Ted Audio Collective Hello everyone, this is After Hours, I'm Felix.
I'm Mihir. And I'm Lane Higgins, a sports reporter from The Wall Street Journal.
Welcome Lane. We're so happy to have you.
Thank you so much for having me.
Yeah. It's a special week because sports is a topic across many of the Ted podcasts, and we're super excited that you join us.
It's going to be great.
Happy to be here. Lane, I have to ask, what's the best advantage of being a sports reporter?
We don't get free tickets, and that's the biggest misconception.
I was an athlete in college, and my coach always asked me, so when are you going to get me Giants tickets?
I was like, I'm so sorry, but that's not what I never do.
Obviously in the course of our work, we're on the field, we get to mail around, and that perspective of sports is really cool.
Any gift that we get that's over $25, we have to send back.
So I have given lots of free apparel and books to family members and friends.
So I guess maybe that's a perk, because that makes my Christmas shopping easier.
Yeah, oh yeah. Marginally.
That's a perk, yeah.
Sounds like a perk to be part of your family.
Yes, definitely. And to wear the same sizes.
And we brought sports topics, of course.
What do you have for us, Lane?
I am very interested in talking about college sports.
It's not a period of transformation, and especially with name, image and likeness, the flows of money are changing directions.
Right. And also, speaking of money flowing in new places, the valuation of women's sports is growing and growing, as is the interest, and I'm very interested in talking about that topic.
Super interesting. That sounds great.
How about you, me here?
What do you have? One related, which is generally trying to think through the valuation of sports teams, which has just exploded, and talk about why that is.
And then the other is this remarkable transformation of sports betting.
In the last five years, sports betting as an industry in the U .S.
has just exploded, and I want to get your take on it.
What about you, Felix?
What did you bring?
I would like to talk about tennis.
Tennis is an outlier among many of the sports in that the distribution of the value that comes in is really skewed.
Is it a problem, or maybe it's even a good thing?
Right. That's a topic that I would love to explore with you.
That sounds great. Let's do it.
Good. So, Lane, college sports and making money as an amateur.
What's going on? It's a brave new world out there.
As of 2021, athletes can sign endorsement deals.
That started off with a slow trickle of seeing offensive linemen strike deals with barbecue restaurants where they would get like $200 worth of meat.
Right. And silly deals like that.
And as the space has matured, we've seen the player signing with Nike or a bigger brand, but the biggest trend to come out of it is the redirection of money from boosters to colleges.
Right. Boosters are just anyone that's giving money to an athletic department.
Mm -hmm. As of July 1st, 2021, the NCAA changed its rules to allow athletes to make money off of their name, image, and likeness.
And we'll just call that NIO.
To add to the sports abbreviations, which are so rare, that we absolutely have to add a few more.
We don't have enough of them.
All right. NIO. Yes, NIO.
That often means that someone who might have a $10 ,000 donation to the school that they might previously have given to the athletic department, which the athletic department can then designate at their will, might be giving it directly and lining the pocket of a quarterback because they want a good
recruit. And the thinking goes, the more money you have coming in, the better recruits you're going to get, the better recruits you get, the better you are at the sport.
Mm -hmm. You look at a school like Alabama and Clemson, the way that their football team is having success on the national stage and that increased donations to the school, it increased out of state applications, it increased enrollment.
Yeah. So, that's one thing I'm curious about.
Are we going to see football teams better?
Are we going to see other sports marginalized?
Yeah, I think this is a completely fascinating lane.
And as you laid out, it's a shift in the balance of power away from universities and toward athletes.
Athletes historically were getting nothing out of this game, which was minting money for the institutions.
I confess, it's hard not to feel good about all that.
But the second dynamic that you're highlighting, I think, is the shift of power towards donors.
Donors now can target things in ways they couldn't target things before.
The swimming team was getting some of the football revenue.
And the left guard was getting some benefits that the quarterback would otherwise get.
And all of that sharing is under pressure.
The rewards go to the most visible, the most celebrated, the superstars.
I don't know, Felix, what do you make of it?
So, I completely agree.
The fairness argument is just super strong.
And, frankly, that implies that some sports completely disappear or get much smaller.
In my view, that's not really terrible.
We just see the market forces operating.
It's just like the rest of the economy.
If there isn't really much demand, if there isn't really much enthusiasm, why keep it up?
That's spot on. But the reason why there's pressure on keeping this fringe sports is the Olympics.
Because those are such a cash cow for NBC.
But also, the U .S. and other countries take some pride in topping the medal table.
And you're not going to do that unless you have some pretty good fencers.
And because the U .S.
is unique in the way its amateur sports system is set up, pretty much every other country in the world has a state funded development program for athletes.
In the U .S. that doesn't exist.
That's college sports.
Honestly, I'd never really thought about that.
But it makes sense, which is the U .S.
is unique in that we basically use college athletics to become a breeding ground for everything.
In one hand, I guess I think that's better if it were outside of the college athletic system.
That we are including fencing or swimming for the purposes of building Olympic strength seems like a contortion.
It's interesting to think about how the Olympics might change.
In a world where college sport doesn't train athletes for the rest of the world.
So I would predict sports at the margin.
Maybe we don't quite see the performance that we would have seen in the olden days.
And does that really matter so much?
What I love about the Olympics is I watch all these sports that I barely know what it's all about.
And frankly, is my enjoyment going to be impacted by stellar performances or performances that are 85 % of what's possible?
I don't really think so.
I want to just return to one thing you asked at the beginning, Lane.
You have athletes who are conceivably going to get distracted by the amount of dollars that they're going to be coming in.
So the interesting outcome might also be that these supposedly winning sports football, basketball at the collegiate level, will they get better or might they actually get worse?
There's an interesting case study that I think is still unfolding and that's Texas A &M.
Jimbo Fisher is one of the highest paid coaches in college football and Texas A &M as an alumni base is also one of the most well endowed in terms of money and also willingness to throw money at football.
Put it that way. And they had a recruiting class that was the top in the nation, which is the first time that the top school in a recruiting class has not been Alabama or Georgia in something like two decades.
And what was interesting is Texas A &M famously this year was quite bad at football.
They did not even make a bowl game.
That's just an abomination by Aggie standards.
And additionally, they also had the largest percentage of their class transfer out of anyone in the country.
And I would have to think that some of that has to do with maybe the reason why you went to a school is because of an NIL deal that was lured your way and you get there and you don't like it.
Or maybe you realize this isn't the right place for me.
And obviously kids pick schools for a zillion different reasons, money being one of them.
But it's hard to turn down a million dollars when you're 17.
And I got to think that that's something that's happening here.
That's true. Yeah. This was a really great topic particularly because Felix is in the middle of negotiating his own NIL deal right now as I understand.
Yes. Maybe that's worth a conversation with the president.
There you go. So Meir, you wanted to talk about the valuation of sports teams.
Obviously, Finance Professor has got to talk about valuation.
So let me just first ask you both, okay, infinite resources.
What team do you buy?
Oh gosh. I think you could look at a team that you know is going to appreciate in value.
I would do a women's sport.
Nice. Either women's soccer because of the global appeal or women's basketball in the U .S.
Yeah. Or if you're trying to buy a team that already has incredible brand reach and recognition around the globe, I might do the Yankees.
Nice. I'd like the Yankees more than the Mets.
I thought I liked you, Lane, as a co -host, but I'm questioning that right now.
But anyway, go ahead, Felix, who would you buy?
Well, of course, since I teach at a business school, my decisions are completely determined by nostalgia.
I would buy the Philadelphia Eagles because I have such fun memories of moving to Philadelphia, seeing American football for the first time life.
And I think somehow it's maybe like your undergrad experience.
You will never forget that first life encounter that you have with an institution or with a sports team.
So go Eagles. Wow. I thought I liked you too, but apparently not.
How about you be here?
I was going to go the Ryan Reynolds route, buy some third class Premier League team like the Rexxum team and build it.
But the reason I ask all this is because the valuation of sports teams has just been amazing.
So up until about 20 years ago, the joke was what's the easiest way to become a millionaire was you start a multimillionaire and then you buy a sports team and you lose your money.
And of course, the last 25 years have been the exact opposite, which is what's the easiest way to become a billionaire, which is you start a multimillionaire and you buy sports teams.
And we have never seen such rapid returns.
Teams that have changed hands include Chelsea and Denver Broncos and the Phoenix Suns.
And they're all changing hands at four or five billion dollars.
That's remarkably high by most objective kinds of financial metrics.
Just to give you one example, Chelsea, when it was owned by Romavitch, a million dollars of losses per week were being funded by the owner.
There are lots of theories about why valuations have exploded.
TV rights have just grown so massively in importance that they are getting remarkable amounts of revenue streams from that.
Alternatively, it's quasi -monopolistic.
There's like huge barriers to coming in.
Or the other view of the world is it's just a lot of crazy billionaires running around being little boys buying their favorite sports teams.
I'm curious, what do you make of those explanations and of these valuations?
My sense is that it's mostly a vanity play.
Everyone has a private jet.
Everyone has yachts that cost hundreds of millions of dollars.
And then how else are you going to stand out?
And what's really attractive about sports teams is the flip of the antitrust angle that you brought up me here.
We know the number of teams is in all likelihood completely fixed or if it should ever expand, it's not going to expand so radically.
If you're in a position to buy one of these teams, you know you have something that not many other people will have.
For me, really, the big question is, are there downsides to that kind of competition among super -rich people?
Is it somehow true that, say, ticket prices go up?
Or is it somehow true that cities are forced into transactions where they build really expensive stadiums?
If there's no downsides, it's competition among the super -wealthy.
And I'm not going to be part of it.
And I don't know that I care all that much.
Right. What do you make of it, Lane?
It does strike me a little bit as your image of two kids arguing on the playground, well, I have a million dollars.
Well, I have a billion dollars.
Well, I have a trillion.
Everyone just assumes that this is an asset that we'll always appreciate.
As we're in this era of cord -cutting, Live Sports is one of the only draws that reliably does get viewers and NFL is king of ratings.
However, is there a tipping point with that?
I don't know if this means that someone like Stan Cranky that owns a zillion franchises is ever going to sell.
But you'd have to think that at some point, there's diminishing returns.
What's your take? I think it's conceivable that these are vanity purchases and yet really smart opportunities as well.
I usually think both of those things are possible.
So the first piece is obviously in the Premier League, we see sovereign nations coming in and with large amounts of capital and they make any billionaire look small and they are willing to pay because they're not getting the boyish victory of like, oh, I own the team I rooted for.
They're getting credibility on world stages and that's worth a lot.
And then I think the deepest point is your point, Felix, which is these folks are economic actors and they will find ways to get returns on their investment.
And that could involve lots of different things.
It's, of course, true that TV rights play a big role in the economic calculation.
But why is it that these TV rights are so much more valuable?
If you look at Pillay's lifetime income and then you look at Ronaldo's lifetime income, the fascinating comparison is on a per television basis they're almost making the same amount of money.
So my sense is the media rights are so much more valuable now because it's a global audience.
Where do people watch Premier League?
Well, we're paying so much attention to what happens in the stadium but really we should look to Malaysia, Indonesia, all of Asia.
The TV rights have become so valuable because we have a really global audience for a subset of sports.
And that I think by and large has played out.
I don't believe the underlying forces will make teams ever more valuable.
Well, I'm going to take the opposite side.
I don't think the globalization thing has played out.
I don't think the Premier League is deeply penetrated in the U .S.
I mean, there's a lot of room to run on that.
But we'll see. And I will alert the NFL that you folks are no longer interested and I'll have to go along.
And we will talk to your banker to see if we can get that $3 .5 billion credit line.
Yeah, there we go. Felix, you had mentioned earlier that you were interested in the economics of tennis and how it's kind of skewed towards the top of the top.
Yes, it's so interesting and surprising to me also because tennis comes across as this really glamorous sport and you associate it with all of these luxury goods and the big deals.
The reality of tennis for most professional tennis players is that it's basically unsustainable.
If you're outside the top 200, there is no way you can even cover the cost of being a professional tennis player.
So many of these tennis players struggle to hire a professional coach and that is remarkably different from other sports.
If you take the NHL, for instance, there's 700 players, there's a minimum salary of $700 ,000 and the reality is that most players make more than a million.
So the split between overall revenues and how much goes to the individual players is just radically different.
When you look at what fraction of that total pool goes to the top players, unless you think you're going to break into the top 50 or the top 40, any sort of business logic would say, you should stay away from tennis.
And I'm curious to think through what's good about the state of affairs in tennis, what's problematic and then in particular, what could we do in order to create a better situation for those professional tennis players?
One thing that tennis does really well and almost better than any other sport is gender equity because of the efforts of Billie Jean King and her peers.
Years ago, we have a point where the women's prize money is almost on the same foot as the men's.
But there's been such dominance at the top by the big three on the men's side and by Serena Williams on the women's side that I think that has contributed to this effect of concentrating the wealth in fewer hands.
Maybe if there was more parity, there would be a little bit more money distributed, but that's probably still only amongst like the top 10, 15 players.
To your point about 50 to 200, that's a whole different issue.
And it's hard to think about how you would go about changing this because there's not a union in which they bargain these guarantees because it is an individual sport.
And it also makes me wonder when you have someone like Jessica Pegula, nothing against her athleticism.
She's obviously a great tennis player, but she also is a scion of very wealthy people, and I wonder how much that's contributed to her ability to rise to that level.
What do you think of me here?
Yeah, that's fascinating, Lane.
I mean, I heart getting back Felix to our conversation about unpaid labor a little bit, about who gets to succeed in some of these markets.
But you know, to me, it feels okay.
I confess, I don't really see a problem in the following sense.
First off, it feels like just inherently the nature of individual sports as opposed to team sports, and it kind of harkens back to our NIL conversation, which is part of what happens is you share the rents in these team sports.
So like Tom Brady is great, and the left tackle gets paid a little bit more because Tom Brady is part of the team, and that feels like something that happens in team sports.
I can't imagine the dynamic that would allow that to persist into individual sports.
So tennis to me feels like golf, which I think I would imagine would have a very similar distribution of outcomes.
You know, again, being the 75th player on the golf circuit, I think it's hard.
So I don't see it as a problem.
And if anything, I think of tennis as a great success story over the last 30 years for reasons you mentioned, Lane, about gender equity, but maybe because of the power of the talent, because of who Serena is and Roger Federer and all these really remarkable people.
I think of tennis as a success.
Is it a hard situation for the folks who are 75th on the circuit?
Yeah, maybe. But I don't know if that's a problem.
I don't know. What do you think, Felix?
I do think there's an interesting organizational angle to this story.
So if you look at the ATP, the main representative body for players, one of the really big issues is that it's split between the tournaments and the players who are both represented by the same organization.
And that, of course, is a conflict of interest right there because the tournaments obviously have every interest to keep the player share small and have most of the benefits go to the very top players because that's what creates the excitement, the audience, the high ticket prices.
That strikes me as not a natural outcome and actually not having really to do with the fact that tennis is an individual sport.
It does strike me that there is a lot of untangling of conflicts of interest that there could be done in tennis.
And whether that's through some sort of organization of players or just some intermediate body that's deciding, not the ITA, but something that's deciding, okay, U .S.
Open, this is the cut for operations, this is the cut for players and not the operating body, that does seem like that should be healthy.
I don't know how you go about convincing the U .S.
Open to relinquish that because who wants to give up power and money when they have it?
One element that strikes me worth thinking about is what this means for young people who think about a potential career in sports.
About 2 % of college athletes make it into the pro leagues.
The probabilities are really, really low.
You shouldn't really think by playing college football you have a reasonable chance.
And what's troubling about this is that the expectations when you look at surveys of young people are completely misguided.
It's worst in basketball and in ice hockey where 75 % of college players say it's somewhat likely that they will have a pro career.
And of course spreading money around and making it easier to sustain some sort of a professional life would only further misguide the kids to think that this is an actual career and that this would actually be a way to make a living.
It's not. Yeah, that's fascinating.
I got to say the final piece of this story that I love is that Bill Ackman hedge fund icon has decided to take on the cause of organizing the players and has started, I think it's going to be a for profit winners alliance or something like that.
And just the irony of a hedge fund Titan going to the streets and saying workers of the world unite is I think pretty fantastic.
One thing that seems to be really gaining momentum in the broader landscape of sports is women's participation.
When you look at how much the FIFA World Cup is growing for women viewership is growing attendance at these events is growing.
They're setting records at the Barcelona women's soccer games.
But it still feels like women are far, far away from where men's sports are.
But I'm curious, you know, what are some of the factors that you think are contributing to people saying, wow, women's sports may be a good investment.
Sometimes it just takes investment to get to the next level.
So what if we share differently?
What if we actually invested ahead of the revenue streams that we have today?
We would improve the athletic capabilities.
We would improve the stadiums.
We would prove the visibility.
We would do better marketing and so on and so on.
And so there's something really misguided about looking revenue streams today and then say we shouldn't really pay women teams more because the revenues are a fraction of what the men's teams bring.
And it's not how any business person would really think about a business.
And I don't think we should think about sports that way.
You could argue that you're going to get better talent if you make the salary a living wage because then that feeds on itself.
And I think a lot of these leagues for women right now are at this tipping point where it's not quite enough to live on.
So you have these people working multiple jobs and then that makes the quality suffer.
And you're sort of stuck in this cycle of never breaking over the edge of, wow, this could be something.
I think you guys nailed it.
I think that's exactly right about investment ahead of what we might fully understand to be the full potential.
You know, having said that, I can't help but just say it's been like 20 years of people saying like women's soccer in the U .S., for example, would break out.
And I don't know. There's capital that needs to be redirected in this direction.
But I think if you're a believer, then you got to get out there, too.
You got to get out there and support these teams and provide exposure for these people and do all these things.
And so it doesn't just feel like a failure of capital.
It feels like a failure of all of us in some sense.
I think media is very complicit in it as well.
If you look at the Olympics, where men's and women's sports are hopping on the same platform and say a company has 10 sports reporters and they know that the Olympics are big, they're going to send all 10 there.
If it's hockey, they would send eight to the Stanley Cup finals and two to whatever women's league is doing.
Because you have all those resources there and the women are doing great things alongside the men, women's coverage tends to be 50 -50 at that event.
And that's like the only time that that ever happens.
I think the statistic is that women's sports takes up about 4 percent of total TV coverage and sports coverage more broadly.
Oh, my God. If you actually devoted the resources and made the storyline something that people cared about, then it's possible that you'd be interested in watching a game.
Because how often have you heard a storyline about some great Olympian from previews on NBC and then thought, wow, I should tune in and watch Simone Biles.
Yeah, I think that's exactly right.
Meir, I know you're a betting man.
What's new and exciting in the world of sports betting?
Well, the Super Bowl is obviously upon us.
And in fact, it's interesting because the odds have been going back and forwards between Kansas City and Philadelphia, and it's looking like a very close matchup.
But this is all happening in the backdrop of the remarkable growth in legalized online gambling, which began really in 2018 with a reversal of laws that had barred online gambling.
It's now widely available in 20 to 30 states, including Massachusetts, as of last week, where you can now place bets and sports leagues that have embraced it completely.
And celebrities have embraced it completely, and the media has embraced it completely, providing odds and providing gambling guides to fans.
So we have just seen this remarkable explosion.
And three companies in particular are interesting.
There's FanDuel, there's BetMGM, and DraftKings.
So you have now ways to trade in the stocks of the companies that are doing all this gambling.
I'm curious what you make of all this.
There's a pure tentacle side to me, which gets uncovered at times like this, where I say, oh, my God, this is the decline of civilization.
And then there's a part of me that says it's entertainment, sports is entertainment.
So do either of those sides speak to you, Lane?
The thing that speaks to me most is concern about colleges, because for a long, long time, almost as long as the NCAA has existed, that has been like the most verboten thing is you may not gamble, you may not point shave anything like that.
And I think there's now three or four schools, it's Michigan State, LSU, Colorado, that have in -house sports books.
And they have sponsorships where they're very closely tied with legal gambling in their states.
Young people are at a very pliable age to gambling, which I think is a bad idea, generally, especially when you're 18, 22, you might not have a full -time job, you probably have student loans, you maybe shouldn't be playing with going into any more debt.
That aspect of it seems very problematic to me.
So much of the way it's done these days on an app and through PayPal and through Venmo or things like that, it's so divorced from handing money to a bookie in a dark alley.
Which you prefer, right?
Yeah, the concept of money just seems fake.
It's like, oh, here's $10, I lost it.
Oh, well. It seems like it's really easy to get into a lot of trouble.
And trouble that seems a little more harmful than making a bet with your friends and whoever loses has to eat 10 hot dogs, you know.
Yeah, what do you think, Felix?
So one of the really important upsides is that as a result of the technology that we now have, and as a result of mobile gambling in particular, you can create moments of excitement that exist at every moment in the game.
The next penalty, the next person who scores a goal.
It's not just like who's going to win in the end.
It creates tension and excitement that I actually find absolutely wonderful and fabulous.
And since it has this strong emotional appeal, how do we protect people from making unwise decisions that have long lasting consequences?
It's good to start with the data.
We know, because sports gambling has been legal in many other countries for a long time, the range of people with gambling habits that are hard to break is, in Scandinavia, it's typically around 1 % of the people who bet.
I think Estonia is the market where it's most problematic, about 6 % of people who have really serious gambling issues.
So that's like the order of magnitude.
So it's not as though half the population will be addicted and it will run into trouble.
And to me, the most important missed opportunity is there's a few things that many of these countries have done that are actually simple and really effective at dealing with the dangers of betting.
So for instance, one scheme is limit loss.
Every month you decide the maximum amount of money that I want to lose on betting.
That is helpful frame for two reasons.
First, it makes clear you're not going to make money.
You're going to lose money if you keep gambling.
And all you have to decide is, is it $200 or is it $500?
And then researchers have done interesting interventions.
So for instance, they sent a little text message to people, oh, now you're within 20 % of the limit that you set.
And you see dramatic changes in behavior.
We know it's a great source of joy and enthusiasm for the vast majority of people.
And we know it's going to be a problem for some fraction.
And instead of looking around and importing the best ways to manage the downside, we seem to let it grow without much thought.
So I think you have unleashed my inner puritanical scold completely.
First, I think the way American capitalism is going to drive this into the population is going to be amazing.
And if you think there'll be legislative efforts to stop it or put on breaks, I think that's unlikely.
And then the second thing is on your kind of additional moments of joy, like who's going to score the next goal?
And I need to bet on that to enjoy that.
Do we need that? Do we need an additional moment of joy?
Yeah, we always do.
No. No, we don't. And just to Helene's comment earlier, I just want to say, do you know the cheating opportunities that creates?
Look at cricket. Look at the NBA referee stuff from like 20 years ago.
There will be scandals.
If it's like an in -game bet on who scores the first basket after half, that, oh, you were open but you passed it, how can they prove that?
It's going to be impossible to enforce.
The other piece of this, which is fascinating to me, is if you don't want to bet on sports, you can bet on these companies.
So DraftKings and BetMGM and FanDuel, the interesting piece of this is in this growth phase, they are spending a lot of money to acquire customers.
You can't watch any professional sports in the U .S.
without seeing a zillion of these ads.
And in fact, some sports have capped the number of ads that you're able to see.
DraftKings has estimated that they spend $300 to $400 on customer acquisition, and they claim lifetime value is $2 ,400.
But I don't understand how this is sticky.
You spend $400 to acquire Lane or Felix, and then what makes you stay on that platform, Felix?
Is this business model make any sense?
Switching costs are very low.
So whether the customer acquisition costs really benefit you is not completely obvious.
But of course, the reverse is also true.
You get customers without having spent a lot of money on them because they got the $400 from some other companies.
So how exactly that shakes out is a little hard to say.
But your earlier point, I think, is actually a really important one.
Remember when online poker was all the rage?
We had these endless conversations about how many people will get addicted and forget about their kids and their family.
And it just went away.
How big is it going to be?
Frankly, it's not completely obvious.
Who's going to get the value?
Is it really the media companies?
Is it the individual players?
Is it the associations?
There's all of these completely open questions about how the value will be divided up.
And I really disagree with you, Mihir.
Every additional source of joy in anyone's life, always very welcome.
I will say, my group of friends in college, we always do Super Bowl prop bets, and this was right in the middle of the Patriots dynasty.
And the one that brought me the most joy of that, granted this was about a $5 stakes, was what color will Bill Belichick's ragdee, cut off hoodie be for the game?
So there is something to that joy.
I agree. Let's have some joy.
Felix, I take it you're going to take the Eagles.
Is that right? Oh, yes, of course.
I'm an autopilot. Lane, where are you coming out on this?
I feel like all of my friends that are Eagles fans will crucify me if I don't say go birds.
So I'm going to go with the Eagles.
I have never had the opportunity of interviewing Patrick Mahomes, but Jalen Hurts is a very nice man and I always enjoy talking to him.
So he has my vote for now based only on that.
Oh, did you see how she dropped that?
Yeah. I was like, yeah, like Jalen and I go way back.
He is a professional.
We're not exactly best buds.
Well, I just got off the phone with Patrick and I think I'm going with the cheese.
So there you go. So we have recommendations, of course.
What do you have for us, Lane?
So I am a big, big reader and I particularly like it when there's some element of personal story and also the city I live in.
I recently read a book called Insomniac City by Bill Hayes.
After the sudden death of his partner in San Francisco, he moves to New York City at 48 and he develops a relationship with Oliver Sacks and falls in love.
And he starts intrepidly taking pictures and he has all these encounters with the types of people you encounter in New York City that are often overlooked.
Homeless people on the subway or the guy at the bodega that's selling cigarettes.
And it's kind of this enchanting picture of New York, not only before the pandemic because this was written in 2016.
It's a story about love.
It's a story about loss.
And it's a story about really just stopping and appreciating where you are.
And something about the scenes that he writes and also the fact that I think his first apartment was across the street from an apartment I used to live in based on triangulation implications.
It was just such a delight and such a fantastic read.
And I feel like it's rare that you read something sad that makes you feel so hopeful.
Wonderful. That's really great.
How about you and me here?
What do you have? Well, I do want to just double down on something I recommended a long time ago, which is Last Chance U.
Both the football versions and the basketball versions are just fantastic.
Now, not every season is good, but certainly the early ones of both of those are just amazing.
But my recommendation this week is something completely different, a program that deserves much more attention than it's getting.
And it's not season three of Happy Valley, surprisingly.
It is a program that was announced by Secretary of State Tony Blinken about two weeks ago and has not gotten nearly the attention it deserves, which is the US is beginning a Welcome Corps for refugees.
So the Welcome Corps, as in like a Peace Corps, is a program that allows private citizens to assist refugees.
It mimics a Canadian program, and it's got incredibly modest goals.
So the goal this year is to get 10 ,000 groups to sponsor 5 -10 ,000 refugees.
So the idea is you come together with one or two other people or more, you raise something like $2 ,300 or $2 ,400, and then you effectively commit to providing some guidance to folks who might need guidance of various kinds.
And I'm thinking if we get a big chunk of after hours listeners to sign up to the Welcome Corps, and you can find out more on the website of the State Department, actually.
Just in the interest of all disclosure, I have yet not done it.
I'm planning to, but I think it's a spectacular program.
That's really wonderful.
Really cool. So Felix, what do you got?
Lane, you will be pleased to know that my day starts by reading the Wall Street Journal.
Fabulous. That's my usual routine, and then I venture out to some other newspapers.
And I have to say, there are days when it's just a little much.
Like, oh my God, what is happening to the planet?
What is happening to humanity?
And I was just so super pleased to find a website, a service really, called Beautiful News Daily.
And it's an initiative by Jason Kotka.
He's a very influential designer.
And it's just an endless stream of positive news illustrated beautifully.
So, for instance, the gender gap in US schools has disappeared.
All of a sudden, acidity levels on the planet are back to normal.
We're reaping so much more energy from solar than we did just a couple of years ago.
And so it's just such a joy and often such a contrast to what I'm usually reading.
Everything's positive.
Everything's wonderful.
And the sight itself, as you might have guessed, looks really spectacular and wonderful.
So we'll post a link on our website where we always have all our recommendations.
And I hope that many of you will get a little bit more joy in your life as a result of looking at beautiful news daily.
I cannot recommend it enough.
I think I need to add that because currently my go -to for breaking out of the doom scroll is just looking at videos of Golden Retrievers doing silly things on Instagram.
That sounds a little more educational.
Silly is important.
I will say that. Maybe a mix of beautiful news and silly might be the right combination.
So this is it for today.
Thank you for listening to this special sports episode of After Hours, a podcast of The Ted Audio Collective.
