The Sport of Life: Chats w/ Comedians, Filmmakers, Sports Figures, Musicians, & Intellectuals

George Mason University Professor of Economics and New York Times bestselling author Bryan Caplan chats with Trey Elling about DON'T BE A FEMINIST: ESSAYS ON GENUINE JUSTICE. Topics include: Feminism (0:22) Orwellian 'othering' (13:49) Public school classes are too touchy-feely (18:41) Happiness (22:39)

Decision-making expert, bestselling author, and former professional poker player Annie Duke chats with Trey Elling about QUIT: THE POWER OF KNOWING WHEN TO WALK AWAY. Topics include: Why we have have a hard time quitting (2:17) Richard Pryor (5:26) Why NYC cabbies in the 1990s were bad quitters (8:17) The difficulty of quitting in the red (13:03) California's high speed train money pit (16:22) Monkeys and pedestals (21:13) Sears not being able to quit itself (24:48) Daniel Kahneman providing a blurb for QUIT (29:29)

Comedian John Crist chats with Trey Elling about DELETE THAT (AND OTHER FAILED ATTEMPTS TO LOOK GOOD ONLINE). Topics include: Writing a memoir at 38 (:31) John's unique childhood (2:20) Failure (6:58) Early affirmations from a comic who had 'made it' (10:47) Louie Anderson's generous offer (13:51) Getting over a fear of discussing his spirituality on stage (17:00) Mocking both sides of a topic (22:22) A Sophie's choice for John (25:51) Those little motivators early in a standup career (29:52)

Renowned child psychologist and author Susan Linn chats with Trey Elling about WHO'S RAISING THE KIDS: BIG TECH, BIG BUSINESS, AND THE LIVES OF KIDS. Topics include: How a commercialized, digitized society affects kids' brain development (3:45) Nurturing 'awe' in children (6:14) Mr. Rogers encouraging silence (14:12) Mattel trying to hook babies with Aristotle (19:03) Screens substituting for real-life interactions (21:38) Amazon's Alexa for kids (24:16) Minecraft (28:49) Brand tribes (33:31) "Reducing friction" when marketing to children (35:15) Digitizing analog toys like Legos (39:01) Pokémon Go, -Smile, and -Sleep (42:09) Screens and advertising in public schools (50:30) Prodigy (54:23) Is there cause for hope? (58:51)

Bestselling author Meg Gardiner chats with Trey Elling about HEAT 2. Gardiner co-authored the book with Michael Mann, which serves as the sequel to Mann's 1995 crime thriller HEAT, starring Al Pacino, Robert Deniro, and Val Kilmer. Topics include: How she and Mann linked up (0:35) Where the book picks up from the film (6:48) Writing dialogue for characters that already exist on the big screen (13:30) The balance of paying tribute to a classic film, while making the current project its own thing (16:06) Turning HEAT 2 into a film or limited tv series (21:03) Running track at Stanford (23:00) Her previous career as an attorney (23:50) Advice for aspiring writers (25:40) Winning Jeopardy! three times in the late 1980s (27:43)

Randall Balmer, an Episcopal priest and John Phillips Chair in Religion at Dartmouth College, chats with Trey Elling about PASSION PLAYS: HOW RELIGION SHAPED SPORTS IN NORTH AMERICA. Topics include: Baseball as counterculture to the Industrial Revolution (2:32) Football benefitting from the US Civil War (17:08) Hockey as a metaphor for Canada (28:24) Basketball's similarities to American urbanization (35:50) Are sports the new opiate of the masses (43:56)

Louise Willder, a copywriter at Penguin Books whose written around 5,000 blurbs over nearly three decades, chats with Trey Elling about BLURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM: AN A-Z OF LITERARY PERSUASION. Topics include: Defining “blurb” (0:29) The profession of “blurbing” (3:09) Adjectives begetting laziness (7:10) Subtitles (10:24) Why some authors despise blurbs (14:10) Do authors ever write their own blurbs? (17:14) Charles Dickens: trailblazing self-promoter (21:00) What makes a book ‘classic’ (27:35) Louise’s blurbing pet peeves (30:34) The greatness of cuss words (32:43) The greatness of…the ellipsis (36:18) Blurbing a book that sucks (39:03) Rules for blurbing self-help books (41:30) Blurbing the Bible (44:09) Blurbs in the US vs the UK (46:46)

Jim DiEugenio, a foremost expert on the assassination of John F. Kennedy, chats with Trey Elling about JFK REVISITED: THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS. The book provides annotated transcripts of Oliver Stone's recent two- and four-hour documentaries, co-written by Jim, that present the most recent evidence uncovered by the Assassinations Record Review Board (ARRB). Topics include: The ARRB's importance for this project (2:45) JFK's autopsy confusion (12:57) The mystery of a press conference held by the two Dallas doctors who tried to save JFK on 11/22/63 that has been dashed from history (20:07) The three Texas Book Depository secretaries whose testimony was ignored (30:06) A meeting between JFK, Allen Dulles, and Lyman Lemnitzer that showed Kennedy at odds was with the US military industrial complex (37:11) CIA MK-Ultra psychiatrist Jolly West paying a visit to Jack Ruby in prison, after he killed Oswald (1:09:25) Who was most responsible for killing JFK, and LBJ's complicity in the plan (1:20:44)

Journalist and author Henry Sanderson chats with Trey Elling about VOLT RUSH: THE WINNERS AND LOSERS IN THE RACE TO GO GREEN. Topics include: Why electric vehicles didn't catch on initially in the early 1900s (2:01) How Exxon gets partial credit for discovering the lithium battery (4:37) China as the world's 'battery superpower' (7:54) Lithium's path from ground to battery (11:40) Cobalt's path from ground to battery (18:11) Nickel's path from ground to battery (26:04) The shocking amount of copper needed in electric vehicles (30:21) Deep sea mining as the next 'great' frontier for EV materials (35:03) Possible solutions to a finite amount of inhumanely sourced materials (38:44)

Portland-based writer and author Kristin Ohlson chats with Trey Elling about SWEET IN TOOTH AND CLAW: STORIES OF GENEROSITY AND COOPERATION IN THE NATURAL WORLD. Topics include: Harvesting trees while keeping a forest healthy (1:14) Dead salmon's contribution to the forest network (5:17) Bees sometimes cheating mutualism with pollenating flowers (7:03) Relaxed selection versus natural selection (9:10) How viral infections helped with human evolution (13:57) Humans emit a lot of bacteria and...fungi? (16:15) The spread of germs can be beneficial (17:33) The effect of sugary junk food on the gut microbiome (20:13) How an area in Nevada transformed from desert into wetland (21:52) Regenerative agriculture (28:42) Coral snot and island bid poop as other examples of mutualism (35:31) Whether cities' attempts to build nature into concrete jungles has paid off (40:01)