* What's your Hang Up, man?

If the Internet is good for nothing else, it brought podcasts into the world. The ability to hear so many quality programs should make the radio and TV industry just as worried as those in the newspaper industry.

Some are “on-demand” versions of programs broadcast on regular TV and radio. Among my favorites: Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Pardon the Interruption, The Tony Kornheiser Show. Others, like The Transmission, a podcast about Lost, are on-line only.

I scour iTunes regularly to see what else is new and fun and came across Hang Up and Listen, a sports gem from Slate.com feature Josh Levin, Mike Pesca, and Stefan Fatsis. In contrast to most sports talk shows, it’s a thoughtful, amusing, low-key, quiet discussion of the top issues for the week, such as Michael Vick and dogfighting culture, Brett Favre’s return, Tim Tebow’s saintliness, and more. Highly recommended.

Levin (pronounced “Leveen,” go know) was good enough to answer a few questions from the Bookshelf about what makes Hang up a “must-hear.”

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Josh Levin

Bookshelf: Where did the idea for Hang up and Listen come from?

Levin: Slate launched a weekly political podcast called the Gabfest back in 2005. The show had a rotating cast of characters at first, but John Dickerson, David Plotz, and Emily Bazelon eventually settled in as the regular crew. The show developed a huge following—listeners got hooked on the smart-but-snarky discussion and the witty back-and-forth banter between the panelists. On account of the success of the Gabfest, we started thinking about other roundtable podcasts that might fit in well at Slate. The Culture Gabfest launched in 2008 and Hang Up and Listen started up this year.

Bookshelf: How did you become involved and how did you decide on Stefan and Mike as you co-whatever you can yourselves?

Levin:I’ve been working at Slate since 2003 and I’ve been the site’s sports editor since 2004. I never really thought about doing a podcast—I split my time between editing and writing and never had any huge ambition to be an on-air personality. But like any big-time sports fan, I have loads of conversations about sports with my friends. Doing a sports podcast in the style of Slate’s gabfests seemed like a fun thing to do and a good way to get more sports coverage on the site.

Stefan Fatsis

Mike Pesca

Stefan and Mike had both written stories for me in the past, so their names came up very quickly when we were talking about who to bring in for the podcast. They’re both radio vets—Stefan is the Friday sports correspondent for All Things Considered and Mike reports on sports (among many other things) for NPR—and they’re both incredibly smart and strange and funny. Couldn’t ask for better panelists.

Bookshelf: Could you describe how your show differs from the usual sports talk programs?

Levin: A lot of sports radio shows revolve around the same set of predictable topics: the coach made a dumb move, so-and-so should be the MVP, Player X is awesome in the clutch, Player Y is an arrogant jerk. There’s only so much you can say about all that stuff, and the conversation become so rote that you don’t have to listen to predict the flow of the conversation. We’re less concerned about the score of the game than the larger narrative surrounding the game. We also try to find interesting stories that haven’t been beaten to death and won’t generate a predetermined set of canned responses. We’d much rather talk about whether table tennis can attract a following on TV than analyze why Coach Whatzit didn’t go for it on 4^th and 2. And when we do talk about Coach Whatzit not going for it on 4^th and 2, we’ll probably steer the conversation toward some nerdy study about when it makes sense to punt and when it makes sense to pass.

Bookshelf: How do you come up with your topics, given the time constraints?

Levin: The three of us talk throughout the week about what we’re reading and what we think could be good fodder for the next show. We also chat with our listeners on the Hang Up and Listen Facebook page and see what they’re interested in. We decided to record the show on Mondays so we’d be able to respond quickly to what happens on the weekend. That means that some of what we talk about during the week has to get tossed in the garbage. And there’s always some exciting field goal that Stefan—the ex-Broncos kicker—wants to talk about the next day.

Bookshelf: Does having Slate as your (not sure what the term is here: Host? Sponsor? Overlord?) have any special benefits or drawbacks?

Levin: Considering that Slate produces and pays for the show, there aren’t really any drawbacks—it wouldn’t exist if not for Slate. The main benefit is that we have a huge built-in audience that comes to Slate looking for smart opinions about current events. I guess the drawback is that Slate isn’t strictly a sports site. But that can be an advantage too. We’ve heard from tons of people that they really like the show despite not being huge sports fans. We try to be a big tent operation. By no means do we dumb down the conversation for people who’ve never watched a game, but we do try to make it so that non-hardcore fans can follow and enjoy what we’re talking about.

Bookshelf: Are you all in the studio together, or from remote locations? If that later, does that present any special considerations? The conversational dynamic can be different talking in person or not.

Levin: Stefan and I are in Washington, DC and Mike is in New York. Mike’s definitely at a disadvantage; he doesn’t get to see our facial expressions or our hand gestures or the wild gesticulating that we do when we don’t agree with each other. Mike is a radio pro, though, and he’s smart and funny under any and all circumstances. Maybe it’s good that he has a bit of a handicap so that he can come down a little bit to our level.

Bookshelf: How do you measure you audience? Since it’s a Slate product, how do you get the word out to a wider listenership?

Levin: Re: measuring the audience, we have tracking software that tells us roughly how many people download the show. Getting a wider listenership is a big challenge. We think there’s a huge audience out there for a sports show like this where the participants don’t scream at each other or spend a half hour arguing about Brett Favre every week. The struggle is to get the word out. We’ve drawn people in through links on blogs like yours. We were promoted by iTunes as one of their top podcast picks, which helped us climb the charts there. The Hang Up and Listen Facebook page has also helped us engage with listeners. And word of mouth is certainly a good thing … if you like the show, please tell your friends!

Tagged as: Hang Up and Listen, Josh Levin, Mike Pesca, Slate, sports podcast, Stefan Fatsis