Episode 16: A Boxing Story - Leen Sanders + Oleksandr Usyk vs. Daniel Dubois.

With Oleksandr Usyk and Daniel Dubois set to put their world titles on the line, we take a look at one of the most compelling heavyweight clashes of the year - two talented fighters, shaped by very different paths, meeting in the ring with everything to prove, to win and to lose.

But this week, we’re doing things a little differently.

Boxing is often called the loneliest sport. There’s nowhere to hide, no one to blame, and every fight has its reasons - some clear, some deeply personal. Some fight for pride, for country, for a way out. And some fight simply to survive.

At the heart of the episode is the story of Leen Sanders, a talented Dutch boxer with a hermetic defence, fighting in the inter-war years and whose career and life took a turn no one could have imagined. His fights weren’t always on canvas, and what was at stake wasn’t just titles. What he endured - and what he refused to give up - speaks to something far deeper than sport.

It's an incredible story that goes from heady heights in the ring to the darkest depths of 20th Century history, with an extraordinary man as its protagonist alongside other boxers of the era.

Come listen, but be warned, this episode hits hard.

Episode 15: The UEFA European Women’s Championship – “Women’s Football Confuses Men”

It’s a story almost as old as football itself: women start playing. People notice. They’re good - really good. Crowds grow, praise swells, more girls join in… and just as momentum builds, the men in suits step in.

With furrowed brows and dubious “health concerns”, they declare the game unfit for women - too rough, too unfeminine, too dangerous for their supposedly fragile reproductive systems. Too improper a spectacle for men to have to endure.

Rinse. Repeat.

It’s a maddening cycle that’s haunted women’s football for over a century: visibility, popularity… then paternalistic backlash. But through it all, the women kept going - not waiting for permission, not playing for praise, but for the pure, unstoppable joy of playing the game.

In Germany, they played hundreds of unofficial internationals and even hosted full blown European tournaments - all while the DFB officially banned the sport. In Italy, enthusiasm clashed with conservatism both at home and with UEFA. Meanwhile, in more egalitarian societies like those in Scandinavia, women’s football wasn’t sidelined - it was supported. And success followed. Funny that.

And then there’s England - slow to change, late to back the women’s game, left trailing rivals. But when talent finally met investment, a generation rose. With the right leadership, they took the game to stratospheric heights - and in 2022, the Lionesses did what no English senior team had done in over half a century: they won a major tournament. The result? An explosion of girls taking up the game, inspired by players who once had to fight just to be seen. Good times never seemed so good...

Because this isn’t just a story of struggle - it’s one of momentum. Those girls falling in love with football today? They’re tomorrow’s players, coaches, leaders, and decision-makers.

Once again, women are playing. Once again, the crowds are growing. But this time, the cycle might finally be broken. The opposition isn’t as loud, and is much easier to ignore. The support is stronger. And the game is rising.

The growth of women’s football isn’t done.

It’s only just getting started.

Episode 14: The Tour de France – More than a race. Less than the truth.

“You can't ride the Tour de France on mineral water. You would have to be an imbecile or a crook to imagine that a pro-cyclist who races for 235 days a year can hold the pace without stimulants.”

Jacques Anquetil, five-time Tour de France winner

It is without doubt the greatest cycling race in the world – just don’t ask what’s in the water bottles. Legends are everywhere, but clean ones are harder to find. Where endurance meets amphetamines, pain meets painkillers, and a yellow jersey rarely means a clear conscience, the Tour de France is a race fuelled as much by scandal as it is by glory – and yet, somehow, it never disappoints.

Because here’s the thing – what these riders do is superhuman. They exceed the limits of what a body should withstand. They suffer more in three weeks than most of us would choose in a lifetime. Just to ride in the Tour takes obsession, discipline, and pain tolerance most can’t fathom. To win it takes something else entirely – whatever that something may be.

For much of its history, drug use in cycling wasn’t a dirty secret – it was an open one. Riders took whatever gave them the edge: from ether and strychnine to amphetamines, morphine, and later EPO. Cheating didn’t always stop at the syringe, either. But in 1967, near the summit of the brutal Mont Ventoux, Britain’s Tom Simpson collapsed and died – the price of pushing too far. It should have been a reckoning. It wasn’t.

Twenty years later, cyclists started dying in their sleep. Nothing changed. In 1998, the Festina Affair blew the sport wide open. And yet, the very next year, the Tour was reborn – branded Le Tour de Renouveau – The Tour of Renewal. What it delivered was Lance Armstrong.

So why do we love it?

That’s the question Jack and Ben ask this week. Because whether it fills you with joy, disgust, awe or disbelief – the Tour de France is a spectacle you can’t look away from. It’s beautiful. It’s brutal. It’s broken. And maybe, just maybe, that’s what makes it so human.