The Distraction: A Defector Podcast

This podcast survived multiple iterations from 2010, even multiple names. The Distraction has been one of my favorite shows for years. I love Drew Magary, but I haven’t f’d with the NFL for like a decade, so I’m hard out on the next version. I’ll follow Roth to his next podcast project though! And I still read Defector — and you should, too.

I caught onto this one kind of recently, and I wanted to say thanks for reintroducing me to sports. I’m a trans woman that transitioned over a decade ago, and somewhere near the beginning I kind of separated myself from sports. This podcast reintroduced me to sports in a passive-learning-rehabilitation sort of way. Wanted to say thanks since, you know… you know.

Drew and Roth are endearing because they clearly love and cannot divorce themselves from sports fandom like so many of their audience members. We all have the ability to understand sports as part of our shared reality, but sometimes you just have to say FTP, Skol Vikes etc. The show sings when this discordance is acknowledged, felt, and eventually ignored because this sports stuff is actually a really good way to sink your attention into something that had a modicum of logic to it (unless you are a Jets fan). Smug, smarmy, non-ball knowers who only want to talk about sports as a lens through which to understand culture are irritating, condescending, and boring. I might agree with everything they say but I’m getting that from every other show I listen to! Naturally I am being too harsh. Oh well!

Thanks for putting such a good pod together, it’s my b-day and though all the fun i’m still looking forward to listening to the pod tonight, thank you guys so much