The Middle

In this episode, Megan walks through a beginner's guide to the Tour de France: how the race started, how it works, how the winner's jersey came to be yellow, how riders survive three weeks of racing (hint: it used to involve wine), the growth of the Tour de France Femmes, and why the 2026 race could make history. No cycling knowledge required! The Middle finds the sports stories the big ou...

We’re all told at some point to toughen up. But what if the version of toughness we celebrate is making us more fragile? Megan sits down with Dr. Dillon Small, the Director of Sport Performance Psychology at the U.S. Air Force Academy, to talk about athlete mental health and why the conversation around mental performance has moved beyond awareness… but still has a long way to go. They explore the...

Women’s sports are experiencing an unprecedented commercial boom, but is this sudden love affair a genuine cultural breakthrough, or are athletic gatekeepers just finally doing the math? In this episode, Megan looks past the triumphant headlines to expose a colder historical reality: women don’t break through in sports, they get let in. By tracing 100 years of history across five pivotal stories a...

Alexa Brabec is one of Team USA’s top women’s Nordic Combined athletes, and she’s competing at a pivotal moment for the future of her sport. Nordic Combined is the only Olympic sport that excludes women from competing in the Olympic Games. Women have built a World Cup circuit, competed at world championships, and grown the sport across multiple nations. Yet in 2026, the International Olympic Commi...

Professional sports is powered by a shadow world of people with special talents, and you probably don't even know their names. From the upside-down world of an NFL long snapper to a cricket role called the "the human sacrifice," sports has mastered the art of finding one person to do one incredibly specific thing brilliantly. In this episode, we dive into seven wildly unique, unsung...

Trey Rogers didn't know what the World Cup was when he got a call in 1992 asking if he could build a soccer pitch made completely of natural grass, put it over a concrete floor, and keep it alive in a domed NFL stadium over the course of several months. Trey and his Michigan State University research team accepted the challenge. They engineered a natural grass field, grew it in California, shi...

What if the golden age of sports fandom isn't in the past… it's right now? In this episode, we break down how the fan experience has undergone one of the most exciting transformations in sports history. From fantasy sports and RedZone to legal betting now live in 38 states, alternate broadcasts like the Manningcast, and stadium tech that lets you order food to your seat without missing a play, fan...

Picture this: you walk up to your favorite athlete at Yankee Stadium or Lambeau Field and have a real conversation with them. They’re standing next to you, life-size, answering your questions in real time… except, they’re hundreds of miles away. What if you could do that same thing in your living room? Proto Hologram founder David Nussbaum is building exactly that: AI hologram technology already o...

In July 2020, a grieving widower in Indianapolis signed up for a 500-mile walking challenge, not because he had a plan but because he needed to move. He had lost his wife to colorectal cancer 16 months earlier. He had a 5-year-old at home. And somewhere inside the grief and the uncertainty and the obligation of still being alive, he laced up and walked out the door. From that virtual start line to...

This episode breaks down what’s wrong with youth sports in America and why kids are quitting at record rates. Using research from Dr. Amanda Visek’s “Fun Integration Theory,” data from the Aspen Institute, and examples from Norway’s Olympic pipeline, we unpack the “Fun Gap”: the disconnect between what kids say they enjoy (effort, teamwork, playing time) and what parents are forced to spend money...

Most fans think they know baseball by April. According to former Colorado Rockies and Pittsburgh Pirates manager Clint Hurdle, you don’t really know a team until game 40. And even then, you might be wrong. In this episode, Megan sits down with Clint for a conversation that goes far beyond baseball. From how long it really takes to evaluate a team in a new Major League Baseball (MLB) season to the...

A couple weeks into the 2026 MLB season, and already nothing is going the way anyone expected. In this episode, Megan sits down with the hosts of “Glove Actually Podcast” for an unfiltered conversation on early season storylines, surprises, and of course, the vibes. They dig into why Opening Day tells you less than you think, the teams (and players) already defying expectations, who might become t...

In this episode, Megan talks with Jerred Mace, founder and CEO of OneCourt, a device that lets blind and low vision sports fans experience live sports through touch. Using real-time sports data, vibration, and audio, the unique device turns movement on the field into something you can follow with your hands as the game happens. Megan and Jerred break down how fans without sight follow games today,...

Why does it feel harder than ever to just…watch a game? In this solo episode, Megan breaks down the rise of the sports streaming era and why fans have to do more than ever before just to follow their teams across platforms like Netflix, ESPN, Peacock, and more. What starts with a frustrating Opening Day experience on Netflix turns into a deeper look at how we got here: why leagues are spreading ga...

Sports data tells a story, but are most of us reading it wrong? On this episode, we sit down with Cynthia Frelund, NFL Network’s analytics expert, to explore how data and storytelling shape the way fans, media, and teams understand football. From ESPN to a decade inside the NFL, Cynthia has built a career turning complex analytics into stories that both support and challenge the conversations behi...

At 10,152 feet in the Colorado Rockies, the legendary Leadville Race Series looks like a dream for endurance athletes chasing the Leadville Trail 100 Run, the Leadville Trail 100 mountain bike race, the Leadville Trail Marathon, and more. But behind the finish-line photos is a year-round operation powered by hundreds of volunteers, emergency crews, and a small mountain town working together to pul...

What really happens when you sign a professional football contract in the United Kingdom? Former Nottingham Forest goalkeeper Paddy Gamble shares the reality of coming through the UK football academy system, being signed at just 16, and walking away from the sport at 21. We talk about the pressure young athletes face behind the scenes, the identity crisis many footballers experience after leaving...

Why do some athletes and coaches vanish forever after a scandal, while others return to a standing ovation? It’s not luck. It’s formulaic. In our first solo episode, Megan breaks down how cancel culture really works in sports and why some athletes disappear while others get redemption tours. Drawing on 17 years in crisis communications and public relations, Megan shares the four factors that decid...

The Washington Post laid off its sports department. Athletes and coaches break news on Instagram. Fans get headlines from TikTok. Is the golden age of (sports) journalism dead? Longtime public relations executive and former Washington Post reporter Dave Reddy joins me to talk about the future of journalism, the death of print newspapers, why fake news spreads so fast (even in sports), and whether...

Fitness instructor Roz Mays is challenging everything the fitness industry gets wrong. Growing up plus-size in a cardio-obsessed sports world, Roz shares how the industry’s fixation on thinness and extreme strength leaves everyday people feeling disconnected from fitness and athletics. In this episode, she talks about discovering her own strength through pole dancing, redefining what it means to b...

In our season opener, Matt Taylor takes us behind the scenes on the intense preparation that goes into the Super Bowl, the emotional weight of the event, and the logistics involved in ensuring everything runs smoothly on game day. He shares what cameras don't show, what's really happening on the sidelines, and how teams prevent the nerves from getting to them. He also talks about his journ...

We've got a new look, a new focus and a lot of new stories to tell. Join us this season as we talk to athletes, coaches and industry insiders about career-changing games, near misses, injuries, transitions and the resilience required when the spotlight fades.

In our season finale, we share the evolution of the podcast and how it's grown over the last several months. Megan shares some behind the scenes on how the podcast was made, where she is in her own journey, and gives a sneak peek at what's ahead for Season Two (debuting January 2026). To everyone who has come on this journey with us, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you. We may be in t...

In November 2024 alpine skier Shannon Abeda was three days away from the start of his season in hopes of qualifying for his third Olympic games. He asked his company for any support they could give. Instead, he was laid off. In this episode, Shannon opens up about his skiing journey, from discovering it as a three year-old in Alberta, Canada, to missing out on the 2014 Winter Olympic Games by 0.01...

In this episode, sustainability expert and environmental scientist Dr. Mara Ranville shares how her career moved from a small town in Michigan to geology labs, research cruises across the Pacific, university classrooms, and the chaotic streets of New York City. On the outside, she was creating a career path uniquely her own, but behind some of her pivots was another journey she was quietly fightin...