben, how was your Ben Lindberg of the Ringer and of the Effectively Wild podcast?
1:25.1	Ben, how was your weekend?
1:26.8	Also good. I think what Sam Houston State was to Arch Manning and the New York Giants were to Patrick Mahomes.
1:33.7	That's what I'm manifesting for myself this week. That's what I want.
1:38.0	Has anyone gone to see the new Jordan Peel movie, Him, in theaters yet?
1:42.6	I read the reviews, and thus I stayed away from theaters thus far.
	...

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