What Men Talk About When They Talk About Sports

This was the episode that first attracted us to the Contested series.  It’s the first time John Biewen blew up something we thought we understood.  We’d rightfully written off sports talk radio as basic and lawless, a vestige of car rides with parents in the days before walkmen and and phones.  But when you stare into the void you begin to see the logic of it all.  In the Contested finale, Biewen takes listeners into the phone banks of sports talk radio and decodes the nuance of masculinity performed over the airwaves.  There’s a question producers ask in considering any story: why tell this in audio?  This episode remains a shining example of sonic journalism, taking a dive into something seemingly trivial to reveal much bigger stakes, and a story that can only be told in sound.