Casual Diehard

Addy, Britt, and Jesse are back together after F1's race in Montreal (and a wild NASCAR weekend in Sonoma) to chat about a Ferrari disasterclass, the silliness of Red Bull extending Sergio Perez, the rise of McLaren, the continuing Lance Stroll of it all, Max Verstappen vs. Kyle Larson for the title of best driver in the world, the dwindling options for Carlos Sainz, and the need for Kevin Magnuss...

Britt and Jesse are joined, as the episode title suggests, by Zack from The Gay Racing Podcast , for a chat about all kinds of motorsports happenings, from death threats over an IndyCar crash in Detroit, to the somehow still ongoing Kyle Larson waiver saga in NASCAR, to the percolating F1 silly season after the news of Esteban Ocon and Alpine parting ways. We're also doing a little draft to build...

Ace, James, and Jesse are back and ready for the NBA Finals between the Celtics and Mavericks, a matchup that was not officially official until the end of the episode, but the way that Game 5 went... it was set at halftime. After dominant shows by both conference champions, who's going to take home the Larry O'Brien Trophy? And who is the third-best player in the Finals? We're also talking about t...

Charles Leclerc (finally) won the Monaco Grand Prix, and Addy, Britt, Jesse, and Katie all are here to celebrate after the most nervewracking incredibly boring race in history, a 77-lap parade of very expensive cars through the streets of Monaco. The key difference between Monaco and a parade being that parades don't generally start with multiple car crashes, we also have a lot of drama to talk ab...

Amber Balcaen, driver of the No. 22 Toyota, joins Addy, Britt, and Jesse to talk all kinds of racing, starting with this Friday's General Tire 150 in Charlotte, where Amber enters third in the ARCA Menards Series standings while racing with a broken foot. We're also talking about fight night at North Wilkesboro after the NASCAR All-Star race, the incredible Kyle Larson going for the Indy 500/Coke...

Addy, Britt, and Jesse are here to continue dreaming about Adrian Newey coming to Ferrari, while Imola is coming up with updates on deck for the Scuderia. We're also enjoying the antics of last week's winner Lando Norris, as well as the food reviews that Denver Broncos part owner Sir Lewis Hamilton MBE did for the NFL team's schedule release video, only for his own team to get cooked by the Charge...

Ace, James, and Jesse are back amid the second round of the NBA playoffs, where the Finals matchup they've envisioned for months is falling apart rapidly -- largely because the Nuggets dropped the first two games of their series against the Timberwolves at home, and looked completely overmatched in the process, not to mention physically fading. Meanwhile, the Celtics are still in a safe enough pos...

Britt, Jesse, and Katie are back for a midweek F1 episode, since last episode we had a guest and had a lot of leftover discussion topics from the Miami Grand Prix. In addition to Lando Norris notching his first F1 win, we've got Kevin Magnussen racking up penalties, sorrow for Logan Sargeant, Alpine finally getting points this season and immediately having a driver announce he's leaving, and Yuki...

Addy, Jesse, and Katie welcome Taylor Hagler, the driver of the No. 77 Hyundai in the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge and the No. 19 Lamborghini in ADAC GT Masters, to talk about the differences racing in Europe and America, the similarities between auto racing and show jumping, and the challenge of making your way as a racer without generational wealth. Plus, we hear from NASCAR and ARCA drivers Ry...

Chrystal and Colleen bring you another episode of Dugout of History, with tales of the San Francisco ballpark that was trouble from the very beginning, from a Teamsters strike to heated seats that never were, and through to Dianne Feinstein’s failed dome plan and the World Series earthquake. It’s not just tales of woe and folly, there were plenty of highlights… just, not a whole lot for the Giants...

Ace and Jesse could taste the second round on Tuesday night as the Knicks led late, but it's James who got to see his team advance to the second round on Wednesday when the Celtics took care of business against the Heat with a gentleman's sweep. Is advancing out of the first round with a 34-point blowout enough for a Boston fan to be happy about? Can the Knicks bounce back and continue their playo...

Addy and Jesse went to Dover for Casual Diehard’s first live race coverage, and return to discuss it with Britt and Katie. You’ll hear from drivers Ryan Ellis and Parker Retzlaff from the NASCAR Xfinity Series, as well as ARCA drivers Toni Breidinger, Lavar Scott, Zachary Tinkle, and Connor Zilisch. We’re also looking forward to the F1 race at Miami, and not looking past Denny Hamlin’s third win o...

Chrystal and Colleen bring you the tale of Moe Berg, and plenty of source material to dive into after hearing them tell it... Books: “The Catcher Was a Spy: The Mysterious Life of Moe Berg” - Nicholas Dawidoff “The Bastards Brigade” - Sam Kean Articles: Who Was Moe Berg? A Spy, a Big-League Catcher, and an Enigma (NYT) Moe Berg: Catcher and Spy (ESPN) Moe Berg, Class of 1923: Baseball Player, Worl...

Ace, James, and Jesse all expect that Boston still will advance past Miami, even after the Heat's stunning Game 2 win over the Celtics. But did that game expose the Celtics, and prove that James has been right about them all along? Even if they sweep their way from here to the Finals? Maybe. For the resident Knicks fans, it's just fun to ride the wave of New York's own success, with hating on Bost...

Formula 1 returned to China for the first time in five years, and despite absolutely no drama in Max Verstappen winning, he's running a different race than everyone else, and everyone else has plenty of drama -- to the delight of Addy, Jesse, and Katie in this episode. Charles Leclerc is driving his ass off for P4s, Daniel Ricciardo is driving for his job, and Lando Norris is driving everyone wild...

This could have been all yours, Milwaukee. Or Tampa Bay. Perhaps it still could be yours, Nashville. Or perhaps the White Sox belong in Chicago and will be there forever, no matter how bad their owners are, what kind of weirdos want to buy them and move them, or what damage they do to their own stadium in the name of hating disco music. You think 2024 is bad for the Pale Hose? Let's take a trip ba...

Ana, Janice, and Jesse share their reactions to the WNBA draft, from Caitlin Clark officially becoming the face of the Indiana Fever to the Las Vegas Aces putting together a sparkling draft class without a first-round pick. Did the Liberty outsmart everyone, including their own fans? What are reasonable expectations for Clark, not just adapting to the WNBA level, but playing the most basketball of...

The "win or bin" concept is not our own, but Addy, Jesse, and Katie do find some similarity between their faves here, whether it's at Ferrari, in NASCAR, or on the baseball diamond. On a between-races episode in the F1 season, there's plenty of room to speculate about silly season ahead, and lots of fun scenarios to imagine as we get ready for the first Chinese Grand Prix since 2019 -- a rare race...

Jesse and Youppi go for a walk in Prospect Park with Jennie Egerdie, the author of Frog And Toad Are Doing Their Best and the upcoming Oh, Bother: Winnie the Pooh is Befuddled, Too , to enjoy a beautiful spring day and talk about the Sesame Street atmosphere of Park Slope, trees growing in Brooklyn, monster trucks, and, of course, the biology of Mr. and Mrs. Met as relates to their old SportsCente...

Ace, James, and Jesse are back together to transition from the NBA regular season to the playoffs, tackling all the big questions. Could the bracket have worked out any better in the East for the Celtics? Is Dame Time already up in Milwaukee? Can the Knicks really make a run without Julius Randle? Is Oklahoma City for real as a top seed? Is Denver inevitable as a repeat winner of the West, if not...

Ace, Jesse, and debuting guest Martin Rickman ready for the playoffs by examining potential intriguing matchups and what might come to pass as the regular season winds down toward its conclusion. We now know all 20 teams that will be involved in the play-in and playoffs, but not their seeding order. Is it as simple as being a two-month march to an inevitable Denver-Boston collision in the Finals?...

After a snooze of a racing weekend between F1 at Suzuka and NASCAR at Martinsville, Addy, Britt, and Jesse are tackling big questions, like whether Max Verstappen or Mike Trout is a more interesting person, what's going on with Lance Stroll's hair, and whether Charles Leclerc would get designer glasses made for viewing a solar eclipse. Oh, and does Williams have enough cars to actually make it thr...

It’s never a good thing when Pete Rose is back in the news, and he has been lately because of the alleged theft of $4.5 million from Shohei Ohtani to cover gambling debts. That story has yet to fully unfold. Rose’s has, to the point where the Washington Post ran not one , but two big stories looking back at it… 10 years ago. This year is the 35th anniversary of the death of then-commissioner Bart...

Walking in Riverside Park on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with Sophie Vershbow and her dog, Simon. It's a great park for dogs, a great place for walking, and little did we know, a great place to look across the river to New Jersey right before an earthquake, which struck less than an hour after we finished recording. That would have been some kind of conversation topic. As it is, a great time...

Ana and Jesse are joined by one of women's basketball's best writers, Jackie Powell, to celebrate a momentous NCAA Tournament won by South Carolina, and to look ahead to the 2024 WNBA draft, which of course will be headlined by Caitlin Clark after she led Iowa to the national title game against the Gamecocks. If "reality is coming," as Diana Taurasi said, what does that mean? The challenges that W...