Tens of millions of Americans, most of them men, tune in to sports talk radio. Is sports talk a haven for old-school guy talk, including misogyny and gay-bashing? For the final episode in our series on sports and society, “Contested,” host John Biewen listened in.
YouTube doesn’t give an exact recipe for virality. But in the race to one billion hours, a formula emerged: Outrage equals attention. ❧
I can still remember the different “loudness” level of talk between Bill O’Reilly’s primetime show on Fox News and the louder level on his radio show.
Peter Rukavina (ruk.ca)I read somewhere—perhaps it was “5 Tips to Instantly Up Your Instagram Game” or some such—that, when taking photos of people, you should ask them to open their mouths as wide as possible.
Interestingly, it works. It seems weird, both to them and to you, but the photos that result often have much more life in them than they would otherwise.
I received similar instructions many years ago from a CBC Radio producer: I was going into the studio to record a commentary, and she advised me to make my points so emphatically as to appear (to myself) to be raving. It was very hard to do this, and it made me very uncomfortable, but I had to agree that the result was better.
Host John Biewen dips into the world of sports talk radio, where guys talk not just about sports but also about how to be a man in twenty-first-century America. What John finds is more complicated than he expected, with revelations both encouraging and sobering. With co-host Celeste Headlee and experts David Nylund and Terry Real.
The lie of patriarchy is dominion. The lie of patriarchy is hierarchy—that you’re above the world you’re above nature and you’re imposing your will like a doctor on a patient, or a mechanic on a car—you are above the system. This is called hubris.
—Terry Real, psychologist
Running away from your vulnerability is like running away from your rectum.
—Terry Real, psychologist [33:20]