Dan and Michael Talk Sports (with John Florio): Sports, Scandals & the Gods of the Game

This week, Dan and Michael welcome writer and sports scholar John Florio to dig into America’s real religion: sports. We cover the rise of prop bets, whether athletes can ethically nudge a stat or two, why AI-powered officiating is killing the pathos of the bad call, and how youth sports became an arms race disguised as “character building.”Along the way, we detour through Birkin bag lawsuits, Tommy John surgery, the death of knuckleballing, and the eternal question: Can you force your kid to play sports without turning into a meritocratic ghoul?As always: we’re anthropologists, and we know stuff about people. People Stuff.Chapters:0:00 — Intro & Why Americans Worship Sports4:32 — Birkin Bags and the Anthropology of Luxury11:20 — Prop Bets and the Ethics of Self-Rigging21:55 — MLB, Corruption & the Luis Ortiz Case28:40 — AI Officiating & the Death of the Bad Call37:15 — Children’s Sports & Class Panic50:22 — Fixing Shit: Baseball Pitchers Edition58:10 — How to Raise Non-Doughy Kids1:08:45 — People Ball: Our Fake Sponsor1:10:00 — Outro & Credits Send us your dilemmas: www.people-stuff.com Subscribe for more anthropological takes on the weirdness of modern life. That’s it for this week’s People Stuff — the show where two anthropologists try (and sometimes fail) to make sense of people.If you’ve got a question, a dilemma, or just something deeply weird about humanity you’d like us to unpack, send it our way at people-stuff.com CreditsProduced by Gabe BullardMusic by The Endless BummerArt by Siobhan HeneganMarketing by Bryan HautLegal support by The Law Office of Matthew Shayefar, the one true business uncle.You can also sign up for our newsletter, drop us a voice memo, or become a Friend of People Stuff — which is our fancy way of saying you get to support the show and we get to keep talking about dust, dads, and late capitalism.So go to people-stuff.com