This week marks the end of the first season of The 252, the podcast on the history and politics of sports that I’ve been hosting with my Bethel colleagues Chris Moore and Sam Mulberry. In our opening segment, we talked about the etymology of badminton, the history of the NFL draft, and the results of our listener poll on what is — and isn’t — a sport. (Sorry, Jeopardy!)
But then our middle segment gave Chris and me a chance to bring things full circle: back to the new course on this topic (HIS/POS252L, hence the podcast title) that the two of us will teach next spring. We thought back through our first season of podcasting:
- What have we learned that would carry over into the course?
- What surprised us? (For me, how often we talked about labor, as we did again with the draft history bit.)
- What have we missed, or not spent enough time discussing? (For example, we had our first meaty discussion of youth sports, using a recent survey from the Aspen Institute as a springboard.)
And, implicitly, should we do this podcast again?
It’s ultimately up to Sam, since he runs the network that hosts us. But Chris and I are both eager to start up again this fall — and maybe even to do a special summer episode or two. So stay tuned for the return of The 252! We’re hoping to talk more about race and gender, the international dimensions of sports, and performance enhancement
Meanwhile, you can find this week’s episode and the twelve before it on Podbean: free to download or stream. And you can follow us and our network friends on the Live from AC2nd page on Facebook. Thanks for listening!
The Pietist Schoolman 