Season 2 | Episode 5: "S[up]porting"
In this episode of Zeugma, Axel Bohmann explores the world of sports and fan cultures. A number of fantasy sports players talk about their respective leagues, their motivations for joining them, and the way being a league member has influenced their perspective as fans. We also take a look at roller derby, which has come a long way from its humble beginnings on Austin's 6th Street to currently being the fastest growing sport in the world. Derby announcers Koolaid and Chip Queso explain how the culture of the sport has taken some decisive turns over its history and why derby is about so much more than just sports.
You can stream the episode below; you can also download it via iTunes and LibSyn.
Image credit: Antoine-Louis Barye - Sketch after an Antique Statue of an Athlete
A podcast coming out of UT hardly needs to point out the importance sports play in our daily lives. Whether as occasional observers or fervent followers, almost all of us engage in sports culture at some level. In this episode of Zeugma, we explore some of the more elaborate ways of engaging with sports and what these mean for the people that practice them.
Axel Bohmann interviews members of different fantasy leagues about their experiences. The simple question is: what motivates anybody to spend the amount of time needed to succesfully manage a fantasy team? It turns out that what intitially comes across as an extremely nerdy enterprise is really something fundamentally social.
Next, Koolaid and Chip Queso, announcers for the Texas Rollergirls, share their experience with this distinctly Austin sport that is taking the world by storm. More than a decade of being members of the league allows them to look back on its history, reflect on the sense of community and agency it provides, and explain how roller derby functions as a cultural alternative to the bulk of mainstream entertainment today.
This episode of Zeugma features the songs "Skate Park" by The Shamblers and "Derby Day" by Invaders from Sears, licensed under Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.