Episode 37: The African Cup of Nations

In 1956 when the Confederation of African Football was founded, four African nations were members of FIFA: Egypt, Sudan, Ethiopia, and South Africa. The first Cup of Nations was played in Sudan between three of these, with South Africa's apartheid supporting Football Association immediately excluded from both CAF and the new tournament, not to return for nearly forty years.

In those forty years, the competition grew. Within a decade of that first three-team tournament dozen of countries had shaken off the last remnants of their colonial pasts, and most had set their sights on the biggest sporting prize the continent had to offer. Three teams became four, eight, twelve, sixteen and now twenty-four competing for the glittering gold trophy. Legends were born, many becoming household names at Europe's biggest clubs but returning every two years - whether their clubs liked it or not - for another go at the Cup of Nations.

Along the way there was tragedy and controversy, heartbreak and joy - never more so that the tale of Zambia rising like a phoenix from the unimaginable horror of their national team's 1993 plane crash that took the lives of most of a golden generation of talent. If 1994 was extraordinary for them, 2012 was a destiny fulfilled when within touching distance of the spot in the Atlantic Ocean where their heroes were lost they upset the odds and won it all.

Sport can be utterly extraordinary, and the African Cup of Nations more so than most.

Episode 36: The PDC World Darts Championship - "This darts match will make you happy!"

Every Christmas thousands cram into Alexandra Palace in fancy dress to scream in unison at a little black, white, red and green board on the wall. In this episode, we trace how that surreal festive tradition came to be - from darts as a pub pastime, through the birth of the televised World Championship, to the civil war that split the game and created the PDC’s neon-lit circus at Ally Pally.

Along the way we meet the swaggering heroes and fragile geniuses of the oche - Bristow, Jocky, Taylor and Barney through to van Gerwen, Smith, Humphries and Littler - and dig into how walk-ons, nicknames, Sky money, global tours and life-changing prize cheques turned a smoky, working-class obsession into a worldwide Christmas staple.

It’s about the sound of “One hundred and eighteeee!”, but also about class, rebellion, reinvention and a sport that somehow stayed true to its roots even as it wrapped itself in fireworks and confetti - and whether it can maintain that as more and more money pours into the game, fuelled now more than ever by the so-called "Littler Effect".

It’s gaudy, raucous, sometimes ridiculous, often sublime - and at Christmas, it somehow belongs to all of us.

Episode 35: Our Ashes XI (The Ashes, Part 3) - Why We Love Cricket

In Part 3 of our Ashes series, we reflect on almost 30 years of being cricket fans, and the players who’ve inspired us, shaped our love of the game, and delivered moments of both joy and agony.

To do that, we stick on our selectors caps and pick an Ashes XI drawn from our time as fans. Some choices come easily - Shane Warne, Steve Smith, Stuart Broad: shoo-ins, no debate needed.

Others, though, need a proper argument. Does Jimmy Anderson’s stellar Test career earn him a place when his Ashes record is so uneven, especially with Pat Cummins and Mitch Starc looming in the background? Can Joe Root realistically compete with Steve Waugh when the pairs Ashes numbers suggest the older man belongs on a higher shelf - and are those numbers even telling the full story?

We even make a brief detour to Headingley in 1981 to bridge eras, but make no mistake: while the legends of series past matter deeply, it’s the personalities, moments and memories we’ve lived through that made us fall in love with this wonderful game - and with the Ashes most of all.

Episode 34: Beginnings, Bradman, Bodyline and Benaud (The Ashes, Part 2) - The Birth of a Rivalry.

"Media were never allowed into an Australian dressing room until I became skipper. I changed that and invited them in at the close of play each day, thereby confirming for many administrators they had appointed a madman as captain." - Australia captain and broadcasting legend Richie Benaud.

England have lost the first test, but rather than slide into familiar darkness and misery Jack and Ben instead go back into the early history of the Ashes to rediscover what it is that makes this contest so special, what makes them keep coming back even when the outcome feels like an inevitability.

It's a dive into the contests origins, an obituary notice and a quest by Ivo Bligh to regain what was lost. Into WG Grace and Billy Midwinter, whose careers intersected as teammates and opponents and, on one memorable occasion, as kidnapper and kidnappee. Into the greatest man to ever wield the willow in Sir Don Bradman, and how Douglas Jardine hatched a dastardly plan to stop him, and nearly set Anglo-Australian relations back a generation or two in the process. And into a man whose voice and passion for the game made him as beloved in England as in Australia - Richie Benaud.

Because through good and bad, the Ashes remain memorable, occasionally maddening, frequently controversial and - when all is said and done - utterly marvellous.

Intro Music: Bensound.com

License code: MZ7BOE03DMJ0CYB5

Artist: Benjamin Tissot

Episode 33: The Ashes Part 1, How to Cricket - A Beginners Guide to a Very Old Sport

“They'd win the first four Tests and we'd try to nick one at the end when they were all drunk.” - Former England captain Nasser Hussain on England's pre-2005 Ashes fortunes.

Cricket, to the uninitiated, can be a very confusing sport. Even to those who are lucky enough to have had the Laws ingrained into them at a young age it still has the ability to puzzle, to bemuse and to surprise in equal measure.

Ahead of the 2025-26 Ashes series starting in Perth on Friday morning we attempt to do the impossible - make the most jargon filled, tradition soaked, wonderfully weird sport on Earth make sense to newcomers.

In the first part of an Ashes trio, we take you through the absolute basics - what cricket is, how the Ashes works, what legendary stadiums are hosting this year's series, how a Test match unfolds, what all those strange words actually mean, and why the sport has such a grip on the imagination of millions.

From silly fielding positions to mandatory tea breaks, the importance of weather forecasts to what LBW actually is, we set the scene for cricket fans old and new ahead of Australia and England once more going to cricketing war, reigniting the oldest international sports rivalry of them all.

Episode 32: The Grey Cup - Canadian Football's Grand Finale

Canadian Football is a weird and wonderful thing, especially to those only acquainted with its immensely popular equivalent played south of the border. To an NFL fan, watching the CFL can seem like a fever dream. The pitch is a bit too big, the goalposts are in the wrong place, the endzones look like they need to go on a diet and wide receivers just won't stand still. And the less said about the rouge the better...

But to Canadians - and, honestly, to the occasional impartial observer - it is an arguably even more exciting spectacle whose rules encourage faster play, more passing and kick returning, more unpredictability and some of the wildest finishes to games in all of sport. And it's all built upon a long history and over a century of its biggest spectacle - the Grey Cup.

Ahead of the Montreal Alouettes versus the Saskatchewan Roughriders in Winnipeg on Sunday, Ben and Jack talk the origins of the game and the Cup, about legends like Russ Jackson and Warren Moon, and of how Canadian footballers changed the direction of the American game forever - and why the sports world should never stop thanking them for that.

Episode 31: The Brazilian Grand Prix - Drama is Only Seconds Away

"I only came back to reality when I saw the checkered flag. That's when I felt immense pleasure in being alive, in being at Interlagos, in my homeland, and seeing my people happy." - Ayrton Senna, speaking about his 1991 Brazilian Grand Prix win.

There is no race on the Formula 1 calendar that disappoints as rarely as Brazil. The Interlagos circuit has played host to some of the most astonishing moments in the sports history - chaos in 2003, Hamilton’s charge in 2021, a three way title showdown in 2007, and of course, Ayrton Senna finally winning his home Grand Prix stuck in sixth gear in 1991.

Surely though, its most extraordinary moment came in November 2008, the final race of a controversy filled season, where Felipe Massa drove a perfect 71 laps only to be pipped to the title by Lewis Hamilton after he had crossed the line to win.

It's a season whose legacy endures - as Massa now tries to undo what he perceives as the injustice of Crashgate, we discuss this race, the merits of his claims and why they are most likely doomed to failure, alongside many other stories from this legendary race and the history of motorsport in Brazil.

> Content note: This episode contains brief factual references to fatal motorsport accidents.

Episode 30: The Melbourne Cup - The Race That Stops the Nation

"The Melbourne Cup is the Australasian National Day. It would be difficult to overstate its importance. It overshadows all other holidays and specialized days of whatever sort in that congeries of colonies. Overshadows them? I might almost say it blots them out." - Mark Twain, from his travelogue Following the Equator.

The sport of Horse Racing is built into the very fabric of Australia. When brave pioneers in the new colonies set out to build towns it is said they would first build a church, then they would build a pub, and finally they would build a racecourse. It is no surprise as a result that today Australia boasts a racing industry that matches or exceeds far more populated countries for scale, and a love for the sport that is arguably unrivalled.

The pinnacle of this passion is, of course, the Melbourne Cup. Held every year since 1861, through floods, war and depressions, on the first Tuesday in November the city of Melbourne and Victoria as a whole shuts down, workplaces and schools close up, and everyone gathers around a television, radio, or for the lucky few at Flemington Racecourse itself for the world's richest handicap race, and truly the race that stops the nation.

Ben and Jack talk the history of the event and thoroughbred racing, of the great horses, jockeys, trainers and strappers through over a century and a half of the Cup, and of the stories and tall tales that make the event what it is today - Archer being denied a shot at three in a row, the tale of young Peter St Albans and Briseis, Makybe Diva completing the impossible, and of course, the legend of Phar Lap and the mystery of his untimely demise.

Events like this are why we love sport: it is history, it is legend, it is sometimes barely believable, but above all, it is Australia.