89 episodes

This show is an artist's take on sports — I believe both art and sports have the power to translate and help us reconsider the largest social issues we face. On each episode, we will be discovering and discussing the many connections between the two alongside artists, athletes, journalists, commentators, critics and fans.

Dear Adam Silver Dear Adam Silver

    • Sports
    • 5.0 • 45 Ratings

This show is an artist's take on sports — I believe both art and sports have the power to translate and help us reconsider the largest social issues we face. On each episode, we will be discovering and discussing the many connections between the two alongside artists, athletes, journalists, commentators, critics and fans.

    Episode 88: Talking Trash with Rafi Kohan and Kyle Green

    Episode 88: Talking Trash with Rafi Kohan and Kyle Green

    Dear Adam Silver listeners! It has been awhile. After a cross country move and settling into my new home in northern northern California, we are back with our 88th episode.

    Author Rafi Kohan joins the show to discuss his new book Trash Talk: The Only Book About Destroying Your Rivals That Isn't Total Garbage (PublicAffairs 2023). Dr. Kyle Green of SUNY Brockport's sociology department is back to co-host and we laugh a lot during this episode, all while getting into some heavy ideas and concerns. Rafi's book is an entertaining and informative read and it was fun to get into it and talk a wee bit of trash too! You can purchase the book here.

    Follow us on Twitter: Rafi, Kyle and Abigail

    • 1 hr 13 min
    Episode 87: Andrew Maraniss and Inaugural Ballers

    Episode 87: Andrew Maraniss and Inaugural Ballers

    New York Times Bestselling author Andrew Maraniss is back on the show to discuss Inaugural Ballers, his 2022 book that tells the story of the first US women's Olympic basketball team that played in the 1976 games. This incredible team was recently inducted into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame and it felt like the perfect time to chat with Andrew about this moment in history, that has helped to shape women's basketball today.



    Kyle Green (MMA nerd, Professor of Sociology at SUNY Brockport, and all around wonderful guy) joins as co-host as we dig into this fascinating story that teaches us much about basketball and also the history of the United States.

    • 1 hr 19 min
    Episode 86: A Summer Sports Stories Reunion with Kyle Green and Tunisha Singleton

    Episode 86: A Summer Sports Stories Reunion with Kyle Green and Tunisha Singleton

    The always charming and witty Kyle Green (Ph.D. in Sociology) and Tunisha Singleton (Ph.D. in Media Psychology) join the show to discuss the sports stories from the summer that are on our minds! Topics range from Las Vegas as a professional sports center point, watching big games and matches at Stadium Swim, the continued failures of UFC as an institution, and the misguided UNITUS apparel launch. Throughout the episode, we collectively feel all of the anger, frustration and excitement around our fandom and process it together.



    You can follow Tunisha on Twitter @TSingletonSay and Kyle @kylethegreen.



    More new episodes of Dear Adam Silver coming soon so please subscribe and share!

    • 1 hr 46 min
    Episode 85: Maria Molteni is Back and Senda + Sedna are Here

    Episode 85: Maria Molteni is Back and Senda + Sedna are Here

    Dear Adam Silver listeners! It has been a minute! I am glad to be back at the mic and sharing a conversation that touches on themes of family, expectations of gender and health trauma all via the topics of basketball and astrology......very timely for Mother's Day.

    I am excited to share my conversation with interdisciplinary artist, educator, mystic and Team Captain of New Craft Artists in Action (NCAA) Maria Molteni, who is back on the show (first featured on Episode #32: Maria Molteni and Basketball Magic). 

    Maria and I unpack the wonderfully complicated and nuanced Senda/Sedna zine that we worked on together this past November, which includes an essay about Senda Berenson (founder of women’s bball) and an essay about Sedna 90377 (Maria's favorite Trans-Neptunian Object). The printing of this zine coincided with the release of Maria’s Star Ball, which was created based on the design of the Cosmic Court in Fall River, MA that Maria painted alongside local students and NCAA members. On this episode we discuss the zine, the ball and all of the themes and concepts that they offer to us.

    Please be aware that Maria and I are very candid on this episode and discuss on our struggles with our body, some relating to infertility, and familial trauma.

    You can find the Senda/Sedna zine for sale here and the Star Ball on sale here and you can follow Maria on Instagram @strega_maria

    • 1 hr 22 min
    Episode 84: Blake Gillespie on Basketball Amidst War in Ukraine

    Episode 84: Blake Gillespie on Basketball Amidst War in Ukraine

    Journalist, photographer and writer Blake Gillespie is back on the pod to discuss his article for SLAM entitled In War-Torn Ukraine, these Ukrainian Hoopers are Trying to Uplift Others Through the Power of the Game.  Follow some of the basketball players mentioned in this story, including Natalia Yudytska who can be found @tasha_shorty and Dmytro “Smoove” Kryvenko, found @smooveukraine. You can also follow Blake and his every growing collection of hoops photos @sacredhoopsbook. 
    Blake and his work have been featured on three previous episodes of Dear Adam Silver, including episodes 44, 48 and 81. 

    • 1 hr 4 min
    Episode 83: Dr. Johanna Mellis on Understanding History through Sports

    Episode 83: Dr. Johanna Mellis on Understanding History through Sports

    Dr. Johanna Mellis is an Assistant Professor of History at Ursinus College where her research focuses on international sport during the Cold War, namely in the Eastern Bloc and Hungary especially, in order to connect the local voices and experiences of Hungarian athletes to the IOC and broader international sport society. Her manuscript, Changing the Global Game: Hungarian Athletes and International Sport During the Cold War, examines Hungarian sportspeople’s interactions with the International Olympic Committee from 1948-1989. Changing the Global Game shows how Hungarian athletes, Socialist Hungarian state sport officials, and the IOC gradually realized by the 1960s that sporting cooperation with one another - and not East-West political clashes nor resistance - was the way to achieve their respective aims of sport success, career and financial stability, and political and institutional strength.

    Our conversation covers many different topics, but we do repeatedly come back to a consistent theme of unlearning our early understandings of world history through sport to form a better, more accurate, and historically inclusive narrative. 

    You can follow Dr. Mellis's amazing and well curated Twitter feed @JohannaMellis. As I share in the podcast, my eyes have been opened to a multitude of different historical perspectives on sports through Dr. Mellis's Twitter account. 

    Dr. Mellis also cohosts the End of Sport Podcast, a podcast on capitalist sport, labor, and justice for end times. The show features interviews with athletes, critical sports journalists, and fellow academics to explore all the ways that people use sport to harm others - i.e. through racist mascotry, the NCAA and higher ed’s exploitation of Black and Brown college athletic workers, sexual abuse and harassment, transphobia, and more.

    You can read Dr. Mellis's writing alongside her End of Sport cohosts in The Chronicle of Higher Ed, The Guardian, Time, The Baffler, and more. She also has sole-authored pieces with The Washington Post and Arizona State University’s Global Sport Matters.

    As always, thanks for listening! Please share, rate and review Dear Adam Silver wherever you get your podcasts. 

    • 1 hr 1 min

Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5
45 Ratings

45 Ratings

Willdrmo ,

Real Sport Journalism

I love this podcast! Waiting for the insta account to remind me of new episodes! Keep up great work.

Mensetpila ,

A Must Listen for All in the Sports World

As a sports fan/player/coach/administrator, the guests' and host's unique perspectives on sports from an artistic standpoint offers insights that those in the sports world can learn an incredible amount from (perspectives we may not normally be exposed to). It also offers those in the sports world an introduction/first step into the art world, using a familiar connection/subject (I am finding myself viewing art so much differently now after listening). I really hope this "Sport & Art" concept can be more prevalent in educational settings (online, in-person, etc)!

Pip01224 ,

Intelligent conversations about the world

Smart and original, Dear Adam Silver talks about art and sports in such a thoughtful way it is a breath of fresh air. Worth a listen!

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