Description
40 years ago Bill Barich was barely surviving in a rented mobile home near San Francisco: five rejected novels, no money and no job. His wife was sick, his mother and mother-in-law had died of cancer within a matter of five weeks. So what to do in a crisis: head to a small racetrack near the Golden Gate Bridge to spend ten weeks in amongst the characters of the sport of kings and write one of the best sports books ever committed to print. In episode 8, Barich talks to Simon Clancy about how the book got off the ground, how that season changed his life and how he went from his last $500 to writing scripts for Dustin Hoffman.
Shehan Karunatilaka was an advertising copywriter who gave up his job to watch cricket and hang out with drunks so that he could write his first novel. Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew tells the story of an alcoholic journalist's quest to track down the greatest thing he’s ever seen: a Sri...
Published 07/16/20
The 1986 Tour De France is arguably the greatest of its 106 editions. Not just for the racing itself but for the incredible rivalry between La Vie Clare teammates and rivals Bernard Hinault - the defending champion and 5 time winner - and the young American upstart Greg LeMond. At the '85 Tour in...
Published 07/07/20
Christopher McDougall was a freelance writer when he came across the story of a tribe of super-athletes living in Mexico’s Copper Canyons who’d been living unchanged for 400 years. From that came Born to Run, a chaotic adventure that reads more like a Harlan Coben novel than one of the great...
Published 06/30/20