The Other 51

Latest Episodes:

Episode 198: The Fast Track with Jane McManus Jun 06, 2025

Show notes

“It was the stories that I woke up the next day thinking about … I want complicated stories about complicated people making difficult choices and facing real things.”

Journalist, professor, and author Jane McManus joins us this week to talk about her career, The Year’s Best Sports Writing, her new book and more.

Jane was the editor of the 2024 edition of The Year’s Best Sports Writing. She and Brian do a deep dive into what that job actually looked like. Jane describes how she got the gig, how Richard Deitsch helped her, how she leaned on a group of fellow journalists as an advisory board, and what she was looking for in picking the best sports stories. We talk about the importance of scene setting at the start of a feature story, of showing the work that the reporter has done, and the deep reporting you see in a great piece of investigative journalism.

They also talk about her introductory essay, a form Brian has studied at great length.

Jane also talks about her book, The Fast Track, and why this was the book she wrote at this stage in her career. She describes the biggest differences between writing articles and a book, and why she doesn't want her students to outsource their thinking by letting AI do any writing.

“There's no Tik Tok, there’s no short form video on YouTube, hot-take sports talk show that is going to force you to think about something the way that at a well written long form piece of journalism is.”

Links

The Year’s Best Sports Writing 2024

The Fast Track by Jane McManus

The Three-Body Problem (The best thing Jane’s read lately.)

Middlemarch (The best thing Jane’s read lately

A Gentleman in Moscow (The best thing Brian’s read lately.)

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Episode 197: Lloyd McNeil's Last Ride with Will Leitch May 22, 2025

Show notes

“The challenge is to make you love Lloyd and make you realize that Lloyd is extraordinary and that you realize that before Lloyd does.”

Will Leitch returns to the show to talk all about his new book, “Lloyd McNeil’s Last Ride.” which is out now and you should totally buy!

Will describes how a pre-pandemic visit to a family friend helped plant the seed for the book’s premise, and how that premise allows him to address the existential angst that parents are feeling about the world they’re leaving their kids. Will also reveals the biggest challenge in writing Lloyd as a character, why he wrote the book in the present tense, and how all of his novels have clocks in one way or another.

Will and Brian talk about the action sequences in the book, how they were influenced by Will’s love of movies and how listening to The Donnas was Will’s secret for those scenes. They also talk about how Will’s excellent weekly newsletter influenced parts of this book.

“I want you to feel the entire time like this is happening right now.”

Links

Lloyd McNeil’s Last Ride on Bookshop.org (to support independent bookstores.)

Lloyd McNeil’s Last Ride on Amazon

All of Will’s books

Run for the Hills by Kevin Wilson (The best thing Will’s read lately.)

Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham (The best thing Brian’s read lately.)

Support

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Episode 196: Love, Abby with Sam Borden Apr 11, 2025

Show notes

“I never really thought about it as something I would ever do a story on. I didn’t even think of it in terms of a story … these were just our friends.”

Sam Borden from ESPN joins us for a deep dive into his moving feature story on the friendship between Abby Zittoun and the UConn women’s basketball team.

Sam discusses the intensely personal nature of this story for him, how he navigated being both a friend and reporter in telling Abby’s story, and why being transparent and intimate as a journalist is so vital to doing stories like this. He also talks about how he dealt with the personal pressure he felt writing this story.

Sam and Brian also discuss the writing and reporting of the story. The details make this story so memorable, but how does Sam know he has the right details, and how do you keep from overwhelming the reader with them? Sam also talks about how he avoided making an inherently sad story like this feel like a long march for the reader. This is not a story about grief, it’s the story about an amazing young girl, her family, and the connection she had with this team.

“I want Abby to be alive for as much of this story as possible.”

Links:

Love, Abby: Inside UConn basketball's eternal bond with a magical fan

Love, Abby (TV version of story)

Trump is selling Jews a dangerous lie by Michael S. Roth (The best thing Sam’s read lately)

Support:

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Episode 195: Throwbacks with Michael Weinreb Feb 28, 2025

Show notes

Author, journalist and screenwriter Michael Weinreb joins Brian to talk about newsletters, carving out a writing career in the digital world, the intersection of sports, politics and culture and the value of works in progress.

We start out by talking about Michael’s time writing for Grantland and how that site was almost our generation’s version of The National Sports Daily. Michael talks about what it was like to write for Grantland and be a part of a site that let writers indulge in the topics they wanted to write about,

This evolves into a broader and frank discussion about a writer’s life and how Michael carves out writing and a career space in this current media environment.

The main topic is Throwbacks, Michael’s excellent newsletter on Substack. He describes how it began during the COVID pandemic, how and why he started writing though a historical lens, and how forcing himself to write every week has helped him in his other writing projects.

Links

Throwbacks: A Newsletter About Sports History and Culture

Move Fast and Break Things (2012)

Michae’s books on Amazon

Grantland

The Greatest Paper that Ever Died

The Bronx is Burning

One Party Town podcast

The Genius: How Bill Walsh Reinvented Football and Created an NFL Dynasty by David Harris (the best thing Michael’s read lately)

Philip Bump columns at The Washington Post (the best thing Michael’s read lately)

Support

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Episode 194: Magic in the Air with Mike Sielski Feb 06, 2025

Show notes

“I didn’t want this to be 300 pages of highlights. I wanted this book to surprise people in its depth and in the way it’s written and in the topics we cover.”

Mike Sielski returns to the show for a deep dive into the writing and reporting of his new book, “Magic in the Air.”

We start with the book’s subtitle: “The Myth, the Mystery and the Soul of the Slam Dunk.” Mike, a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer and friend of the show, talks about he was inspired by Tyler Kepner’s book K and how he wanted to do a book where each chapter was its own entity

Mike describes how his reporting had him dodging rattlesnakes in Amarillo Texas teetering on the rabbit hole of finding the first person to dunk. He talks about why he wrote some of the book in first person, what it’s like to stretch that writing muscle, and how he used it to dunk on the NCAA.

We also talk about his favorite dunk of all time and the surprising role N.C. State plays in the history of the dunk. And no, Olean is not the birthplace of the dunk.

“What I wanted to do is take the dunk and use it as a vehicle to understand how basketball has changed and how American culture and society have changed over time.”

Links

Pre-order Magic in the Air:

Amazon

Bookshop.org

Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan (The best thing Mike’s read lately)

Support

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Episode 193: Who Are These Women? with Jennifer Ashley Tepper Oct 25, 2024

Show notes

“What’s the book that I would write if I had time?”

Jennifer Ashley Tepper joins us for a deep dive into her upcoming book, “Women Writing Musicals: The Legacy That the History Books Left Out.”

Jennifer, a Broadway historian, producer and 2022 Tony Honoree (!!!), talks about how she came to the idea of writing about 300-plus women writers, dating back to the 1700s, who have written musical theater. She talks about how she started to write the book during deep isolation in Covid - but really started writing it even earlier than that.

How do you do historical research during a worldwide shutdown, and how do you research people who have been left out of the history books? Jennifer talks about how online library resources and newspaper archives were so useful, and how restrictions can be helpful to a creative person.

Jennifer and Brian talk about what stories get left out of the history books, how work that addresses the experiences or perspectives of women (or other marginalized communities) during a past era might be seen as dated, and how cast recordings are a kind of unintentional gatekeeping. If something’s out of print, it’s like it didn’t exist.

Rabbit holes include Toni Tennille’s long-forgotten environmental musical, which was produced by Roger Ailes, and watching TikToks on Instagram like a grown up.

“To get to finally share these stories with people is thrilling to me, because so many of them are untold Broadway stories that deserve to be told.”

Links

Pre-order Women Writing Musicals: The Legacy That the History Books Left Out:

All of Jennifer Ashley Tepper’s books

Yellow Face (the best show Jennifer’s seen lately).

Men We Reaped by Jesmyn Ward (the best thing Jen’s read lately).

The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century from The New York Times.

(All links are Amazon affiliate links)

Support

The Other 51 is and will always be free, but if you like my work (and the stuff I do at Sports Media Guy) and want to kick me a few dollars, you can do so here. I really appreciate your support.

Follow us on Instagram and Threads. We’re on the decaying corpse of Twitter, but only because for some reason sports media won’t abandon the site.

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Episode 192: Let's Find Out Together with Stuart Turton Oct 10, 2024

Show notes

“I’ve got this crazy idea, it would be Agatha Christie meets Lost. They were like ‘how are you gonna pull that off?’ and I was like ‘I have absolutely no idea.”

Stuart Turton joins Brian to talk about the writing of his New York Times bestseller, “The Last Murder at the End of the World.”

Stuart talks about how this was the hardest book he’s ever written, why it was so hard, and how he had to throw a full 130,000-word draft away and start over. He talks about how he knew things weren’t working and the changes he made that changed everything. Turns out, he killed the wrong person.

Stuart and Brian talk about the unintentional symbolism of the fog, the beauty of the mourning lanterns, why Stuart hates red herrings, and how the constraints of writing a mystery novel are like a game of chess to him.

“That’s the thing that you started with, that was your premise, that was your holy grail, and that's the reason you started writing this book. But it's not working. So have courage and toss it.”

Links

The Last Murder at the End of the World

All of Stuart Turton’s books

A Visit From the Goon Squad by Jennifer Eagen (the best thing Stuart’s read lately.)

Starve Acre by Andrew Michael Hurley (the other best thing Stuart’s read lately.)

Everyone on this Train is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson (the best thing Brian’s read lately.)

(all links are Amazon affiliate links)

Support

The Other 51 is and will always be free, but if you like my work (and the stuff I do at Sports Media Guy) and want to kick me a few dollars, you can do so here. I really appreciate your support.

Follow us on Instagram and Threads. We’re on the decaying corpse of Twitter, but only because for some reason sports media won’t abandon the site.

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Episode 191: We Wrote a Book with Matt Zimmerman and Lauren Burch Sep 27, 2024

Show notes

“After 190 episodes talking about other’s people writing, I finally get to talk about something I wrote!”

Brian is joined by Matthew Zimmeran and Lauren Burch, and the three of them talk about their new textbook, Introduction to Sports Journalism.

We talk about how Matt started the project and how/why he asked us to be a part of it. We talk about our different writing styles and methods, how Brian’s writing habits give Lauren anxiety, and how our three voices turned into one cohesive book. We also talk about the challenges of balancing theory with the need for practicality, and how we to tried to balance writing something as permanent as a book about such a fast-changing industry.

Anyway, I’m super proud of the book and so proud that I got to do it with friends of mine.

Links

Introduction to Sports Journalism (our book!)

Buy it at Human Kinetics

Buy it on Amazon

Want: Sexual Fantasies by Gillian Anderson (the best thing Lauren’s read lately.

The Storyteller by Dave Grohl (the other best thing Lauren’s read lately)
Tennessee coach Josh Heupel comes home to Oklahoma by Jake Trotter and Chris Low (the best thing Matt’s read recently.)

Moneyball by Michael Lewis (the other best thing Matt’s read recently.)

Everyone On This Train is a Suspect by Benjamin Stevenson (the best thing Brian’s read lately)

Support

The Other 51 is and will always be free, but if you like my work (and the stuff I do at Sports Media Guy) and want to kick me a few dollars, you can do so here. I really appreciate your support.

Follow us on Instagram and Threads. We’re on the decaying corpse of Twitter, but only because for some reason sports media won’t abandon the site.

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Episode 190: Solving That Puzzle with Joe Posnanski Sep 13, 2024

Show notes

“I feel like my place as a writer is sort of that place between what happened and the mythology of what’s happening.”

Joe Posnanski joins Brian for a deep dive into his new book, Why We Love Football: A History in 100 Moments.
Joe talks about how he started with a list of more than 300 football moments and the process of whittling those down. It’s an honest and super nerdy discussion about how early drafts of the book weren’t working, what Joe did to work through those struggles, and how writing about The Drive unlocked the book for him

Joe also talks about how we was able to write a collection of essays while maintaining a central theme, how the Don Beebe-Leon Lett play is the perfect example of why we love football, and what kind of athlete “Brian Moritz” would be.

“For me as a writer, the moment where the book came alive for me was when I started to think of it as a football game … every play is its own little universe in football.”

Links

Why We Love Football: A History in 100 Moments

Joe Blogs

The Poscast

Destiny of the Republic: A Tale Of Madness, Medicine, and the Murder of a President by Candice Millard (the best thing Joe’s read lately.)

Support

The Other 51 is and will always be free, but if you like my work (and the stuff I do at Sports Media Guy) and want to kick me a few dollars, you can do so here. I really appreciate your support.

Follow us on Instagram and Threads. We’re on the decaying corpse of Twitter, but only because for some reason sports media won’t abandon the site.

Subscribe:

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Episode 189: Take it Deeper with Tyler dunne Aug 22, 2024

Show notes

“I think those fans deserve the truth. They don't need to be pandered to, they don't need to be misled.”

Tyler Dunne, the man behind Go Long and the best NFL feature writer working today, joins Brian to talk about Sean McDermott, Zay Jones and so much more.

Ty talks about the aftermath of his Sean McDermott series, how the coach and the team responded to that explosive series and reached out to him and how he’s now credentialed by the Bills. Tyler talks about the conversation he had with McDermott at the NFL Combine and what it felt like to walk into that meeting.

We then do a deep dive into his feature on Zay Jones that won him a first place award in the APSE National Writing Contest. Tyler talks about his tools for gently steering a conversation in an interview, how to handle the elephant in the room, and the value of doing extra reporting beyond the main interview. He also discusses how he protects his own mental health when writing and reporting heavy features, and how these stories make him want to be a better person.

“It's a people business, it's a human business, and you just want to have conversations and you just want to treat people like human beings.”

Links

Go Long

The McDermott Problem

I’m Still Alive: The Zay Jones story

Buffalo Bills Memory Lane with Chuck Pollock

The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek (The best thing Tyler’s read lately.)

County Highway (The other best thing Tyler’s read lately.)

Support

The Other 51 is and will always be free, but if you like my work (and the stuff I do at Sports Media Guy and want to kick me a few dollars, you can do so here. I really appreciate your support.

Follow us on Instagram. We’re on the decaying corpse of Twitter, but only because for some reason sports media won’t abandon the site.

Subscribe:

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Spotify

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